Everybody Wants Direct TV... EvEeeeryBoDy

XoOXoOX

Eco Efficient Kitchen: Before and After

The Luck Cabin kitchen BEFORE::::You can see it was a bit spread out and hap hazard, had particle board counter tops, and there was no bathroom in the cabin at all to start with - so this space was to be divided in half, so that the back part was the bathroom and the front was an efficiency kitchen.
The Luck Cabin Kitchen/ Bathroom Wall ::::
The wall was put in with locally milled pine for $40, and then my friend Noelle helped me put together my idea for a kitchen counter to fit in the small space.
The frame was just 2 x 4 studs...
But the actual materials used were mostly reclaimed, reuse, found -

• The counter top is made of left over hickory plank floors
• The sink was already in the house and is being put back in
• The log legs for support I handsaw'ed in the woods
• The nails were already in the house too

So what had to be bought was the 2 x 4's and a working faucet....
the whole thing came together with a rustic look and I love it. LOOooove it.

It's still a work in progress, but most the main stuff is done enough that i wanted to share it with ya'll!!!
The Luck Cabin Kitchen AFTER::::
XoXo

Chemical Free Cleaning Frenzy

I went on a bAzzUrk cleaning frenzy today. A little secret about me is that some may call me dirty, messy and I have even thought of myself akin to "Pig Pen'... like the time i jumped in someone's car and the sun shown just right through the windshield only to reveal a cloud of dust poofing off my clothes. Then they sneezed. Not to say I am totally disgusting but I can relax with a mess around - as long as everything I need is perfectly organized and in it's place. A little dirt won't hurt.
When I do finally decide it's time to repair the tornado that is life - I do everything eco friendly without a single chemical.
I hand wash my clothes in a Wonder Wash (spins them clean in just a few minutes) without using soap! I usually squeeze a lemon into the wash, drop some baking soda, or vinegar... or like today I boiled some ginger & lavender in water and poured that in. Mmmm.... smells so good. I stopped using soap many years ago when I could not find one that was gluten free plus chemical free (I bet there are some like that now but I dont look for it anymore.)
Once the clothes are washed I hang dry them - outside in the spring, summer and fall and then inside over the main heat source during the winter. The outside sun does the best and makes the clothes smell sooooo good, so in the winter I really miss it. I don't eva' use a clothes dryer.
For cleaning my kitchen counter and table I invented a neat little liquid scrub in my blender today... I took a huge chunk of ginger and a few sprigs of fresh lavender, tossed them into the blender with a cup or two of water and blended the ba-jezuz out of it. I then wiped clean all the smooth surfaces! It totally got up the whatever that makes globby spots and sticks to tile. It worked good on hard to clean dishes too. :)
I swept the floor and picked up bits of trash. All tidy and smelling good without any chems or much electricity.

But I am not even through...

XoXo

Abandoned Bus, Abandoned Upcycled Home

Walking down the road at the base of Earlys Mountain in Big Sandy Mush, I saw this crusty old bus across a big farm field. Like a magnet I was pulled towards it to find out what the details of it's history were...I just knew it had at have been at least a party bus for some teens, a school bus full of old seats, or an empty bus full of ghosts. I also needed to use the bathroom at that moment and needed something to hide behind anyway. :)
Once I was there I felt brave- I could sense no one was in there and that no one would care if I pulled the rusted door open to get a better peak inside the mystery van...
The inside of the outer door was dark red with padded & quilted looking plastic material - Fancy! First thing I saw was the steering wheel, hole in the floor, and piles of furnishing trash. Or rather trashed furnishings.
The inside looked as though it had once been the 70's pimp mobile! The ceiling was this fabulous tan quilted pattern, there was a kitchenette cabinet and the whole thing had obviously been outfitted like a luxurious camping RV!
The broken old windows once had groovy curtains- picturing the upcycled bus's glory days was not hard at all. I wish it had been my own glory bus.
I went around the outside to the front of the bus, where it looked like traditional junk yard bus- with no sign of the ancient party inside.
The windows were target practice, surely for teenage boys or drunk rednecks.
The sides of the bus read something like "Forest Hills... Schools". I got behind the bus, used the bathroom and left. Too bad marking territory in the human world isn't as easy as marking it in the animal world.
XoXo

