Its obviously been forever since I’ve posted something, so I thought I’d post one of the projects I worked on this weekend: a humming bird feeder made from a soy sauce bottle. Its inexpensive and it easily hangs on my fire escape.

I realize this is vaguely similar to tooting my own horn, but the new iLife looks so awesome! I’m especially excited about the music lessons Garageband is offering. I brought home my 15+ year old keyboard this Christmas with the hopes of teaching myself some tunes, but have been struggling. Most of the sheets I’ve found have been guitar tabs, and I’ve spent a significant amount of time out on Youtube looking for footage of other people playing. But surprise, surprise! Apple is coming through for me again!

My two remaining goals for Garageband?
1. Improve the platform for composing music.
2. Beg and plead Matthew Bellamy from Muse to make an instructional video. Please. Really.

While I’m not a TV fanatic, I do enjoy streaming a few of my favorites, and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy is one of my love/hate, guilty pleasures (how can the writing of one show be so variable?). When I visited abc.com tonight, I was greeted by a green on black doc inspired site. I thought it was great, but there’s no more info on their site.

update: the design flashback is in honor of their new show Life On Mars.

Jack and Sputnik play tag, but neither are as stealthy as this kitty ninja.

I Love Twistori. Its essentially an animated RSS of Twitter that highlights the human emotions of love, hate, think, believe, feel and wish. My favorite is Wish. It is aspiring, yet runs the whole gamut of human emotion from happiness to loneliness. If you haven’t see it yet, make sure to check it out.

Since I’ve made these, San Francisco has gone from being cold to hot to cold again. Ok, so these aren’t real seasons, but it was cold in February, hot a few days in May and chilly now for San Francisco’s summer. The duvet cover was the initial project, but I had enough left over fabric to make a bonus quilt, too.

The duvet cover looks a little deflated, as it has our summer comforter in it.

The quilt backing is a sheet from the thrift store - far less expensive and a much higher quality than store-bought quilt backing. I was hoping for flannel, but this worked wonderfully. The shabby chic style can be attributed to the white kitty fur that coats the apartment.

My mom told me about a necklace a college boyfriend once made for her. It doesn’t seem like the boyfriend made much of an impression, but the necklace certainly did. I decided to make one myself and posted a tutorial on Instructables. Not only does it smell wonderfully, but its also so light in weight that you’ll hardly notice it.

Yay a teaser!

Allow me to get consumeristic for a minute. Our drip coffee maker kicked the bucket and we’ve quickly replaced it with a ceramic french press. Of course, one purchase leads to another, and now we’re finding ourselves microwaving water, two cups at a time in a pyrex cup. Seems awfully silly to waste the power of the microwave on boiling water when an electric tea kettle could do it much more efficiently.

But have you seen those electric tea kettles? Ugh! And its one more appliance to sit on the counter. I have to say, there’s something nice about putting on a stovetop kettle and waiting for the whistle. It would add a bit of color to the rather dark corner of our stove, too. But while its certainly the most attractive solution, it is also the least efficient.

So which would you choose?

vs.