I Love my iPhone

It seems lately that much of my family life is spent outside of my home. Our calendar is packed with sporting events, performances, volunteering and dining out. We've reached that point where all three of our children are old enough that we can leave the house without a lot of planning, and we've been doing that. A lot.

As a result, my iPhone has become an essential tool for keeping myself and my family moving, entertained, informed, and connected. I rarely make calls on it, but I have it loaded with apps that make my life easier. My top ten for a busy mom with a house to run are:

1. Sit or Squat -- locates the nearest public restroom with features, ratings, and reviews by users.
2. Around Me -- locates the nearest coffee shop, grocery store, gas station, Target, or whatever else you're looking for, and gives directions to it.
3. AniMatch -- a concentration type memory game to keep Katie busy during down time. We've had Furber family AniMatch tournaments while waiting for Jack's basketball game to start. (BTW -- Mom's the reigning champ.)
4. PhotoShop Express -- allows you to edit a photo on the spot and send it off. Great for keeping grandparents in the loop on our many events and activities.
5. CameraBag -- allows you to change the lens on your iPhone camera for super cool effects.
6. Hipstamatic -- a retro camera with multiple film, lens and filter choices.
7. Dirty Dozen -- a list of 12 foods you should always buy organic because they require the most pesticides when grown. Also includes the Clean 15, a list of 15 foods you can buy conventionally grown because they require the fewest pesticides.
8. Seafood Watch -- Monterey Bay Aquarium's list of fish they recommend based on farming methods and environmental conditions.
9. FoodSpotting -- a compilation of user generated restaurant reviews. Shows photos and restaurants closest to your current location. Great for finding a lunch or dinner spot between events. We found our favorite restaurant (The Sideboard in Danville) this way.
10. Vintage Video Maker -- Transforms your iPhone videos into retro 35mm looking film.

With all those tools at my fingertips the Furber family doesn't miss a beat. We research, record, and document every event outside the house, just like we do when we're home.

Dear Diary

I have a love/hate relationship with scrapbooks, diaries, and photo albums. I like the idea of them, but don't have the time for them. The finite amount of time I have now is devoted to the following:

• Family events and activities
• Study time and reading time
• Commuting
• Working
• Maintaining the house

Optional items I add when I have extra time are:

• Sleeping
• Physical activity
• Grooming myself
• Calling my parents

In short, I'm too busy living it to write about it. I know I'm not alone, because my sister seems to keep the same schedule.

In recent months, I've discovered a few things that make me feel like I could actually archive our lives with a minimal investment of time and energy.

Keel's Simple Diary is a fill-in-the-blank diary that even I can find the time to write in each night. The questions on each page are thought-provoking, but not too much so, and require only about a 5 minute commitment to complete. Perfect.

Apple Preview allows you to embed information into your digital photos so you'll never again forget which baby that is in the photo taken in 1995.

iPhoto allows you to organize your digital photos into books, albums, calendars, or cards with a minimum of time and technical savvy. Once your photos are all loaded (very easy if you have a mac and and digital camera) you can choose a template, or customize your work. Either way, it's easy to pull together a great looking piece of work that will look good on your shelf (or on your mother-in-law's).

While I can't say I've completely turned over a new leaf, I do feel like I have started to take some positive steps in the right direction. And by 2020, when Katie graduates from high school, I'll be scrapbooking like nobody's business.

Three Questions

I spend a lot of time thinking about my house. Specifically, how to make it comfortable and functional for my family, while still pretty for me. Every once in a while, I like to check in with my constituents to see how I'm doing. This morning, I asked three questions:

• What do you like about our house?
• What do you wish was different about our house?
• What will your house be like when you grow up?

Here are the answers....

