Bohemian Mermaid Palace

  Right now it is early spring, but come summer I am ALL about the Salsa. We now have 2 Salsa Houses, solely for growing our tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers of all sorts.      I made a short video of the Houses and canning some salsa:  Salsa Time!        We always said that when we found our dream place, we wanted to learn to grow and preserve food. And that's what we did. Neither of us had gardened at all before we moved here. We started small, and learned along the way. Lots of youtube and google. I'd say 90% of our efforts survived even though we know nothing. Ha! I mean, if we can do it anyone can!    Bride of Salsa House Last year's Veggie Zone expansion (we tripled our beds!) meant much more salsa canning, and also some tomato sauce and juice making. Stu (aka Hubs) even got into making his own fermented hot sauces. Pretty exciting! And the bloody mary's were divine.   Here's a quick video tour of our triple sized veg garden:  Mid Summer *Veggie Zone* Tour  

I Used BEER CANS to Make a Wooden Sign  Easy DIY Garden Project I made a thing! Last summer after we overhauled our BBQ Zone, I really wanted to make a sign out of beer cans. I had the vision, I knew how I would do it... I just had never tried before. But it worked great!  I made a whole video about it here:     I Used BEER CANS to Make a Wooden Sign - Easy DIY Garden Project Just to be clear, this is not a complete tutorial. Ha. If it was, it would be much more detailed and informative believe me. This was one of my first how-to video attempts, and has many imperfections. Learning!  BUT I will be showing you the basics of how I made my beer can sign. Call it whatever. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Ok! So first thing is to prepare a backing board, I used a piece of plywood which I painted.  Next I figured out how big I wanted my letters to be, and brought up a font on my laptop. When I had them the right size, I traced them onto paper like a light table. Then I cut them out.    I placed them on

 ALL NEW *Creative* Beer Can Hat Tutorials 2022   Triple Tall Beer Can Top Hat! Crochet Tutorial Okay, I hope you are ready for this. I have decided to start making craft tutorials for youtube, starting with the coveted Beer Can Hat. The more I contemplated this project, the more design ideas I came up with. It just sounded fun! Nobody is making giant cool beer can hat patterns. But I am here for you.   I actually made a cute little Promo video here:     NEW *Creative* Beer Can Hat Tutorials 2022   To start, I'm making a 3 part tutorial for the basic Beer Can Party Hat (it is now posted!!), similar to how my original tutorial is laid out. Each part is a step in the process, but each part can also be a whole hat in itself! Hello. So if you are crocheting in a real life party situation, and you get a little too high or start making out or whatever, you can finish it up quickly.  Part 1 is the Crown, Part 2 is the Fez, Part 3 is the Cap. I have simplified the construction to b

 Video: Driving Through Oaxaca to Monte Albán   Another quick post from my trip to Mexico, mostly video. This day (feb 2020) we drove up up up to the ruins at the top of a huge hill just outside of Oaxaca de Juaréz. Actually, I turned on the camera after we drove through a gigantic intersection of death. Okay not death, near death haha. I thought something else wild might happen, but not especially.      Here's the video:  Oaxaca Mexico! Driving to Monte Alban   It is a neat view of the side streets of the city, each turn becoming steeper and steeper until we drove along the cliff to the very top.            The ruins were amazing, I believe one of the largest sites in Mexico. We had breakfast at the beautiful little restaurant overlooking the city. I feel so lucky to have been able to celebrate my 50th juuuust before they locked everything down for covid. More stories and videos to come.  

Video: A Wonderful Wedding Parade in Oaxaca, Mexico   While wandering the long pedestrian street in el centro de Oaxaca city, we found ourselves in the middle of a massive wedding parade or Calenda. It was magical! Giant puppets, bands, and beautiful people in traditional dress as far as we could see. You know I love the full embroidery and skirts, they were everywhere. There was candy flying, and of course the usual shot of mezcal in that little bamboo shot glass. So much fun!! More from my trip coming soon. It's about time! Here's a short video from that day:  Beautiful Oaxaca! Huge Wedding Parade      

2021 Veggie Zone Garden Tour    Heeey! Veggie season is here and we are going nuts with our Veggie Zone expansion. It is so awesome we almost can't stand it. I'm working on a building video before and after the construction. For now I'm just doing a current tour of how it is rolling in mid June. Things are just starting to pop, my husband is very impatient, but in our mild coastal climate it is just starting to warm up.   So a reminder that we are total gardening newbs. We said that when we found our dream property, we would start growing veggies and learning to can and preserve them. And get cats. And chickens. We moved here just over 4 yrs ago, and we've done everything but the chickens so far. At our old house we did zero gardening. I had like 3 houseplants I got as a gift, and hubs would mow the lawn and sometimes butcher innocent shrubs nearly to death. We started out here knowing almost nothing. Just google and youtube and two people in love. haha.   Anyway! We ar

For my first long awaited story from my trip to Oaxaca, I want to share about one of the most wonderful adventures we had there. I haven't posted about my trip at all yet, which is kind of weird. But this trip had so many layers and moments... I've had trouble organizing it all into words. Not a problem I have very often. Ha. And there are other current distractions as we know. I'm starting with this experience because I gave one of these red pottery items to a friend, and due to social distancing I couldn't tell her the cool story that went along with it. So here it is! Ok quick intro, the whole reason I picked Oaxaca for my 50th birthday trip was for the art and crafts traditions there. Entire villages will focus on one craft, everyone does it and has for generations. It's all very down to basics, which I love. I also speak some spanish and have always wanted to visit Mexico. So when I saw an article about how you could go stay with native Zapotec famil

How to Get Comfortable with Selling Your Artwork I wrote a little bit about this here: Make the Switch to a Business Mindset . But I want to go more in  depth about getting comfortable with selling what you make. I know it's different. You start out making for the sake of making, it's fun, you get good at it, people want more. Boom suddenly you have a little business. Now you have to get a bit more "businessy" and actually try to sell stuff. You don't want to be pushy or annoying or ask too much of anyone. I totally get it. But if you ARE in business, you just have to get over that. At least somewhat. Because you will have to "sell" your work, and the idea of it. I'm going to share how I overcame those feelings and gained a different perspective. What I did was work on a marketing plan . I found some kind of outline with questions that helped me fine tune what it is I am selling. And to whom. Going through that process helped me to

Please. Artisans. Advertise Your Craft Shows! Well, it seems I am just writing things that get my attention at any given time. Ha. So far it's working for me. Write when the inspiration hits! So yeah, it's holiday show season right now. I thought this year, since I'm not vending at all (still weird to say out loud), I'd try to hit as many local craft fairs as possible. Just to check them out, see what's happening out there, since I don't usually do that when I'm working. Here's the problem. I just missed I think 3 craft fairs this past weekend because I didn't see ANY reminders on facebook. I am on fb a lot lately, I follow many many artists and local groups. What. The. F. Okay it's not all on the artists, the organizers need to be advertising their shows for sure and getting the word out. But you can't count on only them! It takes so little effort to do a few things yourself, and costs nothing. So I guess it's time for