I Am Trespassing

Yesterday I was in a grand funk, blame it on hormones or being cooped up in the same area too long- I played out my re-occurring run away fantasy and got on my bike "cajun knuckle" and rode down the hill at speeds so fast I was glad I remembered my helmet. As always, I never get that far because curiosity consumes me faster and harder then the actual distance I wish I could go. Not even around two curves something caught my eye... a mowed lawn in front an abandoned trailer with a road behind it leading to who knows what. Of course I took my bike off the paved road and up the muddy rocky drive, then leaned it up against the red gate I was about to jump.
It was obvious no one came through that road often, it had that lifeless feeling - at the same time I made up fanciful stories I would have to tell some angry farmer with a big gun when he caught me wondering around his land like a lost sheep. "Hello Sir, I apologize but I think PMS made me do it, can we be friends?!"
No one was there, but I could see some kind of large domesticated animals were at some point, fresh manure and hoof prints where in the cracked mud. I didn't expect what I did come upon - I thought maybe an old barn might be back there, but didn't know a tiny piece of history lay hidden the way trash does under summer weeds. It was a glorious old hand built cabin!
This is the kind of cabin that dreams, timelines, and horror movies are made of - so beautiful I am afraid to touch it, so creepy I couldn't stop walking towards it. I could see that no one lived there while plainly seeing in my imagination how someone actually HAD lived there. A whole life I wish could be written out clearly on the walls for me to read.
Peaking inside the broken windows I saw the remnants of the last inhabitant, coils from old rusted beds, collapsing wooden furniture, and the ever so creepy thing people put babies in that has the wheels and they can "walk" before they can walk while in it. The one in this house looked as old as me, from the 70's- but so haggard and forgotten so long I wondered who that baby is now... but wondered more how in the hec that baby pushed itself along those crooked wooden floor planks.
Such a perfect place, such a good foundation, such old weathered wood- it made me feel an old excitement I have felt since I was little sneaking into empty houses and wishing to make it my very own. The whole entire "add on" part of the cabin was not in the best shape, and I imagined re-working it into a glassed in green house section - taking the old wood from the siding and making that the ceiling in the main cabin.
I noticed the poor man sort of innovation and desperation, to be nailing up tiny pieces of wood to cover the holes in the original wood where the winter air was probably blowing in. It's endearing, and also so very real, so close to how tons of people without enough money feel right now, knowing the winter is coming and the economy is not coming with it.
Behind the cabin sits this huge weeping willow tree, growing out of a small creek. It's magical.
On my way out ( to other places to trespass), this is what I saw... I like that everything cycles back into nature.
XOXoxoxooOOOOoooo

HAuNtEd HoUSe In Big Sandy Mush

Remember the Bearingstein Bears story book called The Spooky Old Tree? Do they dare go to the spooky old tree, YES THEY DARE! This is how I approached the neighborhood "haunted house" down the road from where I am living- with careful curiosity... equipped with only a camera and some superstitious wackadoo ideas about how to protect myself from a ghost gone wild. I didn't have a ghostbusters style ectoplasm container or a giant all in one suit for protection, but I figured my good positive energy & a little voodoo talk would do the trick. I approached this window first because it was obviously busted open by someone worse curious (and more destructive) then me. You can see my reflection in the window, that's not a transparent inhabitant of the house. Most of the house curtains are tattered badly, except in all the best places to look in - maybe the ghost is shredding the ones in the top windows, cause why do old scary houses always have curtains that look like Freddy Kruger & Edward Scissorhands had a party in there!

Inside the window wasn't much to see, but more to smell - and it was not freakin' good. It smelled of molded, astringent, roach spray, yuck-o-ness... kinda like an old wet farm shed full of scary chems from the 70's.The house (I am told) was home to a well off slave owner back in the days before equal rights & compassion to all races - the house is very much in the plantation style having a very large porch made of slats of wood on the floor and ceiling, wide columns, and an equally large balcony. It also looked as though it was boasting three large chimneys.

For some reason most the pictures I took of this house have all kinds of beams and balls of light in them too. Could be the lighting, or could be one of the creepy ghosts from these two stories...

Story One: A guy (let's call him Frankie), is driving down the haunted house road and gets a flat tire in front the scariest house on the street. Frankie doesn't change his own tires and had to call AAA for some help. But while Frankie is waiting for AAA to get there- in the dark of the night he hears an old woman yelling angry curse words at him from the empty house... the entire time he's waiting for AAA to come. Frankie was scared shitless.

Story Two: Some neighborhood boys went to the house to sleep in there, but in the middle of the night apparently the ghost got pissed at them, threw their stuff around and stole one boy's clothes - they all ran screaming for a few miles back to their comfy unhaunted homes, one little boy had to run naked.
In the picture above there was the little tattered rag blowing off the branch of the tree in the sunlight, and for some reason it was like the creepy icing on the creepy cake for me... something about the house was like a dried up desert with all the aliveness sucked out of it. Yet vibrant green grass, dandelions, azaleas and other plants were growing all around it - the house itself was like an untouched, historical time warp that stopped where ever it had ended, decaying and staying manicured all at once.I hoped to catch some ghosts in the windows, but didn't get anything that frightening to share. Maybe if I go at night with a flashlight. Do I dare, YES I DO!

XoXo

PS- please please share your own haunted stories, cause I love them!

Is This Where Leslie @ The Oko Box Stays?

By request here are a few pictures of the place I live... from the outside. Beginning with the big overgrown steps leading passed an apple tree & stream, up to the (slippery when wet) deck. There is the air of beauty that comes from age, a little neglect, and some period of love & respect prior to when nature began to take over what man leaves behind. Basically there is a ton of english ivy trying to swallow the house whole and a wide array of trash to be used as new treasure.

The big stone chimney was made with rocks here on the land (so the story goes) and the bedrooms were once a hay loft. The roof is authentically tin, rusted into that pretty shade of red.About half of the basement windows are busted in some way or another - which means animals probably will be making all sorts of homes, nests, and hopefully little babies in there! Ya'll this house rocks - it might be my 2nd favorite place to live ever. :)

XOXO