Ephemera 101

As all Suburban Zen readers know, I am a collector. I especially love ephemera, because I love to keep tangible reminders of memories I've made, and I love pretty paper and type. I keep all my ticket stubs. I pick up postcards, luggage tags and business cards from various places I visit. I keep all cards, photos and thank you notes I receive. No scrap of paper is safe -- I tuck them all around the house and post my favorites on the linen board above my desk:

My son Jack and daughter Andie have picked up on my habit and are also avid collectors of ephemera. Andie keeps all her ticket stubs and theatre programs, and Jack collects Do Not Disturb signs from all the hotels I visit (I try not to read too much into the 20 or so DND signs that are currently posted on his bedroom door).

I must admit, our house runneth over with our collection, so I'm always looking for fun ways to integrate them into our decor. My current favorites are:

Inside the closet door from Watson Kennedy.

Ephemera wallpaper from Living Etc. -- dreamy!

But my all time favorite is this installation featured in this month's issue of Martha Stewart Living

Get ready JP: I'll need a ladder, some monofiliment, and a few moments of your time.

I Feel Like I'm Missing Something

School starts at the same time every year. And each year I'm reminded that I have a flawed system for keeping track of our family's events, appointments, and dates. Back in November of 2008 I had big plans to solve the problem (see post "Has Anyone Seen My (Fill In the Blank?")

but the truth is, I still rely on JP to remember everything.

Sometimes a girl just needs an infusion of inspiration. So for me, and for other readers with the same ongoing problem, here are the best and most stylish ideas I've seen for organizing a busy family.

I'm a big fan of chalkboards, as they can change as your family's needs change:

Cork is also nice for the same reason:

And an homage to my Mom and Dad, who use clip boards to keep track of everything:


Well, gotta run. I'm sure I'm supposed to be somewhere right now.

The Trend I've Been Waiting For

When I was in college, my mom started a collection of teacups for my sister and me, and for herself. For each significant holiday, she would pick out a pattern she liked and buy a teacup for each of us. With that collection, and the teacups that have been added over the years by friends and other family members, I now have an eclectic collection of about 20 beautiful teacups and saucers. I love the collection because it's pretty, it's useful, and it reminds me of both my mom and my sister. As my house started to fill up with kids and pets, though, the collection has been tucked away for a few years for safekeeping.

Lately I've noticed a resurgent interest in vintage china in the design world and in restaurants. I've seen china patterns mounted on walls in design magazines

and in restaurants

I've seen teacups used in creative ways to store and display jewelry

And I've been served in restaurants on beautiful vintage china pieces. My favorite example was a restaurant that used both heavy, white restaurant quality porcelain plates, and dainty little china saucers in the same place setting.

This resurgence in everyday use of fine china appeals to me because I believe beautiful things are meant to be used and appreciated. Also because my children are now old enough that I can get my collection out and use it with very little risk.

I've made some tentative moves in the direction of integrating my collection of teacups into my kitchen, starting with the most conventional use:

It was fun to serve tea to the girls on the first night of school, discuss their days, and tell them the story of each of the cups they were using, when I received it and from whom.

Word to JP: this does not mean those beer steins you collected on your high school voyage to Germany are coming out next.

Keeping Track of Your Balls

One would think that with only two sports (soccer and basketball) played by the Furber kids, it would be easy to keep track of the sports equipment. It's not. I see pretty pictures like this and can't relate at all.

I just stare longingly and think "I want that." But after a weekend with five soccer games, one basketball tryout, a few tears from athletes looking for their socks, shin guards, the right color jersey, etc. and one emergency trip to Safeway for stretchy headbands, we're all ready to cope.

My Dad is the subject matter expert on organization in our family, but he's not much of an athlete (although he does have an interest in this topic: we are storing his basketball shorts and shoes in our messy sports closet so he can play with Jack when he visits). So we turned to Real Simple magazine, our second richest source of information, and found some good advice for the mudroom, closet and garage in an article entitled

Organizing Your Sports Equipment

: Storage solutions for your space―whether it's cramped, cavernous, or in between.

