Happy Longest Dark Night

I'm up in the wee hours of the morning/night on the longest night of the year, working on getting all the packing and prep for our trip back home for Christmas, and I thought I would send you all a Solstice salutation. I hope you find much joy in the return of the light, as I do! In recent years, we have gotten up very early to go watch the sun rise in a very beautiful place, but this year we felt it was going to be too cold. I will miss seeing the sun rise over the desert and getting some good photos. Speaking of photography, C got me a zoom lens for my Canon Rebel for Christmas! I know this because we opened all the gifts tonight for the Solstice, since we won't be here for Christmas morning. Yippee! I can't wait to play with it! I'm sure I will have some great photos on my other blog come the new year. This will most likely be my last post for a couple weeks, since we are going to be travelling and celebrating the holidays. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and I'll see you next year!!

Changes

Time for change, as my blog design is so clearly proclaiming today. I have felt the need for a while now to change the title of this blog to better reflect what it is all about. I was inspired by an Amy Steinberg song, off her new album. The title is "Fall Down to Fly" and the lyrics are so great! I want to share them here and talk about what they mean to me and how it all relates to this blog.

I have to dig deep to live in doubt

My history shows everything works out

And though the mountain looks so high I got two feet so I can climb

I have to fight to find some fear

Beauty, she shows up everywhere

And though the mirror can be mean I got two eyes so I can see me

So I look a little bit harder at the lessons in my life

And I'll hang on when the rain comes and watch the oceans rise

And then I'll swim to the center where authentic joy resides

And then I'll fall down and thank that source that sent me here to fly

Fall down to fly

Sometimes you gotta fall down to fly

So, I'll trust a little bit deeper in those things that I don't know

And I'll watch real close as the world unfolds

I'll try my damnedest to let go

And I'll feel the wind as it carries me, carries me along

Through the valleys, through the deserts

To the song of another dawn, dawn of another song

Fall down to fly

You gotta fall down to fly

Fall down to fly

Pretty inspiring, huh? So, despite my bringing topics that are not exactly good news into the light here, I have to dig deep to find the fear and doubt. I have faith in my own two feet and eyes to find my way and see clearly what needs to be done. I can, and DO, thank that source that sent me here to fly. Unschooling my children, and myself, has taught me to trust and to let go.

For a while now, the focus on unschooling, in the title of this bog, has cramped my style. Don't get me wrong, I am every bit as devoted to living an unschooling life with my family. I just feel that I have moved beyond the shout it from the rooftops stage! Wearing our unschooling label on our sleeves has become less important than actually just living it. If I take the word out of the title - but not off the page, notice - I feel freer to talk about what is most pressing or inspiring or whatever, without the pressure to make it fit the "unschooling blog" category. I want this blog to be un-categorize-able! Hard to put a finger on, but true to me, to my family, and to our life.

So, if you enjoy the pictures, the family stories, the Wake Up Wednesdays and Sustainable Sundays, the impassioned rant/raves about unschooling, and the occasional plug for something cool, you are in good shape. Nothing about what I do here is going to go away or change. Only the framework within which I restrain myself has been changed to give me the freedom to write about what I want to write about. Yes, I made myself a bigger box, one with no glaring labels attached. This one, you are going to have to step inside to see what it is all about. Welcome to Fall Down to Fly!

SS - Wrap it Up!

Keeping in line with our commitment to get rid of disposables this year, we have begun the shift away from paper to wrap the holiday gifts. All the paper thrown away every year!! Not only is it wasteful, but it costs you money to replace it each year. I had read about using fabric and had even received gifts in sewn bags from my SIL in years past. So, I hit the fabric store and got some holiday fabric on sale. In the picture above are three different ways to wrap your gifts. On the left is a simple wrap with a square of fabric, no hem even, and tied up with a bow. No sewing for that one, but I would not recommend that you use this method if you have to ship it or if you have curious little fingers in your house. The one in the middle is a sewn bag, complete with casing at the top for the ribbon closure. This one was made to fit a long tube, but I made it roomy enough that other sizes of gifts will fit in it in years to come. The one on the left is another fabric square, but this one is double sided. I sewed two complimentary fabrics together, right sides together, turned them right side out, and hand stitched the gap left to turn the fabric through. Then I laid the gift box on the fabric, on a diagonal, and then tied two points together to make the bow, tucking and folding the other points under the bow. I really like this one. It looks so elegant.

Of course, all this fabric will be saved for next year and the years to come, to be reused again and again. I plan to hit the fabric store after the season is over to take advantage of the clearance sales. I'll work on making a nice assortment of gift bags and wrapping squares for all our gifting needs in the future. Also, I plan to wrap the gifts I give other people the same way. I figure they might keep the bag for future reuse, like I did when my SIL wrapped her gift to us in fabric. Who knows, they might even be convinced to make the switch themselves?!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I am going to take a break from the Wake Up Wednesdays for a few weeks, to get through the holidays with travel and then getting our house on the market. Don't really go back to sleep though! I am still going to do the Sunday thing, so you can keep checking in for more tips every week. I figure this time of year is for celebration and renewal and we can use a break from the bad news for a while. Plus, I already hit the big problems and don't have any new inspiration right now. Not much time to find any either! Enjoy the break and come back ready in the new year to face the Truth once again!

