i am mother to one adventurous girl and wife to a very patient and supportive husband. trying to create a healthy peaceful environment for my family and friends.

We are looking to discover ways that we could be gentler to the earth. I wanted to start a blog to follow our journey. There were so many things that people have done in the past that have gone away due to the abundance of our nation. I am working to reduce our consumption; we have a long way to go.

Also on this blog I will be sharing other adventures that we have as a family and my quest to create more of what we use.

With all the talk in the news about how we need to help our environment and the great toll that the war has been taking on our economy, I had been so surprised that more emphasis hadnb t been on the way the b everymanb pitched in to help with these issues in the 1930b s and 40b s. I have always loved the idea of the victory garden I was so excited to find this link. It makes me so happy that Michelle Obama has made this so chic. It was also so timely for the Kit Kittredge movie to come out too. My daughter is so funny now when I wear vintage skirts and dresses she asks me if I am wearing flour sacks like they did in the movie.

I feel that we need to look back to find out some of the lost art of conservation. As I was growing up both sets of my grandparents had habits that they had learned growing up in the depression. I always wondered why more people didnb t do some of these things.

My maternal grandmother was uber-creative. She did everything; she sewed most of her kids clothes, she also made many of their toys and dresses for their dolls, she knitted, crocheted, embroidered, cross stitched, canned, baked, cooked, and gardened this list seems endless. Amazingly she did this all while holding down a job out of the house. I remember her hanging clothes on the line instead of using the dryer; outside in the summer, inside in the winter.

My paternal grandmother was also a very busy woman. She had 9 kids and needed to stretch everything a little farther. They lived in the city but had a plot that they leased and would farm. They also sold eggs to the neighbors. My grandfather seemed to have endless odd jobs he was very resourceful he could do just about any odd job he washed windows, worked in the bingo halls and delivered flowers at the holidays all in addition to his fulltime job. When he b retiredb he painted, wallpapered and taught classes about basic home repair.

I remember my grandmother being a big recycler. I know that they used to take trips to the salvage yard all the time drop off paper and other things. My father told me that they saved tin, bacon grease and rubber for the war effort. He also told me that a couple of local garderners donated land in the city for the neighbors to plant victory gardens. l

When I was little one of my favorite jobs was to recycle the newspaper. I kept paper bags of old newspapers and magazines in the basement. When we had enough to fill the trunk my father would drive me to the dump. We would drive onto a scale, we would go empty the car of papers and then have the car weighed again. They would pay us for what we left. I thought I was that was so cool.

I used to save pencil shavings and sawdust too; I believed that one day I would find something that I could make with them. My theory at the time was to use them with glue to decorate a breakfast in bed tray, something of a disaster as you could imagine. Hopefully I will come up with some better ideas for us soon.

I wanted to start this blog for some time now. I must be honest; I have been procrastinating. My husband started a family blog in 2005 to keep my family posted when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I really enjoyed sharing photos and what we were doing as a family once we were able to leave the breast cancer topic, but I was not very consistent posting, the blog software that we used was not very user friendly for photo posting and that was the bulk of what I wanted to post. Then I found some really amazing blogs that used typepad and thought I should give it another try.

I have been following this inspiring blog called Soule Mama since March 2008. She is amazingly talented mother of four of what I must believe are super sweet kids. She generously shares so much about what she and her family are creating. I was reading her blog one day in January and she mentioned that she was going to be speaking at SAW b Squam Art Workshop in June. I looked at the information and the classes that were being taught and thought this would be such a great opportunity. I was telling my husband about it and he said you should go. I was so excited and anxious, there were so many great teachers and classes it was so hard to choose just three.

Well. I have been trying to gather my thoughts from this stunning four days of creating in the woods. And here begins the blog...