***Edited

We’ve changed the cat’s name again, her new name is Pandora.  After getting to know her these past 5 days, it really is the most appropriate name. This is the absolute last time we are changing it!****

I swear this is not turning into a cat blog, but I did tell you that I would share some more pics of our latest Indie Fixx kitty. We have changed her name about 12 times now, but have finally settled on Lola, at least for the time being…We’ve never had this much trouble naming a cat, but this one is schizophrenic—one minute she is sweet and lovey and the next minute she is a wildly freaky spaz kitty. She does seem to fit right in around here though. She still does run like she’s afraid if we reach down to pet her and will not definitely let us pick her up, something our other cats enjoy. I feel like she may have been abused or at least terrorized by a child or something. Sometimes though, if I sit on the floor near her I am able to coax her over and she will get all rolly polly silly and get right in my lap. She will even reach up and give me a kiss. Anyway, here’s some pictures I took of her today. Sorry they are a little blurry, I still can’t use the point and shoot correctly.

This is Isabella and Lola taking matters into their own paws trying to get their own treats. Isabella, the ring leader, jumped up on the counter, got the treat bag and for about 5 minutes tried to get that damn bag open (when I took it away) while Lola watched, waiting to see if she could do it. What a couple of punks!

Image from The Nature Conservancy

Since today is Earth Day, I thought I would share some Earth Day tips with you. I’ve included some of the things I do to be more eco-friendly and some things that I am striving to implement. This is by no means a comprehensive list, there are plenty of other ways that you can reduce your impact on the planet and many others that may fit your lifestyle better. I’m also including lots of links and resources, so you can find out more about how can do more to become more Earth friendly. Every little bit does count!

My list of 22 things you can do to reduce your impact on the Earth.

1. Use cloth towels and napkins instead of paper ones.
2. Take a ‘Navy Shower’, which basically means turning of the water when you are soaping up.
3. Use Craig’s List, freecycle, swaptree, peerflix, bookins, half.com and others to get rid of stuff you don’t want anymore. Of course, you can always donate it to local charity shops as well.
4. Cut your grass less, use an electric mower or plant clover or another good ground cover that does not need to be mowed.
5. Use reusable shopping bags instead of paper or plastic as much as you can.
6. Hang your clothes out to dry on a clothesline or drying rack instead of using the dryer all the time.
7. Combine errands, so you don’t make as little trips in the car.
8. Reuse plastic and glass containers to store your leftovers in instead of buying those disposable containers. You have to wash them out to recycle them anyhow. Use any paper bags or newspapers you collect as wrapping paper. Cup up any 8 ½ x 11 scrap paper you collect into quarters and use padding cement to make your own notepads.
9. Buy local food and produce.
10. Eat less meat or become a vegetarian.
11. Have a home energy audit.
12. Replace your lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs and turn the lights off when you leave a room for any length of time.
13. Reuse shipping and packaging materials. I reuse as much as I can in the Indie Fixx Shop.
14. Buy goods that are made from recycled material.
15. Fly less.
16. Use the library instead of buying all your books, magazines and dvds.
17. Share magazine subscriptions with friends and/or donate your magazines to the library, doctors’ offices or senior centers.
18. Plant native species in your yard and replace and avoid planting invasive species.
19. Try to make your workplace more environmentally friendly by organizing office recycling, affecting purchasing decisions, encouraging less waste and more.
20. Recycle used electronic equipment responsibly.
21. Eat out less.
22. Walk more, drive less! It’s good for you and the Earth.

Please feel free to share some of the eco-responsible things you do in your life.

Here’s a list of resources to learn more:

National Audubon Society
Environmental Defense Fund
Friends of the Earth
The Nature Conservancy
Natural Resources Defense Council
Sierra Club
National Wildlife Federation
Rainforest Action Network
American Wind Energy Association
Worldwatch Institute
World Wildlife Fund
Earthday.gov
Carbon Footprint Calculator
Conservation International
EPA
National Recycling Coalition

Earth Day coverage from some of my must read blogs:

Etsy Storque
Treehugger
Craftzine
Apartment Therapy
Crafting a Green World

We decided to go with the name La Niña for our new little Indie Fixx kitty. In addition to being a weather phenomenon, La Niña means the little girl in Spanish. It’s a pretty sounding name and seems to describe our kitty pretty well: she’s such an itty bitty little thing, but has such a capacity to cause a whole lot of trouble.

