New Restaurant Review

I have a new review posted on The Golden Spiral for M Cafe de Chaya!

Danish Modern Tables

I have a pair of wonderful Danish Modern tables for sale! You can see them on my website or you can bid on them directly on eBay. They are cute, functional and well-priced, too.

Golden Spiral

Good News!  I've been selected as a contributor to the Golden Spiral, a great website for environmental news and discussion.  I will be writing reviews of green restaurants and retail.  My first review on Hearth in the Cottonwoods can be read here.

LIttle Heathens

If you want to get motivated to re-use, recycle and reduce this 2009, I highly recommend reading Little Heathens.  This book was a great inspiration to me when I read it earlier this year. Set on a farm in the 1930s, it highlights a lost way of life where simplicity reigned supreme.  Absolutely nothing was wasted, and so much of the excesses we accept as a way of life would have been unimaginable to those scrimping to get by during this time. 

On that note, I offer some simple tips for reducing your waste in 2009 that I am trying to follow, too:

1. Buy a reusable water bottle, such as the eco canteen.  Fill it with the filtered water from your fridge and stop buying those cases of plastic water bottles.  If you don't have a source of filtered water, you can purchase a Countertop Water Filtration System.
2. Bring your own bags to the grocery store.  
3. Plant a garden or shop for local fruits and veggies at the Farmer's market! Local Harvest is a great source for finding local organic food. Mr. GGG is hard at work on his own garden, and has enlisted the help of Silverlake Farms to make sure it gets done correctly. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

There are so many little things we can do that not only help the environment, but help our finances as well.  I think this is the silver lining in this economy - it forces us to reassess what is essential and what isn't.  Perhaps we can rediscover some of the self sufficiency and reliance as illustrated in Little Heathens.

Green Finds at C&B

Happy New Year! I was hoping to have an incredibly reflective and thought provoking post to ring in 2009, but while I was procrastinating from writing this I browsed the new Crate & Barrel catalogue and came across some exciting finds that I had to share.  

I love using placements, especially ones that don't need to be laundered after every use! So, when I saw the "Circles Wooden Placement" I paid attention. Not only do these placements offer ease of use, but they are also stylish and made of surplus wood scraps from furniture workshops.  They look great as a backdrop for a stylish napkin or a boldly colored dish.

I also love the ease of a non-stick pan.  (Can you sense a theme here? I like low maintenance, high style.  I don't even own an iron - I'm not kidding.  I've perfected the art of taking cloth napkins out of the dryer slightly damp and warm, folding them immediately and voila - no ironing needed!)  However, non-stick pans are not very eco-friendly.  Crate & Barrel has introduced a great new product, the GreenPan.  This cookware is touted as having the first environmentally safe, non-stick coating on the market.  They are currently offering a saute pan, casserole dish, wok and several sized frying pans.  

So, if you've vowed to cook more and eat out less in 2009, motivate yourself with some new placements and cookware.  They're easy on the environment, useful and stylish, too!

Grace Home Furnishings is having a SALE!

Have we lost our imagination?

I read an interesting article about Disney's "House of the Future" on treehugger.com today.  The original house, which was installed in Disneyland's Tomorrowland in 1957,  was actually called the "Monsanto House of the Future."  It was a futuristic imagining of domestic life, and featured such things as a an ultra-sonic pop-up dishwasher, touch-tone hands-free telephone, and a microwave oven.  The design of the building itself was also inventive, as it was shaped like a cross and brought light into each room.   You can view a great video of this house on You Tube, here is Part 1 and Part 2.  It was very Jetson-like and seems to have given great inspiration to Ikea.  It was also imaginative and forward-thinking.

The newest incarnation of the Disney "House of the Future" looks like a bad tract home in a housing development in Porter Ranch.  It is merely a model home with some gadgets thrown in for pizazz.  There is a great article in The Atlantic by P.J. O'Rourke that goes into more descriptive detail, entitled Future Schlock.  In his conclusion to this article he states, "We seemed to have entered a deeply unimaginative era."  

Is this true?  I think what has happened is that we used to imagine the future as always being better than what we had in the present.  I know that's what they foresaw in the 1950's when the original Disney house was built.  Now, the future doesn't seem so certain or so bright. However, this isn't an excuse to keep repeating the past, in elements of design or life.  I know we can do better than that.  This is the worst time to become complacent or reactionary.  My favorite definition of insanity is "repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different outcome."  Yet we all do this.  Are we all insane?  No, I don't think so.  But I do think we've lost our imagination, and that certainly has to change!