I do believe that Film Biz Recycling might be one of Brooklyn’s best hidden secrets for treasure hunting. And that’s exactly what we did when I went on a field trip with Claudine’s kindergarten class last week to visit the business of one of her classmate’s parents. We walked over to the 11,000 square foot giant warehouse from school and we split into groups of 4 with a list in hand for a scavenger hunt!

Film Biz Recycling’s mission is simple: to create socially responsible and sustainable solutions from media industry waste. So what does this mean, exactly? Eva Radke, who used to work in the film industry, founded her non-profit business to divert the tons of materials from being discarded into dumpsters by the film and television industry. This includes furniture, props, books, clothes, glassware, signage, lighting – pretty much anything and everything you can think of that has been used on a set or a shoot. A good portion, about 60%, gets donated to charities. All the items remaining in the warehouse can be rented out as props for a shoot, or even for something like a party if you need extra dinnerware for a night. And everything that you see here? FOR SALE (and I just saw that everything is 50% off this weekend).

But as fun as the Film Biz Recycling and Prop Shop looks – and it is, as you can see from the photos of our recent field trip – Eva is doing something extraordinary to give back to the community while saving all this treasure from going to waste. The space is also used for workshops, performances and as an art gallery. It’s mind-boggling when you look around to think of all this stuff in a landfill when it can be reused and recycled. Plus where else can you find a 4 foot diameter disco ball, sidewalk newspaper dispensers, vintage Hello Kitty Pez dispensers, and tiaras all in the same space?

Mark turns 40 today! And it also marks the year where he’s officially known me more than half his life. Holy hell! How did we both become so old!? But I’m sort of glad that I’m not the only 40 year old in the house anymore. We can’t be in different decades, psssshaw.
 
For what it’s worth, the girls totally think we’re not old. We’re just “mom and dad”.

 
Happy birthday to a most hardworking guy, a lifelong companion, and a great dad. Look how the girls adore him. Hope they remember those fuzzy thoughts when they become moody teenagers!
 

Did you guys see this yet? I don’t get too excited over press (no, don’t take this the wrong way. It’s always a thrill to see your name in print, but when it comes to translating to direct sales, press isn’t what it used to be), but I have to admit I was really excited when I saw how our Valentine collaboration with West Elm turned out! It’s SO fun. And they did such a terrific job styling the 3 recipes we gave them: a cardamom spiced hot chocolate with orange whipped cream, star anise panna cotta with ginger poached pears, and a meyer lemon cake with blueberry lavender sauce. I LOVE it, so be sure to check it out.

Also in biz news, we have more new retailers who will be carrying our products. This Wednesday we’ll be delivering to Foragers Market in Dumbo and The Plaza Food Hall by Todd English, inside the Concourse level of The Plaza Hotel (yes, *the* Plaza Hotel).

Our marshmallows are also on the shelves at the just opened Haven’s Kitchen, a specialty food shop and cooking school, on 17th Street in Manhattan. Don’t forget we’re also at Gourmet Guild over at 110 Broadway in Williamsburg – all locally sourced products.
 
I think that about covers it, whew!

Ah, I guess it won’t be a snowless winter after all. A few inches, not a big deal, but we were out in the burbs at my mom’s where snow plows come when they come so we all used that as an excuse to stay home. The girls played in the snow while my dad used his electric snow blower to shovel the driveway, Mark rested as he was dealing with a rare 24 hour flu of some sort, and I squirreled myself away for the whole day to work on a challenging, but stressful work project.

It was a fine weekend.

I’ve been getting this weird nagging feeling lately that I’m not thinking big enough. It takes enough as it is to get through each day, one day at a time, but it’s true – I’m not really sure where we are “going”. Future dreams that once made sense seem to have lost their sparkle. I feel like we can keep going like we currently have been for however long as it will sustain us, but for me, that is not enough. The next steps are not clear. I don’t have a plan and I’m not sure what I want to do. I just know that I don’t want to wake up in 5 years feeling like I haven’t gotten anywhere.

There are a few benchmarks in your life that are like markers of adulthood. I remember when we first bought that round dining room table 7 years ago. We were still living on the top floor of the brownstone apartment we lived in when we first moved to this neighborhood. We lived without a table for years. We couldn’t fit one in the studio apartment we lived in on 12th Street in the East Village and even when we moved to that Brooklyn apartment with a dining room 12 years ago, we always opted to eat on the couch.

