Tattoo inspiration - watercolor tattoos I found on tumblr

I got my first tattoo about eleven years ago, and since then I've gotten three more. And wanted about nineteen more than I've gotten. I sort of vaguely keep an eye on the sorts of trends in tattoos that float around the Internet, and I have to say, Watercolor Tattoos are about my favorite new idea. The ones I like the most are the ones with clean sharp lines, maybe the science-y ones, and then the watercolor slashed and splattered and dripping artfully. 

These are gorgeous.

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Early May garden update!

Today, I did some replanting to combat the horrors the squirrels have inflicted on my garden! I have no idea how to keep them away, so I'm basically just planting a whole lot more seeds than I usually do.

Because of them, the previous planting a got all disordered, and they're only just starting to come up: the top here is onions and beans (p sure all the corn and pumpkin got eaten), and beans (amethyst beans and butterscotch beans!). The bottom shows...I'm unsure. I really need to get garden tags. I think it's lettuce and bok choi, and maybe spinach. Definitely greens, at least!

These are the ones I did today: lemongrass, two kinds of basil, dill, peas, sweet datil peppers as aji dulce peppers, summer squash, Poona kheera, space master cukes, cardoons, oka hijiki, and my very last two sea buckthorn seeds, since the ones I planted over winter got moldy.

Here's the garden as a whole--so far, a lot of planting and not much growing because of the squirrels and the really weird weather--like, this past week, England was warmer and drier than we were!

I've got flowers and beans on that back beam, greens in the white tubs, mostly trees in the bottles, more greens along the side beam, all the baby plantings in cups and small seed starters (I took the plastic off tr tomatoes today to see who is strong enough), my crab apple and hawthorn trees behind the day lilies that are starting to bud, ginger, and gladiolus!

And our newest addition is a potted begonia my sister brought for my mom!

What's going on in your garden?

Peanut butter bowl cake!

Mug cakes! Made in a bowl!

One Egg + 4 tablespoons PB + a handful of butterscotch chips + 3 tablespoons flour (this is a mix of cornstarch and oat flour because I'm GF) + 1-2 tablespoons sweetener.

Mix up that egg real well.

Add in those scoops.

Mix that up real well!

Mix in the sugar and the flour (which I forgot to take a picture of, but is there).

Throw in the mixins.

Microwave for 1 minute to 1 minute 15 seconds.

Comes out looking about the way it went in, but you can touch the top and see that it's solid now.

Leave it to sit for a few minutes; by the time it's an eat-able temperature, it should also be evenly cooked throughout.

Yum!

For a moister cake, use less flour, or add a little butter or oil. For a fluffier cake, you can add some baking powder, about 1/8th a teaspoon. If you use a flour that has stretch to it, it'll be fluffier, too.

So there you have it! Mostly protein, but it tastes like cake! Not low-fat or low-cal, but fast and yummy and filling.

We're gearing up for the launch of Cashew Creations!

I said before that we're reopening my old crafting Etsy shop Cashew Creations (nothing there yet, but that's the link!), and here's the first sneak peeks at what we're doing! These are two of the sorts of abstract photo-art my mom does, and they'll all be available as prints in a number of sizes. When the actual prints come in so we can check the quality, I'll post pics of that, too!

The sort above will be a collection of nature shots made into things that look like mandalas and stained glass and such. The sort below, I think, look like quilts; they're also based on nature shots, but are further from the orginal. 

We're also going to open with some handmade notebooks and these slambooks I make, and will expand through the summer with various home items and personal items! I'm looking into decorating vases and things with the nail polish from my Incidental Twin nail shop, because that would look awesome.

So stay tuned for more announcements!

Review - The Phillips Hue Lights and the Syfy Synch App

I made a video so you can see the colors shifting! This is basically my favorite of the many options, though I'm also fond of the Passing Clouds option, which has natural light and periodic dims, and Candlelight, which is warm and flickery.

