A Truly Eco-Friendly Playhouse

Check out this eco friendly playhouse for kids, made by artist Judith Needham.
The Dreaming Spires Willow Playhouse is designed to meet the child's need for imaginative play whilst being an attractive feature in the garden in its own right. Handmade in England from natural english willow, the playhouse has impeccable environmental credentials.

At 1200 pounds it's a pricey environmentally friendly play structure, but it sure is pretty.

I wonder if they sell the English countryside to accompany it??

Wove's Etsy Shop Judith Needham's Website

Twilight

So all the hype about Twilight....I watched as Steve's students, former students, athletes, my former athletes OBSESSED over this book series. Then a few of my adult friends started saying how good they were, everyone's so excited for the movie, blah, blah, blah. You would think it was the apocalypse of literary genius the way everyone was talking....it created buzz like the Harry Potter series.

So on Friday night, I caved to the peer pressure and bought the book. Started it Sat a.m. and finished it Sunday afternoon. It was a good book - interesting story, characters that pull you in, mindless enjoyable book consumption. So last night I went to see the movie, and what a disappointment. Usually movies are never as good as the books that inspired them, but i thought that the Twilight movie totally missed the mark. I would guess that most people who saw the movie without reading the book wouldn't have cared for the movie at all. They glossed over so much, filled in gaps with additional material NOT in the book (I HATE that), sped through important dialogues for the sake of time, etc. etc. With Twilight grossing over 70 million at the box office this weekend, I think it's too bad that they didn't just make the movie a little longer and kept in more of the key elements that create the foundations for the story.
I WILL say that they did an outstanding job of casting.....Robert Pattinson who plays Edward Cullen (the vampire) is described in the book as an otherworldly type of beautiful. Compelling, but almost shocking to look at. Pattinson (also played Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter movies) himself is a gorgeous piece of man, but when you add in the hair and makeup to make him look like a vampire? They totally hit the nail on the head - he WAS otherworldly, compelling...beautiful. He justified the movie for me because well...he's nice to look at for 2 hours. I think he's this next generation's Brad Pitt. YUM.

My overall impression? The books are good. They are romance novels geared towards young adults (I can see why highschool girls are batty over them) so the reading level makes for a quick and easy read. The movie's okay -IF you read the books and are interested in the story and the actualization of the characters on film.....if you haven't read the book: skip the movie - you'll miss out on a lot.

If you like stories about vampires and fantasy-type fiction, a more "adult" type book along those lines would be The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I read it a few years back when I worked at Books A Million. It took me a LONG time to read - it's a pretty thick book - but it's more along the lines of a DaVinci Code-esque suspense/thriller following a mystery surrounding Dracula. Did you know that legends of Dracula have some elements of historical truth to it?? Vlad the Impaler, a cruel Romanian ruler from the 15th Century inspired Bram Stoker's famous novel, and stories and legends about vampires have been around for centuries. True story. Google it if you're bored one day. :)

So that's my history lesson, movie review, book review and book recommendation for the day.
Happy Monday!

I Shall Order 10 of Them Right Now

Despair.com takes all of those inspiring motivational-type slogans and posters that you see in offices and gyms and reworks them into sarcastic, snarky ones....so obviously they appeal to me greatly.

I especially love the tshirts so I will be adding some to my Christmas list. :)

Flat Lining

Seems like all the blogs I read are flat-lining lately.....and so is mine.
Apparently, people don't have much to say these days. :)

I don't have much to say either, but check out this weird jewelry from this chick on Etsy. If you've never heard of Etsy, then you are TOTALLY missing out. Seriously....hide my debit card if I log on to that site, because I will clear my bank account. :)
Anyway....kindof Creepy.....but cool, in my ever-so-humble opinion.
What do you think of it?

Upgrade On My Brain

Taking a break from politics, religion, weird videos, and pictures.....I'm totally drooling over the upgrade from the 5D that Canon announced today:

Canon EOS 5D Mark II: with 21MP and HD movies

DROOL.

ING.

I'm off to search for change in the couch and hope for a big tax refund this year.
I SO need to upgrade so I can move on to bigger and better business things. :) My brain is full of too many ideas to be limited by my dated camera any longer! Full-frame sensor here I come! Well....in a few months anyway.

I hope.

:)

Yes, I Am

...posting mundane videos of my children. However, considering that ALL of our family live at least 3 hours away from Albany, this is for them. So if you don't care to watch, that's cool....just know that I'm not gushing because oh my gosh AJ reading this book is the cutest thing ever but more so because our family will want to see him. So there.

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus is a Nowack family favorite and has been read many, MANY times. Recently, we purchased The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog just so we don't have to read about that blasted pigeon trying to hijack that stupid bus anymore. Because the hotdog gig is SO much better. If you have kids and don't have this book, you MUST go buy it immediately. It really is quite amusing. Authored by Mo Willems, one of my personal favs...oh, and he also wrote Knuffle Bunny which is quite possibly even better than DLTPDTB (Don't let the...) mainly because the illustrations are genius...pure genius and as a photographer I find them inspiring. I am not kidding.

