Olivia Anne Robb was born on August 10 at 2:09 am. She was born at home, a topic I’ll probably bring up in another post. It was pretty incredible, I can’t believe it happened almost three months ago. Olivia’s a great baby, having her around has really changed the way I think about the word “sustainable.” I find myself thinking about her future, what her generation will inherit from us. I also find myself thinking about the laundry I have to do, the dishes I just can’t seem to find the time to load, the shower I so desperately need… Convenience has become king, and balancing that with trying to do things in an environmentally sound way has become a tug of war in my head.

Rather than trying to answer any big questions today, I’d rather just post some photos of Olivia. Isn’t that what all new parents love to do, post and email photos of their babies until their friends go nuts? (Yes, I’ve become one of those people who constantly post photos of their baby to Facebook. Sue me.) Here’s my little pootie, hopefully you’ll enjoy!

I have missed writing regularly on this site, and I really look forward to getting back to writing once things have a chance to calm down a little bit. I’m not sure how long that will take, since I’ve never done this before, but I’m hoping that within a few weeks I’ll at least be able to post some updates here. It will most likely be a little longer until the regular posting resumes, I just want to make sure I give myself the time to adjust to the new little life in our house. I’ll be back soon, wish me luck!

Ooh, by the way… If you’d like to be friends on Facebook, which I update regularly, email me and I’ll give you the link. Thanks!

All this is to say, I’m sorry I haven’t posted in so long. Yeah, I have some good excuses, but I’ve really missed writing and connecting with you guys. I have some stuff that’s been on my mind, and I’d love to share it with you here. In my quest for a healthy and balanced pregnancy, I’ve found some amazing products, and I can’t even begin to relay the information I’ve found on modern birth practices in our society. I feel like I’m bursting with information again, and I’m excited to be back.

Well, at least until a tiny bundle of joy once again disrupts our lives. But that will be a most welcome disruption.

We have been on vacation for the last several days, and we return home tomorrow. I’ll have plenty to say about the show, so check back!

We’ll see how it goes, I’m excited to try this out. Mostly I’m looking forward to seeing familiar faces at my favorite companies, and finding new stuff to share with all of you. I’ll keep you posted!

While I’d like to keep this blog from becoming completely baby-centric, there will be more baby- and child-related posts coming through. It’s what’s on my mind, so it’s what I’m going to write about. Of course, it’s not the only thing on my mind, so don’t fear if you’re less than enamored with the idea of baby products.

While I may have babies on the brain, it’s made me even more particular about what I put in and on my body. I’m also thinking more about the kind of world we’re living in and what doing my part requires. My thinking has begun to shift in all the stereotypical, predictable ways that parents talk about, and I couldn’t be happier. Bringing a new little person into the world is a great reminder about why I strive to make the best decisions I can, and it’s really making me want to be a better person. (See? Stereotypical.) I couldn’t be happier about the changes in my life right now (well, the weight gain isn’t all that exciting) and I hope that by sharing some of what I’m thinking here it will only enrich my goal with the site, which is to share every resource I have about living sustainably with the world at large.

Thanks for continuing to read the site for what has almost been three years, I’m excited to continue this journey together!

One bit of news: I’ve decided to discontinue writing the Monthly Meals. I know, some of you really liked them. It’s just that they became such a chore, that writing wasn’t any fun when I knew I had one coming up. I’ll still post recipes occasionally, I like sharing them here. But the pressure of writing a long, complicated set of recipes each month will be alleviated, and I already feel relieved.

So, no more Monthly Meals, but otherwise The Sustainable Scoop will be back in full swing. Here goes nothing, 2009!

I chose this new design for several reasons, not the least of which are the features of this new theme. Thesis is by far the most comprehensive theme I’ve found, in both SEO and in design. I’m a designer by trade, but lately I’ve had a lot of work come my way, and I just don’t have the time to make a million tiny little design changes here and there. Chris Pearson, the designer behind Thesis, has done an amazing job of allowing users to make myriad design and function tweaks without having to edit any code. This has already saved me a lot of time.

