Lisa Taylor's Page

This month's AZHS monthly challenge is to hold back on all the shopping that surrounds the holiday season, and make some homemade gifts instead. Two of my favorite gifts that I've ever received were worms and worm castings (but you will need the help of other worms to "make" these things, of course). For the gardeners out there, grow some plants for gifts - as someone who has never been great at gardening, I love getting plants as gifts. I know there are a lot of crafty people on this site - we'… Continue

In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd post some photos of jumping spiders masquerading as other things (in costume).

Here's a jumping spider trying to pretend she's an ant. I found her out at the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area in downtown Phoenix.

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My mom and I made cheese yesterday! I’d kept hearing about how easy it is to make mozzarella cheese, so we finally tried it out. I should mention from the start that while our first batch of ‘mozzarella’ was delicious, it was more like ricotta than mozzarella.

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Found this guy when I went out to pick basil to eat with our delicious homemade mozzarella cheese (there will be a post about that soon as well). He’s a leafhopper (probably a red-banded or candy-striped leafhopper, Graphocephala coccinea).

In trying to lean more about leafhoppers, I stumbled up… Continue

This month, the AZHS monthly challenge is to buy from thrift stores rather than buying new. Next time you need something, check one of the many great thrift stores in the Valley (many of which give proceeds to local charities).

Here are two of our favorite charity thrift stores:

Flo’s on 7th (benefits Florence Crittenton of Arizona)
http://www.flocrit.org/floson7th.html

Hope’s Closet (benefits the New Life Center)
http://www.newlifectr.org/hope.html

And here’s a good place to get started fin… Continue