So far we've read the article and we're feeling optimistic, but we have a few questions:

• What if your children only play sports with equipment that rolls away when you put it in its designated spot?
• Color coding is a very nice idea, but what if all the clothing for both daughters is all exactly the same color?
• What if you come home from a soccer game with a ball labeled "Ashley" and you don't have a child named Ashley?
• What if you only have about 2 1/2 minutes between games -- is it OK to fling your equipment in all directions while changing, in the hopes that you can find it all later?

Mercifully, next weekend is Labor Day, so no games or practices. That will give us plenty of time to forget how stressed we were this weekend and put off organizing for another season.

Add It To The List

The beginning of this school year is especially intimidating. Not because the school year with three kids requires extreme organization. I'm lucky to be married to the world's most organized man (see post Behind Every Organized Woman Is a Man Who Remembers to Buy the Paper Towels), so we manage to get most things done with an acceptable level of execution.

This school year is coming too soon because:

• Our summer has been a great one, filled with happy memories, and I'm not ready for it to end.
• We've been enjoying our summer right up until the bitter end, so we're not entirely ready.
• Katie starts soccer this year, so all three kids will be involved in sports or other activities.
• This year will be Andie's sophomore year in high school, and puts her one year closer to graduating and moving out of our house.

Ready or not, though, school starts tomorrow. I'm determined to get as much fun and happiness as possible out of each year, so each weekend of the school year I make a list of things to accomplish. I'm not as focused as JP, so my list often is sprinkled with optional items to keep everyone motivated throughout the weekend. The first list of the year has been compiled and reads as follows:

1. Write Suburban Zen post
2. Clean house
3. Laundry
4. Hike Las Trampas
5. Pedicure with Katie
6. Prep dry cleaning for Monday
7. Change date on Rent tickets
8. Clean, wash and gas car
9. Shop for school clothes with Andie
10. Ice cream at The Dairy

Whenever one of the kids wants to do something fun, I say "add it to the list." By the end of the weekend, our list is filled with a funny combination of work and play, and most things are crossed off.

#1 -- check. #2 -- yuck. But if I'm ever going to get to #10...

Open Door Policy

As you may have noticed, Suburban Zen has been on its annual summer hiatus while the Furbers vacation at the family beach house on the Puget Sound. We enjoyed our time together, took the boat out every day, had read-ins, went to movies, fished, hunted for crabs, went for walks, had campfires on the beach. It was pure bliss.

I had an interesting revelation this year that I hope will change the dynamic in my house for the better (and it's pretty great already).

First some background: my sister and my mom have always told me that it's a good thing to be the family with the hangout house. That way you can see what your kids are up to, meet all their friends, and see your kids interact with their peers so you can give them some gentle coaching when they need it.

I've tried to take that advice to heart and have parties and play dates at our house -- always scheduled and very carefully choreographed with activities and such to keep the kids entertained. The house is usually clean and the refrigerator is usually stocked.

This past week at the beach house was noticeably different. Andie, Jack and Katie befriended Franklin, Taylor and Sadie, three very nice teenagers from down the beach. Each day all the kids would gather, usually at our house, and hang out, go boating with us, play ping pong in the garage, and generally do what nice kids do. Every once in a while, we'd see Taylor traipsing back to her house with Katie and my niece Maggie following behind. Or Jack and Franklin would take the rowboat out and fish for dogfish. Or Franklin would conduct a wake boarding class for all the kids. I even caught a snippet of brotherly advice handed down from Franklin to Jack ("I don't know what the truth is, Jack, but it's always the best answer").


All week I was surrounded by happy, polite, relaxed kids and it was one of the best weeks of my life. No stress, no power struggles, and best of all, no planning.

I've now resolved to open my house -- clean or dirty, food or no food -- more generously to Andie, Jack and Katie's buddies. Bring it on girls and boys, I'm ready for you. Just take some advice from the best house guests ever, Franklin, Taylor and Sadie:

Be polite to the parents. They like it.
Be nice to all the siblings. Parents like that too.

