Author Archives: Tricia Edgar

About Tricia Edgar

Tricia is a mom of one daughter. She's into recycling, gardening, and strange and wonderful crafts. You'll often find her tromping through the wet forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Taming the Freezer Monster

I have a monstrous amount of food in my freezer, and I think it’s alive. It’s a little sticky, and it’s got some nasty hard edges. Yesterday when I went down there to dig up some strawberries and cherries from the depths, it leapt onto my hand. I am sure it was trying to suck me in. I have a freezer packed full of fruit, jam, and other goodies from the rest of the growing season. This is wonderful. However, I must admit that it’s really quite hard to delve into the depths of the freezer and come out intact. … Continue reading →

Maximize Space in a Small Home

Yesterday I talked about maximizing space in your small garden. If your home is also tiny, you’ll want to keep things neat and organized in there too. But how can you do this if you just don’t have the space? Minimize, minimize. Yes, a small home needs to have less stuff. Evaluate what you really use, and give extra things to charity. Share stuff. Do you really need to own the things that you own? Can you rent them sometimes, or share with a friend who has more space? If some of your objects take up space and aren’t all … Continue reading →

Maximize Your Garden Space

Since it’s winter, that means it’s time to work on garden planning. If you’re like me and you have a small space to work with, one thing you’ll want to do is to stack functions. What does that mean? What is a function, and how do you stack it? Stacking functions is multitasking for the garden.While you can throw a few shrubs into a small garden and call it a day, if you’d like to grow food in your garden or create a multidimensional and beautiful garden that’s packed with color, you’ll probably want to add a little bit more. … Continue reading →

Creating a Mural On Your Wall

Every time I watch one of my favorite movies, I’m drawn into the animation. It’s the beauty of the fields that gets me. Even though they’re animated, a lush field of blooming flowers backed by mountains seems like the perfect place for me to drift off for a nap. Of course, I can’t travel into the movie, although it would be nice. However, if I ever had a mural on my wall, it would be of a field of lushly-blooming flowers. So restful! When my daughter was one, I painted a mural on her wall. Use a slide projector or … Continue reading →

What to Do With Kids’ Artwork

Artwork: you know you love it. All of those hand-lettered drawings with beautiful, colorful pictures. The problem is, you may be drowning in it! What can you do with all of your kids’ creative inspirations? Create an Original Art Gallery  I love original art, and what better original art than your kids’ masterpieces? The floor that houses our bedrooms is almost entirely populated by kid art, all framed in frames that I picked up at garage sales. Take it to Work I also have a gallery at work. I enjoy looking at my daughter’s artwork when I am missing her … Continue reading →

2013: The Year We Make a Mess!

I don’t like messes. In fact, every day I spend many minutes, sometimes hours, cleaning clutter. While I’m not big on scrubbing, I am big on having clear surfaces to work on. For me, clear surfaces equal a clear mind. I also love messes. I love the tactile experience of messy things, whether it’s glitter shaking onto a wacky craft project or the sensation of mucking about in clay or mud. When it comes to my garden, I must confess that I do enjoy a feeling of order. I can be rather attracted to Zen gardens and overflowing cottage gardens … Continue reading →

Growing Greens In the Winter

After the rush of holiday eating, you may feel a deep-seated urge to go and eat something green. I know I do! But if you’re on a budget or want super local, fresh-picked greens in the middle of the winter, that’s impossible, right? Not quite. Here are a few ideas to keep you in the greens this winter. Sprouting This fall, I’ve enjoyed sprouting my own goodies for salads. For many years, I tried to sprout, only to be rewarded with mucky, mildewy, not-at-all-edible sprouts. Yes, I washed them according to all of the schedules, but they just didn’t work. … Continue reading →

Spic and Span? Cleaning Resolutions for Your Home

It’s time for a resolution! Or not. Whether you shun New Years’ resolutions or jump onto the resolution train, this time of year is a good time to plan for the next. Whether you call them resolutions or not, you might be thinking forward to what the new year will bring. If there’s one thing I’m fairly certain about, it’s that we’re not looking forward to more cleaning in 2013. What sorts of resolutions have I made in years gone by? 1. Do one thing a day. This resolution helped me in 2012, but I slid a little in the … Continue reading →

Bringing in the New

Every Christmas Day, I clean my house. From its consistency in my life over the past twenty years, you might think that this is a sort of profound ritual. It is not. Rather, it is the motion of a guilty conscience. You see, we have so much. We probably have too much. Even though we’ve cut down a lot on the gifts that we give and receive, it still feels like a lot to incorporate the new into our lives. It’s also a New Year’s ritual of sorts: evaluating the old in our lives and bringing in a little bit … Continue reading →

Doing the Christmas Wrap

Yesterday was wrapping day. We don’t give huge gifts, and we’re not getting anything that wriggles. Nonetheless, it was a bit of a project. If you’re into recycling and reusing like I am, Christmas wrapping is a mental stretch. I have a couple of rolls of old wrapping paper in my basement, and I do use them occasionally. However, the fact that they’ve lived with me since we arrived in our house over seven years ago tells me that I don’t tend to use a lot of wrapping paper. What do we do instead? Chocolate boxes, cookie containers, and old … Continue reading →