Pirate Boy

I had a little fun today making a scrapblog entry for my three year old. We took the little guy to Long John Silver's and had so much fun playing with the paper pirate hat, I couldn't help but take a few pictures of his adorable personality.

Do something creative today.

Each day would be more beautiful and fulfilling, if we each did something creative and good.

Today I did a word-play project using Wordle. First you make a list and write down a lot of words that can be used to describe yourself. Then randomize it, verticle, horizontal and in various order, font and colors. It was quite fun to make and turned out nice.

I think I'll start carrying a notebook with me to jot down my ideas and thoughts. Sometimes I think of things on the spot and if I don't write them down, then I forget them later.

Tim Burton's "Wonderland" and message from Raven.

I am happy to say I talked to an old friend today, who wanted to tell me about Tim Burton's new "Alice in Wonderland" film. Raven was quite excited. You have to understand, she isn't from this time or this place. She had been lost in the "Forest of Forgetfulness" for quite some time now and I am always nervous when she arrives. I am never certain if I should listen to her spinning out a tale or not. I have heard stories of those who got lost in her web? It's disconcerting to say the least, but if I didn't listen then I wouldn't get to hear the story, so there are times when you have to be brave. Raven had also told me Luna, her sister, had gone to spin the tale for D. L. White as well. You can read about her experience here at D.L. White's blog.

So here it was, 11:00 pm and I heard a noise on my screen porch. I thought it might be the wind at first, but I came to realize it was a quiet knocking. I wondered who was on my porch so late at night. Whoever they were I was glad didn't wake up my sleeping Chihuahua brood. So I snuck out of bed and made my way in the dark to the glass door. I turned on the dim porch light. Even though I had not seen Raven in so long, she looked exactly the same to me. Dress as dark as midnight blue, hair as black as obsidian and her raven perched quietly on her shoulder, looking at me with its intelligent, spooky eyes. I opened the door just a crack.

"What are you doing here?" I asked Raven, trying not to sound scared. She only smiled and motioned I should sit. I opened the door and went out to the porch to sit with her, and I could tell she was excited to discuss some news.

"I have brought you something" and she handed me a large envelope, made with some kind of old crinkled, weathered looking paper. This could be a scary thing I considered, but then she spoke slowly and softly, her voice almost musical. "There is a man, who makes moving picture; I think you call them films. His name is Burton and he has found a portal to our world. These are some of the pictures he has taken and my sister and I just knew we had to tell you and D. L. White about them right away. We know how you both so love anything to do with our world. Thank goodness Carroll had written about things long ago or you two might never have found us in the forest."

I slowly opened the old envelope which crackled as I peered inside. There were eight large and very beautiful pictures. I took out each one carefully. They were pictures of their world, seen through this Burton's lenses. "Fantastic" I replied. "I have to share this with my friends." All Raven said, was, "I hope you do." And then she left as quiet as she came, her raven cawed as if in farewell. "Until the next time." it seemed to say, or maybe that was, "nevermore," but I couldn't tell for sure.

I am posting the pictures here to share with you all. The first one is at the beginning of this post. The other two are below. I hope you are as excited about this film as I am now. Thanks to Raven for sharing them with us. Also, there are more pictures posted from Luna on D.L. White's blog at "Storm in A Tea Cup."

ALICE IN THE FOREST OF FORGETFULNESS by D.L. White

For those of you wondering why I have "Raven's Writing Desk" as my title, and why my theme is always realted to "Alice in Wonderland", it is because of this little story here, writen by D.L. White. This is just a little snipit of the entire thing, and one day we might get to share the rest of the story here, but until then, there is this little window into this world that D. L. White and I share and should also provide a frame of reference to go by. Everyone needs a compass, even if it doesn't point North. The story is about two characters, Luna and Raven Spinner who life in the forgotten forest located somewhere in Wonderland.




The Story begins like this....
"Oh dear me," said Alice, "I do believe I'm quite lost again." She pushed her way through some branches and found herself deep in a moonlit forest.



"I was looking for a...white rabbit...or was it a red queen?" Alice's head was all fluffy and stuffy like it was full of cotton. “What was I searching for?"



