Hester

Growing up, we rode around the ol’ homestead and to friend’s houses on an assortment of bikes—nearly indestructible, banana seats, and big knobby tires.  The knobby tires were essential in traversing the gravel road that connected our house to the main highway, or the highway to our friends’ houses or creek/pond/watering hole for swimming.  Skinny tires don’t do well with gravel, rocks, and ruts or corners taken too fast.  That’s not to say we didn’t have our share of down-and-out crashes on our country-accustomed bikes.  I’m pretty sure I still have scars on my elbows and legs from crashing on a gravel road, speeding downhill, in a swimsuit and no helmet.  Considering my cavalier bike riding past (one which, I obviously survived without permanent damage), I wonder how I became so cautious when riding my bike as an adult.  But I digress, I’m getting off topic…

So, the bikes we had growing up were well equipped for us to go bounding around on gravel roads, through fields and various places that were rarely paved.  There was one bike, however, that did not adhere to these conditions.  This bike belonged to my mom—a green, three-speed cruiser.  I remember the three of us girls riding it when we were old/tall enough.  The thing I remember most (and what probably caused me to fear the skinny tires) was a crash Jenn had taking a corner on the road to our house a little too fast.  She just had road burn, and it wasn’t anything worse that what we’d all had, or would eventually experience in terms of crashes, but for whatever reason, I think it solidified the idea in my mind that my mom’s bike was not made for country living.

When I moved to Lander (because I refused to ride my bike in Denver, for fear of bike/car collisions), the idea of having an in-town awesome looking cruiser bike was really appealing.  In the summer Paul and I ride bikes as much as possible—when I worked in town, most days I’d ride my bike to work; Paul bought a BOB Trailer from a thru-cyclist so we can go grocery shopping.  On the Fourth of July, there is no better way to get around town, with drink, food and fireworks in tow, than on a bike (the BOB comes in handy for this too).  While the streets of Lander aren’t the most bike-friendly, it’s still a great option.  No summer BBQ/party would be complete without a front yard littered with bikes from partygoers.

Soon after arriving in Lander, I bought myself a commuter bike at the wonderful bike shop downtown and I couldn’t justify investing in a second bike.  The commuter functions as an in-town bike and with its 21 speeds, can work for out-of-town, longer rides.  Despite this rationale and economical thinking, I never did forget about my Mom’s bike.  I had secretly been coveting it since my move back to Wyoming; I may have asked about it a couple of times, but Mom and Dad always politely declined my offer to take if off their hands.  So it was to my delighted surprise that my Dad called shortly before our Christmas visit, asking if I still wanted to the bike.  I instantly said yes.  So, at Christmas we loaded the old girl on the RAV and brought her to Lander.

We dropped her off at the aforementioned bike shop where she has been lovingly worked on over the last few months. Even though we’re at least a couple months away from solid bike riding weather, Hester (she’s a Hawthorne bike…get it?) came home, cleaned and shined up.  Besides the deep cleaning, she only need new brake pads, tubes and a seat.  I also added a basket to the front.  She’s as good as new and ready for summer trips around town.  Now if only summer (hell, I’ll take spring), would get here…

And for the record, Lucy does not want to sit in the basket.  So much for taking her for a bike ride…

Unsolicited Music Recommendation: First Aid Kit

Over the years I feel like I’ve been listening to less and less new music.  I rarely buy music on iTunes (the biggest use of my iPod lately are podcasts), buy albums even less frequently and rely almost solely on Pandora and Wyoming Public Radio’s Morning Music as my sources of music.

Sure, there are newer artists that I enjoy listening to (and of course, have Pandora stations based around them), but in general, I feel out of touch and unworthy to make musical recommendations of any kind.  Nonetheless,  a couple weeks ago, NPR’s First Listen segment featured a Swedish duo and I haven’t been able to get them out of my head since.  There was something about their harmonies and Americana-folk feel to their songs that really resonated with me.  Nearly everyday for the last two weeks, if you walked past my office, chances are their songs were playing on my computer.  Since I can’t download Spotify on the my computer at work, I recently discovered the “Mix” feature on YouTube where users can string together a collection of videos…helllllo free playlists!  Now, I need to buck up and just buy their albums on iTunes.

