So my brother, unbeknownst to John and I, created a compilation of photos of us over the years that is a combination of embarrassing, sappy, and hilarious. He played it for everyone at the wedding, which was pretty damn cool. I saw quite a few eyes swell up and for a second mine did as well, even though I was done with being emotional at that point. Anyhow, I figured I’d share said video here despite it having less significance to those who don’t know John and I. In this way I can pimp my brother’s work because he does an awesome job and I think he’d like to get into wedding videography and the like more. Being an online seller of things, I realize that it involves plugging yourself any and everywhere, so here’s one more plug your way Chuck.

Not that I believe I’ll feel any different when married, but you never know. So last week around this time I was majorly nervous just thinking about being married. But that was more about my issues with being the center of attention in front of large groups of people, and that feeling has pretty much gone, although I won’t be surprised if it resurfaces by Saturday.

More than anything, I’m preoccupied with getting better right now, as I’ve contracted a nice bacterial infection and am so afraid it’ll be worse by Saturday. I got a 5 day antibiotic from my doctor yesterday, the last bit of which I take on Saturday. I’m hoping that it does the trick. You can tell I love John because otherwise I’d be very pissed at him for getting me sick so close to our wedding. And yes, while I am pissed, especially because I told him MANY times to go to the doctor and get himself taken care of (which he didn’t), I can’t manage to stay mad at him indefinitely.

So anyhow, back to the topic at hand: getting married, and how it will change things. The truth is, I have no clue how it will change things. I’m kind of worried all this fuss and bother will lead to very few changes at all. We’ll still love each other. We’ve been together, especially living together, for so long that this is more about the benefits of being legally married than anything else. That doesn’t mean it won’t be nice and lovely to devote myself to John for life. That means a great deal to me that we do that for each other. But I am still unconvinced that it will change our relationship much. I’m half tempted to change my name just so something changes. Which brings up another uncertainty: Whether or not I’m going to take John’s last name. I’m going to wait until we’re back from our honeymoon to make a decision one way or another on that. Plus I figure I can always change it, see how I like it, and if it doesn’t suit me go back, as much as a pain in the ass as that might be.

Anyhow, what you can expect to find in a post wedding blog from me is some photo documentation of the whole ordeal. I’m not much for scrap booking, so blogging about my wedding will be my way of documenting it. My broseph is going to be videotaping it as well, so I’m looking forward to seeing what he captures, how he edits it, etc. Should be cool, and something I can share here as well. Until then, off to enjoy these last days of being not-married.

So I get google alerts which help me figure out where my Etsy shops are mentioned on this big world wide web we all know and love. So today I get an alert and was tickled with delight when I saw that a tutorial I wrote for my street team’s blog is mentioned on Craftzine’s blog! Sweet! The added bonus is that my shop is linked to from that blurb as well! BOSH!

Just had to share real quick b/c I’m so very stoked to be on the blog of a magazine I know and love.

That is all…

I just need to brag for a minute. I submitted a few shots and small descriptions of my dish cloths to Trunkt today. Trunkt is, in its own words, a “premium directory of creative entrepreneurs”. I’ve submitted things to Trunkt numerous times in the past, hoping to get accepted and show off my wares to a broader audience. Trunkt seems to be a great way to do just that from all I’ve heard and seen about the website. But in the past nothing I submitted made the cut. I’m guessing perhaps the items I submitted were too diverse, the images perhaps weren’t cohesive enough, or maybe just not good enough.

But hey, it was worth a shot then, so when someone on my street team brought up Trunkt today I figured why not give it another shot? I have new items now, and I’ve gotten more of a cohesive look for the photos I take of them. And boy oh boy am I glad I did, because I totally made the cut this time! This just completely boosts my confidence as an eco-crafter. I’ve now got high hopes that my portfolio on Trunkt will boost exposure to what I make and sell.

You can check out my brand spankin’ new Trunkt portfolio at trunkt.org/ecokate.

So I’m making this play list for our wedding in less than a month. I’m being swept up in a medley of musical memories in the process, and it has me thinking about where my musical tastes started and how they evolved.