Spec House Time Machine

I love my house. It's perfect for my family, and we have developed a system of organization that works for us. There are times, though, that I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and do a few things differently. Most of my regrets have to do with the area leading to my back door. If I had planned it right, that space could be the most efficient space in my house, but it's far from it. For example:

• I wish I'd spent more time thinking through the storage in the laundry room. I really want my laundry room to look like this

but it doesn't. It's a jumble of cupboards filled with who knows what, and no room for either laundry baskets or hampers. Sometimes the only way I can tell the clean laundry from the dirty laundry (besides the obvious) is this: the dirty laundry is on the floor waiting to be washed, the clean laundry is on the red chair in the family room waiting to be folded.

• I wish I had re-constructed the linen closet by the bathroom before I moved in. Now that I have three kids in school, I dream of a storage system that looks like this

but mine doesn't. It's filled with a mixture of toilet paper, tote bags, loaf pans, empty vases, sometimes beach towels, sometimes things JP is hiding from the kids. I dream of having those three backpacks, coats and lunch boxes staged perfectly by the back door. But, unless my kids want to grab a roll of toilet paper, a loaf pan and a handful of foreign coins on their way out the door, the closet is useless as anything but a holding pen for things I don't know what to do with.

• The powder room would be perfect if I were a single girl with the occasional visitor, but is not at all functional for a family of five. If I had it to do all over again, I would replace the toilet with an industrial strength model with would support the needs of a sorority house, and I would replace our pretty pedestal sink with a more functional model that has storage. That way Jack's vast collection of Axe personal care products could be stowed away under the sink along with extra rolls of toilet paper. As I mentioned earlier in this post, rolls of toilet paper are stored in the closet across the hall from the bathroom. Very inconvenient as you can imagine if one finds herself faced with the empty roll still on the holder and no one within shouting distance to come to the rescue.

If we decide to do some renovating in our house, that area by the back door is going to be the first thing to go. I can imagine it completely reconfigured into one big room with laundry, bath and mudrooms all in one. Maybe we can even work in a little spot for Jasper.

Would You Like a Bedroom Set To Go With Those Potholders?

This weekend we had our long awaited tag sale and I must say, our sale was a good one. We spent the whole weekend together, generated $650 in cash, and found good homes for many of our treasures.

Our family motto throughout the weekend was "don't be greedy," so we bargained with anyone who asked. In fact, we held a "bag sale" within our "tag sale" in the last hour that was a big hit with our customers: we handed shoppers a bag and charged them $5 for all they could fit into it.

As we prepared for and executed our sale, we learned a few things through trial and error that we thought might benefit Suburban Zen readers. Here's our top 10:

1. You don't have to do a lot of marketing, but do some. We posted our sale on Craig's List and put signs up in the neighborhood. That's all it took to generate a heavy flow of traffic for most of the day on Saturday.
2. Prepare as if you were really operating a store: get change beforehand, make yourself a cash box with your change, pens, price stickers and a calculator in it, have bags on hand for people to carry out their merchandise (and for the occasional "bag sale" when you feel like some excitement).
3. Organize your items into departments. We had Kids and Babies, Sporting Goods, Apparel, Housewares, Books and Music, Furniture. I felt like I was working at Target.
4. Make your items look nice and appealing. As Jack said to me when he was merchandising his items: "if it looks like junk, people will think it's junk and they won't want it."
5. When you drop your prices, don't pull off the price ticket. Instead, put a big red slash through the price and write the new price next to it. Everyone loves a markdown.
6. Make a clearance table -- ours was "everything on this table 50 cents"--and transfer things to it that aren't moving throughout the sale.
7. Put signs on things in the garage that aren't for sale. Ours said "Not for Sale. Sorry. Maybe next time."
8. People can't resist a cute six year old selling cookies and lemonade. We made an extra $10 from our lemonade stand.
9. Make yourself a Garage Sale Mix to keep everyone motivated. Every time our mix came around to "California Gurls," Andie perked up and started selling.
10. Have a charity organization standing by to pick up after the sale is over. Sunday afternoon, Books for the Barrios came by and picked up a few boxes of leftovers.

