Shadows & Sun

I love shadows, I love sun, I love succulents.  On a recent afternoon these three loves came together on the front steps of my building.

These are my neighbors' plants; aren't they beautiful?  Between our place and theirs, I'd wager that our building holds at least a hundred plants of different varieties.  I recently started some dahlia bulbs on my side of the steps...crossing my fingers that they push up as promised by the flower woman at the farmers market.

A penny saved, is a penny you can use to tile a table-top.

This post is a little late, but if we're talking Christmas present fabrication, then it's quite early. I'm Sam, guest-blogging today with instructions on how to make a penny-topped side table.

Step 1: Decide what piece of furniture you wish to embellish. For me, the choice was obvious. My boyfriend needed bedroom furniture, so I chose a nice IKEA Rast, a side table. With unfinished wood, it was perfectly customizable.  And quite affordable, though I won’t say just how much because my boyfriend might sometime read this, and I HATE the idea of people knowing how much I spent on their present. So let’s just say, you could probably get two orders of pho for how much I spent on old Rast’y.

Step 2: Assemble said furniture, if necessary. Now, that Rasthole I bought didn’t come pre-drilled, no doubt due to the negligence of some drowsy, post-prandial Swede, too full of lingonberries and meatballs to do his damn job right. So drill those missing holes, or get your dad to help you, then put torque to Alan wrench and get the thing all set up.

Step 3: Choose your spray paint and coinage. I went with a greenish-blue, to complement the green in the copper pennies. Another combination that might work is nickel with yellow (your first inclination might be blue and nickel, but contrast is a concept that I’m getting more and more comfortable with).

Step 4: Slap on a primer coat of paint, allowing it to do dry completely. Spray paint your piece with multiple coats to ensure good coverage. I used almost an entire can.

Step 4: Measure your surface area, your coin, and do some calculations to figure out how much coin you need for your rows and columns. I can’t tell you what those calculations would be, because I didn’t do them! Take that Mr. Fella, and your multiplication tables! No, I take that back. I loved my fourth grade teacher, I just avoid math most of the time. As a result, I made two trips to get pennies and ended up scrounging through my Dad’s loose change.

Step 5: Using super glue, start gluing down the pennies/nickels/pesos in whatever pattern you like. My dad kept trying to get me to do some free-form nonsense, but you can tell by the pictures I vetoed that idea. But do what you like. Follow your own journey. Maybe your pennies should be in waves, who knows? You could clean them up, too, but I liked the higgledy-piggledy appearance of old gnarly pennies next to the shiny ones.

Step 6: Now for the hard part. You need a protective surface over those pennies. I used epoxy (about $30). I (and by I, I mean my dad and I, and mostly I just mean Dad) applied packing tape to the edges of the table to create a barrier. Then I poured epoxy evenly over the surface until I had about a half-inch thick layer. Crossing my fingers, I allowed it to dry overnight. Luckily, the layer was thin enough that all the bubbles came out just fine and I only had a small drip problem down one side. I cleaned up the edges with a razor blade so that they were somewhat smooth. 

Step 7: Unveil to your loved one! Pat yourself on the back, project well done!

Music for a Rainy Day

{image via}

• Bon Iver, Blood Bank EP
• Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
• Arcade Fire, The Suburbs

I have a 12th-floor view of part of downtown San Francisco right now; specifically, a bevy of tall buildings with the huge Transbay Terminal construction site smack dab in the middle.  Although the muffled sounds of heavy machinery get a little tedious, it's kind of addictive to watch them break down the old concrete and move earth in preparation for the new building.

In a completely unrelated note, I thought that Obama's speech at the Tucson memorial last night was incredibly moving.

Homemade Limoncello

I made limoncello to give as Christmas gifts this year and just made a second batch.  This activity is so satisfying to me because mostly it's time that makes limoncello good.  Once you peel the lemons, there's little left to do but wait for the concoction to become delicious.  {OK, OK, there are a couple of additional steps, but it's so worth it.}

If you're inclined to try your hand at limoncello, here's what you do.  You'll need:

• 15 to 20 beauteous lemons
• 2 750-ml bottles of vodka (at least 80 proof) or Everclear
• Simple syrup (I like a 1-to-1 ratio of sugar to water)
• A large glass container to hold your concoction
• Jars or bottles for the finished product

If you're lucky like me, you're able to harvest the most beautiful, huge lemons from your in- laws' citrus trees in Arizona and then cart them back to California so they can live up to their full potential as limoncello lemons.  Make sure you choose lemons with nice skins that smell good.  I have a feeling that this batch of limoncello is going to be even better than my first one, as I had to use semi out-of-season lemons for it back in September.  This time around, I got huge, in-season fatties that smell heavenly.