"Maybe you were looking for us?" said a voice."Heavens, but you scared me! Where did you come from?" said Alice. There in a small clearing in the forest sat two lovely maidens. They wore dresses of the finest silk. One girl was in all gray and there was a large black raven perched comfortably on her shoulder. Her ink black hair much resembled his shadowy wings. The other girl was in all white and when she glanced up at Alice, she saw that she had the most unusual shade of lavender eyes.



"What's the difference between a raven and a writing desk?" cawed the crow from the maiden’s shoulder."You know, I do believe someone asked me that very same question early in my journeys," replied Alice.



TO BE CONTINUED....

Trasnference June 2009

"I'm late, I'm late for a very important date! Oh my...just look at the time."

Today I spent most of the time setting up this new blog and transferring a few of my old blog articles over to this one. The reason I am switching blogs is because we are shutting down our "madteapartyafternoon.com" web site. It feels like we have gone about as far as we are going to go with that idea. It was a fun creative joint project that my friend D.L White and I had come up with to share ideas and make a themed space to play in. When thinking of what theme we should use for our joint project, we could not resist the theme from "Alice in Wonderland" for our web site because it is something we both enjoyed so much. We had also created an entire mythology to go with our site, an extension into Lewis Carrol's word behind the looking glass. Our idea was a tale of two sisters, Luna and Raven Spinner and the stories they wove in their home of an enchanted, forgotten forest located in Wonderland and every now and then they connected with some of the beloved characters from Wonderland.

If you chose to follow the White Rabbit and accept our little inviation you would have seen this picture:

All you had to do then was click on the tea cups at the Mad Hatter's tea party table to explore our little world.

We are all a bit mad here...

In our newly created space, we had pages for our favorite quotes located in the Red Queen's Garden.

We had a page for books we had read, movies we had seen, poems we loved, art work we had created, games we liked, and concerts we had been to or music we enjoyed. I had a great time learning to write HTML code and do some digital drawing. Most of the art work was done by D.L. White and scanned into a digital format.

Who Are You?

Shall we play?

Through the looking glass.



Alice grows...

Some of the the most enjoyable parts for me was our message board we had set up to share ideas and write articles, but later on it had become over run with spam bots instead of interesting conversations about creating and writing, so we had to take it down. Currently, it seems like our blogs have really taken over what we used to do with the web site. I will probably continue to carry the "Alice in Wonderland" theme and my Raven Spinner character into this new blog, because it is an extension of what we had already created and shared and I think it is a fitting design. I usually only update my blog about once a month or so and will try to find time to do some writing or creative project.

My Alternatives to Plastic.

I have decided to change some things in my life regarding my use of plastic. I don’t want to use plastic around food or store food in plastic anymore if not for the fact that toxins “could” be leaking into our food from these plastics, I think the over consumerism, and waste of all the plastic containers for food is abhorrent. I am 35 and I am just now getting the message. I have a lot to make up for, besides being a good steward of what we have been given. We should take care of this place, because it is our home right now. Look how wasteful our society is, just because they can be. I decided it was important enough to take action for my family. It is my responsibility to protect them from harm and insure their safetly.

1. I will NOT use plastic bags from now on. Not only are plastic bags wasteful, but they are terrible for the environment. To combat this problem, I have a nice collection of canvas and cloth bags to take with me to any store. China has banned them in most areas because of all the problems they are having with their environment. The plastic bags are becoming a type of polution.



I think America could take a lesson from other countries in this issue. Europe charges for each plastic bag, which is a nice way to deter people from using them. Also, I get $0.5 for each cloth bag I use at my grocery store. It is a nice incentive for me. Maybe they should start a tax for plastic bags, and use the money collected to help clean up the plastic bag problem in our country and also deter people from using plastic bags. If you woud like to also begin to limit your use of plastic bags, please check out this site about reusable bags: reusablebags.com

2. I will ONLY store my food in glass jars. Yes, I took all my old Tupperware and put them in a large bag for storage in my garage until all these types of plastic can be recyclable, especially #5, but also #3, #4, #6 and #7. I already recycle #1 and #2 types of plastic, like milk jugs, and water bottles. Plastic items are marked with a “recycling identification code.” If you ever wondered what the numbers stood for here is a list:

1—polyethyelene terephthalate (PETE)
2—high-density polyethylene (HDPE)
3—vinyl, polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
4—low-density polyethylene (LDPE)
5—polypropylene (PP)
6—polystyrene (PS)
7—other (includes polycarbonate, acrylic, polylactic acid, fiberglass)


The least harmful plastic for food storage are 1, 2, 4 and 5. Avoid numbers 3, 6 and 7. These should never be used for food storage because some of them could have BPA leaching plastics in them. The next thing I did was go to my Bashas store and Walmart and found some really nice Ball Canning Jars and Glass containers like the ones you see blow.



