Mile's Island

Happy Sunday Kittens!


I was planning on blogging yesterday, however there was a quick but intense storm that knocked out power for 8 hours, but I will tell you more on that later. 


Every Saturday the pups and I (and usually my room-mate) pack up and head to one of my favorite little hiking spots and wander around for a few hours enjoying the great outdoors. On our last excursion I was talking with my room-mate about a flotilla of lilly pads on the Maquoketa River and then I realized it was actually plants and a rather large sand bar was exposed!


Being the sea monster I am at heart, Miles and I ran down as fast as our legs would carry us and we dubbed the sand bar "Mile's Island." As luck would have it, this week it was still there and I remembered my camera this time! 

We splashed around and Maddie was actually so happy she even attempted to play with Miles. Sadly likes was completely exhausted by that time, but never the less a good time was had by all! As I was wandering around looking at the tiny schools of minnows Miles was attempting to eat, I came upon the find of the century (well at least for me!) A fox jawbone, with all it's adorable little teeth still intact even! I just had to take a picture of it, as the night before I was on e-bay searching mounted animal skulls to put on the wall in my room once that project gets under way. 

After the pups had both had enough, they headed up the trail and of course we followed. The walk back to the car for the most part was extremely uneventful, until Miles saw another "dog". The dog was in fact a deer, and let  us get quite close until Miles unholy caterwauling was too much for it's poor ears' to stand and it bounded off into the trees.

At this point it is still all sunshine and fluffy white clouds, the drive home was fantastic, the pups slept the entire way, there was a cool breeze, and Rattle Trap (My ancient Subaru Forester) didn't even see fit to act up.  Upon walking in the front door, tornado warning sirens started blaring, well that is odd I though as the sun was still shining and all the clouds were just as fluffy and as white as they had been all morning. I texted my bestie and made a crack about the darkness coming and Silent Hill and then dismissed it as a weird test. Fast forward 15 minutes, 60 MPH wind gusts, black skies, sheets of pouring rain and thunder the actually made the pups cower (they usually could care less about thunder, fireworks, other loud booming noises), and then it happened.

The power went out. 

The power was out for 8 hours.

8 frakking hours. 

Now all over most of the city that made sense, trees were down and of course so were power lines, but next to our house 1 tiny branch had fallen and it was no where near a power line. While I was waiting for the power to come back on, I bought a couple monster high dolls to try to customize, bought a bag of rocks for the bottoms of the remodeled fish tanks, ate at Village Inn (which did have power), and arranged tanks and filled the newly caulked ones. 

All and all a decent day even if it was an inconvenience to not have power. Today was entirely devoted to moving fish to new tanks and moving the big tanks to the basement with the rest, however the is a post for tomorrow. For now I am going to drink a nice warm cup of decaf grog and get ready to snuggle into my bed.

NIght night Kittens!

The great move-on.

Welcome to Purr-sonality Disorder!

Just so you know this is not the massive follow up I am doing, this is just a happy little welcome note to say tanks for migrating with me to this new blog! The actual follow up posts will start August 6th and there will be one general overview post and 7 expanded posts if you would like to read more in-depth.

As I am sure you can tell this is still a work in progress but already many, many, times more organized then snouts heart sprouts, and I intend to just keep moving in that direction. Extremely eclectic, extremely organized; that is pretty much my new motto, not just for this blog, but for my entire life, I think I am making it work.

I am off to get more coffee and make buttons! 

I'm Sorry

I'm sorry I am so behind here, I have had a lot on my plate and I am behind on everything. There will be several big posts and back to daily blogging by August 5th.

I am dreadfully sorry for the inconvenience.

Cha-cha-changes!

Hey Darlings!

I am making some changes around the blog, so if things are a  bit confusing for a few days I am sorry.

I promise it will be for the greater good!

Evolution of a blog.

Hi guys!

Long time no blog (not really but not every day either!) Hope you are all doing fantastic. I am actually having a pretty good week so far (which is exciting!) Lots going on around here where to start, where to start.

