Thursday, June 23, 2011

More Fun Than Humans Should Have....

....but I AM willing to share!!!!!

As some of you may or may not have noticed, I've been pimping this amazing event coming up tomorrow night! This is my LAST push to inform everyone of the mayhem and merriment they will be missing!
This Way To The Egress is having a record release bash for their first full length CD : The Delicious Cabaret!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now if you've ever seen this band live you'll know why I'm working so hard. Never has a band so cool been so underground! They have sexy burlesque girls (and hot 'boy-lesque' boys as well!), fire performers, side show madness , carnival games and AMAZING music....and that's just their REGULAR show! This should be the show of all shows!
Check out all the info on their facebook page , And I've added some of my fave bits from youtube to whet your appetite!
It's from 8pm on at the old Asbury Park Lanes bowling alley....which has been redone as a rockabilly haven club/bowling alley, with the party kicking off at the Asbury Park Carousel with a fire show and old fashioned circus style parade from there to the venue! New Jersey is sooooo spoiled!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMl-oJ6al1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0we1Canin6E

As well as the magnificent aforementioned band (MAD hugs to Sarah, Taylor and Matt!!), Hellblinki all the way from Asheville NC and Amour Obscur from NY are ALSO playing, and adding their own special brand of macabre sexiness and dark awesomness to the party!

So I know this is sort of a short bit, and really just pimping my head off, but I'd love to have just a giant group of all my crazy friends to enjoy this event with!
JOIN US!!!! LOL!

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

See....I'm NOT dead! :P

Well here we are at the end of a loooooong, weird road.

My experiment was about 75% successful, and I've learned some very important things.

Like ......

: Starbucks isn't the devil, but neither is Whole Foods entirely angelic.

: America doesn't grow grapes for food. ( we do...but it's nearly impossible to find 'grown in the USA' grapes in any east coast market.)

: The US government frowns on home growers. (How messed up is THAT?!?!?! Remember the concept of the 'victory garden'? That USED to be us...)

: Fresh, organic versions of food TASTE BETTER.

: HFCS is really hard to avoid, but REALLY worth avoiding. (Yes, sugar is sugar as far as your body knows....BUT the process for obtaining HFCS is ridiculously bad for humans.)

: You CAN buy Eco, sustainable, responsible products at roughly the same price as all the bad stuff, you just have to WORK at it.

: TRADING IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

: And lastly, for now, trying to eat locally in the summer and fall is awesome and easy....in the winter and spring...not so much.


So herein is my last post of the year long personal challenge.


Got up yesterday morning and went out to my little porch to water the garden. Looking around at the variety of food coming in made me smile from ear to ear. I had proven to myself that not only could I grow my own food, organically and with NO GMO seeds or seedlings, I could figure out how to grow almost any fruit or veg IN POTS!

Here's the rundown as far as June 8th:

Sweet peas

Cukes

Tomatoes (3 varieties)

Hot peppers (9 varieties...so far)

Basil, Rosemary, Peppermint, Lemongrass, Aloe, Sunflowers,

Blackberries, Strawberries (2 varieties), Raspberries, Blueberries (2 varieties),

Silver Mound Wormwood (yay Absinthe!), Nasturtium

Dwarf fruit trees: Macintosh apple, Sweet Cherry.......

Not to mention the non edibles in there.

The sweet peas were a bit of a coup tho, as I was told by EVERYONE that you just can't transplant peas from starter pots. They're too delicate and won't survive the root shock. BAH! BAH! I say!




I pulled the first 10 fat pods yesterday and MAN are they sweet! Mind you, 15 plants does not a great pea haul produce....but what we got was worth the hassles. ( if anyone is interested in HOW I pulled this off, let me know and I'll add it in the comments.)

So I am living proof that you can have a great, organic garden on a teeny little porch with just a little work, research and ingenuity. :)

(BTW: The shelves in the pics were made from old plastic milk crates and wood slats we found in the flea market dump pile. Cool no?)

As far as the locavore thing goes, I have discovered both a secret locavore club that meets once a month in different eateries for locally sourced dinners (it's sadly rather exclusive and therefore expensive,) and a not so secret group started by a friend of mine (Go Katie girl!!) recently!

Pot luck style in fact! I missed the first dinner due to bad schedule overlap, but I plan to attend ALL the rest!

And while the local Goodwill turned out to be a total bust, I have found that the flea markets around here are more than adequate as far as not buying new stuff goes. Sometimes even FREE stuff!

Almost all our porch furnishings are 'trash picked' pieces that are totally fine and useful, but were headed for the garbage stream. Sad actually. But now they have fresh paint and new lives!

The trading thing is going really well too. I had to ditch the Ning site as it was NOT drawing well, but facebook is amazing for it!

**OH!! If any of you out there are local to me, and have chickens for eggs....I WANNA TRADE!!!!**

In fact, let me know if you have homemade foods, crafts or whatever to trade! I'm a great conduit!

** I also need a wooden drying rack for clothes. The kind that folds up.**

In the near future I think I'll use this blog to post trade wants and haves, great hand/home made and eco products from different sources others may not know, and of COURSE goings on in the Steampunk and 'friends with bands' worlds.

SPEAKING OF THAT......FOLLOW THIS LINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (you will NOT regret it!)



Hopefully I'll see you ALL there! This is NOT a show you want to miss! Fire acts, burlesque (the real kind) carnival games, bowling (??) and MAD great music! BE THERE!

Till next time folks,

Keep strange!