And out with the old! I bought six new blouses today (majorly on sale!) and before I hung them up I chose seven shirts, two dresses, and two pairs of pants from my closet that I no longer wear and bagged them up for donation. That’s been my new standard procedure for clothes shopping: must donate at least one item for every new item purchased. Feel free to join me if your closet is out of control.
Helping hands
Today I took a 6-hour CPR / First Aid certification class. I have to keep my certification for both work and Girl Scouts, and even if they didn’t require it I would still take the class because it just feels good to know that I can help if someone needs it. Even if all I can do is apply pressure to a wound and offer comfort and reassurance while waiting for an ambulance I know I’ve helped that person; and truthfully, I hope I never have to give someone CPR – but I know how to if needed. I encourage everyone to take the class for the sense of empowerment that can be gained. Rather than feeling helpless in an emergency situation, you would learn how to take control and make a difference. Maybe even save a life.
Starting out well
Happy New Year! We’ve had a great (long) weekend so far, getting all kinds of things put away, cleaned up, and organized. We even hung up some artwork today! For Christmas I had a print framed for Chris; it’s a lithograph he won on our cruise a few years ago and we’d planned on getting it framed but never quite got around to it. Anyway, it looks gorgeous and turned out larger than I expected, so finding a location to hang it proved a little challenging. In the end it means a little rearranging of the dining room to accomodate it – but it’s fabulous.
On the knitting front, I’ve gotten four hats done for the elementary school refugees. I think my favorites so far are these two: 
(Swirl Hat, knit with Paton’s Classic Wool.)
(Scrap-Happy Celebration Hat, knit with remnants of wool and alpaca.)
I also started a sweater project for myself – a Featherweight Cardigan, in KnitPicks Comfy Fingering (color Hollyberry) on size US 6s. As I spread this out for a picture I found a small error that will be easy to fix (and can’t be seen in the pic, so stop looking for it!) but otherwise I like how this is knitting up – the fabric is light and stretchy and should be a great layer to wear around the office.
Bye-bye Styro!
Would you look at that – Seattle is about to become the first city to have an ordinance banning food containers that are not either compostable or recyclable. How exciting! It’s been a year and a half since restaurants in Seattle were banned from sending your take-out food home in a Styrofoam clam-shell container, but now this is extended to include all sorts of food establishments and single-use food containers. I, for one, am happy to be part of this trend. Seattleites sent some 80,000 TONS of food and yard waste to composting facilities last year, keeping it out of landfills (and the ocean). Hooray!!!
Where does your money go?
I ran across a quote the other day that really struck home:
Where we spend our resources directly reflects what we value.
Think about it. According to Forbes.com, in 2006 the average American household earned $54,400 before taxes, and spent 7.7% of their money on food at home, 5.6% on eating out, and 1.1% on alcoholic beverages.
That adds up to 14.4% on eating and drinking, but only half of that is at home.
We spent 22% on housing,
6% on basic utilities (phone, gas, electric),
3.4% on clothing,
12.5% on transportation (vehicle purchases, gas, maintenance),
5.7% on healthcare (insurance, prescriptions, etc.),
3% on entertainment (buying TV’s, MP3 players and other sound equipment, plus movie/theatre tickets),
11% on pensions and personal insurance (life, social security, retirement).
The rest goes to taxes and miscellaneous dribs and drabs (like philanthropic endeavors, which are shockingly small).
Of the money we spent on food, almost half of that is for eating out – fast food, sit-down restaurants, pizza, lattes, happy hour appetizers, take-out, hot dog stands, sushi bars, smoothies, and Krispy Kremes. We all know that eating out is more expensive than cooking at home, and I would hope that by now we realize that eating out is fraught with fat, sodium, and calorie gluttony. So, what if we ate at home more often? What if we changed our priorities, and instead of zipping through the drive-thru we spent five minutes packing a healthy lunch?
And look at all that car expense! Wow! Americans sure like their new cars, don’t they? We spend twice as much just getting around than we do on our personal health and well being.
Housing, boy – talk about sticker shock. That’s a national average, and while I live in an area with relatively high housing costs, I know that many areas of the country are a lot less expensive — so why do we spend so much on a place to live? Now, this survey was from 2006, before the whole housing market / bank mortgage fiasco; perhaps by now more people are living within their means. Somehow, I doubt it.
In 2006, Americans charged almost $2 billion to credit cards.
Yikes.
Botanical lights
Last night we went to the Bellevue Botanical Garden d’Lights – which is a beautiful thing to see. In this dreary time of year when our gardens are looking pretty pathetic, they create a landscape of lights. Flowers, plants, trees, and even animals are depicted in thousands of brilliant bulbs. I didn’t have my regular camera, so you’ll have to pardon these craptastic cell phone pictures – hopefully you can see past the blurriness to appreciate the artwork.
This gorgeous little vineyard was being threatened by the cutest bunny:
This pond display was fantastic. That “fountain” in the center was created with twinkling lights so it looked like moving water.
What is hard to depict is the scale. Some of these are really quite tall – the “cattails” on the right are actual size, roughly 6′ – 7′ tall.
They placed many lighted flowers where the real things bloom and grow; there were clumps of daisies, lilies, sunflowers, hyacinths, hollyhocks, red hot pokers, dahlias, and so many more. Arbors of wisteria and golden chain flowers, forsythia, flax, and flowering cherry trees. If you are in the area I highly recommend you visit; they operate on donations.
Australia needs our help
Just as the northeast begins to see the flood waters receding (two-thirds of Queensland is flooded), fires break out in the south. Thousands of Aussies have fled their homes, searching for safety. Sadly, almost two hundred have perished in the fires so far.
Australian Herald Sun coverage of the fires.
My heart goes out to the entire country, and I’m joining several relief efforts to gather necessities and donations for the families in need.
Party: busted
On account of snow.
It was quite beautiful, don’t get me wrong.
And while I was walking this morning, I saw raccoon tracks!
My gazing ball was wearing a jolly cap.
And some folks really shouldn’t leave the house; even with this light dusting the folks up the street managed this:
If you look closely, you can see the dent in the car on the left (near the tail light) caused by that giant rock. And it ought to be fun getting the car on the right off the rockery and back on the driveway…
Despite the snow, I had two hat-knitting participants. One was already here (having spent the night), and another had a brave father to deliver her to our house. Today was a scheduled knit for charity party and I was all set with coffee and tea, goodies and snacks. I had a big bag of yarn, several free patterns, and tons of knitting supplies laid out.And then it snowed. Ah, well; such is life.
There are not many hats to show, but here are what we have:
And the two girls, hard at work on the looms:
