Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Books!


Paperbackswap.com is one of the greatest inventions ever! It is a great website to trade books. Any kind of book, cookbooks, children books, fiction, non-fiction, anything. You simply set up an account with a user name and password, post 10 books you are finished with and start shopping. The books you request are free to you, you pay nothing, not even shipping. If another person requests your book, you pay the shipping and mail it out to them, shipping is around $2.60 per book. Not bad at all.
The only downside is that you can only request books if you have credits, and you only get credits if people request your books. After you post your 10 books to start up your account, you get 2 free credits to get you started. I have never ran out of credits, but I can see how that might be a problem.
I highly recommend checking it out. You can look through the site and see what books are posted before you sign up. You might like it!

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Wisdom

1. The Earth & the Heaven, 2. Audrey Hepburn & Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon (1957)

"I believe in pink. I believe laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing; kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and I believe in miracles."- Audrey Hepburn

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Win a Bike!


Look at this sweet bike! This would have been PERFECT for my life guarding days. I hate to say it, but I missing those days at the beach. Not the kids, the rocks, the bathrooms, the boats, the cuts, the dead fish, the creepy randoms or the babysitting duties, but definitely the peacefully quiet mornings and evenings and of course the ducks!
Anyway Madsen Cycles is giving away this bike and you can WIN! Lucky for us, we could both win because they are giving away 2 bikes! Click here to enter!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

More From the 50 States

Well as we all know, I became quite infatuated with The 50 States Project. The first assignment was for each participant to photograph 'people'. I posted some of my favorites.

This round of the project, the assignment was to photograph 'habitat'. Here are a few that I really liked and found interesting.

Of course I have to start with Michigan, because, I am Michigan!

"Future Home - New Hudson, Michigan, 2009" © Peter Baker

I lived in one of these bad boys, and I loved the cozy double wide very much, unfortunately, our neighbor also enjoyed our cozy double wide and its occupants a little too much. So our stay in the lovely double wide was short lived.

There is no caption to go with this picture just a title, and I think once again, Peter the photographer for the state of Michigan, captured Michigan in this photo perfectly, even the title is fitting. With the hard economic times here in Michigan showing no signs of letting up, many people are downsizing and moving into smaller, more affordable homes, such as these trailers.

The photo from Delaware is very interesting after seeing this photo from Michigan.




This caption accompanied the photo.

"I live in a small beach town on the coast of Delaware and there is a huge disparity in types of housing here. A lot of the houses in town are second homes for wealthy tourists from the DC area. The only industry here are service or retail which creates an huge economic gap between the locals and the tourists. Due to the inflated price of real estate because of the proximity to the beach a large majority of the locals live in modular homes and trailers. This single wide trailer still sales for upwards of $200,000."
There were two other pictures that related to each other.

This one from Vermont.

"Peter King, builder of Vermont Tiny Houses. Bakersfield, VT" © Seth Butler

With this caption.

"On the perimeter of his personal one-eighth acre garden and Tiny House, Peter King of Bakersfield, VT, carries his unicycle and juggling implements before an inaugural evening ride around his current Vermont Tiny Houses project in honor Earth Day, 2009. A former busker who currently lives off-the-grid on less than $14,000 USD income per year, Peter King is now thriving as a teacher, gardener, carpenter and homesteader while building houses 10 ft. by 10 ft. by 10 ft. [sometimes taller] and managing to work an average of three days in a given week. King is very excited about Buckmister "Bucky Fuller", sustainable community and de-industrialization. He is now planning one of many future micro-socioeconomic experiments where community farmers work together to encourage people in living a more simplified life, teaching the ideas surrounding building small self-sufficient but scalable, reduced-carbon-footprint communities of Vermont Tiny Houses and Gardens which have recently become quite appealing, especially given that people are looking to cut back in the midst of the current economic downturn facing all the United States of America. In a recent Burlington Free Press article, King was quoted as saying "You can live a fantastic life in one of these things [Vermont Tiny Houses] if you're clever... You never feel claustrophobic or trapped because you're always two steps from the door.""

And this one from Washington.
With this caption.
"Caleb Goodaker-Craig, a student at the Evergreen State College lives "off the grid" in a one room cabin. He has no electricity, running water, or even an address. He enjoys the peace and quiet afforded him by living alone in the forest, free from distractions of traffic, television and neighbors."
It's amazing to see how all four actually relate together maybe for different reasons but they all are looking at downsizing. Four entirely different states completely relate to one another.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Here's To Happiness

A blog I check on a daily basis, rockstar diaries, is posting lists of happiness compiled by several different people. While I highly doubt my simple list will be featured on her glamorous blog, I emailed my list to Naomi, aka Taza, anyway.






Here is my list:


1. Waking up with the early morning sunshine shining on my face
2. Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies
3. Knitting
4. A good book
5. Learning something new
6. Peonies
7. Old photographs
8. Good friends
9. Hot Tea
10. Camping

Check out all of the other magnificent lists rockstar diaries has collected!

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Through The Viewfinder

I finally tried it! I bought the required camera back in October off of ebay, and just today I made the light blocker and started experimenting with 'through the viewfinder' photography. To learn more about what ttv is, here is an article.

These are some of the pictures that actually turned out, my mom took the pictures of the flowers!





These are the ones I experimented with. The flowers turned out much better! I think there is too much light getting in on the ones I took. I didn't fix anything on the pictures except for cropping, which could use some practice too. The first picture is of some wine bottles on my kitchen counter. The second one is the lifeguard chairs at the Spring Lake Beach, where I've spent many summers!





As you can see, I need a little more practice, but I thought I'd post what I had!