I’m going to take a few more days to figure out how I can best serve my various writing commitments; I’ll be back soon.

One of my plans from the moment I offered to take over the site for Sarah was to bring in other bloggers to make the site as well-rounded as possible; if you think you might be interested, leave a comment or send me an email (todayshomemaker at noirbettie dot com) with a little bit about yourself.

And don’t forget the Flickr group! Your photos are so inspiring to me.

Maggie Mason, aka Mighty Girl, is one of my favorite bloggers. She runs two great shopping sites, Mighty Goods and Mighty Junior, and today announced the launch of Mighty Haus, a shopping site for housewares. If the other two sites are any indication, Mighty Haus will feature beautiful, functional pieces with a modern flare — perfect for most Today’s Homemaker readers, I think.

With my new (well, renewed) interest in growing my own food, I am looking for gardening inspiration pretty much constantly. My friend Mike’s blog is a great source! In fact, he inspired me to grow tomatoes in the first place. Check out his latest post for loads of great photos.

More gardening: Check out this tin can wall garden! What a way to use available space.

If you sew, you may be familiar with the back-ache that often accompanies it. This wonderful article on sewing room ergonomics may help! Oh, how I wish I had the space to set up a sewing room.

Over at kaboodle I found these great solar-powered paper lanterns.  I love them!

Summer colds abound. Instead of roughing up your nose and filling your trash with Kleenex, why not whip up some of Stefani’s flour sack hankies?

I was not expecting it to be ripe yet, because it is so small — about the size of a store-bought Serrano pepper.

But my tomatoes are a little small too, so I am just going to assume that’s normal.

Almost ready! And the one next to it (behind the leaves) is starting to turn yellow.

Next up: clean the car.

Oh boy, do I ever need to do this! My car is just a mess. The outside is practically black (it’s a red car), the dashboard is dusty, there’s food and dirt on the floors and stuff everywhere.

(If your car is spotless, don’t tell me! I know I am way too lax about cleaning mine, and I like to pretend everyone else is too.)

We’re not really beach people, but if you are there’s probably sand everywhere! And if you have kids, you too must need to clean up the cheerios and crackers and lollipop sticks. And I don’t know about you, but I’d like to only lug around my grocery bags, the umbrella stroller, and the first aid kit. All this other stuff has to go!

I’m so glad I decided to do these challenges weekly, rather than daily. I may have to do this in stages, for my own sanity. It’s hard to clean anything with my toddler helping (but SO worth it because he really is learning to help!) and if we go to the car he wants to GO! But having all week to do it makes it seem much less daunting.

Cheryl experiments with making her own soy milk, and shares tips. Yum!

Sappmama at Purly Victorious shares a tip on preserving sewing patterns, and a new favorite tool as well.

Amanda of Soulemama shares a sweet little sewing project for organizing her thank yous, with a lovely quote on gratitude. I am terrible about thank you notes, so this one is especially inspiring for me!

This week we didn’t visit the farmer’s market because our crisper bins were still full from last week. We did pick up some green beans at Trader Joe’s, but besides those we are going to try to use up what we already have.

So often I find soft or even rotten vegetables at the bottom of the bin, and it makes me feel awful! One of my goals for this year is to figure out a composting system that will work for us, but until then I just want to minimize food waste and not spend any money on food we don’t eat.

Today I am going to look at our crisper and get a real idea for what we have. I think it is mostly greens for salads, which is great because there is no meal planning required! I know there are also some portabellas and those green beans but other than that I have no idea. So I am going to find out, and discard anything that I’ve let sit for too long (hopefully nothing). And my secondary goal for the week will be to eat everything that’s in there. Plus the potatoes in the hanging basket. They have eyes! I’ll be peeling those for mashers, I think.

What did you find in your crisper?

This beautiful and drool-inducing shot is courtesy of Cinediva, aka Cheryl Katz. At flickr, you can see her whole bagel-making set, and you can check out her blog here.

For at least ten years I’ve kept mine in a lovely cobalt blue bottle. Last week I bought purple (!) soap and wanted to display it, so I dug this old-fashioned soda bottle out of my recycling. Combining form and function, this is an easy way to prettify your kitchen and reuse instead of recycle.

Did you use this tip? Share photos at the flickr group.