Let me share a christmas poem i wrote, just about this time last year:

There’s one thing I like more than fries.
A tale, with three men who are wise,
And shephards galore,
And Mary, and more…
Santa! Jesus! My two favorite guys!

Oh, it’s also the time of year for Christmas Music!!!  And the itunes store is giving away some FREE Christmas tunes!  Just a great sampler of many artists singing some great classics (and some songs that are new to me, but still full of magic and cheer).  It’s mostly super cheestactic (barry manilow, anyone?) but that’s only the best type of christmas music there is, right?

enjoy! enjoy! enjoy!

(that link right there, it’ll take you to the tunes)
i’m sure this free goodness won’t be around for ever, so get it while it’s hot!

ho ho ho, merry christmas, everyone!

(got your own christmas poem to share? comment, y’all)!

I found myself in a mood yesterday and i accidentally cured it with a shopping spree!!

Confession time, this is what i bought:

✿  Two books for me (my fave genre: tween fiction)!
✿  Two books for friends.  I haven’t even decided who to give them to (they’re old faves that just had to be boughten).
✿  Three golden picture frames (well, gold-colored anyway) for an art project i’ve decided to attempt.
✿  A new dress!  It’s just a super cute plaid number that goes great with the tights i got for my b-day.
✿  A sweater for my sister.  It looked like something she’d like.

I know what you’re thinking… good gracious, get a grip lady!  Also, what’s the damage?

Drumroll, Ya’ll!… $13.74!

No, seriously!  The dress was $1.50.

That’s right.  Just the longest intro/brag-fest ever to tell you about a magical land called Thrift Town!

Now, this in not a blanket endorsement of all thrift stores… Unfortunately, for those of you who don’t live in NorCal/some parts of Texas I’m talking strictly Thrift Town.

Thrift Town is a Town of Thrift that is above and beyond your typical goodwill/salvation army set-up for two big ol’ reasons: Organization and Pricing.

“…let me break it down for you, again. You know I only say it cause i’m truly genuine…” -lauryn hill

Organization:  World-class organization = less work digging around for me.  At thrift town clothes are organized by gender, then style (long sleeve blouse, pant suits, etc.), then by size! (this is great.  none of that, “oooh! cute!… ugh! size 2!” just “cute! my size!”), and at the sf location (and here’s the kicker) by color!  Seriously, organized!

Pricing:  Real value, folks!  The prices are crazy low.  And i don’t mean compared to shopping at Bergdorf’s, I mean compared to other so called “thrift” situations.  At the Goodwill near my parent’s house they recently set up this across-the-board pricing scheme, where all of one type of clothes are one price: dresses are $7.99 (not a deal).  At Thrift Town, dresses start at around $2.99 and the one I bought had a blue tag so it was 50% off!  (Goodwill has stopped doing that colored-tag extra-savings thing…lame).  I could go on all day… the books were 69¢ and 99¢.  The sweater i bought for Ani cost 69¢ (don’t worry, i already told her…).

Now, I didn’t take any photos at T-Town, but check out someone elses’s haul i found on flickr!  Not bad!

thanks for the photos tgifreytag and Steven_Morris!

psst! hey you! Thrift town has several locations, but they aren’t everywhere.  Know any good thrift shops in your neck of the woods? Comment!

i have something very important to tell you:  you might be spending way too much for spices and herbs!

i feel like i have this very special knowledge that i have to get out into the world.  There is an aisle in your grocery store where the herbs and spices are super inexpensive.  And that aisle looks a lot like this:

it’s usually tucked in near the hispanic food section.  (or if you’re at Lucky’s in Oakland, it’s in the farthest back corner flanked by some fake plants and the employee entrance to the seafood section).  what i’m getting at, is that these spices are probably hiding from you.

but they’re well worth the search because every last one of them is under a buck.

let’s do some comparison shopping.  cumin: one of my most favorite spices (mmm, guacamole).  Safeway.com reports that the cheapest plastic bottle of the stuff is $3.49!  Now, we look around for the bagged spices and…

79¢!  can you believe it?