Tonight, our garage and our house are all put back together, looking nice, organized, and a little roomier. We don't miss our treasures, and we feel good knowing there's a little girl somewhere in the east bay who got a cute pink trike from her grandpa today.

The Memory Keeper

At exactly this time last year, I made an emergency visit to my sister Lisa's house when she unexpectedly became very sick. The trip ended up extending to ten days, and when I wasn't roaming Tucson Medical Center waiting for news, I was roaming my sister's empty house.

I realized during those endless hours walking up and down Lisa's hallway that she has become the unofficial archivist of our family. We had very few pictures in our house when I was growing up -- my parents were very good at telling family stories and passing down folklore, but not so big on pictures. I think my parents preferred to experience those busy years without the pressure of having to photograph it all. I've wondered over the years where those few pictures we had went and now realize they've somehow all ended up at Lisa's house. Our grandmother's high school graduation picture, our parents' wedding pictures, pictures of the two of us as children dressed exactly alike sitting on the steps of our front porch. They're all there.

It's perfect, actually, because my sister got all the brains in the family. She is one of those rare people who is both extremely analytical and extremely creative, so she not only has the family photos beautifully framed, she has digitally archived them. I think if they were at my house, they'd all be in shoe boxes marked "flower pots" or some such thing and lost forever.

I've been thinking lately about archiving and labeling the Furber family pictures, as it's getting harder and harder in my old age to tell the babies apart in the pictures. For those like me with the will, but not the skill, to build a digital archive of your family history refer to this simple article written by Amy Urquhart "Creating a Digital Photo Archive" and some good information from the National Archives on preserving the originals. Or call my sister Lisa. She's all better now and has been posting all our old pictures on Facebook.

And Lisa, if you have that picture of me ten months pregnant with Andie in a bikini, we don't really need to keep that.

(I'm Hoping) One Woman's Junk is Another Woman's Treasure

JP and the Furber kids left for Olympia yesterday, and I have decided to fill my time by preparing for our upcoming tag sale. This morning was spent in my garage going through every cupboard, shelf and box looking for items we no longer need, want, or remember why we ever acquired in the first place.

I found many items in all categories, but most in the last one. I also found some interesting things that have me wondering:

• Eight baseball gloves. We don't play baseball.
• A box of hoses. All kinds. With no instructions, identification, or clues at all to what they're for.
• At least 100 tiny cans of tomato juice. Yuck.
• A tarp of some sort that smells like vomit.
• All kinds of food. That's either JP hiding snacks from Jack so he won't eat them all in one day or Jack hiding the snacks he's found from JP. Either way, they're mine now.

In addition to all the strange and puzzling discoveries, I've amassed a big pile of treasures to sell, found a few things I thought I'd lost and had the best workout I've had all week. All in all, a good morning.

Now I just have to figure out how to get JP's fourth set of golf clubs, box of beer steins, and two big boxes of paper coasters into the sale without him noticing they're gone.

When You Thought I Wasn't Paying Attention, I Was

When I write about my parents in Suburban Zen, I usually write about my mom. I've been hearing from readers lately though, how much they love it when my dad pipes with his frequent, lengthy, sometimes even relevant commentary. Father's Day seems like a good day to give my dad his very own post.

Mark Twain once said that when he was 17 he couldn't believe how foolish his father was, and when he turned 21 he was amazed at how much his father had learned in the short course of four years.

