Little Guppies, Big dreams.

My female guppy finally had her babies, and I have learned baby guppies have no survival instinct whats so ever. They there all float right out in the open, looking at the bigger fish with absolutely no fear at all, when they could be hiding in the naja grass or the tons of willow moss.

My aquarium lights haven't come on yet, but I will be surprised if there are any left when I go to check later today. They are cute though, strange little sets of eyes with a spine just floating about in the highest current part of the tank.

In other news, the second round of baby plecos is doing just as great as the first, and it looks like my smaller female "Gwen" is actually just a super late bloomer and will have to be called "Glen" now, as his bristles are starting to show up.

I bought 3 of the 6 tubs to make my fish tubs out of, This coming weekend I plan on cleaning up the corner of the yard next to the garage so I can build my little scaffolding for them there (too many raccoons to just hope free standing and uncovered at night will work) so I can get the air pump hooked up and get some plants at least growing in there.

I am thinking, I would like to have parrot feather, water hyacinth and maybe pond primrose for top plants.  The nice thing about he buckets is that even though I will still check on them every day, the fish will have constant natural food and if they get green the fish never mind. Algae control is such a human concept. Although I doubt with 50 baby plecos there will be any problem at all with algae *laugh*

I am also planning on selling some of my fish when I am sorting out for buckets. I only want to keep the best to raise up the next generation. Which I suppose is normal.  I really want to get into fancier guppies and different strains of bn plecos. I will always love my platies too, but I like too much, which is why I always want more, more, more.

I still am stuck on the idea of color coded tanks (as silly as that is) so it will be fun trying to accomplish those.  I know there will be some that wont work out but I'll try. I also think I am going to move my tanks to the basement so I have more room and have to worry less about spilling on the floor. Also in the basement I can store shipping supplies and have a bagging station, which will be a tremendous help. I can also set up a couple quarantine tanks, for new fish coming in or for fish getting ready to go out.

Enough about my fishy friends. Nothing else is really going on here. still waiting for some thing to fall into place. I can't get my tanks moved tot eh basement until I get the fish out in their tubs, so that I am stuck. I am drawing out room designs and trying to decide what I need in my room and what I need to get rid of.  I have so much stuff.

My ebay auctions are not doing so well. In fact, not one person has looked at them even. *laugh* I'm not getting discouraged, I just think I need to maybe find a better way to sell stuff.

I was thinking about my perfect jobs, my top 5 are:

1. Pet photographer
2. Dog walker
3. Plant nursery/ Pond maintenance
4. Fish Monger
5. Dog Sitter

All of which seem so attainable,  I already sell fish, I think though once I get my camera, I might try the pet photography thing and the maybe the dog walking thing.  I don't know.  I am not sure Clinton, IA is the best place to start a dog walking business. I guess I'll never know unless I try though.

Right now I make $200 a week, (that is a good week by the way.) So it would just have to make equal to that. Which I would much rather make out side with insanely happy walkin' puppies then toiling away inside a dingy video store that I am not appreciated at. So I just need to get my but in gear I guess. Ok enough babbling, time to take my happy doggies for their walk and to do water changes and clean my room as much as I can!

Revamp and obsession.

Morning all!

What do you think of the blog overhaul? I am liking it so far, I am still by no means done with it, but it is getting closer to what I see in my minds eye.  I am still pretty new to the whole blogging experience, but I am learning new tip and tricks every day and I feel like I am making progress. I meant to post a "health & wellness wednesday" post yesterday but I got caught up doing a couple signs for Record Store Day for work (one of my jobs is at a record store, and record store day is this saturday 4-21) so by the time I could have posted it was 3 AM and I can't ever write anything that makes sense that late, so I decided to wait until today. (Here are the signs if you are curious:)

Speaking of health and wellness, I am eating breakfast while I type which is weird but I am making it work. I am eating my normal "girl in a hurry" breakfast today which consists of 2 blueberry multigrain waffles topped with natural peanut butter and sliced bananas, a container of Stoneyfield's O' Soy strawberry yogurt (they have been out of the yummy SO Delicious strawberry coconut yogurt since the first time I found it *frown*) and a cup of coffee with 8th continent complete vanilla soy milk. It's high in protein and fiber and easy to eat while doing other things (ie blogging *laugh*) any way, back to my original point, I was planning of talking about something yesterday health and wellness related and I kind of came up short. I thought, "think of all the awesome new recipes you have found... oh, but haven't had time to try to cook them yet.. drat." So, in leu of that I am going to talk about my current obsession with the smell of my Shea Moisture conditioner and my never ending quest for the perfect perfume.

