Better Than a Cat-Themed Party...

A Model Approach to Throwing Domesticated Felines a Celebration for Their Emergence from the Womb

Introduction

People who know me know that I have two very sweet kitties, Jingles (top) & Joules (bottom). Jingles is the pretty one who often forgets how to retract her claws so she gets stuck a lot. Joules is the smart, feisty one who keeps everyone else in line. Despite being a pretty crazy cat lady, I have never thrown them a birthday party (not really sure why). But without cable, it seemed like a pretty fun way to spend my evening. However, seeing as I had never thrown a cat birthday party, I looked to the ever-fruitful Pinterest for ideas. Shockingly, however, I found more posts about cat-themed parties than actual ideas for throwing your cat(s) a party. So I put my thinking cap on and came up with some easy ideas I was sure my cats would love.

Methods

1. A cake. But not just any cake - the kind of cake you definitely don't want to lick the candles from - a fish flavored cake, sprinkled with dry cat food :)  And of course I lit candles and sang (very quickly, though, that cake was very tempting to the girls).

2. Party hats. Being the thrifty grad student I am, I made mine out of card stock and rubber bands (make sure to test the fit though, so you don't choke your cat on their birthday).

3. Activities. Luckily, I recently bought the best cat toy in the world - the FroliCat automatic laser toy. If you have cats, I highly recommend this. So, with the FroliCat, we had a laser light show which was not only fun to watch, but fun to chase. 

Results

Seeing as it is difficult for cats to fill out evaluation sheets, I am relying on photos that should hopefully show you that my cats definitely gave the party their paw of approval :)

Until next time...party on, cats.

-Becca

Let It All Hang Out

As I mentioned in my last blog, without cable, I have had more time to evaluate how I live. After I got my worm composting going, I looked at other things I could do to 'green' my apartment up a bit. So the next thing I did was try to save energy, money and my clothes by line drying. You, know, the good ole' fashioned, hang your clothes out on a line with some clothespins and let evaporation get to it. The problem was that I live on a 2nd floor apartment, with no backyard.

No worries, the 21st century is here, and I found an incredible product for line drying clothes in confined/indoor places. It's made by Barbantia and works perfect in an apartment. It has five lines so you can fit a lot in one area, mounts easily on the wall, and retracts when you aren't using it. Also, it works awesomely...if that is even a word. [picture from Amazon].

I know you might be thinking, ugh, I don't have the time to wait around for my clothes to dry...BUT if you're like most people of this century, you probably have plenty of spare clothes to wear while these dry. I usually wash my clothes and leave them to dry during the day while I am gone or at night while I sleep. When they are dry I toss them in the dryer for <5 minutes to fluff out any wrinkles they may have and then fold/hang and put them away.




You might also be thinking, ugh, there is NO WAY all of my clothes will fit, or that that little thing will hold my duvet/sheets/towels...BUT IT DOES. I have my Barbantia lines strung across my bedroom (~10ft wide) and it holds a FULL load of clothes, all my towels, my sheet set + blanket, or my duvet + blanket, and even my heavy rugs. It has been unstoppable.

Still need more convincing to quit wasting energy on drying your clothes when mother nature could do it for you? The first month I switched to line drying, I saved $20 on my electric bill. How's that for motivation?

Until next time, hang tight.
-Becca

I've Got Worms

I knew that would catch your attention. But don't worry, these are the good kind of worms. So since I dropped cable I have had more time to implement better practices around my apartment. One of those things was setting up a worm composting system. Since I have an apartment, a backyard composting pile wasn't a good option, so after doing some research, I decided to go worm.

I know some of you very squeamish folks might think ewwwwwwwww. But, the composter is very neat, clean, and good for keeping inside. Yes, that is inside, your house/apartment. As long as you take care of it you'll have no stray worms or bad odors. It's the perfect way to stop throwing away food and cut down on your trash. And if you are like me, you'll think being able to tell people you have worms is another great perk. Another great thing about the worms is that any liquid the drains out of the bottom can be collected and then used as a great organic fertilizer for your potted plants or garden.

