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Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 245: Drinking, sharing, posing, lurking

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When the prompt for this week came up, my mind almost immediately went to this photo.  Five young men standing outside a fair that apparently runs September 11-14th and may be a circus from the Barnum & Bailey sign in the background.  The young man in the light colored hat, second from the right (including the lurker in the background by the door), I believe is my great grand uncle Harry Oscar Frederick “Fritz” Powis (b. 1 May 1903, Blain City, Clearfield, PA; d. 22 Jun 1972, Philipsburg, Centre, PA).  The man standing to the left of Fritz, I think is either George Riley or Floyd Shank.  I have another photo with two men in uniform, one of whom looks an awful lot like the gentleman in uniform here, but I don’t know who is who in the other photo!  I hit two of the themes this week between posing and lurking, and how about the tie on the man on the far left!  As far as a year for the photo, I’d guess somewhere around 1919 or so.  I’m not sure at all who the other two young boys are or the man in the tie.  Still, it’s a neat photo, even if it’s a bit faded and worn!

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Subscription Boxes

GoodeBox September 2014

 

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I should say first off that I’m not feeling this one at all.  The shipping delay really irked me – the box shipped August 28 and took 15 days to arrive.  Newgistics, you suck.  This was the first time Goodebox used Newgistics for shipping, but after having heard about all the issues Birchbox subscribers have with Newgistics, I’m not surprised it didn’t go well, by no fault of GoodeBox.  That said, if the box was better, I might not be on the fence about cancelling, but the box isn’t all that great for me.  I mean.. a wee tin of sea salt?!  Really?!  The full-size nail polish is fun, but the color isn’t really me – it’s sort of a glittery beige and just looks weird.  I saw other people got boxes with a pretty aqua blue color, so I was really disappoited to see muddy glitter in mine.  The blush color is all wrong (way too yellow), I already have a soap vendor I LOVE to bits, and the Barre 3 stuff just isn’t me.  Free trial, so I’ll still give it a go, but eh.  Their website has photos of only svelte, toned women, and there are no gals who look like me in any of their videos.  While I’m sure they offer modified poses, it’s nice to see folks of all sizes on fitness videos instead of Mr. and Ms. Perfect.  It’s disappointing and makes me want to hide my voluptuous ass in baggy  sweatpants instead of working out with three perfectly toned people.  I’ll admit that the shipping delay made my review of this box tainted with a big old pair of grumpy pants, so, it’s a little more critical than usual.  Anyway, on to the box!

  • Square Hue Nail Polish – three .5oz bottles per month/$14.99 – The color I received is, “Rodeo Drive,” and it’s just not me.  It’s a really peculiar color that looks kinda pinkish or brownish depending on the light and, ugh.  I hate pink.  Hate hate hate pink.  This is never a color I would’ve picked out on my own, but the formula covers really well in two coats, goes on nicely and is 5-free.  WAY better than Zoya, IMHO, in terms of coverage and smell.  Zoya takes sometimes 3 or 4 coats to cover and really stinks  for being a 5-free polish.  I don’t think I’ll subscribe to the monthly box, but I do like the polish and may do a one-time order.  It’s just a gamble with mystery colors, and if there’s any pink in the box that month, I’m going to be wildly disappointed, and there’s no way to specify color choices.  Not good.
    Update: I like the coverage and it seemed to last about a week, but I hated the color more and more every day.
  • Weleda Skin Food – 2.5 oz/$19 – So, it’s a really expensive skin lotion, and the samples are silly foil packets.  I don’t like foil packets – you have to use the entire amount in the packet in one use and can’t save it if it’s too much.  Drives me crazy.  I’ll use the  samples, but for skin lotion?  There are more affordable  alternatives that are just as good.
    Update: I finally tried this and it REEKS.  There’s something about the scent that really turns me off.. I can’t put my finger on what it smells like, but it almost smells like some kind of industrial citrus cleaning product, and in a bad way.  Note to self, use only on feet and legs.
  • Homespun Northwest Himalayan Citrus Head-to-toe Cleansing Bar – 5oz/$13 – Soap.  A bar of soap for $13.  I have a favorite Honey Ale and Egg solid soap I use for shampoo that I buy from Sweets N Things on Etsy for $6 for 4oz.  I have no plans to switch since I LOVE that soap already, and it’s affordable and lasts me about 4 months.  This sample though is for  a bar of soap for $13 that doesn’t contain unicorn hair or  fairy farts.  Nope.  It also immediately shed salt that was sprinkled on the bar all over the place.  The product card offers a discount of 20% off $10 or more, but I’m really not interested.
  • Plantlife Arnica Relief Gel – 4oz/$15.90 – I’ve never felt that Arnica gel actually did anything for me.  I’ve tried it before on bruises and noticed no difference in healing time or pain relief.  So, this is really meh for me and not something I’d ever buy (and will likely be found months from now in the medicine cabinet, still unused).  There’s a coupon code for 25% off an order through their website, so I’ll have to see what else they make.
  • All Natural Face Matte Cream Blushes for Lips & Cheeks – .7oz/$5.75 – Reasonably priced, but the color of the sample I received is all wrong for my skin.  It’s, “Dark Rose,” when I’m more of a “Peachy Rose” or “Persimmon.”  It’s just too yellow and isn’t a color I can use as blush, and definitely isn’t a color I’d ever use on my lips.  The formula is nice though and I like that it can be used two ways.  There’s a 20% off coupon, in case I want to try one of the other shades.
  • Jacobsen Pure Flake Sea Salt – 1.5oz/$9.95 – It’s salt.  I don’t understand why this is in the GoodeBox at all other than that they, “procure pure salt crystals straight from the cold waters of the Oregon Coast using traditional, hand harvesting methods,” so that they can call it froufrou special salt and charge more.  Big deal.  It’s still salt.  And going out to dinner anywhere involves over-salted food (everyone uses way too much for our near-sodium-free home cooking), so why the wee little travel tin?  It’s all weird, and it’s just salt.
    Update: Put it on dinner last night, and yep, salt.  Nothing special about the flavor.  It’s just salt.
  • Barre 3 – $15/month – The offer in the box came with a wristband, Field Guide, and a month of free online classes.  I’ve done yoga and pilates before, even went to 6 months of sessions with a personal trainer.  I’m no stranger to fitness, but I absolutely hate when programs like this show only svelte, toned people in their website photos.  Okay, fine, image sells, but showing me that people of all sizes take their classes is much more encouraging than making me feel like I’m not the kind of person they want in their classes.  I mean, free trial, so as long as I don’t have to enter a  credit card, I’ll give it a try.