It, for me any way is pretty much the quintessential perfect fragrance for me any how. It is vaguely floral and somewhat sweet but with the perfect amount of spice and musk to balance it out. Well, thats all well and good, unfortunately the ingredient panel has been less then helpful, it says it is scented with honeysuckle. Then a little led came on in the back of my mind, "Oh! They make lotions!" so zoom, off I speed to Walgreens and stake out the lotion aisle, and... nothing. What? Where is it? So then I wander around and finally find some in the baby aisle, which is fine my skin hates everything. I crack open a bottle that is labeled chamomile, frankincense and myrrh, inhale excitedly, blink a couple times and then disappointedly put the bottle back on the shelf. It smelled like skittles, definitely not what I am looking for. Much like beauty products I battle with my body about perfumes pretty often. My body is not a fan of fake fragrances, I can't even use most fabric softeners unless they are unscented. Not to mention I will not dish out hundreds of dollars for perfume, I just won't. So here is the list of perfumes I have used over the years.

ages 14 to 18: Custom Vanilla, cinnamon, tea oil blend my mom and I would make together, it was delicious but the cinnamon really irritated my skin and people were always asking what I had baked.

Ages 18 to 23ish: Patchouli, orange and clove oil. It gave me the musky, earthy notes I constantly crave and didn't make my skin hate me too much, but I just sort of out grew it.

24 was when I started really experimenting with store made perfumes, what can I say I am a late bloomer and I can't stand cloying or sweet smells. Tried several, all kind of just fizzled. I settled on Bath and Bodyworks Breathe Comfort 'warm vanilla milk' scent and I still have that bottle. It is good and is sprayable.  I also used their cherry blossom scent, but it dries down to a horrible cat pee-esque smell on me for some reason on certain days, so that is long gone.

26 to nowish- My arsenal is comprised of Victoria Secret's 'amber romance' spray and Woodsmoke & Vanilla Perfume oil from Firebird Bath and Body on Etsy. I like both but I am not a fan of the dry down on the amber romance and I really love the smell of the WS and vanilla, but its a roller ball and I am not a fan of that sort of applicator, so that brings us up to date. I do have a tiny bottle of Flowerbomb for when I need to smell lady like, but I am not a big fan it was a gift.

So all that brings me back to where I started and what I plan to do. I am going to attempt to make my own custom body sprays. One that is honeysuckle, agran oil, frankincense and myrrh and one that is vanilla, blackberry/ black cherry, caramel, sandalwood, musk and amber. I'll document the process and let you all know how it works out. If it does; it will be fantastic, if not, well I'll have to start making soaps or something to use up all the oils I'll be buying *laugh*

 I had better get moving though, I need to get those posters for record store day printed out and actually make my self look like a member of the human race. Oh and put on some purfume!

See you later Lovelies!

Things I like. (I like too many things)

I'm starring at the rain right now listening to a mix of A.K.A.C.O.D, Leonard Cohen and Morphine, it a very mellow Friday the 13th. I have a phone appointment with the diet pill guru at 2, I shouldn't be mean, he could be a legitimately nice person and their products could be something I really could get behind, I will reserve judgement on weather this is really a pyramid scam or not depending on what he says today.


I have really been hitting the bricks on my blogs and my websites lately, something in my head just keeps saying, "just keep doing what your doing, it will work out for something." Leading me to shake my head and wonder what the something is. The main problem with my intuition is that it is so vague, rather then giving me a yes or no, I get a maybe, or a could be, or a possibly. Thanks me, that's a huge help.


Back to the blogging though, since I have been searching high and low to learn just about everything I can about anything blogging related, especially design because it is so difficult for me, I found a couple fantastic websites which if you blog you should check them out!

❥ Makin' Cute Blogs

❥ puglypixel

They both have fantastic tutorials, great information, cool graphics and are just generally awesome. They also have pretty rad freebies and some fantastic paid packets too for all your blogging design needs *drool*.


