Colourful Threads

Have you ever wondered about where your “stuff” comes from? Why you buy it? Where it goes when you’re done with it?

Then The Story of Stuff is for you.

This little film will give you a very biased look at the “materials economy” and how it’s destroying our lives. The cartoons are adorable, the message important and the ideas disturbing.

MrPages was most disturbed by the “externalized costs” of merchandise – the fact that we pay low prices because others are paying the actual prices; others being people in third world countries who are paying with their homes, their children and their lives. He’s seen it first hand.

I myself suddenly realized that information junkie though I am, sometimes I don’t pay enough attention to the whole process. Where exactly did my new bed sheets come from? Where was the cotton grown? Did a small child have to pick it? What kind of factory processed it? Did they pour lots of chemicals into the ditch? Do I know? Do I care?

So over the next while, the WonderfulPages family will be trying to be more deliberate in our consumer choices. We’re going to try to pay more attention to “our stuff.” We’re going to try to buy less of it (although we already do this), we’re going to try to make better choices on what we do buy, and we’re going to try to pay more attention to who exactly our choices impact. Nothing like a gargantuan challenge!

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Note to Self:

When you get home from picking up a few extra items from Walmart, the Saturday before Christmas, check the bags to make sure that you put the Christmas ham into the fridge, not into the closet with the rest of the Christmas stuff.

Merry Christmas!

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Today we made our annual gingerbread houses.

We have the quaint little cottage of the LittlestPage nestled beside Page2’s ocean lighthouse.

And Page1’s peaceful Swiss chalet sitting neutrally between the rival castles of Page 3 and 4.

Tomorrow the wholesale massacre begins!

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Library Day

Inspired by Swivels the Stickler.

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I have always been a granola-crunching, paper-recycling, environmental-worrying, semi-activist. Though there are seven of us in our home, we put out less than one can of garbage each week. (It should go down even more when I start composting in the spring.) We also put out five or six blue bins of recycling. We shop second hand, only replace items that we can’t fix, and generally try to live simple lives.

Yet I am constantly being challenged and inspired by those who are doing so much more. MrPages has already mentioned No Impact Man. I also follow the stories of Beth at Fake Plastic Fish who is trying to eliminate her plastic consumption, and the Dervaes Family at Path to Freedom, who are living off the grid in the middle of Pasadena, California!

With such heroes from which to gleen insight, I present my first, I hope, of many “Steps to Green” (MrPages says I should trademark it!)

Anyway.

Reclaimed, Reusable, Multipurpose Gift Wrap:

A friend gave me a bag of fabric scraps. I found a bunch of squares that might have been meant for a quilt. Beth’s post about Christmas wrap, and her link to Furoshiki got my creative juices flowing. The result is a smallish kerchief-like section of cloth that can be used to wrap our Christmas gifts. I used the Furoshiki fold for flat objects and then just to be sure it stayed wrapped en route I secured it with some yarn (which is also reclaimed.)

I’m dreaming of a green Christmas!

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Why did the chicken cross the road?
Because it wanted to!

Why did the farmer cross the road?
To catch his chicken!

this is so silly!

what do you get if you cross a squirrel with a nut?
A nutty squirrel!

(Editor’s note – This one is 8 year old silly!)

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I am trying my hand at writing different kinds of poems.
Limericks are such funny, happy, silly, nonsense poems I thought I would make one first.

There was a young man from Beijing
Who decided to dance for the king
But by some awkward chance
He couldn’t choose what to dance
So instead he decided to sing!
-LittlePage1

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No pictures today, because they’ll be the same as yesterday morning’s.

Painting went so much faster with Snowy and Ash and myself and the five LittlePainters, but yesterday and today it has been just me. I got the first coat of ceiling paint on the main section of the ceiling. I got two-thirds of the second, and last coat, on today before I ran out of paint.

The LittlePages have been real troopers this week. Page1 made lunch and dinner on Thursday, Page2 helped with the LittlestPage, Page 3 helped Dad with some framing and Page4 lended his cheerful chatter to keep us all going. All five of them chipped in to help paint the walls. But they are pretty much done with amusing themselves for such long periods of unsupervised time. A child left to himself brings shame to his mother. It’s time to get back to regular routine!

And so as we end the week long attack, we are both excited about what has been done, a little defeated by what still needs to be done, and sore all over!

We’ve talked about trying to get up a little earlier everyday and try to maintain the momentum, but we’ll see.

A painting is never finished–it simply stops in interesting places. (Paul Gardner)

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