Bonus Bone: Chris Jordan's Intolerable Beauty

Boxcar, Seattle 2003

Chris Jordan's photography focuses upon the Intolerable Beauty of our mass-consuming ways. By visiting American shipping centers and industrial dumps, Jordan has seen the vast stacks of by-product and waste and he's both drawn in and repelled.

Circuit boards, Atlanta 2004

These images are staggering, mostly due to the sheer volume of all this garbage! We can't not buy things, we can't not waste, and it would take a miracle for everyone, everywhere to start carrying around re-usable produce bags. A lot of us are still trying to get our neighbors (eh em) to recycle - period. But each of us can become more aware of how we use what we buy versus how we waste it.

Crushed cars #2, Tacoma 2004

So we'd simply like to ask you to pay attention. Maybe this means you'll choose the yogurt in the container that can be recycled over the one that can't. Or perhaps you'll turn over a whole new green leaf and become a composting freak (way to go, Mama C!). Hopefully, you're already on board - recycling, shopping farmers' markets, using the heck out of your cell phone before getting a new one - and this post will merely inspire you to push your dedication further.

For these reasons, I, Cardboard, declare these images - this motive - a Design Boner.

Piled Mile High

Snow Day Denver! DB field reporter, Mama Cardboard, took a few minutes out of her day to snap some photos of Denver's first true snow. The above is taken from her front door and the pretty pattern below is a garden arch.

Thanks for the pics, Mama C! Enjoy your hot cocoa and any time spent asleep near the heater fireplace. Most importantly though - good luck on your flight tomorrow! Egads.

Bonus Bone: Kansas City Public Library Parking Garage

Kansas City Library Parking Lot, by John Irving Dillon

I read books and I write books (or a short story within a book, anyway), and Mama Cardboard never failed to cart us kids off to the library every single summer. Add that to my general love and admiration of trompe-l'oeil art.

Plus - and I'm talkin' to you, Porcelain! - some of the coolest people I know work in libraries.

Library Parking Garage, by Jonathan Moreau

For these reasons, I, Cardboard, declare this a Design Boner.

Rough Time for Scruff

We've got a situation, people. Although this is (mainly) a home design blog - sheets, candlesticks, renovations, paint - we do step outside the definition when it's important. You followed our emergency posts about the whereabouts of Grace; now help up find a home for Mr. Scruffy.

Mr. Scruffy lives across the street from Mama Cardboard in a sunny neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. This all sounds grand but his guardian suddenly passed away and he can't swing the rent alone.

Mr. Scruffy is a stunning cat (see above) but he's also a "...male cat (5-6 yrs old), very friendly companion/lap cat, indoor/outdoor." I don't know how he is with other pets/children but Mama C says that he's always been friendly when she finds him outside on her neighborhood walks.

Mr. Scruffy is paid up through Wednesday and then he's being sent into the system (ie: scary-ass shelters). If you live in/near Denver and have ever thought about getting a furry little beast of your own, send me an email so we can keep Mr. Scruff's trauma to a minimum.

Bonus Bone: The Colors (Etc.) of Alaska

Seward Harbor

Mama Cardboard just returned from a two-week vacation in Alaska. Here are the inspirational highlights:

Denali (aka Mt. McKinley)

1. The Locals:

"We saw lots of great animals - mama grizzly chasing a ground squirrel while her two cubs played, foxes and wolves right on the road, two beautiful big caribou - with huge white furry chests and big antlers - walking single file through the tundra parallel to the road, bald eagles everywhere...red salmon swimming upstream as we crossed the river, beluga whales in the gulf...a walk along the water, watching the sea otters float by on their backs."

Aialik Glacier

2. The Sound:

"Then we went to the edge of a glacier and sat for 20 - 30 minutes with the boat turned off and everyone silent - and just listened to the glacier. So cool. Glaciers move 7 - 8 feet a day! You can hear the ice cracking (sounds like thunder) and watch the ice blocks falling off (called calving - sounds like an explosion as the ice hits the water). The glacial ice is a beautiful turquoise blue."