So without further ado, I strongly recommend you take a couple minutes and listen to: First Aid Kit.  Enjoy!

Hi, My Name is Kathryn and I Use Pinterest

I promise not to make my blog all about narrative lists of stuff I’ve done/will do/only wish and hope that I will do.  Until I get back into the swing of things, here’s another list!

I can’t claim that I was using Pinterest before Pinterest was the new “It” site on the interwebz, but I at least tell myself I might have been slightly ahead of the curve.  For those who may not be familiar with the site, it basically provides a way for a user to “pin” ideas (websites, images, videos, tutorials, etc) on to categorized boards.  Users can like, comment and re-pin what others have already posted, in addition to adding their own pins from various corners of the cyber universe.  There’s a well circulated pin on the site that sums up the purpose of Pinterest  rather aptly:

Pinterest is addicting, time-sucking and pretty damn useful.  Even though I have boards for knitting projects (both completed and future), recipes, crafting projects, yard/garden ideas and color palettes (for the house I do own, mind you), the board from which I have used the most is Organization.  That’s right folks, Pinterest can be about dreaming AND doing!

While this means, in no way, that my house is now the perfection of organization, it’s at least an improvement from what it once was.  Here is what has helped me make our house a little bit better.

Our laundry room is cave carved out in our basement to the side of the stairwell opposite our large family room, with no ceiling (exposed floor joists, plumbing and electrical) and is shared with our hot water heater, furnace, storage cabinet, cat box and chest freezer.  It’s a narrow space and we’ve probably crammed too much stuff into it.  However, with the limited storage space in our house, we have to use all the room we can get.  So, in order to make the space less chaotic, it was Pinterest to the rescue:

 Storage between washer and dryer.  These drawers became unavailable soon after I pinned the item, so I went to Wal-Mart and bought plastic shoe drawers, instead.  While they don’t run the entire length of the washer and dryer and are the same size, but it’s worked well so far and it’s a great place to store laundry supplies, our random screw drivers, hammers etc and light bulbs.  It’s a perfect use of otherwise wasted space.

To dress up the drawers a little bit, I applied fabric on insides of plastic drawers.  I bought a quilting squares package (again, from Wal-Mart…chastise me later, okay?) and glued them to the drawers with a combo of spray adhesive and home-made Modge-Podge.  The pin I found called for using scrapbook paper; so I had to improvise with my adhesives to get the fabric to stick to the plastic.

The final bit of organization is a result of this handy-dandy shelf over the dryer (fortunately it became unavailable after I purchased one). Since the cat eats down there (on top of the dryer, so the dog can’t eat her food), we keep her food, and feeder (for when we’re gone and she’s responsible for feeding/gorging herself) on these shelves.  I also covered a couple boxes with the same fabric I used in the drawers to better store cat food cans and some laundry related accessories that don’t fit in the drawers.

Two other essential pieces of organization in our house are:

Bed sheets stored in their pillowcases for more compact, and organized storage (even though mine don’t look as tidy as they do in the picture).  Our linen closet is small and this really does help it from becoming one big pile of sheets and towels.

Suspension rod under the sink.  This, in addition some plastic containers for various cleaning supplies and our way-too-big-plastic bag collection, has helped to increase the amount of storage space under out kitchen sink.  Cheap, easy and quick to do.  Genius!

In the coming months I’m hoping to start some new knitting projects and work on some of the craft and sewing projects, and if spring/summer ever gets here, some of the yard/garden projects too.  In the meantime, I can peruse Pinterest while still feeling productive, even though in reality, I’m still just surfing the internet.