So you found a bomb box . . .

            At the same yard sale I found my apple peeler in (see previous blog), I also found a box in which bombs were shipped during WWII.  I tell you, people in Villa Park have crazy stuff in their garage.  If I wasn’t negotiating with my grandma, I would have haggled her down, put I paid the asking price of $10—something my husband still hasn’t forgiven me for yet.

            I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it.  However, with the help of Keystone Light, we ended up with this…

            The mirror next to the buffet we found for $1.  It was too heavy to hang, so it was perfect on the buffet.  To the left of the mirror, is a succulent picture (I’ll blog about how to do that later).  Throw in some insulators with battery-operated light and you’ve got a sexy place to put some grub. 

The bullet casings and shells and dog tags were found at an old WWII airforce practice shooting-range on Clark Dry Lake Bed in Anza Borrego (many stories to tell from there—all involving a red neck Christmas).

Underneath the buffet is the perfect spot for growing lettuce.

How Expensive is Air, Really?

Apples for $2/lb.  Dried apples for $4.29/lb.  Once you step into a grocery store, air becomes rather expensive. 

Here's how to not pay for air.  Get some apples - the size does not matter. So, see if there are some smaller, odd-shaped apples in the clearance section.  We are lucky enough to have an apple tree in our backyard.  When we thin the tree to enable the tree to focus its energy on the remaining apples, we weren't sure what to do with those premature apples we plucked.  Drying them is the perfect solution.



Take about a dozen apples.  I used to waste 1/2 a day coring, peeling and slicing them by hand.  Then I discovered something that had been around for centuries—an apple peeler.  Before I went to work one day, I ordered one on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Apple-Potato-Peeler/dp/B0000DE2SS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343015245&sr=8-1&keywords=apple+peeler).  On my way home from work, I swung by an Orange County Womens Republican Federated (www.ocfrw.org/) annual garage sale in my grandmother's backyard.  I take two steps in and my mother walks up with an apple peeler for $2 and says, "I don't know what this is, but it looks like something you would use."  Patience is a bitch.

Back to the matter at hand.  Core, peel and slice the apples. 

Put them in a bowl of cold water with about 1/4 of a cup of lemon juice.  Let the apples sit in the bowl for at least 20 minutes.  If they're in there for less than 20 minutes, they will brown and have a higher potential of rotting.  If you leave them in there longer than 30 minutes, they will be soggy and take forever to dry.

After 20-30 minutes, take the apples out of the bowl of lemon-water.  Slice each apple so that each ring is sliced.  Place one layer of apple rings per tier of your dehydrator.  Let them dry for about 8 hours—this is what makes dried apples very expensive, the application of air.

Sunset Magazine Sucks

Okay, I admit it.  I used to read Sunset.  Alright, alright... I'll come clean.  I was a subscriber.  I know, shame on me.  I came clean.  I gave up the bad habit.  Forgive me, already.

There was a time in which I thought Sunset Mag (http://www.sunset.com/) was the best.  I would swoon over the pages of pretty day trips, forgotten beaches, quaint hide-aways, the garden greats, succulent frames and design on the cheap.

Then I realized I'd been bamboozled. 

They pulled the cashmere over my eyes.  The bastards!

I really started "reading" Sunset Ragazine during the Great Recession; you know, paying attention to the details.  $400 succulent frame, are you kidding?  $650 for a weekend away?  Designers who spend $1000 on a "garden makeover on the cheap"???  They had me reading this junk for years and I was finally onto them.  I was junkin' after all, and our pockets were nearly empty.  I couldn't afford their crap.

So a few weeks ago, while sitting idly by at physical therapy, I pick up a Sunset to skim.  I hit page 51 of the June 2012 and about spit my coffee across the waiting room.  In their Pop Up Backyard they tossed out the very chairs I had just picked up the previous weekend at a yard sale for $10 for the set, bought some crappy plastic Ikea wanna be chairs for untold riches and were set, some $500 later to have a garden party.  A $500 remodel for a garden party????  Are you kidding me??