Thanks for all your suggestions and sharing your stories about your kitties. I really enjoyed reading all the comments that you left.

We got a new kitty today! Yay! Now we are a three kitty family and I am firmly on my way to being a full-fledged cat lady. Our new kitty is a sweet, shy and frisky kitty found by a no-kill shelter behind a dumpster about 4 weeks ago. She is about 10-11 months old, but is so small that she looks more like a 6-month old kitten. We just brought her home today and she is still sniffing out the house, but mostly she is hiding in whatever corner she can find.

She has already been spayed and has all her shots, so now we just need to come up with a name for her. The shelter named her Love Bunny, but we aren’t really liking that name—it’s too cutesy and cliche. We prefer names that aren’t necessarily the most obvious cat names, but we are really having trouble coming up with a good name. I came up with Kali and Callisto, but we aren’t really sure about those names at all. So, I need your help! Please leave a comment with your suggestions. If we decide to pick your name, I will come up with a little thank-you package of fun indie goodies including some Sampler stuff, Sublime Stitching embroidery kits, misc notecards, an Indie Fixx button and other stuff.

I will also have better pictures for you, once she is more adjusted and not so skittish.

I’m planning on starting a Guest Blogger feature here on Indie Fixx. Don’t worry, I won’t be taking a back seat or anything like that. If anything, there will be more content than ever on Indie Fixx and I know you love the sound of that.

So, if you are interested in doing some Guest Blogging and want some more info, send me an email. I have a few specific topics in mind, but I am also open to your suggestions and areas of interest. Ideally, I’m looking for both peeps who just want to do an occasional post and for peeps who are interested in doing a reoccurring column. When you contact me, please send me a link to your blog, if you have one, or some other writing sample.

Some of you may have noticed a new feature listed under the Contents, while some of you may not be as observant, so I thought I would point it out to ya.  I’ve set up an Indie Fixx Calendar via Google Calendar and I will be listing upcoming Indie Fixx news as well as upcoming inide craft shows and other interesting indie tidbits.

For those who already use Google Calendar, you can integrate this calendar into your personal calendar so you you’ll be up on all the indie events. For those who don’t use Google Calendar, what are you waiting for?

If you have an indie event you like to share, send me a email and I’ll take a look at your event for possible inclusion in the calendar.

Let me know what you think of this new feature!

I need a favor. I’m looking for monthly city mags and weekly city papers from the following cities:

Rochester, NY
Athens, GA
Providence, RI
Chicago, IL
Pittsburgh, PA
Raleigh, NC
Portland, OR
Austin, TX

If you live in or near those cities, would you mind sending me an issue or two? I’d be happy to pay for the mags, if you don’t get them, and postage.

I would also be appreciative for the rest of my life. I can’t tell you what I need them for, it’s top secret, but I will eventually be able to share.

If you haven’t had a chance to participate yet, don’t forget that the last day of the Annual Indie Fixx Reader Survey is February 8th. Take a few moments to let me know what you think about Indie Fixx and be entered into a random drawing for your chance to win a Sampler Select: Sleep. Read more about the survey and the contest here.

Take the survey now!

I’m in a Super Tuesday state, as is half the country, and just got back from voting. I was thinking to myself while waiting to cast my vote, “I wonder if anyone is making election-themed goods over at Etsy.” Well, in honor of Super Tuesday and whatever your political bent may be, here’s a few gems I found.

I heart huckabee from honey bees
Barack your world card from Alcove Press
Dumb and dumber pins from Buttonhead
Hilary Necklace from Matsuda Bunch
Barack & Hillary pop art set from NeilJam
Anarchy is for Lovers tee from Can’t Afford Em Buttons

Indie Fixx has been nominated for The Fabbies in the category of Best Indie & Niche Blog! Yay!

What are the The Fabbies you ask?

The Fabbies are the first-ever, blogger-organized awards to recognize the top Fashion, Beauty and Lifestyle blogs from around the world.

Various prestigious blog awards have existed for some time, but they repeatedly snubbed the Lifestyle Blogosphere, deliberately ignoring the growing power, influence and prestige of this group of bloggers. So, in typical entrepreneurial style, three bloggers decided to take action: The Manolo of Manolo’s Shoe Blog, Tina Craig of Bag Snob, and Lesley Scott, Fashiontribes…with crucial assistance from Christina Jones of eBeautyDaily and Sam Francois of Papierdoll.