I’m pretty bummed about not getting the tea – I would’ve definitely used that up.  I’m not sure how else to adjust my preferences on GoodeBox’s website to get better colors that work for my skin – this is a second or third time I ended up with colors that don’t work for me.  I keep going back and making sure I selected the right things, but it doesn’t seem to matter much.  Anyway, sorry for the downer of a review, but this month is hugely disappointing.  I’ll probably end up giving the nail polish to a friend and see if anyone else is interested in the cream blush.  After that I have salt, a teeny chunk of soap, and foil packets of skin lotion.  Yeah.  Not so good.  I’ll give GoodeBox another month to see if things turn around (Subscription boxes can be so hit or miss, so I like to give them another chance), but with Newgistics on board, this doesn’t bode well.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 244: Itinerant Entertainers, Hurdy Gurdy Man, Unusual Pets, Monkeying Around

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Two photos to fit the theme, even if a rabbit isn’t really that unusual of a pet.  I didn’t have any photos of itinerant entertainers, so these two will have to suffice for this week!

On The Left:  My grandpa, Leon Kitko (b. 20 Mar 1933, PA, died 18 Jun 2011, Clearfield, PA), holding a rabbit.  It’s a rare photo of him with a beard – he kept his face clean shaven nearly all of his life except for a brief period around 1954 where he shows up in a few photos with a beard.  A rabbit really isn’t an unusual pet, but among the many photos of their pets, this is the only one that isn’t a cat or dog!  I never heard stories about a rabbit from grandpa, but it’s clear he had one at some point!

On The Right:  My grandma (step-grandma.. Leon’s second wife, not my biological grandmother, but I always knew her as grandma), Romayne (Greenaway) Kitko (b. 30 May 1936, PA, d. 7 Jan 2013, Clearfield, PA).  She was quite the musician her whole life from piano to organ and even the accordion!  This is a scan from a negative, so I don’t know when exactly this was taken, but I’d assume sometime in the 1950s.  She’s sitting at the back of her childhood home at the well, perfectly posed and coiffed, playing on the accordian.

Short and sweet this week!  It was nice to be able to include different photos from this set of grandparents who have both passed away.  Having memories like this and photos from their younger years really helps keep the memory alive and I’m so glad I have a chance to share them with Sepia Saturday as well!