As I reflect on my adult life, I realize many of the lessons I learned from my dad are from my childhood, and not lessons he actively tried to teach me. He just lived them and they somehow penetrated and stuck. Lessons like:

• Work hard so you can play hard.
• Take responsibility for yourself and your actions.
• You can be fun and funny, and still be in charge. Nobody can make me laugh like my dad can, but my sister and I always knew when it was time to be serious and listen. Not that we always did, but we knew we were supposed to.
• It's OK to make a mess, in fact it's good for you. As long as you clean up after yourself when you're done.
• Value people more than things. The only time dad got really mad at my sister and me was when we fought with each other, or hurt our mom's feelings. (Sorry, mom. we didn't mean it.)
• When you pass by a Dairy Queen, always stop for an ice cream cone unless you have one in your hand already.
• Always take pride in the house you live in. Even in the early days when we rented a house behind a gas station, my dad was proud of and grateful for what we had.
• If you feel like wearing an orange leisure suit, wear it. And let people take all the pictures they want.

Thanks, dad. I hope Andie, Jack and Katie are soaking up some of that second-hand wisdom from me. I know for sure they've picked up on the one about Dairy Queen.

I'm Still Working on That

There are many projects in my life that are unfinished. In fact, I'd say most of them are in various stages of completion because real life often interferes with my plans to complete something from start to finish. A project that takes more than 60 minutes is destined to be spread over multiple days, sometimes weeks, and on occasion, years. Rather than think of my to do list as incomplete, think of it as a constant state of progress.

One project that feeds into that constant state of progress is the inspiration board that hangs over my desk. When my family created my little office corner (see post Let the Inspiration Begin!) my husband hung a huge linen board over the desk for all the various photos, tear sheets, swatches, and other ephemera that I tend to collect.

That board is now an ever-evolving compilation of things I think are beautiful, things that inspire me, and things that may evolve into a project of some sort in the future (when I find the time.) In my opinion, a good inspiration board is never done: I'll always be adding and sometimes subtracting as my sources of inspiration, tastes and interests evolve. My children have even gotten in on the action: Andie has a board in her room where she compiles inspiration for her wardrobe.

And a project that doesn't have a defined end and is satisfying anyway? I highly recommend it.

Real Life Social Networking

Now and then I veer off my chosen topic of decorating a casual, comfortable, low maintenance house for families. This is one of those times.

I am well known for the love/hate relationship I have with technology. While I appreciate the conveniences that technology brings to a busy life like mine, I worry that it's had a not-so-positive aspect to my human interactions with people outside my family. (And my Dad might argue they're not so great with those inside my family either.) I was horrified to find myself having this interaction with my husband one morning:

Me: "Ugh! I'm so frustrated! I can't figure out how to post this thing on your Facebook wall."

JP: "What would you like to say? I'm standing right here."

While Facebook, Twitter, email, Skype and texts all make it easier to stay in touch with people, they also tend to make those interactions less personal and the connections we make more superficial. So I'm happy to see a new lifestyle trend that at least partially counteracts that effect: The Communal Table.

Many restaurants are designing their interiors to include a long communal table, where you and your friends dine side by side with strangers. It's kind of like a dinner party, but without the host. My favorites are:

Outstanding in the Field

A bus that travels all over America throwing dinner parties in interesting locations.

Up to 100 people are seated shoulder to shoulder and enjoy a feast harvested from the local landscape and cooked onsite.

Camino

A restaurant in Oakland, CA with long tables and church pews. You can't help but engage in a conversation with your neighbor about the Wood Oven Baked Bucatini they ordered.

Le Pain Quotidien
A bakery originated in Belgium whose philosophy is:

Friends and strangers alike come together around our communal table to break bread and linger for a while. Take a seat next to a neighbor, share the Brunette and be reminded that, even in the big city, we are a community.

I still have to decide to leave my house in order to enjoy this trend. But when I do, I like the idea that I might meet an interesting new person or be inspired to try something new. I might even "friend" someone.

My Summer Stay-cation

Seeing that I had just returned from a 12 day trip around the world, the Furbers weren't too anxious to go away for the holiday weekend. Instead, we decided to stay home and pretend our house was a resort. The kitchen was the coffee shop, our backyard was the grounds, and our bedroom was our hotel room. We didn't even mind sharing a bathroom with the other guests.

