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?

20 degree temperature drop today. But on New Years Eve and New Year’s Day it was warm and 50 and we decided to go to Coney Island. Are these people really swimming in the ocean? Yes! The Polar Bear Club does a New Year’s Day swim every year and since it wasn’t freezing outside, we decided to come watch.
 

You know how certain plans work out better in your mind than in real life? I’m glad we went. It was good to see the ocean, to see the horizon and see the sunlight sparkle on the water. It just so happens that there was a party going on around us so it wasn’t exactly peaceful as I imagined it, but it was festive!
 
I’ve done brief year end reviews in the past, mostly in pictures, but I think I’ll skip that this year. I want to look ahead. 2011 was definitely less drama filled than 2010. Let’s keep that up.

I thought I would have to work right on December 26th on a new project, but in fact I didn’t end up working the entire week. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t do much at all.
 
I went to sleep very late almost every night (3am!) but slept in till 9 or 10pm. The girls did not wake me up.
 

The Wall Street Journal picked up a story about our calendars online and in print over the weekend and I sold a bunch of calendars.
 
I finally bit the bullet and bought a new and bigger dining room table and chairs that I’ve been wanting to buy for the past 3 years. Sure, the table ended up being backordered, but after 3 years, what’s another 5 weeks?
 
I went and bought our plane tickets to our annual August Seattle trip because I found a good deal. I bought trip insurance for the first time because geez, that is more than half a year away.
 
TOY PURGE!
 
The weather stayed mild and sunny and it was a pleasure to walk around Central Park and climb big rocks and watch ice skaters at Wollman Rink (even though it’s now TRUMP Wollman Rink – when did this happen, have I been living under a rock) and watch tourists snap all sorts of pictures of themselves in front of…trees.
 
Despite swearing we’ll never go to midtown during the month of December if we can avoid it, we found ourselves doing just that very thing because we forget that it’s special kind of hell reserved only for the holidays, but this year, not only do we survive the crowds and walking against a wall of people coming at you down Fifth avenue, it’s bearable because of the nice weather.
 
Continuing on with the “why are we doing this” line of holiday activities, we ducked into Trump Towers (what) for a little ice cream break in the cafe. Sure, Claudine had a mini tantrum when she realized that what she really wanted was lime sorbet and not coconut (grrr), but other than that, it was almost pleasant to sit there, stare at the Christmas tree and listen to holiday music even though I was asking myself “why are we here” pretty much the whole time.
 
The tree at Rockefeller Center, which in past years has always been a bit of a let down when we go see it in person, looked more enchanting this year. Maybe because as we were walking away towards the Subway Station the tree started *twinkling*.
 
By the way, doesn’t Claudine look fancy in her shiny new silver coat? She looks like a little lady.
 
Happy new year.

It’s a good thing we had cake and presents the day before, because Miss C. got sick on Sunday, her actual birthday, with a fever and a sore throat. We tried to lift her spirits by taking a short outing to look at leaves, which are peak out in Long island, but she just wanted to go back to my parent’s house for a nap. So far, being 5 hasn’t been fun at all and Claudine saids she wants to go back to being 4 because 5 doesn’t feel good.

I have to say, we’ve been really lucky with our health. The kids in particular, rarely get sick despite all that goes around at school. It’s like the health and dental insurance gods are looking over us (oh wait, what dental insurance? hahaha) and making sure we stay healthy and cavity-free so we don’t get screwed. I thought about this as I was sitting with Claudine, who was still sick with a fever, today. I thought about how insanely busy I was for the last 3 weeks, often working 16 hour days and how I would have been stressed if I had Claudine home from school with me, trying to find a way to work on these work deadlines. As it turned out, my Monday wasn’t so bad aside from 2 conference calls. We had lots of cuddle times. Makes me really believe that things sometimes just work out.

PS. Thanks for all your birthday comments. For those who have asked, yes…Mark baked the cake. He always bakes our birthday cakes. He asks the girls what kind of cakes they want and bakes according to their requests. Claudine wanted a vanilla cake with passionfruit frosting. Someone also asked whether the girls ever want like a Dora cake or something. The answer is no. I’m not sure they know that a cake like that exists!

…in a house in Tarrytown New York, right next to the Hudson River called “Sunnyside”. It seems fitting on a fine Sunday in October to spend the day around the towns that the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle was set, on the grounds where the author who wrote these stories lived. The house is completely intact and furnished as it was since the mid-19th century. I couldn’t take photos of the interior of the house during the tour (led by women in costume waiting for you in the various rooms – okay that was a little bit creepy to walk up to a room and see someone in period dress sitting alone in a rocking chair), but Mia found the house particularly fascinating.

There is no better place to experience Fall than the Northeast, especially in charming river towns by the Hudson. You can argue with me all you want, but it’s true. The leaves are a little late in peeking this year up in the Hudson Valley as of last Sunday and it’s slow to trickle down here in the city too. Which just means that we have a few more weeks of Fall color to look forward to before the trees bare their branches.

Last week of October. Suddenly trying to cram as many Fall activities in on the weekends before it’s all over. After last year’s farm fail out in New Jersey, we stuck to pumpkin picking on Long Island. I think the trees are a bit confused by all the warm weather we had in September and October because the leaves are still fairly green. Mark and I turned to each other while we were driving in the car yesterday and said “the holidays really are around the corner, aren’t they?” Time to fasten your seatbelts…

Not much happening around here these days. The girls are settled into school and that is going swimmingly well. There have been no transition issues with Claudine and she is loving school. The days are quiet because they’re both gone all day, a first. We’re establishing a new rhythm to the year with school drop offs and pick ups. The busy-ness of the season hasn’t quite hit yet, but there is all this pressure already to prepare for the holidays. I’m doing my best to ignore it at the moment. Trying to squeeze in Fall activities like apple picking even if the weather still doesn’t feel much like Fall.