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One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 9

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I really sort of love having visitors over for One Local Summer meals because they’ll bring new and  fun ideas to the One Local Table.  There were a TON of beautiful eggplants at the market this week, so I grabbed two thinking, hmm, well I’ll find something to do with them.  Talking about it with my sister-in-law who was visiting, we ended up with Eggplant Parmigiana using local ingredients.  We didn’t have mozzarella, but I had plenty of blue cheese on hand, so it was a little different, but the flavor was incredible!  And, unintentionally, we ended up with a vegetarian dinner.  While the spaghetti squash was roasting in the oven, we prepped the eggplant by slicing thick slices then breading them with flour and an egg/yogurt mixture.  We double dipped a few of them (egg then flour, repeat) and those seemed to come out better.  They got a quick pan fry in the cast iron pan, then were set on a wire rack in the oven to finish baking for about 15 minutes.  I found some sauce from summers past in the freezer, so we heated that up on the stove to top the spaghetti squash once it was done.  On the side, a small bowl of tomatoes with oil, vinegar, and a sprinkle of salt finished off the meal along with a glass of wine.  Really a great dinner, and we even used the leftover eggplant on sandwiches the next day!

A quick note on the flour.. it’s not ENTIRELY local.  I picked this up at the Phoenixville Farmer’s Market a year or two ago.  From what I remember, the owner was visiting family in the area and brought along his flour from Minnesota to sell at  our local  market.  In that sense, it travelled along with a person who was making a trip anyway, and wasn’t using up extra “food miles” just to get to my doorstep, so while it’s not local, I’m going to allow it since it still follows in the One Local Summer ideals of a lower food carbon footprint and not using excess food miles to transport food from across the country when I can find it basically in my backyard.  I do occasionally make exceptions for things like this that come home with us on our travels.  The Sunrise Flour Mill also uses varieties of wheat that are heritage wheat varities and more along the lines of what one might have eaten 100 years ago, so it’s pretty unique and will be fun to work with!

Ingredients:
Eggplant – North Star Orchard
Tomato Sauce – My Garden
Spaghetti Squash – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Sunrise Flour Mill
Eggs – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Tomatoes – My Garden and Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Wine, vinegar, oil, salt.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 Meal 8

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Another one down, and just six more to go till my goal of 14 for the summer.  So far, it looks like we’ll more than surpass the goal of 14 meals, and I really do like the pacing of meals vs. weeks MUCH better.  It feels less like an obligation and more like fun this way.  What’s on that plate?  A sort of remix of chicken parm.  I breaded the chicken using goat’s milk yogurt and cornmeal for more of a cowboy sort of version of chicken parm, topped it with tomatoes, blue cheese, and mushrooms (MUSHROOMS!  Oh how I love fungus).  Some potatoes and zucchini on the side and KABAM.  A pretty easy one local summer meal.  Instead of frying the chicken, I popped it on a tray and baked it which kept it lighter and, in a weird way, crispier.  Sometimes the greasiness of pan frying just doesn’t work, and I’m glad I baked it instead.  The leftovers from this are already gone even, it was that good.

Ingredients:
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Zucchini – My Garden
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Chicken – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Tomatoes – Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Oil

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 243: Running away, Escaping the Crowds, Beaches, Steam Train, Aquarium

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When I saw the prompt photo for this week’s Sepia Saturday, my mind immediately went to an old postcard in the collection because it had a very similar feel to it, even if the man in my photo isn’t running away.  I’ve posted the front and back of the postcard which has a stamp, but no cancellation or message on the back of the postcard.  I have to imagine that someone meant to send it, but never quite got around to it.  The stamp is dated to 1954, which helps date the postcard as well.  With a town name like, “Coalport,” in Pennsylvania, you can be sure that the main industry was coal.  The majority of my family that comes from that area were coal miners.  I posted another old photo of family members who were coal miners here, if you’re interested.  Awful jobs, terrible conditions, and perhaps at times, they wanted to run away from it all.  As far as the orientation of the photo, on the far left side of the photo, about dead center horizontally, there’s a church.  The church is the one in the Google Street View just below the postcard.  I know I’ve driven down that street before when out visiting family, so I’ll have to see if I can go back out and set up a photo similar to the postcard and do some comparison!

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Subscription Boxes

Goodebox 2014 Summer Clearance Box

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Once a quarter, Goodebox offers  these clearance boxes featuring an assortment of ‘leftover’ items from boxes during the prior few months.  This was the first time I opted into one of the bonus boxes, and the gamble turned out alright!  I got a few dupes from my prior boxes and a few items that I’m SO glad were included.  There are two that I’m going to foist off onto friends, but the one full-size product (that lip gloss!) is AWESOME.  Listing below, in no particular order.