How it works:
You can get worm composters from Amazon or Etsy or even build your own.The number of trays you want and the size of the composter will depend on the size of your household (and how much you eat). Worms are best to source locally if you can find it, if not, you can order them online and have them delivered to your door...yep get 'em on Amazon. You start with one tray (your working tray) and add about a cup of food and fiber into your composter each day. Keep it moist (I keep a spray bottle of water next to mine) and in a cool dark place. And that's it for about a month or so. After about a month you can add another tray...which becomes your working tray, and that is where you add food to. About a month after you add a third tray, the bottom tray will turn into compost, which you can use for your plants or garden.

What kind of food:

• fruits and veggies and their peels.
• coffee grounds and tea leaves
• egg shells
• newspaper and other non-shiny paper
• grain-based foods (oatmeal, cereal, pasta, etc.)
• dead leaves and plant material from potted plants
• DON'T give your worms meat or dairy

**That's one of my worms in the composter (above right), but the worms are VERY shy. So it's hard to see them sometimes. 

Worm Juice:

Yep, the worm juice is powerful. Collect your lechate (or "tea") about once a week, depending on the size. Mix a cupful of worm juice with a gallon of water and give it to your plants! They will love your worm juice (on the right is the juice, on the left is my boyfriend spraying worm juice on the strawberries in my community garden plot).

Until next time, turn off and keep wrigglin'.
-Becca

Bursting with life.

Now that I don't have the T.V. to stare at while I eat dinner or relax after work, I find myself and my mind wandering about. One day I noticed how blank the wall behind my T.V. was. Blank and HUGE. What to do with such a clean slate? My first thought was to buy a large vinyl wall sticker of a tree and birds and things to cover it. I even found a Groupon for some vinyl wall art. However, even with the Groupon, to get the size of tree I needed to cover the large space would have cost me nearly $300. Again, what to do. [please ignore the mess in my house]

For a few weeks I stared at that wall while eating dinner or breakfast, and it taunted me with its possibilities. Then, I saw a Pinterest post about a school art project made with magazine strips and a simple silhouette. Eureka. I'll build my own tree out of the many magazines I have just lying around in my apartment. So I got to work on my tree. I'm going to give the rest to you in a step by step with pictures...if you just want to see the final product, scroll down to the bottom.


1. First, I had to find something I could use to stick the magazine strips to the wall, without upsetting my landlord when I move out. After searching on Amazon and reading reviews I settled on Scotch brand removable poster tape. It worked perfectly for this project. Not only did it stick well, but if I didn't like where I had placed something, it was easy to remove it.

2. Next I ripped out pages that were full of color (usually the ad pages) from 2 Real Simple (c) magazines I had lying around, and cut those into strips.

3. Next step was to draw a silhouette. I'm no artist, so I Googled vinyl wall art trees until I found one I liked and mimicked it as best I could. I drew with a pencil on the wall so I could erase easily if needed.

4. Then it was time to build. I started with the trunk first. I put strips down one side, following the silhouette, and then came back on the other side, following the other edge. This way the strips overlapped some to create a good texture and the sides of the trunk were where I wanted them to be.

5. For the branches, I used strips for the wider parts and then cut out smaller pieces from new magazine pages. (I used notebook paper to trace my wall outline and then used that to cut the small branch parts).

6. For the leaves, flowers/buds, birds and butterflies I created a stencil from the magazine cover (thicker) and then used one more issue of Real Simple (c) to cut these out.

7. The final product was an incredibly cheap, yet strikingly wonderful wall tree, bursting with life. The cost of the project was just the removable poster tape...I went through about 1 and 1/4 dispensers of it. So I estimate around $5 or $6. In total, I used three issues of Real Simple (c).

