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seasonal highlights: UNICEF, Compostmodern, students shopping, Golden Globes, Brini Maxwell, our first grant, SPU, Collage party, the Future Perfect in Brooklyn...

saturday, february 14 | Went to an awesome 'folk jam' last night at Lottie Mott's in Seattle's Columbia City district. SO COOL! There must have been 30 fiddles, banjos, guitars and even a cello doing American standards. My Valenine's Day you ask...spent most of the day pruning roses here at my sprawling 'one bedroom' estate Five Ferns followed by another rose session at a friends who was pruning for the first time. His bushes were very old and unattended to though so we did quite a number on them.

wednesday, february 12 | I finally got the excuse I was looking for to head back to the big apple. Angela Lindvall, fashion model, actress and founder of Collage Foundation hosted a fundraiser and Fashion Week postparty with fellow organic style guru Danny Seo. It was great catching up and we conspired a bit on future projects. I also got a chance to talk to Angela's huband William quite a bit. Originally from South Africa and a professional diver, William's got a lot of great stories.

I also got a chance to catch up with other SSF-NY steering committee members Kim Heismann from PopSustainability and Mary Gelhar, fashion director of GenArt.

On my way out to the airport I made a pitstop in Brooklyn to check out an awesome new store called The Future Perfect, started by Seattlite David Alhadeff. David's concept was to showcase high style accessories, home furnishings and artwork by local designers...what he discovered was that many of the products had great sustainability stories as well including coffee tables from salvaged wood, table runners from Donna Karan scraps and redesigned dishware.

tuesday, february 10 | Another great Greendrinks tonight. If you don't have a greendrinks going in your town...time to set one up.

friday, february 6 | I gave a lecture on sustainable style at Seattle Pacific University (SPU) today. The professor of the class, Dr. Kathleen Braden, is a good friend of mine from my snow leopard days so when we ran into each other at our local QFC she invited me to speak in her Geography of Natural Resources class. Kirk Wimberly, a recent SPU grad who explored the operations of American Apparel was the co-presenter. It was a great opportunity and the students had some great questions.

wednesday, february 4 | Rebecca and I attended a welcome meeting at The Russell Family Foundation (TRFF) today. We recently received a grant from TRFF to start a Seattle chapter of SSF. The facility is first and foremost beautiful but it also has a lot of green building components as well. Best of all it was great meeting the other recipients...lots of networking.

tuesday, february 3 | Been to a couple great little restaurants lately. Bleu Bistro on Capitol Hill's Broadway here in Seattle. They have organic stuff mixed in throughout the menu and several organic beers. My BLT (with fake bacon) was mighty tasty and it's actually 2, count 'em TWO, full sandwiches. My buddy's mac and cheese was out of this world, the abundant garlic made it even better than out of this world. The design of the place is really hipster too with all sorts of seating areas stuffed in under stairways and tight little corners, it's quite a maze in side.

Tonight I dined with my friend Lisa from Grist Magazine at Cyber Dogs, spcializing in vegan hot dogs accessorized with all sorts of tasty topings. We had the "El Bandito" or "Intense Mexican Dog" as they describe it. It was a full entree and really tasty with chili, avacados, cheese and salsa. ?Ay Toro!

Oh, and I forgot to mention that while in San Francisco last week I took my friend Kim's suggestion (who works at New Leaf Paper) and dined at a fab vegetarian/organic restaurant called Millennium. OH MY GOD! I had the warm spinach salad (with the Asian pear walnuts). The warm salad with the smoked tofu was such an amazing taste sensation. The only thin I can compare it to [sorry vegans out there] is unagi (eel) sushi...both pure heaven in my book. The service was incredible as well.

saturday, january 31 | I must confess I have a new favorite show...the Brini Maxwell Show. Major kitch and on her latest episode she insisted that viewers use organic or home grown flowers for the fresh salads, desserts and summer drinks she whipped up on the show.

tuesday, january 27 | The YMCA Earth Service Corps student symposium was a really great time yesterday. I helped out with some of the planning, lead one of the treks and then was able to spend a big part of the day interacting with the high school students. We started with Severn Suzuki's 1992 Rio Summit speech. Stunning. And it was the first time many of the students saw the speech. Next, my trek was off to "Shop for a better world". Our first stop was at Madison Market, a local coop to talk about coops and the importance of local and organic food. Next it was off to Value Village where the students each got $5 to find something that expressed themselves, their individuality. Our last stop was at the City of Seattle's exhibit, Art, Architecture and Product Design. Stay tuned for some pics.

sunday, january 25 | The AIGA/IDSA conference Compostmodern was inredible. This was my first time hanging with a graphic design crowd and I am really impressed with the sustainability efforts underway in the industry. One big find, ReadyMade magazine. HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THESE GUYS? Check out their link and sign up...a very hip version of Martha Stewart with sustainability written all over it considering all the reuse they promote and all. I also hung out with my buddies at New Leaf Paper.

And of course what sort of style buffs would SSF be if we didn't have a couple "best dressed" picks from the Golden Globes. Our sustainable style hats are off to Jennifer Aniston and Kim Cattrall for their vintage Valentino. Jennifer seems to be making vintage a habit too. I bet she was shopping at Paper Bag Princess again.

wednesday, january 21 | Had a wonderful organic dinner at the home of friend and fellow sustainable style enthusiast Ingrid Rasch. The dinner was held for Bill Shireman, Future 500 who was visiting Seattle to help prepare for the Network for Business Innovation and Sustainability (NBIS) event being planned for the fall. Fabulous food prepared by a former Herb Farm chef. We had a great conversation about how to get companies to embrace sustainabiltiy as well.

tuesday, january 20 | We had our UNICEF volunteer recognition dinner tonight at the Bon Macy's led by our incredible chairperson, Marge Haines. Great dinner, good people and lots of incredible stories about a really successful year. Our chapter is all volunteer, but they really seem to get a lot don.

tuesday, january 13 | Another great greendrinks tonight. Met a great guy who started up Eco Encore a nonprofit that sells donated media on Amazon.com to raise money for nonprofits.

saturday, january 3 | Clean up day at the UNICEF gift wrap today. It actually went pretty quickly with all th volunteers we had. We also heard a lot of the great stories from the season, including people responding to the huge UNICEF poster we put up that featured children playing in a field in Ethiopia. Several people mentioned they had received assistance from UNICEF and new where the location was. Cool. Another story involved a woman purchasing a tribute card to give to someone else. Cool in itself but actually she was doing it because a child had put it on a giving tree...that they wanted to make a donation to UNICEF. WAY COOL!

tuesday, december 23 | With a sunny day in Seattle, I reved up Ru (my Vespa) and headed down for another day at the UNICEF giftwrap center at Westlake Center. Biz is picking up and we're doing a lot of wrapping. I've somehow succeeded in injuring myself in the line of duty...twice on the tape dispenser and once with the ribbon slicer (trying to clean it).

In other news...I went to the Seahawks vs. Cardinals game on Sunday with my Sis and future brother-in-law, Mike. Great game (we won, five fumbles and all) but I was also really impressed with all the great stuff the Seahawks are doing in the community, particularly the Stats for Kids program. I think it's time to rev up SSF's sports program.