Whether or not Mrs. Knightly also shared her 2nd or 3rd furtively thrown in the back of the car  NTMCB’s, is not on the table for discussion at this time.

Coffee bags are constructed of Burlap, which is made from Jute, a fascinating, highly renewable plant grown primarily in India. No trees were harmed in the making of this post, nor was it tested on animals, although dog beds have not been ruled out.

Mrs. Knightly’s first project were pillows for her progeny.

"Are they clean?" -- "Yes."

And then, one of Mrs. Knightly’s oldest and dearest friends (this means longer than some of the Zoomer’s have been alive) was blessed with a bundle of joy. What to give a child who has, literally, everything?

Enter, the Racclown Bunny ™

Not from Fisher Price.

Because Mrs. Knightly’s dear friend also has a slightly twisted take on most things, he decided to accessorize the Racclown Bunny ™.

"Accessories are the key to fashion" -- Danielle Chi 1980

The next project will be up for grabs. Stay tuned and practice your Haiku’s.

Make something, even if it scares the children,

Mrs. Knightly

All winter long, I had this idea for the front yard, and it kept growing and growing until late February when I just couldn’t stand it anymore. The first stop was Lowes for a big roll of water permeable weed blocker $39.00, 5 cedar trellis’ $50.00. Then on to craigslist for two tons of concrete, rock and bricks – Free, what appeared to be 7 square yards of wood chips from a local tree company – Free, culminating in the purchase of $204.00 of four-way soil from Mt. Scott Fuel. For un-gardners, that is 5 square yards of dirt. The dirt part of the program is where it comes in handy to have a strapping young son because what he did in two and a half hours would have taken me at least a week and would have been accompanied by copious amounts of tears interspersed with words not fit for polite company.

Here’s what I did.

Now, if they could just turn Spring on a littler harder so my seeds will sprout!

From The Garden,
Mrs. Knightly

My darling lady-friend picked me up a Rii Mini wireless keyboard/trackpad. This thing is awesome. For less than $40 you have a rechargeable, USB keyboard and trackpad with a back light and a laser pointer. It’s great. When I was feeling very lazy during the break, I could sit and watch episodes of Dexter on my computer without having to drag the mouse to the couch or get up to start the next episode.

Some people complained that the track pad was hard to use, but I don’t think so. It’s a very small touch pad, so it did take a little getting used to, but the mouse pointer moved nice and precisely when I moved slowly, and zipped across the screen when I moved quickly.

One complaint that I have is that when I hold it with both hands, my left hand must be sitting on top of the radio transmitter, because the range gets limited. I’ve gotten used to how i should hold it, but it was a little annoying at first.

Either way, I highly recommend this little device. It’s fantastic.

Perhaps you’ve heard, but maybe you haven’t… either way, Portlandia, a 6 part original sketch comedy series, premieres on Friday, Januray 21, 2011 on the IFC network.

Portlandia was created, written and stars Fred Armisen of SNL and Carrie Brownstein. The series is based on the creators’ hilarious and fairly absurd rendering of our fair city and promises to create laughs, but not at our expense. Portland is known for being hip and chock full of creative types, but even to some Portlanders, the image conjured up by the media of who and how Portland is can be obnoxious. Portlandia plays on these stereotypes while following the lives of fictional characters: a feminist bookstore owner, a glass blower, and so on. The series is shot on location around PDX and producers have made every effort to fill open positions of all types with local talent and crew. Most of the scenes are improvised rather than using a strict script and will feature guest appearances by Heather Graham, Jason Sudeikis, Steve Buscemi, Kyle MacLachlan, and more.

From Oregon Live:
“Portlandia” features Armisen, Brownstein and guest stars satirizing such alternative-culture types as the owners of a feminist book store, a bike messenger, a punk-rock couple, and an arty duo obsessed with putting little cut-outs of birds on anything they lay their hands on. Each half-hour episode will consist of interwoven short films, with some characters recurring from week-to-week.”

If you get a chance to check out Portlandia, feel free to share your reviews and thoughts with us. Cheers to the Rose City!

p.s. — Portlandia is a sculpture by Raymond Kaskey located above the entrance of Michael Graves’ Portland Building in downtown Portland, Oregon at 1120 SW 5th Avenue. It is the second-largest copper repoussé statue in the United States, after the Statue of Liberty. [so sayeth the all-knowing Wikipedia]

Interns are the best! Thanks to Kyle for assisting the Zoom team with all sorts of helpfulness, but specifically, for helping us meet our blog deadlines.

