Fan of Friday: Week of 4/28/2017

The thing I'm a fan of this week is my little, hanging herb garden!

It was a gift from my in-laws several Christmases ago. I haven't had good luck with plants in the past, so it sat in our closet for a bit while I worked up the courage to try to not kill plants.

This batch of plants is actually my second attempt. Over a year ago, I tried for the first. I killed cilantro and oregano and basil and rosemary. The rosemary was the most impressive one because of how long it took me to realize that it had died. Oops...

I'm having much better luck with this crop of plants, though!

The top plant is a habanero pepper plant. When I brought it home, Dan said, "You know pepper plants get huge, right?" No, I didn't know that. It's quickly out-growing it's small container and I'll probably move it to another pot this weekend. I'm scared to move it, though, because it's got flowers so I might get some peppers out of it soon!

The middle plant is basil. The first time I stocked this little hanging herb garden, basil was the longest surviving. I don't think I watered the first attempt enough, but it still held out for several months. This second one has been living happily for about six weeks, getting plenty of water. I love having a basil plant because we eat a lot of pasta and adding fresh basil makes it instantly classier. Dried pasta from a box and sauce from a jar? Chiffonade some basil and throw it on top for an upgrade on a lazy Monday evening.

The bottom plant is a strawberry plant. Trust me when I say it's doing better than this picture makes it look. I need to trim back some of the dead leaves and the old strawberries. You know what's hard? Determining when teeny, tiny strawberries are ready to be picked. I still haven't figured it out yet, but I will. I'll keep it alive and I'll figure it out.

So when I swap out the pepper plant, what should I put in its place? I'd like some cilantro, but I've tried to grow it several times now without any luck. Is there something easy and useful I could try? I cook a lot of tofu and rice. Is there something from the Asian palate family I should try? Or maybe something Mexican?

Project House Update: Period Cart

This is a weird little project I've been working on for a while, but I think it's quite unique and I'm pretty proud of it.

Back almost three years ago, I did a mini re-do on the 'toilet room' in our master bathroom. I removed the old, built-in toilet paper holder, patched it, and painted the room. Because this was meant to be a hold-over project until we did a full bathroom re-do, some details were put off. No new toilet paper holder was installed and I was tired of just setting the toilet paper on the back of the toilet, so I assembled the Ikea cart we had purchased.

Over time, I realized it was a great place to store all my period stuff. With a toilet room, any time I needed something meant the forethought to grab it from under my sink before heading into the toilet. Now, I had all this space to store stuff and it was great.

Then along came Dan. In his traditional masculinity, having all of my period stuff out made him uncomfortable. He wanted it hidden away.

So what did I do, as a good wife?

I ignored him completely and put everything on display instead.

I took a bunch of empty candle containers and small cheap vases and organized my tampons by size.

The part of this project that took the most time was finding and gathering the right size containers. Bath and Body Works three-wick candle jars work really well for this.

The last little bit of my display is my new art. These images are both from my work calendar last year. I think the fog one was May and the starry night was December. Something about these images, especially when paired together, is incredibly peaceful to me. The fog image seems to be of a doe in the morning fog, unsure of the day that lies ahead. The starry night is the same doe, surviving her day, and relaxing at the end of it. And, because we're being honest here, I use this bathroom in the morning or at night so the beauty of it isn't lost on me.

I need to come up with a catchy term for whatever the hell this set-up is, so suggestions are appreciated.  I can't come up with anything punny involving periods or carts.

I am quite proud of it, though. It's nothing special, but too many people treat periods like some sort of curse. Something we don't talk about or acknowledge. But as a woman who annoyingly bleeds from her vagina for a week each month, this set-up has proven to be incredibly handy.