Solutions For Living With Wood

At the beginning of the heating season, I'm all gung-ho about heating with wood. Hauling wood is exhilarating exercise, and the oh-so-toasty radiance of a wood fire is enchanting. After the initial infatuation wears off, I start grumbling about it…mostly, about the mess.

2 Problems, 2 Solutions:

Problem: There are splintery pieces of wood that gather around the stove which makes walking barefoot treacherous (and messy).

Solution: Remodelista presented a beautiful wall-mounted log holder via Skona Hem. Not only does this wood holder look handsome, it frees up floor space. While it may be an  inspirational solution, I can't read a word of Swedish, and there are no particulars of where to purchase such an item. Has anyone found an off-the-floor solution for the in-house wood stash?

Problem: This morning I piled up a few logs into my arms, stoked the fire, then ran out to have breakfast with friends. Someone commented that my jacket made me look like a porcupine. I looked down and there were spikes of wood embedded into the fleece. Geeze.

Solution: While writing Stalking The Wood Pile, I came across this DIY wood tote on the Whipup site. It’s stylish, functional and easy to make. The creator of the project was in the process of building a house and says, “I made this firewood tote to help move all the logs to the house site. This firewood tote sews up super fast, and will make carrying wood to your fireplace, or building a house just a bit easier.” Brilliant!

Download the DIY pdf instructions and CLICK HERE FOR MORE

Photo Credits: Rais, Remodelista, Whipup

Dreaming: Desire To Inspire

3 things I love about Desire To Inspire (besides the room porn above):

1. Desire to Inspire is run by two women who have never met. Well, they e-met on Flickr and shared bookmarked images. Kim lives in Canada, and Jo hails from Australia. The mission of these two design junkies is to inspire the world one room at a time. I just love the way they share a long-distance relationship and their passion for all things beautiful for the home.

2. Desire to Inspire's "Pets On Furniture" feature each week is hilarious, and so very shameful. If my pooches only knew how the other half lives…Hey, that dog looks like one of mine!

3. Econesting was highlighted in Design To Inspire's latest reading list. Cool…and thanks!

Photo credits: Desire To Inspire

Crafting A Career

Have you ever thought you could sell your art or crafts? If you have a creative hobby that you love, cheap and friends and family are often telling you, "You could sell that!" - why not consider subsidizing your income or making a living as a "craft-epreneur"? Folks all over the globe are reinventing their careers by selling their art and crafts.

5 questions to ask yourself before quitting your day job to run off with the crafters:

Who will buy your crafts? How will you finance your start-up? What will your wages be? How much help will you need to produce at a profitable scale? How much will you need to charge to break even or better yet, make a profit?

CLICK HERE to find out where to sell your art without selling your soul, and what my friend, Juliet Harrison who sells her equine photographs, has to say about marketing art.

Cuff Cup Cozy: The Easiest DIY Project Ever

Last year, a new laptop inspired me to transform an old sweater into a laptop case. The sweater I used had a complicated Fair Isle design and a gaping hole on the sleeve. It was too short to repair and wear.

It's magical the way a sweater will shrink up in the washer and dryer to create a thick piece of felted fabric. The fabric can be cut (just like store bought felt) and will never unravel like a handknitted item will. You can see the process and learn how to make a felted laptop sleeve from a sweater here.

When I wrote An Inspired DIY Idea: Recycled Sweater Sleeve Cozy, I retrieved the sweater from the pile of felt scraps. The sweater cuffs are getting repurposed to make cup cozies. I’m lovin’ these cup holders because you can cradle a hot beverage in a stylish heat-resistant cup without a handle.

Once the sweater is felted, this has to be the easiest DIY project ever:

To Make: Measure the cup you want to cover and cut sleeve cuff to size. I positioned the ribbing on the bottom because the cup I used tapered.

What do you think of this sweater cuff cup cozy?

Photo Credits: Jen Kiaba

Building A Sustainable Future: The Greenest Living Building and Biomimicry

As an environmental writer, I have the unique opportunity to explore a multitude of eco-related subjects. With environmental news rightfully focused on catastrophic events such as the Gulf Oil Spill, and stories about greenwashing running rampant, it may seem like there’s a fog descending upon the green world. But, I source exciting fresh information daily, I'm impressed with the level of new eco-friendly products and sustainable materials available.

As a blogger I feel that it is my duty and honor to dish out environmental news and commentary about things that have the capacity to enrich the environment and hopefully, create a more sustainable future for our kids.

I was invited last month to the Omega Institute of Holistic Studies to tour one of the most sustainable buildings in the world and listen to architects, designers and eco-visionaries discuss the inspirational process of creating the Omega Center for Sustainable Living (OCSL). The OCLS is a state-of-the-art water reclamation facility and environmental education center that brings together wastewater recycling, clean energy, green architecture and other sustainability elements that can be replicated locally and globally.

Omega spent the last four years working to achieve one of the most prestigious honors in the green world – The Living Building Challenge. To make this happen, Omega had to reach the most advanced level of sustainability in a built environment. Here we (writers and photographers) are hearing Omega's, Skip Backus talk about building the OCSL:

Three awe-inspiring things I learned at the OCSL:

1. As a high-performance designed building, the OCSL is powered by passive solar heating, a geothermal system, a photovoltaic power and includes a greenhouse and green roof, constructed wetlands and a green classroom that integrate seamlessly with the natural environment. 2. The OCSL is a teaching facility that teaches Omega participants as well as local schoolchildren how to adopt sustainable living practices in their own lives and homes. 3. From waste come life – At the core of the center is a greenhouse with a living water filtration system that uses plants, bacteria, algae, snails and fungi to recycle Omega’s wastewater (approximately 5 million gallons per year) into clean water used to restore the aquifer. To watch a video about the OCSL and learn more CLICK HERE.

While I was visiting Omega, a conference called, Design By Nature: Creative Solutions With Biomimicry, Permaculture & Sustainable Design was in full swing. This event brought together some of the nation’s foremost leaders in the fields of biomimicry, permaculture, and sustainable architecture. The main objective was to explore the creative potential of these promising green technologies for the sustainability of the planet.

Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a fascinating emerging science that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems.

Biomimicry can answer questions such as:

How would nature get water to the desert? How would nature heat and cool a home? How would nature create color without harmful chemicals or dyes? How would nature create non-toxic waterproof adhesive?

To find the answers to these questions and read more about how biomimicry can change our lives CLICK HERE.

As we hope to forge towards a more sustainable future, we can learn so much from "living buildings" like the OCSL at Omega, and scientific ideas such as biomimicry. They truly fill me with the promise of a bright green future.

Photo Credits: Omega Institute and Care2