Now, they don’t have every flavor of spice, and if you’re tricking out your fancy fancy spice rack for the first time, by all means buy some nice bottles.  Just don’t forget the bagged spices when your supplies are running low.  69¢ to refill the oregano?!  yes, please!

secret bonus: here is another really powerful spice that’s well worth dropping 75¢ (it’s secret, because it is only available to folks who can read italics).

This is how it works:  Friendly folks all over the world offer up their couches and fill out profiles that you can browse to find the perfect place to stay.  Couchsurfing.org currently lists 834,377 couches in 232 countries!  Just shoot off an email and if the host is free during the days you’re looking to stay with them, and they like the looks of your profile, you’ve got a free place to rest your head.

Now, you can check their website for more specifics, but I want to just share my super experiences with couchsurfing/hosting:

One weekend two friends and I decided to make the drive from Portland (where we lived, at the time) to Seattle.  It was Thursday night and we decided to drive up the next day!  We browsed around couchsurfing.org and found some friendly looking hosts that had been recommended highly by other couchsurfers, and sent out a few emails.  We received a quick reply from Robin, who was not too busy in the coming days and happy to have us.  A few emails later and we had the logistics all worked out, Robin’s phone number in hand, and we headed off toward the great wet north.  As we drove closer to Robin’s house we called to report our ETA and mentioned our plans to head into downtown for the evening.  When we arrived at Robin’s place she had a map showing the route from her house to downtown all printed out for us, with points of interest circled.  Couchsurfing hosts are super at making recommendations for awesome things to see and do (and eat) in their home-cities!  That’s just how sweet couchsurfing hosts are.  For little more than gas money and the price of a beautiful flower bouquet we picked out at Pike’s Place Market to show our gratitude to Robin, we had a fantastic weekend (of course we spent money on food, but we would have had to eat if we sat at home all weekend too).

A free place to stay is stellar, but if you don’t have the time for a getaway, consider hosting couchsurfers!  It’s loads of fun.

After our great couchsurfing experience in Seattle,  my roommates and I listed our apartment and our lovely gold velvet couch on couchsurfing.org.  In the next couple months we hosted a several couchsurfers, and always had a blast.  It’s always fun to meet new folks and travelers tend to come with a lot of fascinating tales of where they’ve been and where they’re going.  It’s also fun to be the expert on your hometown, ready to recommend your favorite restaurant or park.  And here’s a BONUS: on more than one occasion, we had couchsurfers offer to cook a meal for our apartment to repay our hospitality!  A lovely canadian couple cooked us a top notch curry.  One dude, got in our apartment’s fancy start-of-autumn dinner and contributed a delicious veggy/cheesy dish that knocked our socks off.

I think I’ve set a new record for gratuitous use of the exclamation point with this post, but that’s just how enthusiatic I am about couchsurfing!  Check it out.  No, seriously, check it out.

Likewise, your lovely home doesn’t have to go to shambles.  Luckily, for just about three bucks you can class up your abode and give Jack something to jump about.  It’s time for a new set of DIY candlesticks!

Don’t worry, you won’t need any crystal cutting skills or silversmithing experience.  Just foam board and a sharp x-acto knife (also, paper, scissors, and a pencil are handy).

Got ‘em? Great. Let’s go!

Step one: Make a candlestick pattern. Fold a piece of paper in half, draw half a candlestick (along the seem) and cut it out for a perfectly symmetrical candlestick pattern. (not feeling designy? no prob. here, use my pattern: candlestick pdf).

Step two: Trace that shape onto a piece of foam board four times. (We’re making a set of two candlesticks here, and you need two halves to make each whole).

Step three: Cut it out!  Well, cut them out… the four candlestick shapes. Here’s where having a sharp x-acto knife come in handy.

Step four: Cut a 1/4 inch slit out of the top half of two of your candlestick pieces and the bottom half of the other two. Like so: 

Step five: Assemble away! Just slip together piece one and piece two. Voilá. Lovely!

Now just put in some beautiful candles (i got mine at a dollar store, where they were two for a dollar).

In just a matter of minutes you can have your very own fancy-pants candlesticks!  Also, these candlesticks make wonderful gifts.  You can even disassemble them and send them through the mail to a far away friend!

p.s.  If you try this out, email me photos, or post a link to your photos in the comments.  I’d love to see them!