The earliest album I can recall being obsessed with would have to be Paul Simon’s Graceland. I had it on tape and would borrow one of my parent’s portable tape players and just happily drift through that whole tape start to end (side to side?). It was the first time music really grabbed my attention in such a large way. At most, before that I’d hear a song and dig it but never really bother to find out who it was by or care to hear more from them. That sort of changed after Graceland. And to this day, I still love that album.

Sort of embarrassingly, perhaps just because these tastes have changed, my next obsession was with Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation. But hey, it was the early 90s so I was by no means alone. That period came and went though, but brought with it the advent of a portable CD player to skip through and around as I saw fit.

At this point in the history of my musical beginnings, my older brother was much more into music, and was somewhat obliging in sharing that interest and music with me. MTV was also made available to us thanks to my parents caving and getting cable. As a freshman in high school I can distinctly remember listening religiously to the Foo Fighter’s The Colour and the Shape and to Weezer’s Pinkerton. These are all still in my collection to this day, and I still derive a great deal of pleasure, and plenty of nostalgia from listening to them.

From there my musical interest was peaked so that when I heard something I liked, I just had to know who it was by and find out if there was more by them that I might like. And to this day, with every new song I hear that moves me in some way or another, I always have the same high expectations that this new artist will have a plethora of other great hits that I will never be able to live without, although that’s only true probably 10% of the time in reality.

I’m not sure if any of this has affected how my musical tastes have evolved since the start. I guess it’s one of those unanswerable questions until some scientist does numerous studies to find out if what you’re exposed to at a young age affects your tastes later in life (anyone know if this study has been conducted yet?). Knowing the tastes of my siblings to my own, I’d have to believe that while some of us have somewhat similar tastes, others have very different tastes, and even where similarities exist, they are not at all exact. Personally it leads me to think that your musical tastes are inherent: something you’re born with. Although I am also inclined to believe that musical tastes can most definitely evolve, somewhat based on what you’re exposed to and what you open yourself up to. What do you think influences any given musical preference?

…and in less than a month no less!

John and I are not “wedding” people in the conventional sense. But to please those who this is important to other than ourselves, we’re going along with a somewhat conventional wedding this August.

I can’t think about it too much or I get sick to my stomach. Not like I am disgusted with the idea of marrying John. No, more like I have horrible reactions to situations in which I’m put in the spotlight or too much pressure is put upon me, and my reaction is to feel the need to throw up, shake, and otherwise have annoying and embarrassing physical reactions. This happens to me in lots of situations in life. I just wish for something so meaningful it didn’t have to happen. Perhaps I’ll look into something to calm my nerves that doesn’t involve alcohol, because who wants to be buzzed or borderline drunk during their wedding? Although what do I know…that may not be a bad thing.

Overall though, the idea of being married to John is a pleasing one in my mind. One that brings about the opposite physical reactions to those mentioned above. Instead it brings about a calming sense of happiness, mixed in with surges of joy. Even reading the vows gets me a bit choked up, as generic as they are. It’s all the added BS people feel the need to worry about for weddings that kind of turns me off. But it’s so ingrained in a lot of people’s heads that you need to have a wedding a certain way that they look at you like you’ve got a half devoured baby’s leg hanging out of your mouth when you try to tell them otherwise…

But I’m sure this occurs in many other sectors of life, and is something that you either continue to fight for if you believe in it enough, or just let go if it’s not worth you driving yourself crazy over. And trust me, people constantly looking at you like that baby’s leg is hanging out of your mouth when it so obviously is not, will truly drive you insane if you don’t care enough to argue with them that there’s no leg there to begin with.

So I have a confession. I have another blog. This makes 3 if you don’t count myspace blogs, and who does really. And really, my green wedding blog I just let go to the dogs. I should just redirect it to a legitimate site of my choosing because it’s been so long since I’ve posted in it, and I’ve lost my desire to talk about weddings in general.