I suppose I will start at the title of this post. When I first started this blog it was with the intention of writing about green/ organic/ healthy/ natural pet products, and although I felt and still feel very strongly about it, it is not something I can write about with any reliability, and so started the evolution on snouts heart sprouts. As it stands today I mostly blog about random events in my daily life, products I really adore, and of course my critters.  I have decided because of this I probably have a rather diverse set of readers, so I am going to make a bar for easier navigation between subjects for those of you who only follow me to ready certain posts *grin*

Another thing, no one comments. I am not sure if this is because of language barriers or because my followers have nothing to say, but I would love to know who you all are :)

Lets see what else did I want to blog about?

OH!

Gearing up for some serious summer fish tubbing! My mom gifted me her 169 gallon stock tank to use as one of my fish tubs, so it will be fantastic for growing out my baby plecos, although I am not sure what other fish I might put in them, maybe see if there is another kind of platy I would like to try to raise? I would love to get my hands on some peppermint platies, however I may just do an experiment with the red wags I have and maybe some of the snow whites and see what happens.  Back to the tubs though, I will have 3 small 25 gallon round tubs and the one gigantic stock tank, hopefully with my next paycheck I will be able to afford all the stuff I have in my cart at kensfish.com. I also still have to get a pond liner and probably 4 or 5 bags of sand to dump in the bottom of the stock tank before adding the liner, and then all the plants. Wooooey! I'll love all of it though, I always do!

Last but not least there is a now pallet from Sigma BEauty I am lusting over that I will write a separate post about most likely tomorrow!

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!

Depression- Case of the missing Manny.

I have been meaning to blog for a few days now, but I am depressed and I tend to not want to write when I am depressed because i don't think the world needs any more negativity in it. Nor do I think it appropriate to wander around bemoaning my life not being fair when there are people who can't ever have enough food to eat. However I do feel like my life is unfair and I am stuck right now, and it is not a happy feeling at all.

Also my favorite pleco "Manny" has gone missing and I am baffled as to where he could be. I looked behind the aquarium fearing the worst, not there, I looked IN both filters, not there, I looked in every cave (maybe is is guarding more eggs) nope, not there. So then I thought maybe I moved him to another aquarium to give him a break from his daddy duties, but I can not find him anywhere. Which actually adds to my depression. I know he is just a fish but he was my favorite fish, all adorable and stout and bristle nosed. Speaking of plecos, the babies are doing fabulously and are growing every day. I am aiming to get my fish tubs up and going by the middle of may.

I am so behind on everything, and the depression is just making it worse. My garden in non-existant, my fish tubs still are MIA, the house is a disaster, ick. If i had health insurance this would be the point in time where I go in and get anti depressants to help me get through this slump. I don't though, so I will just keep muddling on.

I took some pictures of the fish (or tried) my camera still is not working well at all, so I am rather disappointed with the quality of them (I HATE THINGS OUT OF FOCUS.) I need a new camera with manual focus, yes need is the absolute correct word.

I want to be well on my way to a career by 30, I want to not have to struggle so much, have my own place, enjoy my life, just easy things like that. What I really would like to do is be a pet photographer, and there can be money in that field, but there can be money in any field. I make money off my fish, but it wont keep me fed. I have two friends who are photographers who say go for it, but they have not seen my photographs *laughs* I think even doing image retouching would make me fairly happy if I had some one to teach me. Point being I need a career where I can still have the freedom to make my own schedule.

Being how I am some days I need 12 hours of sleep (ug. does that make me sound lazy, I swear to you I am not!) and other days I can work for 15 hours straight, it just depends on... I'm not sure what, but on something I obviously can't control. Working with animals is exhausting, but I love it. I didn't really love working at the dog daycare, I worked at, I loved the daycare aspect of it, especially walking dogs, that was the best therapy I could have ever asked for, but I hated the part where I needed to clean with horrible chemicals and bust my butt to try to keep up because I was old.

I think in general I want to work with animals, I would happily be a dog walker, pet photographer, pet sitter, dog groomer. I would be open to the idea of training too, but not in a class setting, it would have to be one on one unless the doggy parents were there.  The doggie daycare really opened my eyes and it was a fantastic business BUT trying to keep 25 dogs all in control at once is too much to handle for me.