I would like to take a minute to sing the praises of the Grilled Cheese Sandwich.  The perfect recesh lunch.  It’s crazy delicious AND so inexpensive!  Let me break it down for you:

•Two slices of bread 20¢ (and that’s the good kind, you can usually find decent bread for $2 a loaf)
•2 oz. of cheddar cheeze 56¢ (or less, for two generic brand american singles, fancy!*)
•margarine 4¢ (8¢ for butter, if you’re classy like that)

your basic GCS is just 80¢!

extras: an egg 21¢, a slice of turkey 40¢, half an onion (carmelized first, of course) 34¢, a slice of bacon 22¢, half a tomato and some mustard 50¢.

for just over a buck you can have a fabulous lunch!

allow me to inspire you with two tales about my best grilled cheese sandwich experiences in recent history.

A couple of weeks ago, I was house/cat-sitting for my brother.  (There’s a perfect recesh survival scheme if I ever heard one: house/cat-sitting = free food from my bro’s fridge, and my bro’s fridge = fancy food).  So I had access to some nice wheat bread, muenster cheese slices, sliced turkey with herbs already on it, and actual butter.  The cheese melted to stringy perfection and the slightly heated herby turkey was just mmmm.  It was so delish, Bix, the cat looked super jealous!

And now, the tale of the sandwich in that mouth-watering photo up-top there.  That, my friends, is the main course from one of the most delightful meals of my life.  I was in Seattle with my dear friends Raul and Keighty.  We were looking for cheap food near pikes market (it’s tourist-ville.  $10 crumpets? no thanks), when Raul spotted “Restautrant”.  (the place had an actual name on their menus, but we chose to call it by the name on the sign outside).  Keighty and I had identical meals: a cheese and egg sandwich grilled to gooey perfection, and a rootbeer float that came as a glass full of ice cream and a can of rootbeer, yum.  It was a delightful meal and our bills each came in at under five dollars!

Well, now you’ve heard what i have to say about the gloriousness of the perfect GCS.  You absolutely MUST czech this out:

10 of the most magnificent GCSs ever!
(complete with inspirational photos and recipes)

* i know that cheese singles are fancy, because as a child we only got to have them at grandma’s house, and they come individually wrapped!  that is fance!

p.s. what are your fave GCS recipes? comment, please. i’m always up for trying a new form of melted cheese on toasty bread.

It’s all about upcycling.

I first considered the idea when I saw it on a super clev post on the blog The Slacker Method.  They suggested getting some cheap thing at a garage sale, fixing it up, and selling it on craigslist fo a nice li’l profit.

Fast forward a few weeks, i was running in my neighborhood and i passed this little gem: 

it just looked so sad. with it’s middle drawer so sunken in, and wheels on only three feet.  i thought about it the rest of the run home, then turned around, walked the couple blocks back to it, and rescued it. Those three wheels may have made it comically lop-sided, but they sure were handy for wheeling the little guy back to Lee Crest.

In the days that followed i made a trip to ACE hardware for sand paper, paint, a four inch wide paint roller (cute!), and a little piece of wood to fix the sunken in drawer situation. It was tough to give up some of my hard earned money at the hardware store, but i knew i would have fun painting (also, the money i spent wasn’t too “hard earned.” It was from my last money making scheme: doing some usability testing for a start-up).

So i spent a few hours over the next few days sanding, painting, and listening to podcasts.  I used plates and cups and a pencil-on-a-string to draw circles on it, and i painted those in too.  It turned out pretty cute, if i do say so myself.

And, in fact, I did say so myself… in my “Super Cute Dresser!” craigslist ad.  I got an email that very night, and the next morning a lovely little family showed up to take it home for their new baby’s room.  I made back my supply money, and then some!