Here is AJ, reading Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus:



And then it was Owen's turn, who wanted to read More Spaghetti I Say! which is actually one of my old books...published in 1977, it's cute too, although owen hasn't read the book in about 2 weeks and was a little fuzzy on the particulars.



And then MY turn (so said Prince Owen and Prince AJ). They chose for me: If You're Happy & You Know It. Nevermind the horrid excuse for singing...sounds like someone stepped on a cat. Anyway.....



And in case you're wondering....I'm not sure why Owen doesn't have any pants on.

Enjoy.

:) Later.

Summer Fun

We went swimming a lot over the weekend, so I finally had an opportunity to take pictures of the boys in their new swim shorts, which I ordered online from Mini Boden. If you sign up for their e-newsletter, you'll get offers for discounts, coupon codes and occasionally free shipping (helpful since they're located in London). Anyway, I think the shorts are adorable and they look so cute in them -- they're very....European. And short. LOL :)






Tyler didn't get anything from Boden so I think he was feeling a little put out.



I also fell in love with this towel hoody because I knew it would look great with AJ's blue eyes and I think I was right. I think it will get a lot of use..coming out of the pool or at the beach.

(click any to enlarge)

I liked it in black and white too...


And this one was my favorite....

Have a great Monday!

The Trash Vortex

I've recently learned of the Great Pacific Trash Gyre, which is basically a concentrated section of ocean about the size of the continental US of "trash soup". So now I'm gonna educate you on it, in case you're one of those weird people who think that the recycling is too difficult or that we're not actually having any significant impact on the environment.

Ocean currents, (in addition to air currents) pull large amounts of ocean debris to this area where it slowly swirls around. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the world's largest landfill, and it's smack in the middle of the ocean. The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California, and is roughly the size of Texas. The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world.
Much of the plastic is in very small pieces floating under the surface of the water, going about 100 feet deep, meaning capturing a photograph of the patch is not possible. Because the garbage is so small and scattered, clean-up is also incredibly difficult, without endangering sea life.

The only way to truly understand the depth of the trash is by doing a trawl, which entails dragging a net with a bucket attached to it off the back of a boat. Here is a picture of what a normal trawl should produce....zooplankton, occasional small fish, seaweed, etc. Now, contrast that with the contents of a trawl done in the Pacific Garbage Patch. And then we wonder why beautiful Hawaiian beaches sometimes look like this.

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Most of the pieces are in such tiny pieces that the only way to clean it up would be high intensity trawling similar to shrimp trawling. The thing about shrimp trawling is that it kills 10 pounds of non-targeted sea life (dolphins, sharks, turtles, whatever) for every ONE pound of shrimp gathered, making the impact on the marine life far greater than what it's potentially worth to clean up such a massive area of trash. Bottom line is, we just have to live with it and make every effort to not make it any bigger.

The main problem with plastic -- besides there being so much of it -- is that it doesn't biodegrade. No natural process can break it down. (Experts point out that the durability that makes plastic so useful to humans also makes it quite harmful to nature.) These tiny plastic particles can get sucked up by filter feeders and damage their bodies. Other marine animals or sea birds (specifically albatross) eat the plastic, which can poison them or lead to deadly blockages. This has many other far-reaching consequences on the food chain and marine life that I won't go into here, but even if you're not all that concerned about ocean life, consider that in some cases, that ocean life makes it's way to your dinner plate. And some plastics can become toxic and if they're ingested by that salmon that you're about to eat.....well, you get the idea.

It comes down to managing waste on land, where most of the trash originates. So, I know I've said it before, but we could all use to do a little better at our consumption in general, but especially of plastics. At the very least, recycle your plastics. Don't you think our home deserves a little better care and maintenance? It makes me sad what we're doing to our earth.....

Here's some more links, if you're interested in reading more:

Altered Oceans - a great series by the LA Times, with videos and lots of other info

GreenYour.com - a cool resource for how to green up any area of your life.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Out of Sight, Out of Mind - great article by treehugger.com


Okay, stepping down now. :)

GDiapers....Or: I'm Turning Into a Hippie

But I think true hippies smoke weed and drive Volvo's so I think I'm ok. For now.

Forewarning: this is a post about diapering. So if you don't care about diapering. Or being a hippie. Or poop. Or the earth. Then you might want to skip over this one, may God have mercy on your consumeristic soul.
Just kidding about that last part.