• We slept in late.
• We lounged by the pool and had fresh towels every day.
• We sampled the local cuisine: mostly made with the 20 lbs. of cherries picked at the local cherry orchard.
• The girls and I made a big jar of minty water with fresh mint from our herb garden and gave ourselves facials.
• I explored the local terrain on my beach cruiser.
• We listened to music.
• We read our books.
• We watched movies and ate popcorn.

I must say, this is one great resort. Pencil me in for July 4th.

There's No Place Like Home

You may have noticed that Suburban Zen has been strangely silent for the month of May. I just returned from a 12 day trip around the world. I visited many interesting places that were decorated much more lavishly than my own home. My favorite was the Rajvilas in Jaipur, India. The hotel is a beautiful compound, situated on 32 acres of beautifully landscaped gardens, with a 200 year old Hindu temple at the center of it all.

There were wild peacocks freely roaming the grounds. (And I learned firsthand that peacocks sound like howling cats when they're calling to each other under your window in the early morning.)
My bedroom looked like this:

The view out my bathroom window was this:

We had dinner one night here:

I appreciated the Rajvilas for its beauty, noted that it was always clean and quiet, and liked that I didn't have to make my own coffee in the morning. However, it made me miss my own not quite so luxurious, slightly messy and very noisy house. The Rajvilas, and all my stops, were wonderful, but were missing one crucial ingredient:

Sometimes an Herb Garden is Just an Herb Garden

By coincidence, I've received copies of the NY Times article "The Femivore's Dilemma" from three different people recently. It seems my status as a working mother, pescetarian, farmer's market shopper, composter and farmer in our suburban backyard garden makes me a likely candidate for the new movement of self-sustaining feminists who not only serve their families organic food, they feel compelled to grow and harvest it themselves.

While I admire the women who have the time and fortitude to raise their own chickens, grow all their food, and take up beekeeping as a hobby, I just don't have the time at this stage

in my life. The truth is, we grow tomatoes, peppers and herbs in our backyard because Katie likes to help tend the garden and it gives us a another good reason to be outside with our children. We shop at our local Farmer's Market because it's a fun thing to do on a Saturday morning and we live in glorious Northern California where the Farmer's Market produce is beautiful and delicious. We compost because we can and should, but truthfully, we haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet. We have fresh limes in our margaritas during the summer because the lime tree came with the house. The good things we do, we do because they fit within our lifestyle today.

I hope that someday I'll be able to indulge in a more rural lifestyle. In fact I have dreams of living like Tim and Karen Bates of the Philo Apple Farm. But for now, the herb garden is just an herb garden.

Extreme Recycling

With Earth Day on the horizon, we always give a little extra thought to how we can reduce waste and improve our energy efficiency in our house. Of course, we all try to take our re-usable bags with us when we go shopping, but somehow there always seem to be a few plastic grocery bags that get into the house. Rather than throw them away, we’ve made an extreme sport out of re-using a bag as many times as we can before finally abandoning it to the waste stream. The trick is to find uses that allow the bags to be used over and over again until every possible use has been exhausted. Here are our favorites:

• Use them as packing material instead of Styrofoam or bubble wrap. And be sure to put a note in the package reminding the recipient to reuse the bags.
• Make a soft nest for your Christmas ornaments while they’re in storage.
• Pack some in your suitcase: they’re great for isolating your laundry and shoes from the rest of your clothes.
• Tuck them into your beach tote for wet towels and swimsuits.
• Use them for your toiletries when you travel. I wish I could say that I have a snazzy, monogrammed cosmetic bag for travel, but I actually use the same plastic grocery bag (or sometimes a big Ziploc) over and over again. Who’s to know?
• Line the bottom of something that needs filler: a flower pot, a basket filled with candles, and shredded plastic bags make great confetti for a gift bag.
• Cushion your china while it’s in storage.
• Store your outdoor pillows inside them during the off-season.
• Put one in your carry-on bag when you travel. How many times have you purchased food at the airport for your flight, and had it leak all over the contents of your carry-on?
• Our dog Jasper likes to eat the fluff out of his dogbed. When it starts to deflate, a few plastic bags make it nice and puffy again.