So if you’ve got some time on your hands, and some creativity in your heart… Upcycle.  It’s fun and fun-ding my next several trip down to the coffee house.

p.s. got a recesh survival scheme of your own? comment away!

welcome back to the all free chicken, all the time blog.  i mean the photos of lokate holding food blog.  only kidding, this is still ReceshBreak!  I just have to let you know that today’s free chicken deal at el pollo loco is more than just free chicken.  It’s free tortillas (your choice of flour or corn) and unfettered access to their salsa bar!

that’s a whole meal people!  yesterdays kfc free piece of chicken was good, but today’s free meal was amazing.  i’m not normally into eating chicken with the bones and all, but i found it kind of fun to assemble my little chicken tacos.  yum, yum.  this offer is good until 8pm tonight (4.28.9), it’s not too late!

by “research” i mean, i walked down to my local KFC and tried it out.  sure enough, they will give you a piece of their new grilled chicken just for being there.  it’s that kind of chicken that’s on the bones and you get all dirty trying to eat it… but it was pretty tasty.

so, if you have no dinner plans tonight… pick up a piece, just don’t forget to grab a napkin or two (or more, take them home, use them later…)

if you’re reading this post april 28th or later, don’t worry i can still help you out with those dinner plans… mmm.

UPDATE: word on the street (actually, on my facebook page, thanks mom!) is that El Pollo Loco is giving out free chicken tomorrow! and according to their website you get free tortillas with your free chicken!  Holy smokes!  I am so there!

i called them a secret treasure (up there in the title) because some people just don’t seem to know how truely super they are.  if you’re already down with the p-casts, you can skip this p-graph.  i’m about to get all explainy.  what‘s a podcast?  podcasts are mp3s (sound files) that you can download for free and listen to on your computer or on your ipod and they generally feature people talking.  who? anyone! can make a podcast and put it up online for you to download for free.  most of my favorite podcasts are radio shows that they record and put online.  why not just listen to the radio? because if i have the shows on my ipod i can listen to them whenever i want to.  they are great entertainment for when you are walking to the store, sitting on the bus, getting ready in the morning… i even like to do the dishes after dinner (i know, right…) because it gives me a few minutes to listen to my podcasts.  so, lastly how do you get these magical gems?  if you use itunes it’s super easy, just go to the itunes store and look under the audio podcasts section and you can search around for something that strikes your fancy.  you can also usually download a p-cast straight from its coresponding website.   there are approximately one bafillion podcasts in the world.

to help you find the very best, i would like to recommend my personal faves:

Long-time producer Jen "Flash" Andrews, Sean DeTore (Japan's #1 mixer) and your host Luke Burbank.

tbtl (the show that is possibly Too Beautiful To Live) is a nighttime radio show from seattle that i just can’t get enough of.  Jen, Luke, and Sean talk about anything and everything.  From waterbeds (what happened to them?), to what music they want played at their funerals, and even baby ninjas.  Every night they go through the news events of the day and declare them awesome (rawr!) or not awesome (come on!).

this american life is a public radio show where every week they choose a theme, and bring you a variety of stories on that theme… (are you hearing ira‘s voice yet)?  It’s great story telling!  Some weeks it’s so funny, sometimes dramatic, always tons of fun.  itunes will only let you download the most recent episode, but their website lets you stream every episode they’ve ever had!

wait, wait, don’t tell me is a news quiz where panelists and call-in listeners answer questions about the week’s news.  Paula Poundstone is sometimes one of the panelists, so pretty much it’s a news quiz and a laugh riot.

raul and jerry enjoyed this dinner party at apt. #81

the dinner party download is “the show that helps you win your next dinner party.”  Every week they give you a joke to break the ice, hints about interesting news stories to bring up, a few history facts to make you sound smart, cocktail ideas and more!  I don’t go to many dinner parties, but i always listen to this p-cast.

the relevant podcast is made by the folks who make relevant magazine.  they talk about funny news stories and have musical guest come in and play songs.  They are the reason i know about Pigeon John.

and now: a note about gratitude (also free, also awesome).  Maria/Julie Andrews isn’t lying.  When you feel down, cause i don’t know, maybe you find yourself in the middle of some sort of recesh maybe… simply remember your favorite things and then you won’t feel so bad.  Thanks for letting me share my favorite podcasts with you!  What are your faves?

✩tbtl photo used by permission from the lovely Jen Andrews (no relation to Julie…), thanks lady!