Sorry about the lack luster post, better then nothing at all I suppose. Have a great Thursday!

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!

Ever the Updater.

Good morning comrades!

(It seems right now my largest readership is in Russia so "Большое спасибо!!" to everybody there who has been reading.)

I don't really know much Russian other then please and thank you, however I have been wanting to learn both Russian and Italian for quite some time now.  Once my life is back on some form of track I plan to pick up a copy of rosetta stone so I can start doing nightly lessons.  

Actually part of why I would like to either learn how to write SEO articles (ok, so technically I bought a book and it said how to write them, but it just seems too simple. I have to be missing something.) Or really just have any job I can do anywhere from my computer, so I can travel some times and see new places. Speaking of SEO articles I was going to try to work more on updating the look of the blog today and then trying to wrangle a couple little SEO gigs for myself. Yesterday I had the good fortune of dropping my phone into a puddle, so I could use all the extra income I can wrangle, when did phones get so expensive? I really want an iPhone 4s, I like most things apple, and most likely not for the reasons you may be thinking. While I do appreciate the beautiful product designs, I actually am devoted to them because their products actually hold up to my horrible abuse. I have had the same 1st gen iPod touch for going on 5 years now, and my little Macbook Pro for I am guessing nearly 3 or 4 years now and both still run like the day I got them, which for me and technology is outstanding.  I would just be pleased to have an older generation iPhone, however, the 4s is the only one with siri and since a good chunk of my time is spent driving, the idea of talk to text is really appealing to me. 

Back to SEO writing, it seems like the perfect fit for me. Unlimited income potential, can do it form anywhere where internet is present. It could easily help me get out of this hole I am stuck in. Actually that is part of why I started working so hard on blogging, so I could use it as a reference. I think that I am a fairly competent writer.  Of course, like most people I am best when writing about things I am truly passionate about, but I have written some fairly long essays in my time (I mean like 40 some odd pages) about subjects for school I could have completely cared less about (hello there sobriety and abstinence in western cultures... I mean what kind of weird, preachy, class is this even? So of course my paper got a C as I butted heads with the whole thing, BUT I was passionate about one thing, I hated the class, so I guess I can even be passionate about things I dislike if I dislike them enough for it to make me annoyed.) The point here is I just need to over some my fears and get to work. 

I do really enjoy blogging, I will enjoy it even more when I can start posting photos again. I think photos really help anything really, it just makes it more interesting, to me any way but I am an extremely visual person. Oh, that reminds me I LOVE pinterest as much as I thought I would! I am still getting the hang of it but so far it is fantastic and has given me all kinds of ideas, including trying to do "Starvin' Saturdays" here, where I will be posting about food or nutrition related stuff. I absolutely adore cooking although I am limited to what I can do here as the kitchen is horribly laid out and I don't have a full sized oven (tiny countertop convection ovens for the win!). It won't stop me though, I'll try  to make some fantastic things!

In other news the room rework is in the works. I moved my bed into the closet and it really is 40 inches, which means it is folded in half more like a sofa which for right now is fine but it can't stay in there forever, so I need to try to rework my plan again. I'll figure out something. 

Today I am going to be working on banners for fishy fridays and starvin' saturdays, and like I said working more on  the looks of the blog as well as finishing my diamond order for the comic book store and trying to make more progress on my room. I totally just have WAY too much stuff. 

Well ladies and gents, I should finish this up so I can work a little bit on my SEO page and then get to work doing all the other things I should be doing today. Have a fantastic tuesday!

Asparagus and Ham Fritata Time!

I'm cooking breakfast, well more like brunch as it is almost noon, but in my defense I had a meeting at work this morning, so that took until 10:30 plus grocery shopping for said delicious comestibles. While cooking I thought I would try to multi task and write a short post today asking for some suggestions for some normal weekly features. I already have decided I was going to do "Fishy Fridays" to pick up the slack from my aquatics blog... but other then that I am drawing a blank. Any one else have any suggestions? I can and happily will blog 5 to 7 days a week, so really if you have any ideas don't be shy, leave a comment or send me an email!

Newish.

