Last night I attended the start of the Design Green Now west coast tour, just up the street at Western Washington University. Overall it was a fun event heavily attended by students from the Industrial Design program. The interesting hearing from Adam Richardson who is a Strategist at Frog Design about how many more clients are now asking for Green design and more importantly willing to pay for it. With pressure coming from executives believing it will have an impact on revenue.

After the presentation and panel discussion I had a chance to talk to some of the students  from sophomore to senior year in the Industrial Design program. So many of them were passionate and excited about applying eco practices in their future work. Still however looking for the black and white way to design green. Made me realize once again how complicated this whole issue is and the importance of keeping it simple when the realities of measuring what is really better are not perfect.

I also particularly like the Green Now tag line:

“Create a healthy planet with clean air, pure water, and fertile earth, where humanity is happy and ecosystems thrive.”

Very uplifting and a nice encapsulation of what makes up the green movement these days. 

Stumbled across this today from Cone.

“The 2007 Cone Consumer Environmental Survey reports that 32% of Americans are more interested in the environment than they were a year ago. Most important, 93% believe companies have a responsibility to help preserve the environment.

The study also revealed that 47% of Americans have purchased environmentally friendly products, 21% have donated to an environmental organization, and 18% have advocated for environmental issues. In their own lives, 93 % are conserving energy, 89% are recycling, 86% are conserving water, and 70% are telling family/friends about environmental issues.”

The study is all about business benefits for attaching to causes. Specifically in this case the rise of the Green movement that has grown so rapidly. What I find so amazing is that according to this study 70% of Americans are engaging their social networks about environmental issues. To me that is huge when more people spend their social capital rather than their monetary capital on an issue.

Is it bug business? YES. Is it good for the environmental movement to have businesses looking at aligning efforts to further there goals. ABSOLUTELY.

After a little over a year of hard work we finally moved into our new house this last weekend. And wouldn’t you know, it snows on move day. I mean hello it’s nearly April! But we got everything moved in about a day. Now we begin the process of figuring out where to put everything.

It feels good to settle in and there is this weird feeling of permanence I have never really felt before in any place I have lived previously. It’s a little scary since we are used to moving every 4 years. But at the same time it is providing a peace that is strangely new.

Not only is the house now mostly done and not a daily job, but I finished up studying for the GMAT and scored a sweet 640 so seem to have loads of free time on my hands. Good thing I start full time this week at ONE/Northwest otherwise I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. 

Shawn’s been working hard on the house (along with help from John and Karen!) and we are almost ready to move in.  Here are a couple of pictures I took this weekend. 

The kids’ room

Jax thinks it’s very cozy too!

The real work has been happening with the tile.  Thank you Mom and John for all your travels and beautiful work!

The guest bath…

 

The master shower…beautiful!

The attic transformed into a playroom.

It would appear that after an intensive two month stretch blogging our trip I went through a rather dry period there for the last month and a half. Perhaps I can use the excuse that I have been focusing on getting our house done so we can move into it. Yes that sounds like a perfectly reasonable excuse so I am going with it!

But we have made some great progress and it is really starting to look like a real house. John and Karen flew up a couple of weeks ago and John and I trimmed out all the windows and doors, installed the hardwood stairs, and got the handrails installed. While Misty and her mom transformed the lime green sunroom into a beautiful pecan and white oasis. Here are a whole slew of new and updated pictures of the house from the last couple of weeks.

Christmas at the wild animal park

Originally uploaded by Shawn Kemp

Nothing quite like christmas in california. Were it is almost 80 degrees. Especially knowing its snowing back home in washington. Merry christmas everyone!!

Well by now your probably wondering were in the heck we are. It’s been a few days since our last update when we were debating whether to continue on from Corpus Christi or turn around. Well we decided to go call it quits and make a run back to California. So we packed up the trailer skipped out on our last night at the RV park and made like the wind. Stopping overnight in Fort Stockton, TX and Kartchner Caverns on our way back to Temecula but pretty much driving non stop for three days.

So why did we call it quits, hard to say. Perhaps we just got tired of being on the road or perhaps we just have a bias for the west coast. But I can tell you it sure is nice to get the clothes out of the suitcase and settle in to a location for a period of time.