I had picked up the exact same chairs the week prior, rattle canned them flat rust, plopped on some $0.50 red and white pillows to match the rest of the outside dining room and viola!  $15 garden party makeover.

Sunset Magazine Sucks.  Enough said.

Kathy's Potting Bench

What to give the person that has everything?


(Edit: Kathy and her son Danny who live in Huntington Beach Central Park area and have a beautiful southwestern themed backyard have since painted this bench purple with pink accents and it came out amazing!)

We created the Junkin' version of a potting bench for a friend who had everything but was in love with our basic potting bench/bar in the back yard.


We got a hot tip that Habitat For Humanity (http://www.habitat.org/) was having a warehouse sale, and upon arrival was told that everything was going to be sold or tossed.  We found some cool stuff and saw some turn of the century doors getting taken out to the dumpster.


The next morning the idea hit us... a potting bench made from an old door!


This is where our lives took a turn for a new low.  We jumped into the truck and went down to dumpster dive Habitat!  Sure enough, door secured and new project was under way.


After picking up $25 worth of lumber, we threw together a table of 2"x4" and 1"x4", secured it to the door with some lag bolts I had laying around, bolted up some rusty crap from the workbench (horseshoes, etc) and bolted some old jelly jars to the bottom of the table to put knickknacks in.  Complete with a coffee cup succulent garden and an old insulator to store string on, and we were good to go.


Delivery of this beast took two grown men, but it was worth it.  Kathy couldn't have been more pleased. 


Dumpster dive project accomplished.

86'ed

Let's first place the setting in which this blog was drafted: Music—"Give 'em enough rope" by the Clash; Cocktail—Keystone Light.  We apologize in advance. 


We've been kicked out of a lot of places—usually family is invovled or I started to karaoke to "Like a Virgin"—but this time it caught us off guard.  What is not normal with kicking a box of someone elses' belongings off to the side as I pronounce "I don't work here!" when some Napoleon-complexed estate sale worker demanded that I put her over-priced crap back?  Mother Theresa would've behaved the same way at 20% of retail prices.


It started off with our desire to put a lot of miles on a loaner car.  Miles on the "Bo."  I was in a car accident (55-years old Ms. Orange County on her cell phone) and have a Chevy Malibu as our loaner car.  Accordingly, day trip to Pasadena to do the Gamble House [www.gamblehouse.org], Pie and Burger [www.pienburger.com/], and an estate sale.


My wife is on the email list to an estate sale company.  The estate sale is under Pasadena's suicide bridge and is the former home of two professors with a multitude of hobbies.  The perfect hunt for rusty crap. 


After 40 minutes of pushing through a zoo of men in tight jean shorts, striped tank tops and mustaches and girls who could use a sandwich and a bath (that's what we get for going to LA), we end up with a box of rat-shit covered gardening supplies, Ziploc bags from the 70's and chrome polish (I'm the last to have on my truck).  My wife is especially excited about coming across the gardening supplement btk (the wonders of which she will undoubtedly blog about).


When Tabatha (aka "T.B." or more commonly known as "That Bitch") finally graced us with the privilege of being checked out from her blessed estate sale, she starts to calculate . . .1/2 a box of band aids $2.00, book on zucchini recipes $3.00, rat-covered tomato food $5.00.  I thought my wife was buying trash, but figured they would give me $10 to haul this shit away, so going along with it was a smarter move than trying to convince my wife otherwise. 


$57.  I offer a more than generous offer of $30 (a whole 15% of retail, which is generous for us).  As Tabatha tries to wipe the rat crap off of her hands, she says, "oh, no" with an insulted tone.  Not a problem.  It was junk after all.  As a courtesy, we were going to push the box off to the side, but Tabatha demands that we put every item back where we found it. 


"I don't work here."  "Excuse me?!?!"  "I don't work here."  86'ed.