I won this starter set of the Phillips Hue Lights from a sweepstakes run by the 12 Monkeys twitter account, and lemme tell you, it's super-neat. No really necessary at all, but definitely neat.

Pros:

• Lots of options
• Voting and suggestions on new lighting options being added to the store
• Nifty
• Rainbows!
• Pretty easy to set up

Cons:

• The app doesn't make it super-intuitive to know which lightbulb you're talking to--it just numbers them, but there's not really numbers on the bulbs so you have to figure out which is 1, 2 or 3
• Sometimes it gets stuck on one light color or pattern
• A little laggy if there's any interference

With the Syfy Synch app, you can connect your lights to various Syfy Channel shows and then as the colors of the light change on the TV, your lights change to match. It's a cool idea, and very atomospheric, but a little buggy. Maybe it's just that the tech is new, or maybe our internet is that unreliable, but it couldn't seem to keep synched, and I kept having to restart the app because it kept crashing.

But when it worked? It was awesome.

I know that there's all these recipes on IFTTT.com for Hue lights, so I'm going to look into those for making them more useful and less of a novelty, and in the meantime, I'm going to keep my bedroom in a rainbow-progressing loop.

Because why not?

Getting to know me

I found this list-meme over on Tumblr, and since I've been off this blog for a while and I also love these things, I thought I'd fill it out.

1:Real (first) Name?
Samantha. Almost Chloe Phaedra, if my dad is to be believed.

2:Current crush!?
In real life? No one, really. In celeb-life? The newest addition to my Top Ten (which is sitting actually around seven or eight right now) is Aaron Stanford. He's too cute.

3:Addiction?
Tea. Chocolate, probably. Buying books I don't have time to read. Fanfic?

4:How tall am I?
Four foot ten. Shorter than most people over the age of about nine.

5:Relationship status?
In a committed relationship with several fictional men.

6:Girls I trust?
My sister. My Monkeys. My Troublemakers.

7:Boys I trust?
A2. Also Troublemakers. Hayhay. Jason.

9:Current mood?
Restless, but low-energy--I'm in a lot of pain right now and I'm gonna go take a nap when I'm done here.

10:how many followers?
On Tumblr, 488. On Twitter, almost 900.

11:Confession;
I didn't like most of the books I had to read for my undergrad degree.

12:Who I miss?
Hayhay. Jason. The independent me I used to be.

13:Who I last hugged?
A2, probably. I hug him all the time.

14:Who understands me?
My sister. Hayhay. Kristina. I think my brother gets me most of the time. Not a lot of others in that totally free sort of way.

15:Someone who is always there for me:
My sister.

16:Last Text?
A link to my sister about how 1st graders finished famous proverbs, and how hilarious it was.

17:someone you cry to?
My sister. My mom.

18:Who makes me laugh the most?
Hayden. We don't even have to talk to each other to be cracking up!

19:Who I do the craziest stuff with?
Once upon a time, Hayden. Nowadays, probably A2, since I basically just wander around behind him while he wanders off.

20:Who makes me smile?
With their very existence? Tom Hiddleston. Aaron Stanford. Almost any baby or kitten. David Tennant.

21:What am i listening to?
A show about dinosaur extinctions playing in the other room.

22:Turn on’s?
Good hands. Cheekbones. Wide shoulders. Goofy grins and mobile, expressive faces. Gentleness. Good senses of humor. Treating me special without crossing over into spoiling or condescending. Wide-ranging, animated conversations about stuff we love. Liking cats and babies and being liked by them in return (because they know how good you are). Brains. Weird sensed of humor. Adventuresomness.

23:Turn offs?
Being a jackass. Being mean. Being good looking but having a horrible personality--it makes it worse, because the looks are like a lie. Being shallow or condescending. Being smothering, Being untrustworthy. Lying. Hitting. Manipulating.

