Posted another lovely family over at The Mixed Race Project. Christine and Randy live in Seattle, WA and I had the pleasure of visiting them when we were there in August. I loved the hilltop view of the city from their Seattle home and it makes me impatient for the summer when we’ll go back like we do every year. Although I’m not sure how much longer I will continue working on this project, I do hope to feature a few more families this year. Thanks for all your encouragement and positive feedback over The Mixed Race Project over the last 18 months. It’s helped me keep the series going.

It’s been a while since I put up a new family on the Mixed Race Project, but I did indeed visit 2 families on our West Coast trip this year. In Portland, Oregon, I met Roxana and Dupre and their 2 adorable girls. They cooked a super delicious Sunday breakfast and we talked about Portland, New York, food and the NY Yankees (Dupre is a big fan). Thank you Roxana and Dupre for letting me into your home!

UPDATE: We sold out our first small run in 24 hrs! We are selling more in our shops but please allow up to 4 business days for the calendars to ship, though in most cases it will ship earlier than that. With your help, we have already made monetary donations to the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance, The Red Hook Lobster Pound, and the Ali Forney Drop in Center. We’ve also delivered supplies down to Occupy Sandy and the Park Slope Armory, which is housing storm evacuees. In our next round we plan to fund The Bay Ridge Cares Kitchen, the Red Hook Initiative, Hurricane Sandy Long Island Disaster Relief, and Staten Island Project Hospitality. Thank you so much for your purchase and support!
 
I had been working on a NY calendar for the last few weeks, but with all that has happened over the past 10 days, it now seems fitting somehow. So, for the month of November I’ll be donating 30% of all calendar sales to some of the local organizations that are listed on this post and will also be taking a portion of the funds to purchase the most currently needed supplies for distribution and relief centers. The supply needs change seemingly by the hour, but via Twitter and Facebook, we’re able to see announcements of what is needed at that moment and try to put that in motion. Just this past Tuesday The Red Hook Initiative, for example, put out a call that they needed aluminum and foil serving containers to distribute meals. Later that afternoon, Mark was able to purchase and drop off 500 of those containers. This is social media put to use at its best.

The rest of the country might have moved on from Hurricane Sandy as the Election dominates the news and coverage of the aftermath and recovery efforts gets buried, but as the days go on for some people still without power, heat and shelter, the situation becomes more dire because of the cold (oh, did you know that we are having a full fledged Nor’Easter snowstorm right now? I know, right??). Field reports from volunteers paint the most realistic picture and the conditions are often much more worse than you can even imagine. We try to help because it’s the right thing to do. The weather doesn’t discriminate. You might only be spared because of pure luck and chance and if we were to find ourselves the unfortunate ones next time, we’d be grateful for the help too.
 
Find the calendars on our website or our Etsy shop.

Next year’s calendar is here! Available in our Etsy print store and our website.

There is so much good stuff at the Farmer’s Markets right now and it should continue on till Fall. We love walking over a block to our growing little market in the neighborhood and picking up zucchini flowers to stuff or watermelon radishes to toss into salads. These particular radishes were almost too spicy so Mark tossed them in a water, sugar and vinegar mixture as quick pickles and they are so good. It cut the spiciness almost completely and it’s been hard to resist not picking at them all day. We’re really looking forward to visiting the markets in Seattle, Olympia and Portland later this month. I think we’re all really ready for a change in scenery and a different pace, to break out of our normal routine (thanks to those of you who have chimed in on luggage tips – I actually learned a lot).

And another thank you to all who bought during our big summer sale. Between that and making sure our retailers are stocked up while we’re gone, it’s been a CRAZY week for Mark, almost holiday level crazy. I think he is really looking forward to not baking for a few weeks!

It seems like it was forever ago that we were on Governors Island with our friend Jill taking photos with film cameras. But that’s the nature of shooting film sometimes. It might take weeks (hell, longer even) before you get around to developing that roll of film. These were taken with a Yashica 635, a medium format camera and yeah…now I totally want a film camera. We’ll see. It can be an expensive hobby! But the approach to photography with film is, of course, a different experience since there are only so many shots on a roll. You find yourself more selective and really thinking about the shot that you want to take, meaning you don’t have a million shots of the same thing as I tend to do when I shoot with digital. And I don’t know about you, but I still remember the giddy anticipation of going to pick up my prints – something that we just don’t experience anymore.