The price couldn’t have been less expensive then if I had bought them online in bulk. I got a case of 1/2 gallon size jars for all my drinks like milk, orange juice and they are great for brewing my favorite beverage, iced tea. I got a case of 6 oz. ball jars for “left over food”. They work great and you can safely warm up your food in them in the microwave without worry. You can just put them in your dish washer with the lids to wash. I can tote them to work in a bag and everything takes up much less room. My fridge looks pristine. Why didn’t I do this sooner? It is so much nicer and I didn’t ever realize it would be. I thought it would be expensive and would be a hard thing to change over to, but it was inexpensive and easy. The only thing you have to remember is to put labels on the jars so you know what is in them, otherwise you are doing smell and taste tests to figure out what is in each jar. I just use sticky notes for labes. It is surprisingly easy.

3. I will make an effort to buy my food in glass containers and re-use them or recycle them. I already buy my peanut butter in glass jars, as well as pickles. In recent shopping I found canned peaches in jars, and apple sauce. Why buy it in plastic when it comes in jars and is just as expensive? Buying butter in sticks wrapped in paper rather then plastic tubs is a good idea as well.

4. I will work on purchasing some stainless steel water jugs, mugs and glass cansisters to use instead of plastic containers. Glass canisters can be used to store some of my dry goods, like flour, sugar, rice and coffee. Right now those items are in plastic Tupperware containers. I also want to get a large stainless steel water dispenser to put all my drinking water in or one of these glass jars like the one at this store: Homecanning.com . They are hard to find and a little pricey, but I hope to find one soon. In the weeks to come I am sure I will find more ways to enhance this project.

Little Things To Make A Difference.

People often feel that what they do doesn't really matter, but it does. Each person does matter and what they do effects everyone around them. I think more and more people are realizing this, and things are changing for the better. Here are some things I do to make a difference for the environment: I don’t do anything radical, expensive or complicated and they end up saving me money:

Drink Tap Water: Having drinking water delivered to you isn't really cost effective, causes polution by having to use gas to deliver the water to the door. I don't like the idea of having water sitting around in plastic bottles and everyone knows how wasteful and expensive botteled water is. Osmosis is better because you don’t have to have a driver deliver water to you and the water is filtered right at your home, however we do not have one of these systems. We drink tap water filtered in a Brita Water Pitcher. I love this because the water is always cold and ready to drink and tastes great and this really saves us money. When my family takes water with us we use only stainless steel water bottles that last forever and are very easy to clean.

Use Real Silverware: I invested $10 on an inexpensive set of stainless steel silverware and tray for my office. They supply everyone with plastic ware in our kitchen, but I feel it is wasteful to use so much that will just be thrown away or break. I put the tray in our kitchen for everyone to use. I was somewhat surprised that some people complained that they would have to wash the silverware off, so therefore they wouldn't even consider using it? Wow, I thought that was incredibly lazy and a poor excuse to keep being wasteful. In fact, no one even said thank you, but when I see employees using the silverware, I am secretly happy, because I know that is one less plastic fork in the garbage.

Use real dishes: Our office also supplies the kitchen with paper plates and bowls. Again, this is very wasteful, so I brought in my own set of dishes that I wasn't using for just my co-worker's to use. There are 6 of us in this office. 3 use the dishes and 3 continue to use the paper dishes because they "don't want to wash any dishes." I was again shocked at the lazyness of this, but at least there are 3 of us who don't use the paper plates anymore.

Use real coffee mugs: The next thing I thought of was all the styrofome cups in our office. Why do people drink their coffe in those when they could just as easily use a mug from home? They also have plenty of mugs in the cubbords of the kitchen, so why not use one of those? I always use my coffe mug or stainless steel coffee cup for beverages at work.