Also speaking of drooling (I am a bit of a slobberer if I don't make an effort keep it in check ha ha.) I am loving kale chips lately. I am sure if you have gone to any healthy food blog in the past few months you have seen the recipes. Let me tell you they are actually worth it, even my anti-vegitable roommate will devour them with the same gusto used to devour an entire bag of potato chips. I admit I am not a big fan of greens, they all taste like grass to me, and while I will eat a salad in the summer if there are tons of fresh fruits and veggies to add into it, I vary rarely just eat plain greens of any type. I urge every one to try them, I season mine with olive oil, pink sea salt, smoked black pepper and turmeric ( SO Spicy! YUM!) Kale aside, I also have been enjoying Erin Baker's Breakfast Cookies in Vegan double chocolate chunk and So Delicious dairy free coconut milk greek style strawberry 'yogurt'. I love it there is a dairy free yogurt option finally that tastes good. Thank you So Delicious! If you can't eat dairy but are craving yogurt, give this stuff a try, you won't be disappointed at all, and for those who hate coconut, you can't taste it at all. It tastes just like dairy yogurt, but milder! 

❥ Erin Baker's Wholesome Baked Goods

❥ SO Delicious

I just completely lost my train of thought. Drat. I suppose on t hat note I will go and make some kale chips for lunch.

Mispellings.

So funny story, I was thinking I should post a new blog so I went to type in "blogger.com" into the browser bar and accidentally typed "logger.com" thankfully it was just a website for a lumber yard but woo it could have been bad *laugh*.

It's been a weird week. I got my job at the video store, it's super fast paced and the people I work with are nice, I am going to try to keep up, but when November rolls around I will be getting another job with a pace that is better for me. I am mystified at how much "age" is slowing me down, I know some of it is the fibro, but I just can't keep going as long as I used to. Some people tell me it's because I am unhappy and maybe that is true.

I had a weird dream today about rescuing a baby chicken with no legs. Odd.

I'm sitting at the comic book store, half watching the skeleton key and trying to write this blog with a very heavy cat head resting on my right arm. He seems happy though so I will make due.

Back to the blogging.

I am thinking about trying to find new homes for miles, aisu and spites again. It's always such a hard decision. I have also been thinking about selling a lot of my stuff lately. I don't really get to use much of it any way, so at least I would have the money from it then to use toward other things. 

I want to get a really nice DSLR and start trying to really work on this photography thing I want to pursue. If nothing else it would help with good macro pictures for my auctions on aquabid. 

I love growing my fish and plants, it really is a singular joy nothing else can really touch. Ill leave you guys with a couple pics of baby fish I took this morning.

The "heart" of the problem

I leave my heart on the farm every time I have to leave. I truly feel the most at home in the country and any time some one asks me if I had a million dollars and I could do anything, I always respond, "I would have a farm with a massive garden and lots of birds and fish... OH and lots of pumpkins!"

 Mama Mathusala kitty (actually her name is Madusa) and the magical Cour di Bou tomato. She is ancient for one of my moms farm cats at 9 years old. She is super sweet and loves to just be cuddled.  I wish I could take all the kitties at my Mom's inside, I usually end up trying to find all the kittens homes with varying degrees of success. 

 Mortimor, one of the latest kittens.

 Schnerd, Mort's little brother.

 I am told roasemary posted at your door means it's the home of a good woman, I put some by the door of my roommates house, but mine isn't flourishing as well as my moms, maybe I am not as "good" as she is yet. Practice makes perfect I guess.

 Possum the worlds most needy and ill behaved cat. She is a darlin', I really need to try to find her and her sister Ming an inside home.

 The harvest. The garden grew pretty well this year, although I think next year we will be using mostly grow bags and raised beds. It's just too hard otherwise, not to mention, I don't mind weeding but its so much easier if you don't have to as much.

Cappy is truly the happiest dog on the planet I think!

I really, really do want to have my own farm. I don't think it could ever be my full time career, but I would love to be able to grow most if not all of my own food and jack o lanterns, honestly I don't think one can ever have too many pumpkins or  too many turkeys.  I will keep working toward my goal. I just need to find the perfect catalyst to get me there. Dog grooming? Cat toys? Canine psychology?