One of the best features of the Fabbies is that it’s a democracy. Rather than a few judges determining which blogs are “best” in 12 different categories (which showcase the impressive breadth and depth of the Lifestyle Blogosphere), it is the real experts – the blog readers, fans and supporters – that determine the winners with their votes, highlighting the deliciously freewheeling spirit of blogging.

I’m very honored to have been nominated and would be even more honored to win, since it would be based on the people’s vote. So, if you love Indie Fixx and would like to see Indie Fixx win The Fabbies, sign-up here to VOTE!

Voting will be live until April 30th and the awards will handed out during New York Fashion Week in September. 

I know I’ve been incommunicado since Friday, but Mr. Indie Fixx and I took advantage of the long weekend to work on the redesign of Indie Fixx. I had hoped to be able to make the changes on the 1st of the year, but there is only so much that one can accomplish in a year. Better late than never, you know!

I’ve been planning an update of the design since the opening of the Indie Fixx Shop. It’s been a sad long time since Indie Fixx had been updated and I didn’t want her to look like the Shop’s ugly stepsister, so I asked Liz Wong to work on a new logo for me. Once again, Liz was able to understand my gibberish and Crayola drawings and gave me exactly what I wanted!

I think the new logo better represents the blog and my personality and it feels like such a better fit than the old one. It’s like getting sparkly brand spanking new clothes…and you just can’t believe those old rags you used to wear.

So, my wonderful friends, what do you think of the new look? Share your opinions, thoughts and critiques!

Just a note to let you know that the Indie Artist Fixx and Reader Fixx Thursday (with a few changes) will continue after the new year. I’m taking a quasi holiday until after New Year’s…quasi, because I will still be posting, but not as often as I usually do. I wanted to still post a little, because I know a lot of you read Indie Fixx at work and I didn’t want you to have nothing to do during my holiday break.

Hope you are having a nice holiday week, whether you are working or vacationing. I sure am! Did some after Christmas shopping for myself (I’ll share later), went to IKEA (yea!) and I’ve been eating plenty of cookies and drinking too much wine. I will have to readjust after the holidays and curb my three favorite vices…shopping, eating and drinking wine. It’s the holidays, yo!

You may have already seen it, but I just got a catch to see the video by Annie Leonard called The Story of Stuff. In the video, Annie describes the linear model of goods production and distribution and all the hidden costs. Hidden costs like the alarming rate of destruction of the world’s natural resources, the health of workers who produce goods made with toxic chemicals, the collective shallowness we feel as consumers buying so much throw away mass-produced crap from mega MCcorporations.

So, watch The Story of Stuff and pass it around to your family, friends, coworkers and think about the stuff you buy, where it comes from and where it goes when you are done with it. Leave some comments too with any thoughts you have after watching the video and checking out the website.

Mintd is an online community that allows users to buy, sell and style items they have made or modified themselves. It’s easy to set up a shop and allows beginning indie businesses to get their feet wet or can be another marketing tool for more established businesses. It’s a great site for shoppers too. Products range from jewelry and accessories to homewares and art.

**Sponsored post**

Some kind of winter sickness has gotten the better of me and after participating in two indie craft shows in one week, I’m worn out, wrung out, strung out and feel like staying in bed. But, I’m supposed to go to see Neil Young tonight and nothing is keeping me from going! I’m a huge Neil Young fan and no matter how tired and sore and feverish I feel, I’m going to the concert. Thank gawd, Mr. Indie Fixx is going too, so he can drive.

Here’s a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Vintage Concert Photo I found on Etsy by Moonrise Photographics.

Too much of our lives are spent doing things that we have to do and not enough time is spent on the things that make our lives meaningful, fulfilling & enjoyable. We spend too much time cleaning the house, stressing out about paying the bills, and for many people, working at a sucky ass job. We really should spend more time with our kids, go to that art museum we’ve been talking about visiting, drink a bottle of wine with old friends, take a walk in the woods alone with nothing but a sketch pad to keep us company or just be more in the moment, happy and seize the day.

