happy living Design

full

I feel blessed to live in a nice, dense, walkable town and then drive 5 minutes out into the country to see beautiful things like this.  Obviously the picture does no justice to the real thing.  We were on our way back from dinner Saturday night and turned around twice to take pictures of the moon and the mist that had fallen over the farm.  On the left, barely visible, is the sweetest barn in our county.

spending hiatus #2

Starting today I am on Spending Hiatus #2.  This time around I am not following anyone like I did last time. I am trying it out on my own.  We will see how that works.  If any of you did not participate last time and want to  this time feel free to do so and let me know so I can follow you.  Either way I will do the same as last time and post each Monday (or Tuesday!) and re-cap.

So far I have a few exclusions such as two toilets, one refrigerator, paint and some other building supplies for our bedroom make-over.

I am committed to three months of this: June, July and August.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the spending hiatus exercise, I am committing to not buy anything that would be deemed non-essential for three months.  For me non-essentials means clothing and accessories, home and decorating items, specialty personal care items (it is amazing how much money I can spend in one trip to Walgreens), magazines that I don't already have a subscription to, books (thank goodness for the library), electronics and itunes music.  This list is not exhaustive and I think it would be different for everyone.

Like last time I am going to use the next three months to do some more de-cluttering and organizing my two favorite activities.

Wish me luck.

Nearly Car-Free : Vauban, Germany

I would like to live here.  See and read.

flying by

Things fly by so quickly sometimes.  I feel like I have missed an entire week or month.  There is no doubt that I frequently have too much on my plate and that makes me feel like I can't keep up.  Most of the time I can find some clarity in life and realize that I am only 'not keeping up' in my head and wonder why am I rushing?  We are having a beautiful day here.  I am glad I went out for a walk during lunch and took time to notice a couple of little things.

I may get a fishing license this season and start going out with the boy.  I'm not too worried about having to bring dinner home.  I think it might provide some nice opportunities to slow down, get outside and take notice (and read and take pics too!).

New Reality 2009 by Apartment Therapy

In case some of you don't subscribe to the Apartment Therapy newsletter, today's was great.  Here's a snippet and the link for the full letter is below.  It is worth reading.  Within the newsletter there is also a link to a NYT article that is also very interesting.

"As our economy "de-leverages" and the illusory power of credit and debt is removed from every facet of our lives, we are starting to see things for what they are worth, and to see ourselves for what we are worth. Just yesterday I visited a home that a year ago was priced at $1.3 million dollars and just sold for $750,000. That's not a huge discount, that's what it's actually worth when you remove the inflation of an economy based on borrowed money.

Unlike the loss of super-powers, knowing what things are really worth and knowing can be a very grounding and gratifying experience. It allows us to get off the endless wheel of chasing our cravings, and get back to simply seeing what it feels like to aim for happiness."

See full newsletter here: Apartment Therapy

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50 Nifty Tricks for Big DIY Savings (around the house)

Article Print | Planning and Ideas | This Old House

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Crafting: A Silver Lining in a Tough Economy - Business Gift Giving - Entrepreneur.com

Crafting: A Silver Lining in a Tough Economy - Business Gift Giving - Entrepreneur.com

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sunday

waking up to

the smell of coffee

and a wood fire

a little bit of snow (followed by lots more tonight!)

making soup

with homemade venison sausage

and fresh thyme.

some other things too like catching up on magazines and the Sunday paper, a run to the grocery store, a tumble off the spending-hiatus wagon (a good one, I might add), taking care of some important household business like paying bills and budget planning and catching up with friends and business partners.

happy sunday, my friends.

the spending hiatus : 2 week update

I'm a little tardy due to being a little under the weather but here goes.

Things I (we) bought: contact lenses, groceries, chinese takeout on Friday (limited to eating dinner out once per week), I had lunch with a friend on Sunday so that was a non-essential, although spending quality time with friends is essential, and we (the boy and I) ate lunch together yesterday here and the new rule for that is once per week for eating lunch out.  Today I brought my lunch.  Cosi has been calling my name.