I’ve proven my theory that no matter how much time I set aside for personal projects by consciously controlling the amount of paid work that I take on, the space fills itself with other stuff – domestic chores, parenting, obsessively looking for a new dining table – you know, life stuff (sort of like your income, yes? Your spending rises and falls commensurate to how much you make). How many times have I said to myself, “If I only had a few free weeks”? And yet, here I am with a few free weeks…and I feel more pressed for time than ever.

When Fairway opened up in Red Hook Brooklyn in 2006, we, like most Brooklyners, cheered on and declared that grocery shopping would be changed forever. Well, we did start shopping at Fairway like most of our neighbors, but after a month or two of driving 15 minutes over to the waterfront and parking in the spacious parking lot like suburbanites, Mark and I decided to stop. It had nothing to do with the quality or selection of the food. Quite the opposite really – Fairway did live up to its reputation, but we found ourselves falling prey to the Target syndrome. You know, you can’t leave the store without spending under a hundred bucks?

We were still in super frugal mode in 2006 and $100+ trips to the grocery store weren’t going to cut it, especially if the groceries weren’t going to last a week. The problem with Fairway is that there are so many good looking things to tempt you as you walk through the store, you just end up throwing all kinds of stuff that you wouldn’t normally buy in your cart. It’s like vacation spending.

Even though we’re no longer on a super strict budget like those early years when we became parents, our grocery budget and shopping habits haven’t changed at all. We still keep food purchases to about $450 a month for our family of four. This doesn’t include things like toothpaste, toilet paper, bottles of ketchup, shampoo, etc. which we buy in bulk a few times a year at Costco (yes, that does mean we have ridiculously large bottles of ketchup in our fridge), but it does include all food, including trips to the farmer’s markets (edit for clarification: this doesn’t include the occasional takeout or restaurants. When we were on a strict budget, this would happen maybe once a month). The good thing is that food is never wasted or thrown away. We only buy what we need, usually from a list. The bad part is that we rarely ever have fun stuff to just snack on around the house when we’re feeling snacky. If you were to just drop in on us one day for a surprise visit, We’d have nothing to offer you (sadly, my friends can attest to that. So if you want to drop by, give us some notice to shop, ok?). The only big change in our spending habits from those days is that we may eat out or get take out a little more frequently, but Mark still cooks pretty much 90% of the time.

I was thinking about those extreme budgeting days when we shopped at Fairway this morning. It was one of those Sunday mornings when the weather forecast derailed our original plans to go to the beach and we were trying to think of things to do (it didn’t at all rain, by the way). Exploring a neighborhood we haven’t gone to in awhile seemed perfect. I was also thinking that we needed to revisit those budgets that we stuck to 5-6 years ago. Remember that post about all the news bringing me down? Well the news didn’t get any better last week, did it? I am really trying not to freak out about the economy. For ourselves, our friends, my parents. But I don’t want to live in a bubble either and ignore what’s going on.

Oh, and did we manage to avoid the Target Syndrome at this Sunday’s trip to Fairway, our first in years? Almost. $94.

ps. that black building there in the last 2 photos? It’s across the street from the Fairway parking lot. The girls and I must have stared at it for a good 15 minutes. We even played “I spy”. Mesmerizing.

Amusement parks may very well be the 10th circle of hell as far as I’m concerned. Sure, they can be fun if you’re in the right frame of mind, but not in 90 degree weather and not right after coming from Stone Barns. BUT, we can only blame ourselves. It’s not like the kids came up with the idea themselves and forced us to drive there. It seemed like a good idea at the time, particularly because it’s right on the Long Island Sound, and a swim sounded appealing, but I should have known that as soon as the girls saw the rides they would be thinking of nothing else. The whole experience was jarring in the sense that I can’t think of anything else that’s as polar opposite of how we spent our Sunday morning.

Bucolic farm pastures vs. rainbow colored industrial steel and plastic
Farm animals vs. people in animal costumes singing choreographed dance numbers
Fresh, locally harvested food vs. Popeye’s Chicken and Nathan’s hotdogs
Quiet countryside vs thumping bass and loud music

Still, to see the excitement on the girls’ faces was almost worth the junk food and the lines to get on the rides. I had been to Rye Playland once before. It was the summer after my senior year in high school and some friends and I were visiting our art teacher who lived in a nearby town. I think it’s probably the last time I’d been to an amusement park as a “kid”, still wanting to go on rides. I don’t, however, remember being 4 years old and being such a thrill seeker. I swear Claudine in particular was getting addicted to that adrenaline rush of being twirled around, dropped from high points (that last photo up there? Her favorite ride which she must have gone on about 6 times) and zoomed through a mini roller coaster course. She said that the rides “tickled her tummy” and when she got off each one, she’d do a little hyper excited dance with this goofy grin on her face. Pretty funny stuff. And I guess that’s why as parents we tolerate spending hours in places that we normally wouldn’t want to spend our Sunday afternoons in. I may have loved going on these rides when I was a kid, but now that I am old, just watching the girls being tossed around is enough to make my stomach churn.

We had a weekend of extremes: Saturday the girls and I laid around the apartment and didn’t do much except to go get bagels in the middle of the day, but Sunday was super action packed. We started the day off at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. You can read more about the place here. We didn’t eat at the fancy restaurant, but did get lunch at the Blue Hill Cafe and ate in the courtyard. There must have been a wedding or event that day because there were lots of women dressed in breezy summer white dresses and guys in seersucker and crisp button down shirts. Or maybe people dress like that all the time to go to brunch on the farm, I don’t know. Stay tuned for tomorrow to see where we ended up the second half of our Sunday.