It has been a fun couple of weeks and we’ve seen and learned a lot. It’s always eye opening to see how things change and what stays the same as you travel from place to place. Makes me ponder once again the concept of local and what it means from place to place. What things make a place unique and appealing to some but perhaps not everyone. We loved some areas and hated others but it’s that diversity and difference that made us find things that resonated with us.

Lentil Soup

Originally uploaded by Shawn Kemp

Just made the most delicious lentil soup in the trailer tonight. So i thought i would share. The following makes enough for two or three people.

Cut about 8oz of bacon into thin strips and saute until brown in 2qt pot, drain fat and reserve meat.

Add to hot pot and saute 1/2 cup each of chopped onions, celery, and carrots. Add bacon after vegies are soft. Cook until veggies are translucent and turning brown on bottom of pot.

Add 2/3 cups lentils, 1/4 cup canned red peppers chopped, 6 oz chopped canned tomatoes drained, 3 cups chicken broth, 1t dried thyme, and red pepper flakes to taste. Simmer for 30 minutes or until lentils are soft.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Absolutley delicious, enjoy!

I highly recomend using all organic ingredients and if possible a cast iron pot such as a Le Creuset.

Finally hit the coast after what seemed like an endless amount of inland driving. Who knew that the country was so vast We hadn’t realized just how much we missed seeing the water. We checked out the Padre Islands National Seashore, which we both thought reminded us of Ocean Shores. Except a little warmer! But very cool and with endless stretches of beach. We found out there is a little turtle that shares a name with us: it’s the Kemp’s Ridley and is one of the most endangered turtles in the world.

Grabbed a quick bite to eat at Snoopy’s, a neat little fried seafood place right on the water. Exactly the kind of place I would expect, cash only and filled with wacky characters.

We also journeyed up and explored the area north of Corpus up to Rockport about an hour north. Took in the Aquarium which was a bit of a disappointment as it didn’t hold up to the promise of a $13 per person entry fee.  A little small and not a lot of exhibits.

Overall Corpus Christi reminds us a bit of Florida but without the charm. Granted its the off season but it feels a little run down and a little dirty. Or perhaps we are just wishing for the green of the northwest after being gone for nearly a month.

We are now at a cross roads in our travel, do we continue on to New Orleans or do we turn around and rest our travel weary heads in Temecula for a while. It’s amazing we have only been on the road for about 2 weeks this stretch but we are feeling a little overwhelmed and ready to stop and relax for a while. I guess it’s been a month total of travel time which is a long time to be on the road, at least for us. Though many of the people we talk to at the RV parks tend to do 4-6 month stretches. Geeez I don’t know how they do it.

Next Stop……tune in later to see which direction we decide to head tomorrow.

We took a little adventure into the city of San Antonio, leaving the solitude of our Hyatt that we are now convinced has no other guests. Traveling into San Antonio we were struck by the number of highways that circle the city. In the course of a 15 minute drive in we took no less than 4 different numbered freeways. But it is actually a very intelligent design and traffic flows very well. 

After walking by the Alamo, we spent most of the day exploring the Riverwalk. A man-made channel of water from the San Antonio river that winds through downtown. It has walkways on both sides and is lined with restaurants. River boats cruise around it nonstop taking people on tours. We stopped into a place called Cafe Ole and had a nice little southwest lunch. Note the small salsa bowl, that’s because it’s got fire in it and you can’t eat as much as you can with those giant northwest salsa’s.

In the evening as it got dark we were in for a treat. The trees and shops had Christmas lights up and it was a cool sight to see. Also about 7pm the people came out and the Riverwalk took on a new life as crowds filled the sidewalks and overflowed from the restaurants.  We found a cute local Italian place and settled in for a delicious dinner of pasta and Cioppino…with a lot of people watching thrown in.

It was interesting though that all of the activity of the city was concentrated in this area beneath the streets. When we went back up to the road area to walk to our car there was no one around and you would think it was completely dead, if not for the area that we had come from that buzzed with excitement.

Next stop…Corpus Christi