Before Owen was born, I had considered using cloth diapers on him. They're more environmentally friendly, gentler on baby's skin, cost-efficient (depending on the route you choose), etc. etc. But then I saw (through a lady I knew who was cloth diapering her newborn) how much freaking work it was and elwww, you dunk it in the TOILET to rinse off the poop? --->insert gagging sounds here <---- That quickly brought to an end my grandeur ideas of being earth-friendly and I opted for the Pampers route. For the next 5 years. We should own stock in Pampers. Seriously. But a few months ago, I came across this new product called G-Diapers, which are actually flushable diapers. Sounds weird, right? But no...it makes a lot of sense. You buy these cute diaper covers with a plastic snap-in liner (which Tyler is modeling in the photo above) and then you put in this flushable insert (think giant maxi-pad for babies). When you change the diaper, you pull out the insert, put a new one in and then flush the old one. Genius! Considering the fact that as a nation, we throw about 18 billion diapers away each year into trash cans and bags, believing they've gone to some magic place where they will safely disappear. The truth is, most of the plastic-lined "disposables" end up in landfills. There they sit, tightly wrapped bundles of poo that take about 500 years to break down. Ellw... That's a whole lotta stanky dipes. The G-Diapers flush away all that stuff - where it belongs - in the crapper. Or...if you're out and about and don't want to mess with flushing, the GDiapers break down in about 30 days. You can click on the video HERE to watch a side by side comparison of normal plastic diapers deomposing next to the GDiapers. Pretty eye-opening. And gross.

Price wise, GDiapers are slightly more expensive. Depending on the brand you use, about 4-8 cents more per diaper. But isn't keeping the earth clean for your kids worth the extra investment? So I ordered a starter pack to give them a try. And by golly, I liked them! I tentatively told Steve-o about them before I ordered...testing the waters, seeing if he was up for the bit of extra work involved and he was game and said to go ahead. So I did, and they're working fabulously.
But THEN...oh, then....I REALLY got granola, and I thought, maybe, just MAYBE, I could use the G-Diapers part of the time, and cloth inserts inside of the G-Diaper cover when we're at home and save some money AND the environment. HOoooo boy. I was feelin' crazy. Again, I tested the waters with Steve....he wasn't sure, but he would give it a try.

Now, lemme just tell you that the days of the folding-of-the-cloth diaper and securing with a pin are LOoooonng gone. There are so many cloth diapering options out there that my head was about to EXPLODE from information overload. AIO's, inserts, doublers, fleece, cotton or hemp? which is better? this one's more absorbent, which ones leak, which ones for nighttime, blah, blah, blah! Ack!
I finally got a little bit of an understanding, after I emailed a few online distributers and basically said, "help me! I'm in cloth diaperland hell!" and they were super nice in explaining things to me so my virgin cloth diapering brain could understand. So I ordered some hemp/cotton inserts (super absorbent PLUS soft and natural on baby's skin) and have been using those during the day when we're at home. AND.....they're great. And last night Steve even said, "man, I wish we had known about all this stuff when owen and aj were babies". So I think that's a pretty good sign that things are going just fine.

Our diaper trash can in the nursery is pretty empty these days...and in just the few weeks we've been doing the G-Diaper/cloth combo deal we've saved a LOT of diapers from ending up in the landfill. Just for us alone, an average of 5 diaper changes per day (more when they're little, less when they're bigger), we were putting about 150 diapers a month in the trash....

that's 1,680 per year
about 5,040 over each of our kid's lifetime until they're potty trained. So with 2 kids, we've put about 10,000 plus diapers in landfills, that won't break down until our boys great great great great grandchildren come along. Field trip to the dump kids! Let's look at great great great great great grandaddy's poopy diapers!

Anyway, that's my product endorsement/save the planet plug for this week. If you're interested in learning more about G-Diapers, or cloth diapering, you can check out the links below, or feel free to ask me questions and I'll try to answer. It's really not that hard and if you have wee ones, I think you should check it out. Not to mention, they're really cute. Soft diaper covers are much cuter (and comfier) than crinkly, crunchy plastic diapers.

Tyler likes 'em....doncha buddy?

See. I told you.
___________________________

G-Diapers

General Cloth Diapering Info

Cloth Diapering FAQ
____________________________

Groovy man. I'm off to make some beaded friendship bracelets and tye-dye some t-shirts.
Catch ya later.

Some Baby Deliciousness for Your Enjoyment

He crawled yesterday.

After eating a snack after nap, I brushed him off and set him in the living room with a basket of toys and went into the kitchen to start making dinner. Next thing I know I turn around and there he is in the kitchen. And he's been crawling around the house ever since, pulling himself up on the coffee table (now put away), chasing after his brothers, picking up minuscule pieces of lint and paper and eating them. Last night Steve and I shook our heads over how much he's changed in the last 7 months and then I promptly demanded he impregnate me immediately so that I could have another small baby burrito to swaddle and nuzzle to which he shot me a look that clearly stated "hell, no".
Maybe next week.

Here are some from today, with him in his Argyle Baby Legs, looking so soft and adorable and baby blue that I just wanted to eat him up. Hope you all had a great Friday.