UC Davis

Ever since I watched Food Inc and with the beginning of the new year I’ve been on a culinary kick.  And part of that kick is the concept of “do not eat crap”.  And it is more than just avoiding junk food.  It’s about preparing my own food, and it’s about eating clean and nutritious food that will nourish my body and keep me healthy.  For a long time I’ve really really really wanted to be skinny.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still trying to get skinny!  But my new mentality is get healthy, get in shape, and that will lead me to skinny bliss.  I came across the UC Davis Good Life Garden Blog and I must say that I’m obsessed!!!

The Good Life Garden is located at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at UC Davis.  If you’re a UC David Campus Confidant…go!!!! (And take pictures to send me.)  Their blog reads that the garden’s mission, “…is to expose and educate a wide audience to the relationship between good food and good health. “  I love love love that there is a group in education that is out there spreading the prophecy of “You are What You Eat”.  You can check out the website for the garden here or read up on their posts at their blog here.

On the blog I read up on seasonal vegetable profiles (it is recommended that we eat vegetables that are in season), a scientific taste test of organic vs conventional food and an abundance of information on growing and maintaining your own garden.  Plus I love Arlene, the gardener’s, videos… who knew dividing and transplanting chives could come off so endearing???

Planting an entire vegetable garden is probably a bit ambitious for me and my apartment living.  So here are some herb and vegetable garden options for all of us apartment or small space dwellers:

Inspiration from Joost Bakker’s Vertical Garden as seen on Treehugger.com:

Make a vertical garden out of a cloth shoe rack.  Instructions can be found here on Instructables.com:

Square Wooden Planter Box from BackyardCity.com:

Indoor Culinary Herb Garden Kit from Herbkits.com:

An industrial terraced herb garden as seen on ApartmentTherapy.com:

A high rise herb garden from Tiny Bite’s Flickr page. (GORGEOUS city living!):

Vertical Red Metal Planters as seen on Terramia blog:

xoxo, Vanesa

There are internships for this?!?!?!  At one point I wanted my entire house to look like an Anthropologie display.  I soon learned that I wasn’t as crafty as I thought.  For those of you UC Davis or UC Berkeley Campus Confidants who ARE crafty enough, or WANT to be crafty enough here’s a posting from the UC Davis TXC and FPS Internships blog:

“Anthropologie is seeking Display and Visual Merchandising Interns for our Bay area stores. Please stop by any one of our locations in the Bay area and speak with a Visual or Store Manager for details. Best time to stop by Monday through Friday between 10 am and 3 pm. For Internship consideration the following expectations are mandatory. You must apply in person to be considered and you must be currently enrolled in college at the time of your internship. Please do not apply unless you have met that expectation. Thank you.”

For the full length internship description read the entire post on the UC Davis TXC and FPS Internship Blog.

Writing this post made me think of all the magical displays I’ve seen at Anthropologie over the years.  After a quick trip through Google Images I found a few photo inspirations:

And while we’re on the subject of the beauty of Anthropologie….This past holiday I was gifted with a Voluspa Candle from Anthropologie and its been sitting at my desk filling the air with all sorts of deliciousness.  Its amazing how the aroma can take me to a peaceful place.  I need these everywhere!!!  Here’s a pic of my candle, Voluspa Goji & Tarocco Orange 3 wick candle.  You can get your very own here at, of course, Anthropologie.

xoxo, Vanesa

On the UCLA Campus.

I’m thrilled to say that UC campuses are part of Kiplinger’s 100 Best Values in Public Colleges for 2009-10.  According to Kiplinger, this is how they rank the schools:

We narrow the list to about 120 schools based on measures of academic quality — including SAT or ACT scores, admission and retention rates, student-faculty ratios, and four- and six-year graduation rates, which most schools reported for the class entering in 2002.

We then rank each school based on cost and financial aid. In our scoring system, academic quality carries more weight than costs (almost two-thirds of the total).

You can see the entire listing of their top 100 here on their site as well as the full description of how they rank the colleges here.

Here are the rankings for the UC’s:

#11: UCSD

#13: UCLA

#18: UC Berkeley

#20: UC Irvine

#29: UCSB (Still on the list but not as high as the above schools.  I’ll account it to all the beach-front property)

#41: UC Davis

#50: Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (Not a UC but still loving that another California school is on here)

#68 UCSC

xoxo, Vanesa