Get your vodka or Everclear and decant it into the container you're going to use for your limoncello.  As you can see, I really did go for the cheapest vodka possible.  For your container, a big sun tea jar would be great.  I use a gallon glass container that I picked up at our local co-op.

Wash your lemons and dry them, making sure to remove any debris.  Then peel them.  I use a regular vegetable peeler, but you could also use a sharp knife.  Make sure you are only peeling the yellow citrus skin and not the white pith underneath.  If you leave a lot of pith on your skins, the limoncello will turn bitter.

Once you've thoroughly peeled your lemons, add them to the vodka, leaving at least 2 inches below the top rim of the container.  Seal it tightly and store in a cool, dark place for at least 2 weeks but preferably for a few months.  

I allowed my first batch to steep for 2 1/2 months, which really allowed the citrus oils to infuse the vodka.  If you're like me and enjoy checking on the progress of your projects, feel free to open the container every couple of weeks or so and swirl the peels around.  You'll notice that the peels will start losing their color after awhile, and the vodka will start turning yellow.  That's a good sign!

When the lemon peels have sufficiently infused the vodka, make the simple syrup and add it. For this batch, I'd use 3 cups of water and 3 cups of sugar.  Combine them in a saucepan, boil until the sugar is dissolved, allow to cool, and then add to your container.  For this batch, I'll have to divide it and get another container.  Put the jar(s) back into a cool, dark place for at least another 2 weeks.

When you're ready to bottle your limoncello, get a coffee filter or cheesecloth and strain your mixture through it, pressing out citrus oil from the peels.  I used coffee filters the first time around, but will use cheesecloth next time because I think it'll be easier and allow more of the oil to leak through.  Discard the peels (hopefully into a compost container) and bottle the lemony yellow liquid that you're left with.  Use recycled jars or bottles with tight-fitting lids, making sure that the bottles are completely clean.  Let the bottled limoncello sit for another week for drinking or giving it away.  Make labels to give the limoncello as a gift!

Store your homemade limoncello in the freezer because it tastes best ice cold.  It won't freeze due to the alcohol content.  For a tasty cocktail, pair it with champagne and a dash of Grand Marnier.  For a tasty treat, pour it over your choice of ice cream.

Don't forget about all of your naked lemons!  Juice them and make fresh lemonade or freeze the juice in plastic containers for later use.

I have so much extra citrus from Cole's parents' house that I may try my hand at orangecello or grapefruitcello.  Either would be just as good as limoncello, I think!

Happy Holidays

{Fat angels in our bay window in SF}

'Cause they're not over yet...we still have New Year's Eve to look forward to.

We're back in San Francisco and I'm excited to have a week to decompress from a busy Christmas in Arizona and play with my new camera some more.

Thinking

I'm trying to figure out why I find Mormonism so fascinating.  Part of it is due to the fact that I've lived in close proximity to large Mormon populations for most of my life, but I've never known very much about the history of the church or what they believe.  Part of it is due to the Mormon church's absolutely criminal involvement in the Prop. 8 campaign here in California, which still horrifies me.  Another part of it is due to my reading of a few blogs written by Mormon women around my age, to whom I can relate.  Mostly I suppose it's about reconciling all of these different aspects.

I decided to do some reading on it.  I started with Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which I finished about a week ago.  {If you're not familiar with the book, it uses two murders by Mormon fundamentalists as a jumping-off point to discuss the entire history of the church.}  It's been on my mind ever since, especially this excerpt, which Krakauer uses to introduce Part III of the book:

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous.  So I am told; I have not noticed it. ...

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward the better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. ...

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius.  I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.  I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contribution to civilization.  It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that they became able to predict them.  These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.

--Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

There's a lot to digest that that passage, especially after just finishing Krakauer's book.  So that's what I'm doing--digesting, as I read Mormon Country by Wallace Stegner.

Small World/Smaller Neighborhood

In a very serendipitous turn of events, Cole saw one of my ilivehere: sf photos on a newish Bernal Heights blog this morning. 

This blog contains some serious Bernal Heights awesomeness, including old and new photos of sights around the hill.  Add it to your list of worthy work distractions.