24. Bestfriends?
Hayden and Jason. My sister.

26:Second confession?
I take way too much pleasure in talking about myself.

27:What I hate?
Unfairness--and lots of things are unfair. Not having better options. Being lied to. Being manipulated. People who get away with being jerks and see no reason to be better because of it. Willful ignorance and lack of creativity. Violence. Willful destruction of people, places and things.

28:Last person to give you butterflies?
In real life? That's a ways back. AP maybe. Or Sam. All sorts of famous people do all the time, though!


So that's me! How would you answer these questions?

I'm relaunching my Cashew Creations shop!

A million years ago, when I lived in a house with four room mates and two other housemates and we all crafted, I set up a shot for us to sell our stuff--and then I was the only one who used it and it eventually fell silent.

But now! Now I'm diversifying my life, I craft, my mom takes photos, my sister makes things, my dad and brother make things, so I'm going to relaunch the shop as part of my Birthday Month Celebration! By the end of May, Cashew Creations will be a thing again, and leading up to it, I'm going to periodically sneak peek some of the stuff we're going to be posting there! So stay tuned!

We'll be selling my mom's photography and photo-manipulation cards and prints and hopefully cloth items if we can find a quick and efficient way to print them.

My paper and yarn goods, which will change as the season does, and occasional jewelry. I'll also be adding home items decorated with the nail polish from my Polish Shop, IncidentalTwin!

There'll also be occasional items from my dad, brother and sister, as they find time to make them.

We're so excited, you guys, and I hope you are as excited as we are!

WTF "rib inflammation"?

I went to the doctor yesterday because I've been having a lot of pain in my boob and side and up into my armpit and when we called the nurse, she was concerned. Which made me concerned. And I had to wait almost two weeks until payday so I could afford to go, so there was a lot of not sleeping and barely skirting panic attacks--and making Contingency Plans in my head and my journal.

So I get there, and he is almost immediately sure that it's nothing deadly. He said if it was, I'd have no good days--it would all be bad days. And then he started poking my bones.

Apparently, there's a thing where all your connective tissues all over your ribs get inflamed. And it makes a lot of pain that sort of leeches into your soft tissues and feels like soft tissue pain and can be alarming and awful, but isn't deadly, and that's what I have. It can be caused by injuries--and I did crack at least one rib falling in the tub in our old apartment, maybe a year and a half or two years ago. It can also be caused by coughing which I do quite a lot because I'm allergic to everything in the last two climates I've lived in. And sometimes it just happens. My mom has a similar condition, so maybe I've got the same susceptibilities as she has.

It sucks. Like, a lot. They gave me steroids to take, which means I'm taking way too many gross-tasting pills every day for the rest of this week, plus Aleve for the sweeping and pain, and an allergy pill to help my immune system calm down and ease the coughing. He wants me to start walking again now that it's warm (which we were going to do anyway), and fast-walking to get my arms moving and my ribs flexing. He wants me to do what's basically the same arm exercises they give to physical therapy people to strengthen up my torso.

It's dumb. But at least, as far as we can tell, it's not deadly, and I'm super grateful for that!

Monthly Me - April 2015

I'm down to 157! Amazing!

I'm going to the doctor again next week, so I'm off all supplements and stuff so they don't mask anything, and I mostly feel okay. Some pain, some inflammation, but mentally and physically pretty fine.

I'm also drinking less tea now that it's not so cold and the lowering of the caffeine is making me sooooo sleeeepppyyyyy.

But I published a book last week (search Amazon for Married To The Wind by Samantha Holloway!), and I'm still feeling up about that! Eee!

How're you this month?

Things I did not do this week

- Make a list of blog topics so I can remember to blog

- Remember to buy cat food

- Finish that book I started

- Write any sonnets

- Remember to get my laundry out of the dryer four days in a row

- Send off pen pal letters after carrying them around for less than nine days

Apparently the week after being sick is not great for remembering things.