Balancing Kitchen Items and Cookware

While it is great fun balancing rocks, you could also have great fun balancing items in your kitchen. Everything from bottles, forks, plates, cookware, pots and pans. I personally balance items in my drip tray after washing them just so I can stack more items in there. Its not artistically done, but it gets the job done.

But for those of you who are more serious about doing such things, like the type of person who is so serious about their kitchen that they take private cooking lessons with a professional chef, then absolutely, go ahead and balance your cookware, baking tins, spoons, wine glasses and soup ladles.

Just don't forget to take a photo when you do something really amazing.

If balancing items in your kitchen isn't enough to keep you busy. How about learning to cook in your kitchen? Get Italian cooking lessons in Toronto in the privacy of your kitchen. It doesn't have to be Italian either, just pick a topic and get cooking lessons in Toronto with a theme of your choice.

Rock Balancing Video

Made this video back in May 2011. Forgot we had it.

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This post was imported from Canada Rock Art Balancing to Project Gridless.

What It Takes To Balance Rocks

By Aimee Rimes


#1. Concentration

Rock balancing requires concentration and an open heart and mind. Anyone can do rock balancing and at any skill level. Connecting with the rocks allows you to concentrate and focus on the moment and is very relaxing. The rocks allow for creative play from stone prophets as I like to call them, or as referred to as stone towers, they speak for themselves and all around if you listen to them; to smaller designs that are uniquely creative and often tell a story and demonstrate one’s ability to concentrate whiling creatively playing with the rocks, often the smaller ones are made by children and women, while the more experienced and stronger people can go for the bigger stone towers.


#2 It Takes Patience

When you allow yourself the time for creative space and have a few hours to breath out in nature, you would be surprised what nature can reveal to you. In honoring nature and what she does for us can allow you to feel better and relax. While contemplating doing some more rock balancing, and honoring the space, I found myself able to find more freedom even in just the sitting with nature and being present. Where normally I would want to jump right in and balance rocks, I decide I would just sit with them, and the space, the water and the fresh air. Later, I found others enjoying the space with me, and a baby came along playing on the rocks and I was playing in the sand. Then while making a sand painting on the rocks, the baby came right over and lied belly down right on rocks and was having a great time. Sometimes, just holding the space and time to allow things to happen, things will just happen all on their own. To do rock balancing and sometimes to do nothing but be present with yourself; it takes patience. What will happen may be a blessing all on its own, only time and patience will tell.

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This post was imported from Canada Rock Art Balancing to Project Gridless.

Rock Balancing in the Garden

The following is an example of some rock balancing I did while visiting my parents and made quite a few rocks balance in mother's 6+ acres of gardens. Sadly my camera batteries ran out of juice so I didn't get photos of them all. I shall visit again in August and take extra batteries.

Geodesic Homes

Geodesic domes were heavily promoted by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller during the 1950s and while they did get off the drawing board at the time, they were never a huge financial success due to costly manufacturing processes at the time.

However times have since changed. It is now much more economical to build (or buy) a geodesic home.

Step 1. Order prefabricated pieces for your geodesic home. (Or build the pieces yourself.)

Step 2. Build a foundation the right size for your new home.

Step 3. Assemble all the pieces on top of your foundation.

Step 4. Add internal wiring and plumbing, and you are basically done.

Below are 9 examples of geodesic dome homes and also a geodesic treehouse someone made.

Plus the Geodesic Treehouse!

City Living Vs Living Off the Grid

Check out this blog post: City Living Vs Living Off the Grid

How to find off the grid homes

#1. Lets first stop and determine what OFF THE GRID actually means.

The term off-the-grid (OTG) or off-grid refers to living in a self-sufficient manner without reliance on one or more public utilities such as water, electricity or sewage.

Off-the-grid homes are autonomous; they do not rely on municipal water supply, sewer, natural gas, electrical power grid, or similar utility services. A true off-grid house is able to operate completely independently of all traditional public utility services.

Hydro, solar and wind power generation is often the route taken by off-the-grid people. (You will need a river if you want hydro power. An undershoot water wheel can produce a decent amount of electricity with zero environmental impact, overshoot makes more electricity but will effect the wildlife.)

Being connected to the electrical grid via a grid-tie system is more expensive due to the extra hardware costs (such as a grid-tie inverter) especially when old car batteries that can no longer supply enough current to start a car are reused.

Going off-grid can be done for altruistic reasons or to lower the environmental impact of living, as the typically limited amount of on-site renewable energy available is an incentive to reduce its use.

But if energy usage is not reduced, then it will be tricky to get the necessary electricity without having an environmental impact. Solar panels, wind mills take up space but don't produce enough power alone... but large numbers can compensate and that means more space (and thus environmental impact).

Living off the grid works best when its done in combination with lowered needs for electricity. Using a woodstove for heat. Candles and windows for lights. Minimal electrical appliances and all energy efficient appliances.

Finding and buying a green "off the grid" house is possible to do however. There is a whole market for buildings that are off the grid so that the hard part has already been done.

Websites like http://www.greenhomesforsale.com/off-the-grid-homes.php have lists of homes, descriptions, photos and prices. Other websites that specialize in off the grid homes also exist. Just Google it.

Awesome Treehouse + Toronto blogger's quest for a condo

Check out this awesome treehouse. I would totally live in that.

Plus check out this Toronto blogger's Quest for a Condo. Its not off the grid, but I like the concept.

What he is doing is trading one item for another until eventually he has something valuable enough that he can trade it for a condo.

The beauty of it is that he started with a mere toy. A Hot Wheels car worth $2.

The theory goes that if he can trade up and double the value each time it will take him only 17 trades to eventually get a condo.

But his first trade was for a Digital Multimeter Kit (typical used by electricians to measure currents) worth $50. So that is a 2500% jump in value just on his first trade. Some trade might only be a 20% or 50% increase in value, but if the average is roughly x2 then it will take only 17 trades to get a condo.

I say more power to him!

(Technically him is me, but who says I can't toot my own horn?)

UPDATE: Since then I've traded up to a bicycle. We shall see what happens next.

Rocks Balanced in Oval

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This post was imported from Canada Rock Art Balancing to Project Gridless.

Sustainable Architecture

One of the problems with living in cities is you really only have four options:

House in the suburbs

Conjoined Housing (often Downtown)

Condominium

Apartment

And you really don't have much choice in terms of the methods they were made.

Thus if you are an environmentally conscious person you might be very upset to learn what the carbon footprint of building and maintaining your home is. Thus comes up the issue of Sustainable Architecture: Buildings built with the concept of preserving the environment in mind.

And this isn't just true of architecture and building practices, but in other disciplines as well such as fashion design (see Sustainable Fashion).

The photo shown above is the Bosco Vertical Forest. Its a condo that follows the idea of creating an eco-friendly architecture which actually contributes to the atmosphere (and looks pretty kewl too).

Who wouldn't want to live in that?