SS - Ripples of Hope

Before I give you something concrete to do, I want to talk about the Hope I have been mentioning.

My SIL sent me this quote last year and I think it perfectly sums up what I mean by hope:

Either we have hope within us or we don't, it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense no matter how it turns out. - Václav Havel

I think it is very important that we talk about making changes in our lives and that we give each other and ourselves reasons for making these changes. The more people we can convince to do something, the better our chances to make a difference. The more we can motivate people, the more good we can do.

However, I need to state that none of us can really know if what we do will help. We might just be too far down the rabbit hole to stop anything, or make it better, even. This is where the hope comes in. Like in the quote above, hope is not dependent on the chances of it turning out OK. Hope is something we can have, no matter what is going on in our lives. In fact, the worse things are around us, the more important it is to have hope. Otherwise you have nothing. No hope is the worst place you can find yourself.

My friend Flo had this on her blog recently:

"Of all the forces that make for a better world, none is so powerful as hope. With hope, one can think, one can work, one can dream. If you have hope, you have everything."

So, you see, if we at least feel that all the small changes (and big ones, too) we are making are the right and good thing to do, then we actually have everything we need. And the really cool thing about doing what feels right is that you tend to influence those around you, for the better. Here is a post from No Impact Man about the effect one person doing the right thing has on those around them:
http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2007/11/triggering-an-e.html

OK, now that we have Hope, what else can we add to our list of changes? Once again I am directing you to another one of Sharon's posts. Did I mention how much I have gotten out of her blog? I did? Oh, OK, good. Here it is:

http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2007/07/52-weeks-down-week-10-use-it-up-wear-it.html

This one has to do with getting off the consumer treadmill and using what you already have to meet your needs to the fullest capacity you can manage, instead of buying new. I know I drive my husband crazy with how I never want to throw anything out. But it is not because of a sentimental attachment to "stuff." It is all about future resources. I can pretty much make something out of nothing, if I have enough "worthless stuff" to cobble together. I hate feeling like I have to throw something away just because it is cosmetically damaged. If it works or can be repaired, you should keep it. Getting something new just because your present one is outdated/out of style/last year's model is crazy! What a waste of money, energy, and precious resources! I consider it a fun challenge to see how long I can get use out of something. And it feels much better than buying that shiny new item when I have a perfectly good one already.

Go and see what you can use up, wear out, and make do!

Dancing Elves

Now, if you have seen the video in the post below, you'll get a kick out of this homegrown version!

Holiday Cheer!

Ok, you have to click on this link now and watch this:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1209871134

It takes a while to load, but you won't regret it! Hope that put you in a good mood!

WUW - Where's the water?

I don't have much time to do this post this week, with the holidays and our move/selling the house coming up, so I am going to direct you to a couple of articles about drought. It's frightening stuff. This first one touches on drought around the world, but has some info on the Southeastern US:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/68498/?page=entire

According to the National Climate Data Center, federal officials have declared 43 percent of the contiguous US to be in "moderate to extreme drought." Already, Sonny Perdue of Georgia is embroiled in an ever more bitter conflict -- a "water war," as the headlines say -- with the governors of Florida and Alabama, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, over the flow of water into and out of the
Atlanta area.
He's hardly alone. After all, the Southwest is in the grips of what, according to Davis, some climatologists are terming a "'mega-drought,' even the 'worst in 500 years.' " More shockingly, he writes, such conditions may actually represent the region's new "normal weather."

And this one focuses on the Western part of the US:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html?_r=1&ei=5087&em=&en=adc25155e153a757&ex=1193284800&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”

Speaking of selling our house, I am glad we are getting out of here before the water runs out! Not that I am happy to think that my friends who have more roots here are going to face possible relocations in the future. It's sad, but there is not going to be an easy solution to the question, where should we go?

Happy Birthday A!!!

Nine years of A:

Newborn

One year

Two years

Three years

Four years

Five years

Six years

Seven years

Eight years

Nine years old today!!

Besides being in shock that I have a nine year old, I am the proudest Mama in the world! She is amazing. I love you, my sweet girl.

SS - Chill Out

I have a post in the works that I am just not going to get to today, so I am copping out and directing you to one of the Casaubon's Book posts:

http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2007/09/52-weeks-down-week-21-keep-heat-down-or.html

In our house we have reduced the temp we are heating the house to 65 during the day and 60 at night. OK, we have not officially made it down to 60 at night yet, but we are working our way down. Now it is at 62. I did not even turn on the heat for the daytime until this past week, but I live in the southwest, so that makes more sense than someone in upstate NY waiting until the end of November to turn on the heat. Last year we heated the house to 68/65, so I expect to see a big energy use drop when we get our power and gas bills next month. Don't forget that less energy you use means less money you have to shell out to the power company!

It does take a bit of acclimation, but you can do it. Get out the sweaters and knit hats!