It has been neither easy nor difficult.  Somewhere in between I guess.  On one hand, it is freeing as Joslyn said, but on the other I do notice my small internal battles that go on when I am feeling the 'need' to shop either brick and mortar or online.  I found myself thinking about going into stores as I was passing by them on the street but then reminding myself that not only am I on a hiatus but I also DO NOT NEED ANYTHING.

I would say, online shopping is probably where I have the potential to struggle more.  It is soo easy.  I have an email account where I get all the shop emails, coupons, flyers, etc.  Anthropologie has some nice stuff on sale, did ya know?  And I got a coupon from Hable Construction.  I have actually started unsubscribing to most of the emails I get just so I don't have to look at them (which is a lot harder than one would imagine!).

I have been surprised at the snippets of time that I have seemed to gain by not shopping, even online.  But my mind is also clearer and that might be why I feel like I have more time.  The other benefit of doing this is my rate of bringing new stuff into the house is going down so that when I start bringing things to Goodwill (you should see the pile of crap in my basement) I will be able to see the difference at home.  Before I think my rate on 'in' and 'out' were pretty close.  I am looking forward to some winter/spring decluttering!

Big Picture:  For the last couple of years I have been longing more and more to live a simpler life, not because it is enviromentally friendly or politically correct or trendy to talk about right now, but because I believe it will be beneficial in countless ways for my little family.  I haven't defined for myself exactly what 'simple' means yet, but I think this exercise will help me in many aspects, mainly in identifying what is really important to me and that being happy comes from inside.

I'll leave it at that for now. ;)

All There Is to Be (is Green)

All There Is to Be

The convenient truth: taking better charge of what we already have

By Dwight Young | From Preservation | January/February 2008 

These days, with everybody talking about "greening,"
It's obvious that what used to be just the name of a pretty color has
taken on a whole new meaning.
No matter how you feel about it—profoundly skeptical, utterly terrified, or only mildly annoyed—
Global warming (or if you prefer something a bit less apocalyptic and slightly more benign, climate change) is a topic you just can't avoid.
If you believe the pundits and prognosticators, it becomes more frighteningly apparent every day that it will take all the powers of Merlin and Gandalf and Spider-Man and Harry Potter
To keep mankind from burning up as the temperatures
keep getting hotter.
And while folks are sweltering
The polar icecaps are meltering.
And if this alarming trend keeps up, it won't be long before a worldwide sea level rise gives New York's penthouse dwellers an unsettling view
Of surfers hanging ten in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

Of course, every Tom, Dick, and Millie
Has a solution to the problem, some of which strike me as impractical, if not downright silly.
I saw a guy on TV, for instance, who earnestly insisted we all take up residence in houses made of bales of hay.
Let me say this about that: Nay.
Didn't one of the Three Little Pigs build his house of straw,
And didn't it make the Big Bad Wolf chortle and guffaw?
And here's another question that probably isn't very bright, but I'm going to go ahead and repeat it:
If your whole house is made of hay, what happens when a cow decides to eat it?

When you get right down to it, the crisis that we face today
Is simply the result of our longstanding love affair with wasting and polluting and throwing stuff away.
I certainly don't mean to downplay the seriousness of the crisis, but let's face it, it ain't exactly rocket science
To recognize that one fairly simple first step is for preservationists and environmentalists to form a strong, long-overdue alliance.
And proclaim this message: OK, people, over the course of these past few centuries we've all taken this poor old planet on a hair-raising, hell-for-leather ride,
But now it's time to stop this foolishness and let good
sense be our guide.
We're all in the same boat here (actually, it might be more accurate to say we're all in the same cooking pot)
And we need to spend less time running after whatever's newer and bigger, and more time making ourselves better stewards of what we've got.
I hope you won't think me mean

When I tell you that I'm getting pretty tired of hearing people quote Kermit the Frog saying it's not easy being green.
I'm not arguing with the simple, inescapable truth of that statement—but if you ask me, another line from that same song shows us what we really need to see:
Green is all there is to be.

via Preservation Magazine