Urban Artifact

I am a Planet Green junkie.  "Living with Ed" is so hilarious and interesting that I'll watch the reruns over and over.  After watching an episode of "Wasted", where the girl that used to do "Dinner and a Movie" goes to people's houses and measures their Eco Footprint and then tries to get them to shrink it, I decided to figure out our Eco Footprint. 

Our Carbon Footprint, based on the Nature Conservancy's carbon footprint calculator, is 47.  The average American household's footprint is 110, so we're doing good there.  But the world average is 22, and I'd love to get ours down to that. 

We already do quite a bit, but here's the plan to go greener:
1.  Put up the clothing line in the backyard so I can hang dry the clothes!
2.  Turn off our PC when not in use during the day.
3.  Get a new, energystar printer.
4.  Get a digital electric meter and find other ways to decrease our usage.
5.  Compost our organic kitchen waste.
6.  Get a child-proof rain barrel for watering plants.
7.  Install Solatubes for natural light in the kitchen and bathrooms during the day.
8.  Install central air and recycle our window units on craig's list.
9.  Plant a vegetable and herb garden.
10.  Find a green solution to getting rid of the poison ivy that's overrunning our woods and stone walls.

I'd also love to one day put in a few solar panels, but that's a wishlist item that goes under "addition to house" and buying a few 10ths of an acre from the owners of the property behind us so we have a more logical backyard - our property line is completely wacky.

But of course, most of this stuff costs money and right now we need water.  Although we conserve like crazy, our well is going dry and we need a complete new system and a much deeper well within the next 2 months.  And wells are expensive to drill!! (The main reason I'm working!)

Anyone doing anything interesting on the green front out there?

Inevitability.  The dishes are washed, the toys all put away, floors cleaned, all the blogs in my bookmark list visited, but my work is not done.  Why do I do this?

At least this time I have the idea.  It's all sketched out on index cards, along with my design rationale.  But the blank InDesign screen stares back at me.  I'm not used to using InDesign, so I think I've built it up as a big roadblock in my head. 

I'm half expecting to see Snow White sitting back there next...

My little monkeys are walking!  Sam took his first steps Thursday before last, and Finley took her first steps yesterday. 

Sam takes tiny little well-balanced steps, and Finley careens forward and often ends up on her side on the floor. 

An abundance of beauty, right outside my (orange) front door.

Deer always walking through.

A few weeks ago I started a part-time, work-from-home gig for an agency in Manhattan.  The day after their 1st birthday I began carting the kids off to daycare two days a week.  I figured the "structured play" would be fun for them.  And the gig was pretty much all on my terms, so who can complain about that?

Yet here I sit, 11:30 p.m. after a long day of crabby kids and household stuff, facing a potential all-nighter because I'm really seriously far behind with my work.  It's kind of my fault.  Okay, it is totally my fault.  I don't quite have the discipline to sit for 1 or 2 hours each day and work in small increments.  In college I was always up the last 12 hours before a paper was due, writing in one big chunk. 

Part of the problem is my own head.  I told my PM I'd deliver a workflow diagram of this entire system and now that I'm actually doing it, I don't know how it will help him.  He's going to look at it once and then never again.  I think.  I don't know.  I'm going to get fired.  My perfect gig, screwed up!  I'm such an idiot!

I just want to sleep.

Ah, the wonder of the barn sale.  Don't get barn sales in Brooklyn, but out here in the country, as soon as the weather breaks it's sale time.  Here was my take from day 1 of barn sale-ing:

For $43 I got 3 vintage globes, a small stainless steel lamp, and a vintage work floor lamp.  The stainless steel lamp will get new life with a new shade, the globes will become part of the family room decor once it has decor, and the floor lamp will go in the living room one day, when it is empty of boxes.

Here it is, finished and done. 

As a first step in decorating, I am thinking of painting my front door orange.  I photoshopped a winter photo to get an idea of what it will look like.  I hate the fake mullioned window, but it stays for now until I can buy a new door with a sleek, narrow, vertical window.

I might even change the color of the shutters a bit, going towards a dark putty grey, moving the house to this color palate:

(source: East Orange Eichler for Lease)
Ah, if I could only replace the vinyl windows with non-mullioned glass, and the horizontal vinyl siding with vertical composite.  Maybe someday, after we put in the garage and master suite addition.  And I win some jumbo mega millions jackpot.  Ha!

But once we add some nice landscaping, like some small evergreen bushes and nice rock borders (pardon the scary photo chop job on this), the orange will become a nice warm focal point, as opposed to the starkness of the photo above.

We have already replaced the front door hardware with a simple, round, brushed nickel knob, and I have plans to replace the porch light with something along these lines:

And I hope to add a house number feature, using Neutra house numbers from Design Within Reach:

So far we haven't done much of anything, though.  That includes unpacking.  Our clothes are either on the floor or in laundry baskets.  Our living room is still overflowing with boxes full of of books and martini glasses and the contents of our old office.  The kitchen is functional, but I really hate the layout and keep moving things.  I have to walk all over the place to assemble the simplest meal and my kitchen isn't that big.  Oh well.  One day it will all be perfect.  And then we'll move.