We bought this table when Mia was a few months old and immediately felt like grown ups. A baby AND a dining room table? The table wasn’t cheap for us at the time (and I’m sort of shocked to see just how much it did go up in price over the years at Design Within Reach), but we saved for it and it looked great in that space.

When we bought and moved to the apartment that we currently live in now, the table came along with us. It was great with a little toddler around. No sharp edges or corners. The table was solid. It worked for the 3 of us. Then we added another baby to our family and the girls started growing. One day, the round table felt too small. There wasn’t much room when we’d have friends or family over. The table started to become filled with homework, papers, drawings and markers. It wasn’t big enough when I needed to trim paper or do a project. We needed a bigger table. Luckily we had the space for one.

I think I started looking for a new table 2 years ago. It’s one of those big purchases that you need to be sure of. Depending on how much cash flow we had, the table search would intensify or die down in spurts over the years, but it was in full force in the Fall. I eventually put it off again after so many of my work projects got postponed and cash flow felt tight. Besides, I couldn’t find the right table and I was undecided on the chairs. In December, however, we decided that we were going to do it. Holiday sales were good so the search was on again. After having looked at SO MANY tables and even considering getting one custom made, I settled on this one that I kept going back to. I also bought 6 new chairs after much deliberation. These are Tolix reproductions, but they are pretty damn good reproductions and they were on sale. A few days later, the chairs shipped (you can see them stacked in that first photo), but I was told the table was on backorder. I can wait though, right?

But the table came today ahead of schedule and it’s here!

It’s a bit darker and the wood has more variation in color and grain that what appears in the photos, but it’s so beautiful and actually fits in with the apartment better than maybe a lighter table would. I think the chairs really work with the table too. The old dining set was too much of the same beech wood color and it was too close to our floors. This new set gives the space more texture and variation. It’s just rustic enough to work with our not so rustic looking apartment. The vintage George Nelson lamp works much better with this set up as well. The longer table also defines the kitchen area from the living area in the open floor plan so much better.
 

I don’t know…can a new dining table feel life-changing? Because I kind of feel like it does! And if our old dining table made us feel like adults then this table makes us feel like grown ups even more. I mean, we can have placemats! I have all these beautiful placemats that my friend from Dwell Studio gave me a few years back but we could never use them because they didn’t work with our round table. Oh, and centerpieces. Woah. This is like a whole new aspect of decorating that I have never even considered. A fruit bowl? Candle sticks? Maybe we need a candelabra! I’m thinking back to that epsiode of Ellen when she first came on the TV scene with that sitcom, remember? She was responsible for getting table decorations for Thanksgiving (or was it Christmas?) but she ended up dragging palm fronds from the street because nothing was open and the whole table was piled with palm fronds (does anyone remember this or did I just totally make that up?). I don’t know…the centerpiece and table setting possibilities are endless.
 
And so we are selling our beloved old table. Maybe you are interested? We have so many good memories so it’s a little bit sad, but since our apartment looks like a furniture showroom right now with 2 dining tables, we need to let it go. It’s been well loved – the table top has a few light scratches in it – but it’s still in great solid condition and it needs a new home because…new table NEW TABLE!
 

I love our Valentine’s Day Gift Box for this year. We have all new cookies and a new flavor marshmallow too. Mark’s been making passionfruit marshmallows for years, even before we started the business and I think it was actually the first flavor marshmallows he’s ever made, but we’ve never sold them before.

The chocolate hearts are made with chipotle so they have a spicy kick and then it’s topped with coarse sea salt. The sandwich cookies are lemon rosemary shortbreads and filled with a Meyer Lemon icing.

Order deadlines are February 5th.

Did you have a good 3 days weekend? The girls are back in school today, but we mostly stayed at home this weekend while Mark worked all 3 days. It was cold! The first string of frigid days we’ve had all winter, but despite snow falling everywhere else in the country, we are snowless so far this winter except for that freak storm back in October.

Much of what we did all weekend is what you see above: lots of coffee, looking at books, playing with all of their little calico critters, and drawing pictures. Mia drew the picture in the 2nd photo, but both girls have been drawing these houses on top of hills with these elaborate paths and mazes. Another favorite subject of Claudine’s is our family (last photo). We have endless sheets of paper with portraits of our family and in every drawing, she never fails to include Tobi, our cat who passed away last summer. The girls still miss and talk about him all the time. You gotta love the heart pointing to his butt.