I joined bloglovin' today and signed up for an invite to pinterest (which makes 300% more sense to me then any other type of social networking, I am a very visual person so I love the concept and idea behind it. )

It should be fairly obvious to most of you I am still pretty new to the blogging scene, it doesn't really help that I can't narrow my blog down to specific things. I started this blog to try to help find myself, which it hasn't really helped much with, but it does give me a really great place to unload stuff that is on my mind (i.e. what is happening right now) I feel like part of the problem is my lack of social skills. I am beyond awkward in all social situations be it in real life or behind a computer screen. I have 6 friends in real life, 2 of them live across the ocean, one is my roommate, one lives 15 hours away and 2 live in my home town (which is 2 hours away). Online I don't really have any friends,  and this is not a "oh you should all be my friends I'm so lonely post" although having some online friends would be nice, it's just more of an exploratory post on why it's hard for me to get people to follow my blog I guess. I also want advertisers to help out with the costs of my blog, but with so many interests, and so few followers, who would bother. So I need to come up with a better game plan I suppose.

I need to redo my room, I planned onto moving my bed into my closet, but my closet is only 23 inches deep and my bed is 40 (which is weird cause I though twin sized beds were suppose to only be 29 inches wide) but, I am sure I will figure it out, maybe monday I will try to move things around. Part of the problem of sharing a house with some one is me being how I am, I don't want to move all my stuff in (partially because it is a teensy tiny house) but the stuff I do have I don't like it spilling into the other parts of the house so I just try to cram it all into my room. (why one entire wall is fish tanks.) I wish I could just have a personal mentor or something to help me with everything that I just can't understand. Then again I know the answers. I just can't get to the steps that lead me to them. Need more room get rid of stuff... ok BUT what stuff and how and where to? Again my brain is such a help. ug. Further awesomeness includes that I have an entire large 2 bedroom house all packed into a storage unit, including sofa, love seat, nice office, ect. but it is just sitting there because I can't make enough to even get a small apartment on my own, and even if I could I couldn't because of the foreclosure further ruining my credit. Yup. My life is the bomb.

Ok, ok ug, I need to stop. In more exciting news the diet pill pyramid scheme was not really a pyramid scheme... although it sort of was, they wanted 200 bucks to start up, which I don't have so it's back to blogging and trying to get SEO articles to write. Which maybe I will try to write a couple tuesday, I just get very apprehensive about doing new things I am green on, I never want to disappoint any one and while I am more then sure that I can do it, I have never actually done so, meaning there is a possibility that I could some how mess it up, you should see me closing at work, haha there are notes every where apologizing for things I may have done wrong.

I also remembered the end of my train of thought from yesterday. I was going to write about Desert Essence and Shea Moisture and their equally fabulous natural products of which I use both. If you walked in the bathroom right now (honestly you would probably cry and run screaming, I have been sick and thus have not been able to keep up with house keeping, BUT...) you would see a sea of lime greens, corals, salmons and teals with a few chocolate browns tossed in. I am very loyal to products that don't cause my skin to go into an all out revolt. To date I have found 4 companies that most of their products don't cause me to have to walk around hiding behind my hair or scarves; those companies being:

1. Aquage
2. Desert Essence
3. Shea Moisture
and finally
4. e-sen-cis by Samy

I have a horrible time finding products, and my roommate loves it because all the spoils are just handed off (which is a lot.) However I have been on a winning streak lately. Desert Essence thoroughly clean face wash is absolutely fantastic for my overly sensitive skin while still controlling my weird adult acne (I still have no idea why I suddenly started have acne problems at 28), also the tea tree facial cleansing pads are great for when I am too tired or in a place I can't bust out my face wash! I also use their tea tree and neem toothpaste and tea tree mouth wash (see a pattern here? My body really gets along great with tea tree so I'm sticking with it!) and while these are probably not for every one (they are fluoride free) for those of us who have a very low tolerance for fluoride (I can't drink tap water with out getting ill) or for those trying to avoid it because of it's possible carcinogenic properties, give these a try! Lastly I also use their Apple Ginger shampoo, but I mix it 50/50 with Shea Moisture's Coconut & Hibiscus Curl and Shine Shampoo, because on it's own it was a little too drying for my already very dry hair.