  • Pangea Organics Eye Cream – .5oz/$60 – I hadn’t received this before, and likely won’t buy it since I have really sensitive eyes.  I will give it a try though and see how it goes over, but it’s way too pricey for regular use.  I do like the smell of rose though, so it’s definitely something I’ll try once!
  • Balanced Guru No Frizz Balancing Oil – 1oz/$25 – A product I really loved when I received it in the July 2014 box!  I was really thrilled to see this again, and will definitely use it up.  The sample is half the size of the full product, so between this and the other box, I basically have a full product.
  • Juice Beauty Stem Cellular Repair CC Cream  – 1.7oz/$39 – I had received this in the April 2014 Goodebox and still haven’t used the first sample, thinking I was going to save it for going under makeup for a special night out.  But hey, now I have two, so I can give it a try whenever, right?!
  • Pure Natural Diva Whisper Body Spray – 16oz/$40 – Ehhh.  The scent is barely even there, and isn’t one I’d use on a daily basis really.  It’s okay, just nothing spectacular.
  • Evofem Softcup – 14ct/$7.99-$9.99 – These again.  I don’t have a period that needs protecting (or any at all), so, a total loss.  I figured they’d be in this box since they were in almost all the boxes in July.
  • Seventh Generation Hydrating Boost – 1.5oz/$14.99 – This goes such a long way, that even from using this pretty regularly from the April box, the little sample tube still has plenty of life left in it.  Having a second means I should make it through the whole winter and be able to treat the dry corners of my nose on the samples!
  • LA Fresh Nail Polish Remover – 20ct/$10.99 – I wasn’t a big fan of these from the July box  and now I have more.  Oh well, they’ll find a good home, even if they’re not a good fit for me.
  • Celsus Scar Cream – .7oz/$19.99 – Looks like this was from the March box before I joined.  I don’t really have any awful scars that I care about reducing (I think they make me unique), so I’ll probably find another home for these two little foil packets.
  • Sumbody Let My Muscles Go Salt Bath – 4oz/$7.80 – When I opened the mailbox to grab the Goodebox, something smelled like lavender, and it’s definitely this little bag of bath salts.  WOW.  It’s funny because lavender isn’t at all in the ingredient list, but it smells so strongly of lavender.  I’m not a big bath person, but I’ll stash this away for some future vacation that may involve a fancy whirlpool bath tub.  Looks like this was from the February box before I joined.
  • Garden of Life Raw Protein Powder – 15pkts/$44.25 – I’m not big on protein powders or shakes or any of that, but hey, I have the sample, so I’ll try it!  The flavor is Vanilla Spiced Chai, so this would be really nice in the morning with some almond milk.
  • Diva Stix White Highlighter – $4.88 – Another item from the February box.  I’ve never really used a highlighter before, and this one seems to not be very opaque which is great for me.  It’ll definitely be worth trying, and this seems to be a full size product.
  • Revolution Freedom Gloss – .23 oz/$26 – From January 2014.  Color is “Truth” and is spot on perfect for me.  This is the real winner of the box and completely paid for the box!  It’s a full size sample and was in a box before I joined, so it’s wholly new to me.  This will be getting plenty of use.  The smell isn’t all that pleasing – kind of smells like raw vegetable oil – but it goes on nicely, has a great sparkle, and feels nice on.

So, overall, 12 products like promised, one definitely full-size, and I think the Diva Stix is full size as well.  Not a bad haul!

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 Meal 7

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Okay, so this one was OUT OF THE BALLPARK good.  I know I say that often when I talk about One Local Summer meals, but seriously.  I’m not sure there is too much that will top this.  We finally found a local source for butter and husband immediately remembered that the only thing holding us back from making these pretzel rolls was the butter.  BINGO!  Thus, dinner was Pretzel roll burgers with watermelon, grilled peaches with blue cheese, and a wonderfully delicious salad.  Even though there are some non-local ingredients in the rolls (baking soda, yeast, oil), they’re still really minimal in comparison to the whole of the meal, and we were even able to substitute the required sugar with honey.  Our rolls came out a little flatter than the recipe’s photos, and I had a feeling we should’ve used more flour (the dough seemed a little too squishy), but for a first time, they’re still 100% edible and delicious.  I was really glad we had leftovers of this meal so I could enjoy it a few more days, and we even have four more rolls tucked away in the freezer.  Definitely expect to see more pretzel rolls in our One Local Future!

Ingredients:
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Watermelon – Hoagland Farm
Peaches – Hoagland Farm
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Egg – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Veal & Pork Patty – Countrytime Farm
Lettuce – North Star Orchard
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Tomatoes –  Brogue Hydroponics
Cheese – Lambsquarters from Valley Milkhouse
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Honey – Baues Busy Bees
Non Local – Baking soda, yeast, oil, salt, pepper, dressing.