stacie

Vacation is over and I am busy working on my album and print orders.  It is finally cold outside!  The weather began to warming up just after we saw “An Inconvenient Truth”.  Gore picked the right year to release this film.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you should.  An awesome display of evidence in response to Bush’s claim that global warming doesn’t exist.  Anyway, India and I have been enjoying kicking the soccer ball back and forth out in the cold as she waits for her bus.  I feel like a New Englander relishing the cold days.  Who knew that I could even have fun in 30 degree weather.  I guess I am no longer a California girl. 

We have had fun dreaming about building a green house this week.  We visited the National Building Museum in DC on MLK day and toured the “Glide House”, one of the only prefab houses on display for the public to walk through.  If you haven’t heard, pre-fab housing is the latest cool thing in building.  Basically, designers are creating 3-4 different designs which you can purchase and have put together like a kit.  Beyond having a wonderfully designed home these houses are also green and have the ability, if you get all the bells and whistles, to be unconnected to most (if not all) utilities.  A self sustaining house… what could be better?

It sounds like this year we are off to an activist start.  Ha!  Oh ya, there’s one more radical thing we are changing in our lives.  We have started this year by saying bye-bye to the Atkins mentality and hello to vegetables.  Not that we were ever on the Atkins diet, but you have to admit that our entire nation was swept into a no carb frenzy.  Every once in a while I am reminded of nutrition and the importance of eating right.  This year “The China Study” has helped me to remember all the things I had forgotten… and tell me things I didn’t know.  We (hum, I) have decided not to purchase meat for our home and even limit the amount of egg and dairy that we consume.  We are not super strict vegetarians, just trying to limit our intake of animal based products. 

Seeing as today is the last weekday before Christmas there was a huge push to get everyone’s gifts made and sent out.  One of the best gifts I think had to be India’s teachers’ presents.  We wanted to make something they would enjoy and let them know how much they mean to us.  So I decided to have India help me make a couple of small, soft covered photo albums.  She sewed the binding and used silver and gold pens to draw little pictures along the edges of the black pages.  She was excited to finally make an album with me.  I wish I had thought to photograph these little jems.  This type of album is something I make often, I will photograph the next one and maybe even write up a how-to.  They aren’t much without India’s drawings, though.  I love each of her creations.  Well, except for the one etched in the wood of our vintage desk top.  Is nothing sacred?

I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday and a Happy New Year!