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I have been, as you might know by reading my layouts, quite political in my life.  I spent many years as an activist and a community organizer. Then in my early forties I was fortunate to meet and marry my wonderful husband Jon. I don't know what happened; I think perhaps he was waiting to become an activist. Anyway two years after we were married he read a book by John Robbins of the ice-cream family and he became a vegetarian. Boom…just like that. He hasn’t touched a piece of meat, fish or fowl since. And the main reason was the harm to the environment. The result of which has been a concerted effort over the years to decrease our footprint on this earth.

We bought a condo less than five miles from where Jon works and the bus line runs right in front of the condo entry. I could go to work and come back with less than a block of walking and Jon can do the same. We can walk to our local mall only about two blocks away and find there a Michael’s, Jo-Ann’s, Barnes & Noble, theaters, library, ethnic restaurants (about twenty), NY Cupcake Co., French bakery, etc. Also within six miles of us we have Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Puget Consumers Coop. We are happy in being able to travel less and vote with our dollars as well as our ballot.

So what does a respectable ex-sixties activist and her younger husband and friend do on a gorgeous Saturday morning in late September? We go to a Green Jobs action!! We find that in downtown Bellevue, our hometown, they are building two huge condo towers and to our delight and surprise, they are going to be LEED Gold certified. Now what the heck is that you might ask? Well, Jon and I are early risers and on early morning HGTV is a program called HGTV-Pro. It is all about remodeling and building and lately green building. LEED certification means that you are building to the latest environmental standards. So gold certification is the second best there is and the highest one, platinum, is seldom accomplished in residential building.

So here I am along with Jon having great fun on a Saturday afternoon. Each time we here of the great things that are being done and could be done to save our planet, we are inspired. Please vote-both with your ballot and your dollars. We are recording history with our pages. We do it for our families, ourselves and for future generations to know who we are. I hope that they will know that we did our small part to make things better when we realized that we were causing harm to our home, the planet earth.             

We each got to keep our green hard hats. This is me and my camera. Jon is on the far right of the picture of the group and my friend Sue is holding up the bright green sign.

I promised Cassie that I would leave a rave review on my site and then got busy with company and class and fell behind. Cassie made me the most wonderful hat. I sent her a description of the one I have that was worn out and she asked for measurements and made me this new lovely one. I walk everyday at least a mile or more and with my short hair keeping the ears warm is a must. This hat does the trick and even looks good. Cheers to Cassie and all of the great crafters on this site.

Wow, I can't believe how long it has been since my last post. My mother has been here visiting from Florida. It is her annual visit during hurricane season. She spend a few weeks with us and then a few weeks with my brother in Edmonds (just north of Seattle) and then home again. She lives in a small town in the middle of the state and it is usually safe from hurricane damage, but we always feel better with her here. She told us upon her arrival that she will not be flying again. Perhaps thae train next time. The airports are just too much trouble for an 85 year old. Standing in lines and all of the hassle is more than she cares to deal with. It is a shame as air travel used to be the easiest mode of transportation. She is healthy and sharp as a tack and for this we are very grateful. I will post a few layouts soon. 

In the meantime I started taking a journaling class from the Jessica Sprasgue site this past week and that has also taken up most of the time that I can get away and be on the computer. I hope to have some wonderful layouts to share soon. Because of Jon being on vacation while Mom is here, I haven't really been able to do much more than keep up with the writing for the class. Will do more next week. Mom goes to Bruce and Kristie's today and Jon returns to work tomorrow. Study time...

I look forward to sharing more of my work soon. I really appreciate the feed back that I recieve on my work. It is a help when you can get ideas from folks who do and love the same things that you care about. This family at mycraftivity is wonderful. Thanks for all of the support.This is a picture of my mother and me with my son and daughter-in-law. We were at our local coop having dessert and coffee.

I am not in the habit of entering contests but I do love reading scrapping magazines both paper and on line. One of my favorites is the Digital Artists Magazine that I have been getting through ScrapArtist.com. This month they are having a month long party on their blog site and so I decided to take a peak. Shouldn't have done it..  I have been lurking and entering several of the contests ever since. I haven't been a winner but I am finding out that contests are very much like challenges. I am so leary for some silly reason aboutentering a challenge. Perhaps now I won't be so frightened. Here is the layout I did for one of their challenges and the photo of where I had it sitting.

I used the paper from this months DAM kit called Calypso by Hollydesigns and the swirl and parenthesis are from ScrapArtist Lisa Whitney's kit Zesty. The word art is from the Digital Artists Magazine blog site and the font on the journaling is Georgia.