 In the center of the tree on the trunk, a little hidden note:

Turn off, and tune in to LIFE.
-Becca

More to Watch than Cable

After finally deciding to cut my symbolic cable cord, the hard part was convincing pomfast (the cable company who's name will not be said). I called pomfast and said I wanted to cancel my cable...what I thought would be a ten minute conversation turned into a thirty minute argument. At first the woman was nice, asking me what I liked to watch and then offering me deal after deal to get me to stay. They even offered me a 6-month promotion where my internet speed would be higher and I would have the exact same cable for $50 (about half of what I was paying). This was quite tempting, as one of the main reasons for ending my cable was money. But I stayed strong and politely said I was not interested in continuing cable of any fashion - just internet. That is when the lady got nasty and berated me for not taking such a generous offer. I ended up with slower internet for ~$46/month...same price as fast internet and my previous cable - makes sense.

So for those of you thinking about quitting - prepare yourself for a stressful conversation and stay strong!

So what can you do without cable? The possibilities are endless, and that's what I want to blog about. So a really easy thing I discovered you can do is watch something other than cable - birds, in this case. Yes, I know, sounds a little "elderly" of me, but birds are fascinating, social and quite entertaining. I had my boyfriend safely secure a bird feeder to my balcony one weekend and since then I have identified about 10 different kinds of birds. From the incredibly shy cardinals to the fearless sparrows, the bird world is loving my freedom from cable. They have a unique hierarchy for who gets to eat and I have gotten to know the pairs who nest in the trees outside my apartment. And don't worry for you urbanites with fewer outdoor ecosystems...I live in a pretty urban area and I'm pretty sure if you build it, they will come.

My cats, too, have greatly enjoyed this new addition to the balcony. Although they haven't figured out how to be too sneaky yet.

Until next time...turn off and tune into life.
-Becca

Sans Cable.

(stands up and waves) Hi, I'm Rebecca Logsdon, and I was addicted cable television. You name it, I watched it, from Disney to PBS to MTV and TLC. My most recent obsession was the Food Network: Chopped, Restaurant Impossible, Iron Chef, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives...I watched it all. When I came home from school (I'm currently a graduate student), the first thing I did was turn on the TV, plop on the couch and numb my mind and body with the ever-dependable cable TV. The TV stayed on...even when I went to sleep. Yep, I couldn't fall asleep without it on (I did use the sleep timer to save energy, though). TV was always there for me, to entertain me, to teach me, and most importantly to provide an escape. TV was my drug and I didn't even realize it.

So how did I finally get the cojones to finally "just say no"? I'd like to think it was motivated by a sense of "sticking it to the man" - showing the big cable conglomerate (which shall not be named, but rhymes with pomfast) that they didn't control me, but it was more than that. As I said before, I am a graduate student...and for anyone who knows about graduate school, you know we work many hours for very little pay. So, with an ever tightening belt, I started reviewing my expenses vs. what benefits I was getting from my expenses. A red flag went up with my cable bill. I was spending about $100 a month for TV and internet...and what was I gaining from it? Occasionally I would learn something new, but was it worth that much of my hard-earned stipend? As I thought about this, I also thought about my productivity levels when the TV was on...and they were low.

At the same time as these thoughts were rolling through my head I also was going through my grad school mid life crisis (as I like to call it). I had just finished my preliminary exams - which means I had about a year until I could finally graduate with my Ph.D. Well that's (excuse my language), fucking scary. I started thinking about life and what I wanted to be and all that I hadn't done. I tried to remember what made me happy (outside my wonderful friends, family and love of my life), and I came up with nothing. I had been so entrenched in graduate school and developing my career that I had lost my sense of self.

After talking to a few lovely ladies I knew that had ditched their cable, I made my decision. I was going to quit cable cold turkey and use my free time to discover new interests, passions and myself. Turns out, that was the easy part...the hard part - actually cutting the cord with pomfast - was yet to come. So join me as I blog about all the adventures, discoveries and joys that I have found, in my life sans cable.