Lets be honest, we all struggle with being creative from time to time, especially when we have a project where creativity needs to be emphasized. Luckily, the wonderful blog, zenhabits.net, which is one of the top 25 blogs in the world, has a great post about The No.1 Habit of Highly Creative People. The post states that solitude is the most highly effective habit in being creative, followed by participation. Although these habits may seem to clash and cancel each other out, the key is to finding balance between the two, and that is when you will find that your most creative ideas flow from your mind. Although the article is a little short, I believe it holds a lot of great information on building your creative habits that you will surely benefit from. You can also find many more interesting and helpful posts about simplicity, health & fitness, motivation and inspiration, frugality, family life, happiness, goals, getting great things done, and living in the moment at zenhabits.net.

*Thanks to our fabulous intern, Kyle, for this post… *we heart him*

When I’m feeling particularly Cosmopolitan, I might use this sporty little Italian number.

And then, quite by accident, I became aware of The Atomic Coffee Machine, which is $450.00 (US) worth of Gorgeous Coffee Goodness. Upon discovery of this sleek, sexy Caffeine Machine, I descended into a state that can only be described as profoundly sad and disillusioned (The French call this ennui). Because you see, fair readers, Mrs. Knightly has not been quite that good this year.

From my Leopard Recamier,

Mrs. Knightly

A couple of days ago, The New York Times released a video gallery of classic screen types simply titled Fourteen Actors Acting. The title basically describes what these series of videos are all about. Fourteen actors, with limited props, no dialogue, all shot in classic black and white. There is a great assortment of actors and actresses: Natalie Portman, Matt Damon, James Franco, and Jesse Eisenberg are just a few. Although these videos have no dialogue and only run for about a minute, they still produce a lot of emotion and result in powerful performances, and for a few of them, a little creepiness as well. My favorite is the one of James Franco just because of the creepy vibe I got from it. I wish I could hear some of these videos with no music and just the sound of the actors. What could James Franco possibly be saying to himself while kissing his reflection?

You can view the entire video gallery here!

Imagine this scenario. You created the logo for your company. Months of research, sketches, critiques and revisions. It was perfect and functional. Nothing was there that did not need to be there. It had been in use for years with no issues and then all of a sudden, you need to add the letters “HD” to it. What do you do? The logo was perfect without it. If you add to it does it become not perfect? Not an easy design task.

Something to think about next time you see a logo with an HD tacked on. Does it integrate well with the logo or does it feel tacked on? Here is a list of a few examples of some that work well and some that definitely do not.

Also, when standard definition is obsolete, will the HD add-ons be dropped or should all TV channel logos from here on out be designed initially with the letters HD? Hmmm. Maybe the HD could be dropped and SD added?

We are definitely not ones to toot our own horn, that’s not the purpose of this post. However, there were some alarming statistics that were so impactful we ended up choosing OFB. We share these with you so that maybe, if you are looking for somewhere to give back to, you may be inspired to give to the Oregon Food Bank, too!

• 73 percent of surveyed households had incomes below the federal poverty level ($22,050 for a family of four). That compares to 67 percent in 2008.
• 64 percent of households with children had incomes below the federal poverty level.
• 29 percent of households had incomes below 50 percent of the poverty level ($11,025 for a family of four).
• 31 percent of surveyed households listed long-term unemployment as the reason they sought emergency food. That compares to 22 percent in 2008 at the beginning of the recession.
• 28 percent of adult recipients are unemployed and looking for work, compared to 20 percent in 2008.
• The average length of time of unemployment was 15 months.
• Due to an unprecedented recession, demand for emergency food remains at historic levels.
• An average of 240,000 people eat meals from emergency food boxes each month. Of those, 33 percent are children.
• 16 percent of adult recipients work full time, compared to 21 percent in 2008.
• 52 percent of respondents cite “to be employed” as critical to improving their situation. That compares to 45 percent in 2008.

Without belaboring the point, the facts listed above made today’s poverty, unemployment and overall need very real for us. With the economy the way it is and unemployment running out, many families are genuinely struggling to get by. When 64% of families with children have an income below the federal poverty line, there’s definitely a need for assistance from those of us more fortunate.

The bottom line is this: our communities need us and it takes very little to make a big difference, so if you are out and about this year, pick up a bag of canned goods and drop them at any Jiffy Lube in the Portland area. If we all pitch in just a little, we can truly make an impact on those who have run across hard times, some for the first time ever. It takes a village!

More info here.