DIY Home Inspiration: 6 Easy Ways To Update Your Kitchen

First off, here's where I should be announcing who gets a $10 gift certificate from me for winning my riddle challenge. However, no one's even attempted soooooo here's a hint: 26.

Secondly, have I mentioned yet how much I love love love these LEAF videos? The ladies behind them are just genius. And their latest video is a home run for someone (like me) who can't exactly renovate their entire kitchen.

Riddle (And Photo!) Of The Month

Happy Friday my lovelies! It's been a crazy long week, and an even crazier, even longer month. I missed last month's riddle (forgive me?) so this month I'm raising the stakes two ways, just cause that's how I roll. 

First, in addition to monthly riddles, you're now also getting monthly photos by yours truly, mostly cause I'm a visual person and it's hard for me to imagine many posts without pretty pictures to look at. They'll range from film photos I took in high school and college (like the one below) to digital snapshots I've taken on my various travels.

And secondly, a real prize! Winner of this week's riddle gets a $10 gift card to an Etsy shop of their choice (though you're always welcome to ask me to make you something)! Yay for supporting small business owners!

March Riddle

Send me away, my kin returns

Unless some harm to him befell.

If you should find my smallest part,

You'll find my name as well.

Green tomatoes in their dried out skins - taken with an ancient film Nikon camera, developed and printed by me

Riddle Winner And A Return To The Internet

You know, sometimes life doesn't exactly go the way you want it to. First, I get violently and suddenly ill halfway through moving into my new apartment. Then my internet doesn't get set up until a week after I've been here, disallowing me from announcing the riddle winner, only letting through two prescheduled posts. Then I realize that being an adult means having to pay rent and utilities and not purchase fabric willy nilly from Joanns. Boo.

In any case, internet is back and so am I! So without further ado, and although almost all of you got the right answer despite its gross factor (I'm so proud! sniff), the winner is...

SHENOAH!!

Congratulations!! Email me and we can talk about your fabulous prize!

January Riddle

Alright folks, here is your old white man blush-inducing riddle (though to be fair the only person in my poetry-writing class to guess correctly was a young white guy) that I promised earlier this week! Leave your guesses as comments below - first one to guess correctly wins!

When I am missed, one more exists.

If I’m not stopped, one more is dropped.

By moon I’m ruled, by patch I’m fooled.

Although I’m free, no man wants me.

What am I?

And yes, I will know if I've told you this riddle before. No cheating :)

Riddle-Writing, Resumes, and Rewards

Storytime!

The background: A long long time ago... in a state very very far away.... (i.e. my very first semester of college) I enrolled in a weekly seminar aptly named "Writing Poetry 1" that was co-taught by a former US poet laureate and another old white professor, whom I will call Prof.Ass. I wrote a ton during high school but never poetry, so I was more than a little nervous going in.

After the first few weeks of niceties, Prof.Ass. became something of a, well, ass. We're talking straight up telling one girl that the subject she chose was unworthy of poetry and so we wouldn't be reading her poem that week (yup, still remember that DK...). He knew what he liked (Frost mostly), and everything else wasn't poetry. Prof. PL was fairly quiet and much more civil but wasn't terribly impressed by anything I was writing.

Getting bored and a bit fed up with the absolutely terrible reviews Prof.Ass. was giving me, I kind of went out on a limb one week and wrote something much more abstract. I still vividly remember what I was trying to convey but apparently the message didn't come across. AT ALL. Without belaboring the point, I had to leave class for a good 15 minutes to go cry in the bathroom because of Prof.Ass's comments that week.

For the next class, I wrote a short poem about the murder scene left behind when curiosity killed the cat. I think both Prof's got the point and were courteously complimentary of it.

The riddles: In any case, that was the week I stopped caring and it was so unbelievably freeing. I could write whatever the hell I wanted! Heck, the Profs were actually pretty nice about my poem likening them to kitten murderers! So when Prof.Ass. mentioned one week that we could write a couple short riddles if we thought we could manage it, you bet your pants I took that as a challenge - one that would change my fate (or at least my resume and party trick repertoire).

I searched for topics, unhindered by what I thought the Profs would approve of (since apparently that was nothing). When my brother suggested a topic that I knew would make both old white male Profs blush, I immediately got to work. And I finished two more in record time.

Ironically, my riddles were some of the only ones the Profs were impressed by that day.

The resume: I've since written several more riddles, for "Writing Poetry 2" and for co-workers/friends. I put "riddle-writing" on my resume under the Skills and Interests section and have without fail been asked about it (and usually to recite one I've written) at every interview since. I honestly think it got me an internship the summer before my senior year.

Moral of the story: sometimes you just have to say F*CK IT and write borderline inappropriate riddles. Put silly things on your resume and you'll seem more interesting.

The rewards: And the moral of this post: I want to start writing poetry/riddles again. So.
1> I'm going to start posting one new riddle a month.
2> If you are the first to correctly guess the answer, you'll get a prize (to be announced with the riddle)!
3> Bonus: If you suggest an awesome topic and I go on to write a riddle on it, you also win a prize!

WIN! Look out for that first (inappropriate for elderly white men) riddle later this week!