filtering black gold

Mack came up with this one all his own and I have to say I was pretty impressed because it is a true feat of engineering. Everything we make these days is from pallets because on one income a project is much more worth doing if it is free. If I had known all it would take to make my husband happy would be to go to the dump every day and pick up free stuff, I would have had him quit his job a long time ago. But now being resourceful isn’t just fun; it’s necessary. We used to have one of those fancy drum-shaped plastic bins that you turn with a crank on a side, but it basically desintigrated when we tried to move it from the old house, and besides, we were looking for a more permanent structure here. So Mack designed this bin to suit our purposes, and it kind of turned out halfway between a bin and a heap. It’s kind of hard to explain so I’ll just give you lots of pictures.

So to start out, he took one pallet in relatively good shape. We had some plastic chicken-wire type fencing that the previous owners left in our backyard when they moved out; he just tacked that on using a staple gun. The idea behind the chicken wire is to have a double-layer of filtration (in addition to the pallet planks) to sift out the smaller product from the larger pieces of stuff inside. You only want to use the material that is furthest along and most broken-down, so filtering out the big chunks helps with that. The whole compost bin is going to be built on top of this first pallet, like a base, and you need to be able to access the area beneath the pallet to pull out the material that filters through. Unlike other compost bins that need to be cranked and turned, gravity is doing the work for you here. That's what the cinderblocks are for. You could use something higher if you wanted more space to work with underneath, but for us this is just fine. You can see in this picture that there is a flat board all the way across the ground beneath the pallet that can be pulled out to access the final product; more on that later.

You can already see in the picture above that panels are positioned on three sides, made of plywood. These are going to be the walls of the bin. You can just screw these into the pallet base directly, then use simple 2 x 4 boards as corner anchors. Here's a picture of my husband looking hot and attaching the sides:

 And here's a pic with all of the sides attached. You can somewhat see the 2 x 4 corner anchor in that far back corner.

And now for the final step: accessing your compost. As you can see here, Mack selected a clean piece of plywood in relatively good shape and made sure it was the right size to fit in between the cinder blocks.


 He also positioned some 2 x 2 planks horizontally and vertically so that the board would slide more smoothly when pulling it in and out (rather than sliding directly across the ground). You can see that underneath here:


Having a lid helps of course, both with smell and keeping little critters out, but it also keeps the moisture in and helps the materials inside decay.

In Colorado, you may actually have to water your compost to make sure it is healthy and breaking everything down in an efficient way.

That's black gold, people. Putting worms inside helps, too, but they tend to migrate so make sure you add more from time to time. Happy composting! Please let me know if you have questions.
-Amy

loving it while it lasts

I recently participated in a discussion on a friend's Facebook page. She was relating a conversation she overheard in the coffee shop on her college campus, in which a young woman bemoaned the weight gain of her best friend, who had become "so fat" she had begun to wear a size medium.  My friend, a once-again freshman who averages a decade of seniority over most of her classmates, had remarked that she was grateful to not be 18 anymore, to be beyond the stage of skin-deep friendship that comes with a transient, childless existence.

                I think it's an important issue, the tendency of women to succumb to fulfilling the stereotypes of a culture that refuses to judge us on anything other than our appearances (not hyperbole—just Google "Miss America Pageant"). This kind of commentary, unacceptable at any age, is all too common in the media and our everyday lives. But I'm not feminist. In fact, I've always prided myself on not being a feminist. I like it when my husband does things for me, opens doors and carries bags, and I even let him pay my bills once in a while. But in this new role I've been given as a mother of a daughter, a little baby daughter who still is presumably young enough to be molded and taught things, I can't help but wonder how and how early we learn to do this. How young are we when we are taught these things? And how can I teach her?

                The answer to the first question is clear on a Monday morning at story time at the Loveland Public Library. Mostly girls, the audience and participants comprise a who's who of local fashion role models under two feet tall. I'm still adjusting to the shock that the baby I had thought for nine months was surely a boy came out to be a girl, and I'll be the first to admit that dressing my daughter has become one of the unexpected joys of motherhood for me. There's just nothing more fun to do with a baby girl than to dress her up in cute little clothes. Why should we care about the message it sends to our daughters when some of their earliest social interactions are preceded by a significant amount of fussing over the way they look? Aren't the matching polka dot tutus worth it? Aren't the leather jeans and cowboy boots? I've seen a necklace on a baby and thought it was adorable. And then there are the tiny pink sparkly Tom's shoes small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. I'll say it one more time to let the cuteness sink in: pink sparkly Tom'ses small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. In a world of sequined headbands, puffy shoulders, ruffled butts, and teddy-bear-eared hoods, doesn't the adorableness of it all outweigh any permanent scars we may be inflicting on our yet impressionable children?

