Microgreens

For Christmas, Matt gave me a book about growing microgreens. I'd never really heard of microgreens, and thought they were similar to sprouts. But, they're a little different. Sprouts are the germinated seeds, and you eat the root, stem, seed, and underdeveloped leaves. Sprouts are grown in the dark. Microgreen, after you germinate the seeds, are grown in the light, usually until the first true leaves appear. You eat microgreens by cutting the stem, leaving the roots behind :)

Well, I'm going to give it a go. I've ordered a starting kit from growingmicrogreens.com, and I'm patiently awaiting its arrival. Microgreens can be grown on your countertop, take about 10 days to mature, and can easily add greens to your diet, with minimal effort. I can't wait!


~Pam

And the Magic of Thursday

So, we're getting a new roof put on. It's been going on for over a week now and they're still not finished. It takes a while. It's a high quality product. I'll just be glad when I don't have 7 guys walking around on my roof all day. They're nice guys, but still...


So, a few weeks ago, we had Emily (Peggy's daughter) stay for the week. We had a blast! We took her snowboarding one of the days, her first time ever, and she did amazing! Way better than I did my first time. Also, the whole week, we waited (im)patiently for our hummingbird's eggs to hatch. She had laid two eggs, and we kept waiting, and waiting. I think they hatched 2 days after Emily left :( But the good news is, they're thriving. And I mean thriving! They're so big now that they almost don't fit in the nest anymore! Pretty soon, probably within a week or so, they'll be leaving the nest, flying away for good.

Jade, the momma, sitting on the nest, before they hatched.

The first baby hatched!

Jade, standing on the edge of the nest, feeding the babies.

And, here's a video I took of the babies fighting for space in the nest:

I was surfing the interwebs yesterday and came across this webcam of a hummingbird nest near Santa Barbara, CA.  Enjoy!  

~Pam

*Update* So, I've made an executive decision. I've decided these are girl hummingbirds, and as such, with the help of Miss Emily Blair, have named them. World, say hello to Melody and Harmony!

One a Day

Alright, so here's the deal: I want to blog more. Just so I can have something to look back on later :) I've not had much luck with journals lately, but today's a great day to start, right. So, I'm going to try to blog once a day. We'll see if I can keep it up.


So, what am I doing today? I'm researching tents. And listening to RadioVatican, where the new Pope was just chosen (no particular reason, really, but history is being made :) Oh, and why tents? Well, we have a tent, but we're in the VERY early stages of planning a new bike tour, and I'm thinking a new tent might come in handy. Here's what we're thinking....

 

It's much lighter than our old one, and has two doors, which would be nice. We shall see.

Oh, and last night was pretty cool. I had heard about the two comets this year, PANSTARRS and ISON. Well, I remembered that the best night for viewing PANSTARRS would be 3/12, so as the sun was getting ready to set, Matt and I hopped in the car and drove up to one of our favorite viewing places, Kagel Canyon, and watched the sunset and the comet appear :) So cool! I'm glad I brought binoculars, because while I could see it without, it was much better with! The comet should be visible through the rest of the month.

If you look really closely, you can see the sliver of the moon. The comet was just to the left of it. :)

Anyways, that's what I'm up to today.


~Pam

Copyright trolls

Recently a law firm named Prenda Law Inc. filed a defamation lawsuit against people who did nothing more than proclaim they, Prenda Law Inc., are a copyright troll. Further research on the matter really did lead me to believe that Prenda Law Inc. (located at http://wefightpiracy.com) knowingly and willing files many suits for the sole purpose of intimidating and demoralizing people. Also I believe it is within a person's rights to say these things, and that they should not be sued for it. So Internet and search engines spread the word, Prenda Law is a lousy firm, with (in my opinion) shoddy morals and I am allowed to have and express this opinion.

-Matt
http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2013/03/04/copyright-trolls-prenda-law-paul-duffy-and-john-steele-commence-three-lawsuits-v-paul-godfread-alan-cooper-and-our-community/

http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2013/02/20/sinking-ship-prenda-is-breaking-with-a-loud-sound-rats-are-leaving-the-vessel/

Yet another Kitchen Update

For those of you paying attention, We began this kitchen remodel on January 10th. That means that today is day 47 of the remodel. And we are making progress! New sliding door and window over the sink. Granite is in (and looks amazing). A lot of the little details are coming together, too. Almost all of the handles are installed. The outlet strips and under cabinet lights are in. The overhead/recessed lights are halfway up, and the motion detector/dimmer installed. The cover pieces and some of the trim is up. Well, I'll let you see for yourself. I'm thinking it looks pretty darn awesome!!!

I'm so happy for the progress we're making. It really is coming right along. Its so much fun cooking with the new layout. I feel like I have so much more space! Oh, that's right, because I do! Thanks to my wonderful husband who pretty much thought of everything and designed an amazing kitchen for us!

~Pam

PS. The new sliding door and window are so much better than what used to be there. It's so quiet in the kitchen/dining room now! And, it may be our imagination, but it felt warmer this morning in there, too.

Do not do businss with Tri North Lighting

I just wanted to put a brief review of my experience with Tri North Lighting. I purchased (well am still attempting to purchase) several Phillips Profile Powercore under cabinet lights on December 23rd. I understand that this was the holiday season, so I patiently waited.... and waited... And finally in the first and second week of January I attempted to contact the company through the website. After 3 attempts and no responses I called them. They did answer the phone and mumbled how that was weird and it should have shipped by now, then said ohh it is back ordered and should ship on Monday.

I wait another week or so and e-mail to get no response, so I call again and they say it should ship tomorrow. Finally I receive notification that my product has shipped. I get excited and it arrives... only to find out the wiring components are back ordered along with 1/3rd of my lights. The interesting thing is that the lights were shipped direct to me from another company called "Color Kinects" and they included a handy Packing List, which had on it an "order date" of Janurary 30th. So this leads me to believe that they never even really placed my order with their distributor who appears to be Wiedamark based on the Packing List. Instead they sat on the order and didn't bother to do anything. Now this is speculation on my part, but the great part of having no contact with their customer service means that I get to make as many assumptions about the company as I like.

So here I sit on 2/19/2013 (just shy of two months after my initial order), I still have no way of wiring the lights that they did send me, and am missing lights as well. I have nobody to really contact to find out how long these products are back ordered, nor do they seem willing to answer any questions. The only thing I can do is broadcast my frustration to the Interet about how HORRIBLE the service is from the people at Tri North Lighting, also doing buisiness as: Neon Lights, www.ledchristmaslighting.com, ledneonlight.com, and probably more dubious names. With their stellar BBB rating of B- and 23 complaints I hope you avoid them like I will in the future...

-Matt

The remodel continues

Slowly but surely we are making this kitchen happen.
This first picture is the start of the wall cabinets going up.

And now, today! We have all wall cabinets hung, all but one base cabinet installed, a sink, faucet dishwasher and cooktop with most of the countertops in! Its looking great!!!

We need to finish tiling the closet (not in this picture) so we can grout this weekend. And hopefully get someone out to measure for our real countertops sometime in the near future. The counters on right now are from Ikea, and while they are fine, they're not our forever counters. Oh, and we need to think about lighting, like where to put lights. And install the vent hood for the cooktop. All the light colored wood on the sides you see will be covered with the same color as the cabinet fronts. It's so much bigger than our old kitchen! :)