The Local Christmas Rundown

We spent the beautiful, sunny, almost-70-degree day scouting apartments around Raleigh, and I just kept thinking "We'll have proper internet soon! Hooray!". But for now, we're sipping tea at a Starbucks and ganking wi-fi.

Moving to Raleigh was a massive green trade-off. We have given up the low CO2 emission commute (by estimates in a recent National Geographic article, the #1 eco-benefit of living in a city is the walking/public transport lifestyle), but hope to earn at least some offset by committing to REALLY shopping local, which is much easier to do in a place where fresh fruit and veg are growable almost all year round. Not only that, but other cool things that we use regularly are produced right here in the Carolinas. So Christmas shopping was a fun treasure hunt of locally made treats. Here's what I snagged:

Cold Mountain Winter Ale for Les, made in NC

Chapel Hill Toffee for the Christmas Eve party with my fam, and one for Les's fam.

Local Chocolatier

Woot! Burts Bees is made in Durham! I gave my fave new lip balms to my best girls.

Home-made local jam from the Farmers Market for my siblings

Tippy's Treats, made a few towns away, for my Dogs-in-law (Aug got some in his Stocking)

Aug wanted to open his early.

My elf.

Yes, I know, the ingredients for all these lovely finds were probably not native of NC (like cacao for example), but they were all made by local companies and didn't have to be shipped across God's Green Earth to get to me. Which is a start. I was planning to buy everything from the local farmers market, but didn't think my family and friends would appreciate hearty kale or a bunch of turnips as much as I appreciated that they were still plugging away this late in the season.

The New Year is almost here, and my Green Gray and Grace year is about to wrap up. But I feel like I'm just getting started, so I'm not going to quit now. I just need to get some real internet so I can blog all the new ideas I have for the next Year of Awesome.

Random Green

Les and I were perusing the Whole Foods here in Raleigh, and he pointed to this tea in a reusable glass and said "Hey! Why don't you try that! If you like it, we could replace all our glassware and have some tasty tea with the same $2!".

I love my hubs. And I love that he's on the lookout for reusable, double-duty materials. We've also started making pasta sauce selections based in part on the shape of the jar and lid. Which is awesome, because we recycled all of our repurposed jars before we moved. Too much of a pain to pack, especially considering how often we make pasta.

But hopefully, we'll be able to cut down on the jarred stuff all together and start cooking more and more from scratch. We're still on the lookout for our permanent housing situation, but it will DEFINITELY have a bigger kitchen than our last place. And with a year-round farmers market that still had fluffy green kale, root veggies, nuts, eggs, and cheese for sale in December, I'm hopeful that we'll really dig into Local in a new way here. I'm pumped.

PS - the tea WAS very good, and while the glass itself is a little "ladies who lunch"-style for my taste, it does the job and has a handy lid that doubles as a coaster. Win win win. Oh my gosh, I'm such a dork.

Gray Hair Update and December Christmas Shopping Mission

I know, I know, I really need to get Les to take a proper photo of me and my gray hair. I'm remarkably bad at self portraits, especially with the built-in laptop camera. BUT, I really wanted to update the blog, and we don't have internet at our little house yet, and we're currently ganking internet from a lovely, bustling little Starbucks in downtown Raleigh so I decided to just go for it. I don't foresee myself having a lot of blog time at work in the near future.

But there it is; full-out gray. That light color streak you see is really a shock of white-gray hair. And it is not alone. I'm 10 months into the gray experiment and I think it is safe to say I no longer have gray roots. I have gray hair. Not really even salt-and-pepper in a traditional sense. I have wide slabs of gray that lay thick across my head and hide nestled under my part. Those slabs, plus about 1,000 individual gray rogues sprinkled throughout the rest of my head. And I kind of like it. I don't love the way the gray hair is coarse and wiry, but I like the look of it overall. I just wish I didn't feel like it makes me look like I'm creeping up 64 rather than 34.

Anyway. It is what it is, and I generally like what it is.

Shifting gears here, I also wanted to go on record with my Christmas gift plan. This year, with a few very select exceptions, I will challenge myself to buy only Christmas gifts that meet one of the following 3 criteria:

1. Handmade/crafted AND I HAVE MET or CORRESPONDED with the maker - i.e. - Etsy is OK, but random department store "hand crafted" does not
2. Produced within 100 miles of either Chicago or Raleigh and I BOUGHT IT in one of those two locations (bonus, there are some really awesome things made around here, and around Chicago)
3. Somehow directly supports or promotes an organization that I trust and whose social practices I would endorse

I've already found some lovely gems that meet these rules, so I'm encouraged. And I don't have kids (or a hubby) pining after any particular gifts, so I've lucked out in that regard. I confess that last month I did buy Les a couple of things from a Big Store, but they were from a store that stores pretty well on the Good Guide, so I felt OK about it at the time. From now on, I'll be a stickler. Even if it means hours of agony over what to get my in-laws...

I'll let you know what treasures I find!

Gonna be Good

Blog friends, I'm sorry for the long gap since my last post. Life has been pretty nutty! The move has gone really smoothly so far (our stuff still has to arrive on Friday, so we'll see how the "move" part of the transition really went once that is all done), and we're starting to dig in to life in the south. We don't have internet hooked up yet in our new digs, and I've been pretty crazed at work so far this week, so the Gray Hair Update and December Mission are on my "To Blog" list!
But as a preview, I'll say that it *has* been fun to get random "I love your hair!" comments from people. It's the south, so of course everyone is too polite to say "I love your crazy gray hair!", but I still appreciate it.

We are definitely going to like living here, though. We'll just have a big GREEN ADJUSTMENT to make, what with all the "no sidewalks, only driving" predicament. I wonder if tons of green space, abundance of gardening opportunities, a long local food growing season, and a greater awareness of water conservation can possibly make up for the YOU MUST DRIVE EVERYWHERE sadness? I'll do some research and let you know.