               The answer to question two is a little more troubling. As moms, we want to give our kids the tools to deal with adversity. We want to teach them how to cope with the way the world works. Should I teach my little girl how to judge and be judged? Should I remind her that her best friend has really chunked up in the last few months, or warn her of the dangers of being friends with an eighteen-month-old who wears a 2T? Should I point out that the bald look is very last-season and so a hat is probably the best choice and that she should have done more tummy time last summer because now she’s going to have to run a few laps around the yard before lunch? Should I not use words like "pretty," "beautiful," and "cute" when I'm talking to her over breakfast or getting our nails done? Along with that, should I avoid objectifying other children by Googling things like "hipster babies" (if you haven't done this yet I highly suggest you devote to yourself the 15 minutes of pure joy and amazement it will bring)? Or is there a better way? Should we instead teach them to love their bodies while it lasts, because once their own kids are born they had better have something else to fall back on, if you know what I mean?  Should we tell them, over and over, how beautiful they are? Because seeing is believing means one thing but when you hear it and know it, it becomes a part of who you are. That's what's so great about story time at the library—every little girl is beautiful in her own way. The little girls don't notice one another's outfits, only the other moms do (we'll leave the psychology of how and why moms try to impress each other through their offspring for another day). After all, is it really so bad that tiny humans are adorable and that we celebrate that, that we fall in love with our babies based, in part, on how they look? Leave the scarring and emotional analytics for a later time, once your kids start to get older and lose some of their cuteness. Luckily, I won't have that problem; I'm the mother of the most beautiful girl in the world.

An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the June 2014 issue of The Fourth Street Chronicle, Loveland, Colorado.

a Very Hungry birthday

We had a few setbacks, but Harper’s first birthday party was overall a major success. Things didn't exactly go as planned because my grandfather died and we ended up going back home to Kentucky the very same weekend as the party was originally scheduled. So we had to postpone things a bit, but it was alright because I hadn't actually sent out the invitations yet! I was a little behind from the start, to say the least, and I will admit to being a little too overly ambitious in my Pinterest party dream-world. And when we decided to change the venue to an entirely different state at the very last minute, well, everything else pretty much went out the window from there.

I decided, of course, to do whatever I could by hand, but the copyrighted images and text I just didn't have time to scan in and format myself. I saved myself countless hours of tedium by purchasing a downloadable package (or really combination of two packages) that included all the signage, invitations, thank you cards, various label-making materials, and a pattern for a pennant banner that I had wanted to make anyway. Again, this saved a ton of time and was definitely worth every penny of the $17 price tag.  If I had InDesign on my computer I might have tried to do it myself, and then I might have actually lived up to my dream of being the world’s first perfect mom. But that shit is just too hard on Microsoft Word. I’m pretty sure Harper didn’t know the difference. And the invites were adorable, and I even splurged on the little food labels with quotes from the book for each individual food.

One thing I did make myself was the birthday board, a piece of plywood that I had Mack sand down and cover with chalkboard paint; then I wrote on it with those chalk paint markers that restaurants and coffee shops use to write out menus. These go for upwards of $100 on Etsy, so this one was definitely worth the DIY. We also didn't want people bringing gifts since I knew she'd get enough from grandparents anyway, so we asked for donations to the local food bank, which we collected in a box I covered with wrapping paper.

 Other DIY projects I could have spent a ton of money on included the 12 month caterpillar banner (thank goodness for this one and the justification it gave me for all those monthly photos all year !)...

...these quick curtains which added a little childish flare...

 ...and, of course, plenty of balloons.

 There were a few fun craft projects, which mainly entertained the adults (mainly myself).

The food consisted of everything the caterpillar eats in the book. This was one of the primary reasons why I chose a Hungry Caterpillar theme—I thought the menu would be easy to plan and relatively cheap. The last part turned out to be a major disappointment to the tune of almost $300; just ask my mom. Thanks, Grandma.

 

I actually had guests helping hang up the decorations and put out the food as they arrived because we were so busy doing everything that morning! I guess it takes a village to throw a picture-perfect fantasy Hungry Caterpillar birthday party for a one-year-old.

 Everything was so last minute with the changes that I was way behind and didn't get to decorate the cake the way that I wanted to. But it was still delicious--lemon with raspberries inside and cream cheese frosting.  One thing I did ahead of time, though, was make an adorable outfit for Harper to wear for the cake smash. I've been to enough one-year parties to know that you have to have a back up for that super adorable and super expensive dress you bought for your adorable little princess. This one was easy. I made a copy out of the Hungry Caterpillar book that I printed onto iron-transfer paper for Harper’s cakesmash outfit, then just sewed a little tutu we had onto the onesie. It was pretty cute and saved the nice birthday dress I had bought her from certain ruin.

 Did I mention Grandpa came all the way from South Carolina?

We did make favors, but there weren't really any kids there because of the venue change and short notice. The only other baby was Harper’s cousin Sean, but he forgot to take his, probably because I forgot to tell his mom it was there.

If you’d like to see more pictures, please check out my Pinterest board. In all it was a wonderful day and I know my grandmother had a blast. She passed away herself in March, so it was wonderful to have had the time together with her and Harper, my mom and myself.