farmer cara's Profile

I live in a town with more cows than people. In fact, we don't even have a post office. We are almost as close to our grocery store as a Lowes, Target, CVS or other big chain stores. I think that the perks of living in a small town, or even a very rural area, (the people, the stars, the outdoors) have *nothing to do with shopping*. People here spend more money in chain stores than the people I knew when we lived in the city. The towns near where I live (Washington County, NY) are thriving and could support people who only shopped in small local stores. That could not be said of my small hometown in rural Pennsylvania.

And although I shop online for lots of things that I would have a very hard time finding locally, even in a box store, shopping online is more detrimental to your local economy than shopping at Target. http://www.the350project.net/home.html

This doesn't sound very classy (and it isn't, but hey, this is a rental) but we have to ceiling closet in our kitchen that is very narrow. I use labeled milk crates to store most of the food/kitchen supplies that live there. I'm pretty short and pull out shelves wouldn't work very well for the upper shelves because I would have a hard time looking for the items kept there. I have to be able to take things off the upper shelves and out of the closet in order to access the stuff toward the top, anyway. The milk crates make it easy. They're labeled, too (booze, liquids, immersion blender) so that we can all find what we're looking for. But I think that banana boxes would work well, too.

I found some great lockers like this on the street years ago. Sadly, mine are blue and I'd love them to be a sort of brushed metal color. Can metal like this be stripped easily? What would you seal it with later?

I think fans blowing OUT of the apt (esp blowing out of the kitchen window) instead of just into the apt is really key. I find it so frustrating to be at a friend's place when they set up the fans so that they all blow in from the outside. We lived in Brooklyn for years without an AC. Our apartment was like a windtunnel.

Also I really like cucumber water. It's really refreshing.

I've been dreaming of these... in this color even!

very pretty

finally, we might paint the spare room!

I second most everyone else. Also: "Don't take a pan out of the oven before you know where you're going to put it down". Good advice for those of us with small kitchens.

I agree that this is really ugly, but I think that the windows would be terrible without the mirrors, too.

I think that nice shear curtians would hide the mirrors and let in light. Under shear curtains the mirrors may even improve the amount of light that comes in. Living in someone else's apartment is a drag.

Yum! I think this is the perfect dessert for my dinner tonight. And it sounds easy.

It's so nice to make stuff like this and keep it in the fridge for toast, snacks, light desserts through the week. (I just finished some lemon curd this morning!)