We stop just short of this:

Although we do admire the industriousness and creativity of Tyler Velten, an architecture student at Yale who designed and created the chandelier, we're not quite that extreme. Yet.

Like a Fresh Coat of Lipstick for My House

We're planning to paint our house this summer, so I'm deep in the research phase of choosing the right colors. I recently asked some readers their opinion on my plan to paint my front door red. The response was overwhelmingly "yes!" Lisa Holmes mentioned that a red front door is supposed to bring prosperity to the house. Kamille Caple mentioned that studies show houses with red doors sell faster. In addition to the enthusiastic thumbs up I received from readers, I read somewhere that in China, it's tradition to paint the front door red before the new year, to invite good luck and happiness. And then the kicker was this endorsement from Suzanne Tucker in a House Beautiful article "The Best Colors for your Front Door:

"I wanted to draw people to the door like bees to a flower, and this luscious red did the trick. The color has such clarity. It's like the most kissable lips. It's like the best manicure you've ever had."

How can I resist? Red it is.

I'm partial to Benjamin Moore's Aura line of exterior paint because it's low VOC, they have beautiful colors, and the paint is easy to apply. I'm also partial to Benjamin Moore because they have an iPhone app that allows me to take a picture of something that's the perfect shade of red, then it will recommend the closest paint color to match that item.

Now I'm off to find a beautiful manicure or some kissable lips. Whichever I encounter first.

As most Suburban Zen readers know, I have a love/hate relationship with my TV. I like to watch movies and Survivor with my family, I love the Food Channel, and whenever I come across a Mythbusters or What Not to Wear episode, I’ll watch it. I dislike having to talk over TV, having to compete with it for my family’s attention, and every time my children start arguing over what TV show to watch I hide all the remotes and declare a temporary electronic blackout.

Because of my dysfunctional relationship with my TV, I’m always looking for the perfect media storage solution that looks pretty, hides all our stuff, and has doors that close so I can hide the TV from my family when I want them to pay attention to me.

I’ve come across some pretty great solutions in my quest :

I'm always a fan of the armoire as a solution, because it looks pretty when it's closed and has lots of room inside for all the other stuff I want to hide. I prefer a vintage clothing armoire that's been converted to fit media components, rather than one that's been designed for media storage, as the attention is paid to the design of the face, finish and hardware that's sometimes sacrificed on a piece that's designed purely for function.

Many people are putting their TVs in wall alcoves and covering them with art, photos, mirrors, or a pair of vintage doors.

I've toyed with the idea of painting an unframed canvas and hanging it over my TV.

And if I must look at my TV, this is a pretty cute idea:

But honestly, I'd still rather look at this:

I think I feel a blackout coming on.

Read Me.

I love typography. I always have. Maybe it's the years of writing thank you notes when I was a child, maybe it's my years of art training, maybe it's that I secretly hope having letters and type everywhere around the house is a subliminal reminder to my family that they should be reading. I don't know, but I love it.

If something can be monogrammed, I monogram it.

I collect vintage letters.

I've watched the movie Helvetica three times now. I want to buy the DVD just because I love the cover.

I just bought the new Taschen book "A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles" because it's beautiful, and because it comes with a code that allows its owner to download 1000 new fonts to use. Heaven!

So when I noticed this trend in graphic design lately, I felt I had finally found a style of art that spoke to me (see post "Art Shmart" for context):

If you'd like to display your art and boss your children around at the same time, good resources I've found for this type of art are Keep Calm Gallery (thanks, Melanie, for the tip!), Concrete Hermit, Typographic Posters. Go wild. You may even find one that says "I'm not going to tell you again: clean your room."