On that note, after seeing probably 56 online reviews of Shea Moistures various hair and body products I decided to wander on over to Walgreens and pick some up to try and I have to say I am not disappointed in the least, although the shampoo didn't get my hair as clean feeling as I like so thus is why it is perfect to mix with my Desert Essence shampoo. The repairing conditioner is great and I use it as a wash out, I think as a leave in it would just make my fine but fluffy hair a stringy, crunchy, mess. Lastly I have been using their eponymous "Curl enhancing smoothy", which my friends is fantastic and will most likely last me forever as I use about a 1/4 teaspoon sized glob once a week! I have read some times it makes hair crunchy, and yes it will, if you use a lot, but once I figured out I needed hardly any, my hair is soft and shiny and relatively frizz free (which just doesn't happen.)

As for Aquage and E-sen-cia, I use their plethora of hair styling products when I actually need to use styling products (which is rare but does happen.) I urge you to check out all these companies at the links below if you are into natural beauty, they are a bit pricy but I am happy to not have irritates skin so I will deal with it!

• Desert Essence
• Shea Moisture
• Aquage
• E-sen-cia

Oh! My I have been writing for over an hour! I had better go get ready for work! Opps! Have a great day!

I forgot in my previous post to write about how I found the perfect bag. I am always that girl you see struggling with 3 or 4 bags and a box of stuff, just always. Laptop bag, camera bag, purse, and some times a lunch bag, which I must say is very annoying. You can understand my excitement yesterday when I found the Clover bag by Epiphanie! It holds a 15 inch laptop, a large DSLR, a couple extra lenses and of course wallets, keys, glasses, lip glosses and other personal goodies! All my bags sans my lunch in one bag? Not to mention the fact it is stylish and looks like a purse and couple double as an over night bag in a pinch?! YES PLEASE!

This bag could be the most amazing thing I have encountered since sliced bread.
The price point is a bit steep, but seeing that some women I know routinely spend $200 on fancy bags (I am not one of those woman sadly) I think it wouldn't be too much of a stretch since it will eliminate all my other bags!

If I do manage to save up enough to get one of these their will be a review of it's awesomeness in very short order! Until then you should check out all their other bags (especially if you are a multi bagger like myself!) here.

Spring is in the air!

Today was pretty fantastic (well aside from the hurricane force winds!) I was finally able to get out to visit my moms farm today and fraternize with my ducks and thousands of goldfish!

I do mean thousands by the way, I really need to make sure I get some sold this fall, as the pond is way over stocked. The ducks help a bit with keeping the population down, but each goldfish can lay 50 or more eggs, so 5 ducks don't make a dent really.

Speaking of ducks, there are 2 drakes now, so I am hoping that there will be far more baby ducks this year... I really love cute fuzzy baby ducklings, more then almost anything I can think of, except for maybe baby bunnies.

As I type I am eating a delicious salad of young dandelion greens, violet greens, baby spinach, baby red spotted romaine, one of the first tomatoes from the greenhouse, and green grapes that were on sale. It is beyond delicious.

Things will be back in full swing again around here soon, and hopefully a new job will be as well so I can procure a new camera for more gorgeous photos of snouts and sprouts!

My aquariums also are in full swing, including adorable baby bristle nose plecos and several new colors/ patterns of platies. Happily growing in front of my aquariums are also two new happy little plants I rescued that I believe are in the haworthia family (maybe Haworthia cuspidata and H. magnifica var. acuminata) They seem to be doing much better now that they have been liberated from their 2.5", very root bound pots and are now stretching out in their new shallow dish containers. I'm very excited this year about trying to get all my plants repotted in proper succulent friendly planters and letting them live out doors for as long as possible.

Beyond behind.

Spring has tons in the works; including a complete room redo based on one of my favorite movies, much gardening and replanting succulents, fish related madness and maybe even an adventure trying to get into a school! I am sorry I am so lax. Just keep with me til spring.

I can't think of a good post title.

I tend not to blog when I am depressed, and since I have been kind of sick and exhausted; I just haven't felt like writing. I feel like if I don't have anything nice to say, I shouldn't say it at all.