3. The Color:

When Mama Cardboard first told me she was taking a two-week vacation to Alaska, I pictured nothing but a bunch of snow, of ice, of white, white, and white. One might not be able to bring a caribou home or simulate an adequate calving in the freezer but the non-white shades of Alaska are easy to bring on home.

Denali Red Tundra

For these reasons, I, Cardboard, declare this a Design Boner.

Photos by Mama Cardboard

This is My Love on Steroids

Triple Chocolate Caramel Apple, at Mrs. Prindable's

Dang it. I just found the perfect Mother's Day present and it's one day late.

These decadent apple orbs serve 8-10 people. 8-10! I do believe that, had I planned ahead and actually bought her one, this is what Mama Cardboard would have called an "apple huge."

Hope all you foxy mothers had a great holiday weekend!

Mama Cardboard is One Lucky Lady

Photoshop Magic: Happy Birthday, Mama C! & Cool CHAIN Box/6

Well, whatta you know! Mama Cardboard saw our post on the SCOOP's second birthday and decided to try her luck...which appears to be plentiful. She is one of the lucky winners!

I fully expect to receive one of these Orange Beautiful paper goods in the mail (along with a newspaper clipping on Denver real estate and an update about who just got married/had a baby/started taking dance classes).

Love you, Mama C! I need to rub your head for luck!

Weekend Flings

• The Sweetest Tale of Friendship (seen above)
• Snowy & Gleeful London
• Especially for Mama Cardboard
• Obama Likes the Heat
• Russian?

If you're new around here and have no idea what this list means, click HERE for a brief and witty explanation.

Mama C as Motivation

Mama C Painting the Living Room

One of the reasons I'm so gung-ho to get going on my own home projects is because Mama Cardboard has put an entire summer into fixing up her place. With Bamboo's help, they spackled, sanded, painted, stripped, hung and re-hung, and even put in a new light fixture.

Yet today is the biggest feat yet: Mama C is finally getting new carpet! She's been waiting for this for years and today marks the first day of installation. Together with the freshly painted trim and walls, it's going to look like a brand new house.

Old Carpet

Even though she's not completing the install herself, she had plenty of prep work to accomplish before the overalls show up. Check out this hi-lar-i-ous narration of Mama C and the relocation of the enormous and CIRCULAR dining room table:

"The main problem was that I didn't know where to put it. So I decided to take the top off. I unscrewed it ok, but then there is a mechanism for locking the base together that still connects the top and bottom. It looked way too complicated to consider removing that, so I decided to screw the top back on. Well... then the base came apart and I couldn't get it back together, and, therefore couldn't screw the top back on. I struggled and struggled and then decided to take a break. I had a cup of coffee on the porch and was thinking of asking [a neighbor] to come help me... After coffee, I thought I would give it one more college try, before giving in and asking for help. I got underneath the table, lifted the top with my back, squeezed the base together while inserting a yard stick to raise the lock between the two pieces, and then once they were together, reached up and behind me to the top of the table to grab the lock and lock the base together. Can you picture it?! Hilarious. I screwed the top back on and then rolled the table out to the front room by the big window. Hopefully, it is not in the way there, 'cause that is where it is going to stay!"

Congratulations, Mama C! All barefoot, all the time!!

Are You Getting Away?

Castellammare, Sicily

I speak only for myself when I say that this whole blogging thang has got me rather stressed out. I know, I know - you're probably thinking, "But you guys hardly post..." Pish Posh! It's hard to come up with new and clever ways to say THIS CHAIR LOOKS NICE. Sometimes it's near impossible to force open the laptop. Which leads me to...

...vacation...
[insert sigh here]

I'm gearing up for one so Porcelain & I are wondering if you're doing the same. And to where? And I'm all out of clever so it's time for a survey!

Upcoming travel plans?
	Yes! Although it seems like a lot of travel time just to take a seven day nap on the beach. But there will be rum punch!
	Yes! I finally taking a whirlwind trip to [blank] which I've been planning since I was [blank]!
	Yeah. But it's only grandmas/family reunion/road trip to IKEA.
	Kinda. I'm part of the summer library program so I'll be reading my way through journeys to distant lands...
	Nope. I can't read on the bus. Which is where I'll be. As I go to work. Sucks.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Photo credit: Mama C's neighbor