Quick one this time: I went to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in Wisconsin this past weekend...great show. Lots of fun and TONS of amazing food (um...beer-battered cheese curds anyone?), locally made. I met so many interesting people, readers and presenters alike, among them Nate Kipnis, the architect who designed this home featured in our January/February 2008 issue, and Roald Gundersen, who does whole-tree architecture, featured here. It was great fun to meet these two in person, as I've spoken to them by phone and e-mail so many times and they are both awesome and inspiring people to work with.

My newest task: Get a new, much more gas efficient car this week. I am planning to take a trip to the Smoky Mountain area of Tennessee over the fourth of July (just after we get this next issue out the door)...I'm going to drive because plane tickets are way too expensive. And I am NOT going unless I have something that gets over 30 miles to the gallon. I can't afford a new hybrid, unfortunately, but fuel efficiency is my No. 1 priority. Suggestions?

OK, this is going to be a really quick post, because we're getting into the thick of things production-wise on the upcoming issue, but I wanted to give a brief townhouse-greening update. The first major thing is that I got my recycling center organized. I have a bunch of bins and have set up curbside with a private company. Unfortunately (and astoundingly, considering how progressive the town is otherwise) we don't have a city recycling program in Lawrence and the only recycling center in town is at the Wal-Mart, which is all the way across town from me. With the cost of gas for those trips over there, the convenience factor (and knowing my recycling would pile up and pile up if I had to take it there), I decided it was well worth the $10 a month for biweekly curbside pick-up. The sad thing? My first week, I put all my recycling out in the morning before work. We had a huge thunderstorm that day (as we've been having EVERY day in Kansas for about the last month...weird weather everywhere!) and my recycling got blown all across the parking lot. It was then picked up and Dumpster-ized by the property management. Ugh! Next week I am going to put a brick in the bottom of the bins or something.

One other thing before I get back to the production work at hand, James and I made an awesome piece of art for our living room. It was his idea and, I have to admit, I was skeptical about how it would turn out, but it actually looks really cool. We took a bunch of our boxes from moving and cut them into equal-sized (probably about 2 1/2 inches) squares, then chose four colors of oil pastels to work with. We colored the textured side of each piece of cardboard with the different colors, leaving some of the "grain" of the cardboard visible. Then we arranged them in a big square, randomly mixing colors, and attached them all with hot glue to these reeds we had as decoration before. The result was a big kind of mosaic looking thing, colorful enough to bring some life to our living room. I am going to take a picture and post it here soon...it really turned out looking great, somewhat to my surprise, and it's definitely eco-friendly decor.

My next planned upgrades are pretty boring, but will make a big difference: replacing all the apartment's light bulbs with CFLs and getting low-flow showerheads and sink aerators. Not everything can be as glamorous as cardboard art!

If you have ideas for other fun projects you've done around the house, let me know and I'll steal them from you!