There are a lot of things I should be doing: Finishing this blog layout, updating a couple websites I manage, figure out how to fix my face, trying to find ANOTHER job cause 2 just isn't enough apparently, trying to get into school again so I wont have to pay my student loan payments again for awhile, coloring and bleaching my hair, trying to get my aquatics business off the ground, cleaning my room, moving a bunch more stuff to the storage unit, rearranging my room. Ug. It seems never ending.

I'll just keep working I suppose and eventually everything will get finished, at least I hope it will.  Sorry about the lack luster blog. Hopefully ill be able to buck up soon. Sorry.

I also forgot to mention that since I am broke, I have been watching a lot of movies over and over again (which I am fine with) but I have been watching the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnasis and I love LOVE LOVE the layering in that movie, it's fantastic and I love how there are so many pieces from different different cultures around the world.  It makes me want to go thrifting. Looks like it's time to draft the besty into going thrifting!

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.

Cravings and jitters

Today I seem to be craving all things Japanese. Yan yan, ramen soup (and not the gross over salty kind in a cup), cute deco tape, ridiculously busy kawaii stationary, animal crossing, and more. It's painful and there really is no way I can fix it with out making a trip to Chicago (and my poor little soob needs that like a hole in the headlight). So I guess I will go on wanting, if nothing else it would be cool to be able to watch spirited away tonight when I get done at work... but my copy has gone missing.

Other then my intense craving for Japanese awesomeness, I am nervous about starting my new job tonight, mostly because I had one 2 hour training session, with other an hour and a half devoted to paper work... yeah, worrisome. I am sure I will be fine, but it doesn't make it any easier. If i can cover up the visible shaking issues I have, I'll be ok.

Cat-alyst

I need to find a catalyst. That probably sounds confusing but I need to be able to start moving forward with my life. I wrote out a plan last night to try to help my self a long, and a very strict budget, which I will hate and will most likely throw me into a terrible fit of depression but I will try my darnedest to stick to it.

I had wanted to go to dog grooming school, and a part of me still does, but the part that doesn't knows the constant barking will give me terrible head aches and the fur schnipsuls will make me even more itchy then I already am, not to mention being on my feet all day, close to standing in one place....

I am leaning more and more toward photography every day, not for people but for animals. The biggest problem being I don't think it would really provide a very large or even moderate income for me.  I know my best strength is working with animals, quickly followed by working with plants, so it seems logical that I should try to find something having to do with one or both of those. A farm is the logical thing, BUT that is quite a few years off and I will still need to have a second career to pay the bills (and sweet lord do I have bills!)

So, I am at a loss and kind of just floating in the aether wondering what I should do. It is the most horrible feeling.

The big 2...8...

Today is my birthday, I am officially now 28 years old.

Here is my birthday wish list in no particular order:
- Spumoni Cake
- Spumoni Ice Cream
- Breyers Lactose free Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
- Turkish Apple Tea from Whittard of Chelsea
- Small Hawkeye Gold Decaff Hot Latte
- Swiss Steak with a mountain of mashed potatoes
- A shar pei x basset hound puppy (or any cute floppy wrinkly puppy)
AND
- of course a pony *sticks out tongue*

I am going to try to enjoy today despite the havoc the 2 plane rides yesterday wrecked on my system and my horrible sore throat.

Now on to my shower and then some awesome breakfast that I'll be making for my self *laugh*

Update: This may be my best birthday so far! My room mate got me skeleton key and slammin' salmon, I got a few awesome bday cards, Mom is making me swiss steak Tuesday when I go to visit (and maybe even the spumoni cake!) AND I got a call telling me to come in and talk about the job I interviewed on Wednesday! So Excited!

Almost a year?!

Apparently I am a slow pony, or tardy to the party, or what ever you would like to call it.

I always start blogging and then I fizzle out because i have too much to deal with. WELL, that is all going to change right now, or at least I am sincerely hoping it will.

I am going to be revamping my site over the next few days and I hope to have it up and running reliably with at least weekly updates by October 1, 2011.

Until then,
Ellyse