So yeah, if you really think about it, I have 2 blogs now! And as much as I love this one as an open forum for whatever I feel like writing about, as horrible as that is to do with a blog, my new “other” blog is way more focused and I end up posting in it quite often. I’ve gotten a lot of great responses from it too, so I figured I’d spread the word about it further.

Basically this new blog, named EcoCraftiness (see above), is all about the eco-friendly crafts I find, and sometimes about the ones I myself make, although I try to shy away from too much self promotion, and have failed horribly at that this week. So yeah, it’s been quite fun searching and posting all the awesomeness that I’ve found thus far. Most posts are short and sweet and that’s enjoyable for me as well.

So, if anyone reading this knows of any great eco-friendly crafts/crafters that they want to bring to my attention, I’d love to hear about them for this new blog!

Or new knits, if you prefer. Well, one new knit really. I just created a knitted tie!

John requested that I make him one months back but I kinda skirted around his request because it seemed like it’d take so damn long to make. More recently, after watching Roman’s Empire and seeing the knitted tie the main character Leo wears on the show, I decided to try and knit one up that way, using a garter stitch for the whole tie. It ended up being quite a fun knit, but John doesn’t dig the garter stitch, so I’m going to have to make him another tie, using a ribbed stitch and smaller needles b/c he basically wants it to look like it’s been machine knitted. I should be offended by his lack of admiration for my usual hand knitted work, but I’m looking at is as a challenge instead. Not so much a challenge to become a mechanical knitter, but a more precise, neat knitter, at the least. I’ll let you know how it goes in 4 years when it’s done…

So, apparently a neighbor of mine cares enough about the environment to use an eco-friendly detergent, but is vehemently in opposition of recycling the container when finished with said detergent.

*

WHAT KIND OF A MONSTER DOES THIS SORT OF THING???

*Check out the creepy mouth/nose mask sitting next to the detergent (on its left). The fact that something like that is in the trash in the basement of an apartment building makes it doubly creepy.

[Photo by HeartofNature]

Let’s face it, global climate change is eminent. Most specialists agree at this point that there’s no way to reverse global warming with the amount of greenhouse gases already trapped in the atmosphere. This however, doesn’t mean we can’t reduce the severity of global warming. We can do this individually by reducing how much of the most impacting greenhouse gases we emit with our daily activities. The two strongest and most lasting greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane. So, how do we emit less of them?

Drive less! Walk and bike more whenever possible. And when you need to drive, trip link! Trip linking is basically combining multiple trips into one. When you have to run out, hit up the post office, grocery store, and then pick your kid up from soccer practice all in one trip. This reduces the amount of trips you make in the day, and reduces the amount of miles you’d otherwise drive by going back and forth to each place individually. Also, keeping your car finely tuned, with the tires inflated to their proper PSI increases its fuel efficiency.

Cut back on red meat! Cows are a MAJOR producer of methane (cow farts)! If we all ate less of our ruminant friends, their demand and production would go down, and less stinky, harmful methane would be produced as a result!

Methane fact: While you might think methane isn’t so bad because hey, it only takes 12-17 years to break down in the atmosphere, unlike CO2 which takes 50-100 years to break down, you should know that when methane breaks down, it turns into CO2! So yeah, it’s reduced to a less insulating greenhouse gas, but its turned into one that lasts way longer in the atmosphere!

Consider buying things made and grown locally! By doing so you’re avoiding buying items that have been transported from far away, which means less energy has been expended on their transport, and a lot less CO2 has been emitted to get them to you.

Use sustainable energy, which requires a lot less greenhouse gas emissions to be produced and to get to you! This in no way means you have to live “off the grid”, because as liberating an idea as it may seem, it’s just not plausible for many people. A simpler, and cheaper way to acquire sustainable energy can be as easy as consulting your electric company to see if they offer green energy options! Here’s a great website to find out if and where you can get sustainable energy supplied to your own home: U.S. Department of Energy / The Green Power Network

These are just a few ways you can make a big difference to reduce your carbon and methane footprints! Please share more ideas on how we can make individual emissions reductions in the comments!