Jeffrey Yamaguchi, the author of the books 52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity and Working for the Man: Inspiring and Subversive Projects for Residents of Cubicle Land and the creater of 52Projects.com and WorkingfortheMan.com, understands seizing the day and wants to help others do the same. Through his blogs and books, he encourages people to think outside their cubicles, see the humor in working for the man and to add more meaning to their lives through creativity.

We should all be adding a little creativity to our lives. You might have to work for the man to pay your bills, but that’s no excuse to turn on the boob tube as soon as you get home from work. Instead, spend your time creating a manga with your boss and coworkers as the main characters or design and screenprint your own tee shirts from all those doodles you create during meetings. Or leave work at work, and use your creativity to document your last vacation, join a group of gorilla knitters, take pictures of your cats every day and make lol cats out of them to send to friends or make collages out of all the paper, magazines and junk mail you accumulate over the week.

To give you an incentive to make your life more creative both on company time and your own time, Jeffrey Yamaguchi has offered a copy of his latest book, Working for the Man: Inspiring and Subversive Projects for Residents of Cubicle Land, for a giveaway here on Indie Fixx.

To win a copy, leave a comment on this post with a creative project you have completed, a project you have in the works, a humorous or horror story from work or anything else you want to share that you to do to combat cube stress and to just lead more meaningful and enjoyable life. Jeffrey will choose one winner from the commenters to win a copy of his book. Projects can be anything and aren’t limited to just crafting projects. You can write a brief description or post a link to your blog or flickr account to share your project. Just share your creativity!

We’re giving you until December 4th at 11:59 EST to comment!

I never understood the Thanksgiving holiday when I was a kid. I thought it was the worst possible holiday…being stuck in a car traveling, having to kiss smelly old relatives, eating yucky turkey, and there were no presents, bunnies, elves, jellybeans or costumes. It’s only as I’ve gotten older that I understand the allure Thanksgiving had for all the grownups in my life when I was a kid. It’s exactly because there are no presents or bunnies or costumes that made Thanksgiving significant for them. I realize now that there is more to life and some things in life are fleeting and some things remain.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the things that remain. Family, who take you as you are and who help you through tough times and who you in turn can help through the rough spots. Friends who you can pick up with after losing touch for months or even years. Good jobs and leaving bad jobs. Things that make you feel alive, in the moment and totally aware of how awesome life, the universe and everything really is. I am thankful that I am able to spend my time doing something that I love doing and I am thankful to you, dear readers, without whom that would not be possible.

I hope to spread a little bit of joy to you all this Thanksgiving by sharing what I am thankful for and to hopefully help you remember those things in your life that you have to be thankful for. Have a lovely, peaceful and thankful day.

XOXO,

Jen

If you haven’t already pledged to buy handmade this holiday season, head on over to BuyHandmade.org and add your name to the list of peeps who have already pledged to support independent artists instead of huge mega-corporations this holiday shopping season.

I did it and you can too!

Fathye Levine is putting together a timeline of major events and turning points for the indie craft movement for the book Handmade Nation, a companion to the documentary.

She is looking for submissions of when fairs started, when brick & mortars opened, when community sites originated, the first craft congress, when the first issue of CROQ was released, etc. Please send her your submissions asap. There is a very, very, very short deadline–the info is needed October 29th!

Email information to: indiecraftdocumentary@gmail.com
Subject: TIMELINE
Deadline: Octotber, 29th, that is this MONDAY by 8PM central time, yes this Monday!!

Sorry for the late post today, but today has just been one of those days. And, I know you know what kind of day I mean. Just one of those days when you just want to go home and have a glass or two of wine or maybe a nice soak in the tub, so you can just relax and unwind. Except, you don’t actually have time to drink any wine or take a relaxing bath because your day isn’t going to be over for a very long time.

I have a kajillion emails to respond to, a long list of stuff that needs to be done (like yesterday) and I am hard at work on the Indie Fixx Shop (which is coming very, very soon)!

So, taking a break from all that, I thought I would mention a few items of interest.

1. Check out the contest going on over at Cleveland Handmade, an Etsy indie artist collective for Etsy sellers in the Cleveland area.

2. There’s also a chance to win some indie goods at Lounge Luxe, another indie collective site.

3. I heard from a little birdie that Indie Fixx is mentioned in this month’s Craft magazine, so check it out. I think we are listed as a resource for buying handmade for the holidays. I don’t have the latest issue yet, so if someone feels like scanning it and sending it to me, that’d be great.

Back to my suck *ss day.