It’s been awhile since I uploaded a new family on The Mixed Race Project, but I’m excited to share a new family with you today. Annie & Michael live right here in Brooklyn, New York and are raising a 7 year old girl and a 3 year old boy. Annie is from Colombia and Michael is a born and bred New Yorker. Annie is a Pastry Chef who runs her own business called PicklePetunia Made and she’s been super nice enough to help out a few times in the kitchen when Mark has been slammed during the holidays.

The Mixed Race Project has been hard for me to keep up because scheduling shoots, interviewing the families and editing the photos have been a time management challenge, but I don’t want the project to slide. I’m looking for a few families to shoot when we’re out on the West Coast this year: LA, Portland and Seattle. If you would like to participate and we can coordinate timing, send me an email at info@themixedrace-project.com

Oh, did I say we were having a mild winter so far? Because it turned so unbelievably cold today, it shocked us back into reality. Sun, then hail, then clouds, then sun, then flurries, then sun. What a strange day. Lucky 13.

It’s mid-January already. Mid January!! And I’m only now feeling like I’m waking up from some kind of post-holiday slumber. I entered the New Year lethargic, out of sorts and without any goals for the year. I’ve never been very good at making a list of goals for the new year (unlike my mother who never wavers on this!), at least not on paper, but then again, I am not one to make lists at all. Is it strange that I’ve never wanted or needed any sort of organization tool, calendar, or datebook? That I never write anything down? It’s all stays in my head and for the most part that’s worked…at least until I start becoming forgetful in my old age.
 
But today, I feel a little more alive. I started a design project for a dance company, and many more projects for work are being lined up. Schedules so far are vague and they could very well fall unfavorably (meaning all at once) or things can fall through again like they did in the Fall, and while it is admittedly giving me anxiety, it is making me feel something again. For the first time since our holiday rush ended and the hard month of December passed, I am feeling a glimmer and a sense that this will be a good year, whereas I have felt nothing before.
 
Maybe I am ready to mentally make note of some goals:
 
1. Buy less. I don’t spend gobs of money on stuff in general, but I can still do better on buying stuff we don’t really need.
2. Play with my new Polaroid camera (first test shot above).
3. Eat less meat and dairy. I’m not saying I’m going back to being a vegan, or even making the decision to eliminate meat and dairy from my diet completely, but I’m choosing to not eat it these days. It won’t be hard. I rarely crave cheese, and I almost downright dislike the taste of butter right now.
4. Make sure to set aside time to get those side projects done, which always gets pushed to the back when there is a lack of time…but when is there ever enough time?
 
Btw, today is lucky Friday the 13, which I always believe to be a lucky day. I booked a trip for Winter Break next month. We’re going to LA!

Maybe it’s the mid-winter blues (though I have to say, we are having such a mild winter in New York after the past few insanely snowy and frigid winters, that I feel like I have no right to complain – temps near 60 again today!), but I’ve been daydreaming a lot about traveling. It’s so hard you know, with the business, school schedules, my unpredictable freelance schedule blah blah that the excuses loom large and become big hurdles that make it seem impossible outside of our yearly August trips to the Northwest. So instead, I start planning imaginary trips, browse hotels, search plane tickets in the hopes that something will click or that I’ll book something completely spontaneous.

What trips do you have planned this year? We have 2 big things happening in 2012: a big birthday for a certain member of our household and a big anniversary. I had fantasies of going to Hawaii to celebrate these 2 events as it’s been 10 years since we were last there and Mia is DYING to go because she has all these plans to live there when she’s a grown up, but airline tickets aren’t as cheap as they used to be (Mark and I once found $200 roundtrip tickets to Honolulu from NYC non-stop! Craziness) and now there are 4 airplane tickets to pay for. Traveling as a family has gotten very expensive. There was also talk of going to Disney World for Winter Break, but it was decided that it’s not affordable right now.
 
So there is the road trip option which worked fantastic for us last year when we went to the Outer Banks in May. I’d like to plan something for Spring Break which comes early this year in the beginning of April if my work schedule cooperates. The weather will still be cool unless we go south again, but I need a change of scenery. I want to look at something different, a different skyline, different buildings, different trees, walk different streets. Go somewhere unfamiliar. See something I’ve never seen before. Something to break out of our daily routine that for the most part is comforting, but sometimes can be stifling.