I like that the sidebars in the new design are both on the right. I always found the old design, with the main content in the center, to be distracting. This way, all of the “extras” will be on the right side of the page, allowing readers to focus on the content much more easily. This does lend itself to the problem of an unbalanced page, particularly once you scroll down past the end of the sidebars; but I decided that this issue wasn’t enough to keep me from loving the new design.

I’ve also simplified some things here at the Scoop. For one, all of the archives will be organized in an “Archives” tab at the top of the page. I’m also going to simplify some of the content, but I’m not sure how yet. I’ve decided that I can’t really eliminate any categories, since the stuff I write here has such a broad scope. I’m just going to reduce some of the time it used to take me to write, manage, and update the site. I used to have to manually update the Pages for several types of posts, and this effort became a deterrent to posting anything. So, anything that wastes time will be removed or redistributed.

I’m going to be focusing more of my posts around gardening (biointensive, in particular), since this has become a major passion of mine. The image currently in use in the site’s header is a photo of the garden at Ecology Action in Willits, California. As my own garden grows and changes, I’ll be updating the header with photos from my own garden. That’s the idea, anyway, and I hope that in this way I can share some of my gardening with you guys.

Another feature of the new site that I’m particularly proud of are the six colorful squares in the top of the sidebars. These are resources that I’ve deemed worthy of occupying that space, I receive no money whatsoever in exchange for featuring those resources. I just really believe in what each one of those organizations are doing. What I’ve chosen to feature also resonates with my own sustainability practices, so I really wanted to share them with you.

If you guys have any thoughts on the new site, please let me know. I’m not aiming to please everyone, but I do want to make reading the Scoop as pleasant for as many of you as possible. If you have thoughts, please share them in the comments. Thanks!

Also, I’m going to be focusing a lot more on gardening and cooking. I do like doing the product reviews, I think they’re important and integral to why I started this site; but my concept of sustainability has changed a lot in two years. Growing and preparing your own food is a big part of what’s really sustainable, so you guys will probably notice my posts shift a bit towards those topics. Like I said, I’ll still do product reviews and other features of the site will stay, but I will be simplifying some.

I’m excited about where the site will go, though it will definitely take me a while to get around to doing it all. I’m thinking October, probably… I’d love to get it done sooner than that, but I guess the good news is that my design work is keeping my really busy. Yay for work! And now that I have a clearer idea of what to do with this site, I’m feeling more capable of posting. Hopefully there will be more here for you all to read, I know it’s been slow ’round these parts lately. So, yay for posting! I’ll keep you all in the loop as everything goes forward.

After about a year, people started asking me, But what will you DO with the site? What is its purpose? The implication was that a site like this should have a greater plan, a means of supporting itself. Prompted by such questions, I hatched grand ideas of an online store in which I could sell the products that mattered to the people who cared. I polled, I announced the results, and I opened the store with one lone item: an organic cotton tote bag. This wasn’t meant to be the only product for sale, of course; I had been busy gathering wholesale prices from retailers, compiling a spreadsheet to help me figure out my margins, and finishing my business plan. As far as the site went, I decided that the design (and the content management system) needed an overhaul. I spent hours finding just the right solution, and hours more on its implementation and design. The result was a polished, commerce-ready site with a simple store, ready to serve the world. What I didn’t know at the time was that this new site would lose some of the soul that made the original inception of The Sustainable Scoop so full of life.

Now, two years after the site’s beginning, I’m feeling a little burned out, and a lot wiser. The reality of online retail is that the added shipping costs (and lower volumes) make it impossible to sell products to customers for a price anywhere near what can be found in stores like Whole Foods and Wegman’s. Even after switching my plan to include only those products that are hard to find in stores, the price points just weren’t lining up with what I thought customers would pay. So, the store idea slowly got put on the shelf, perhaps more slowly than it should have. But I wasn’t wiling to let go of the plan, so it took me a while to come to the realization that it just wasn’t going to be worth it.

Also, my design work began to pick up. The store was forgotten in order to pursue paying work. During this time, I realized that I had been trying to combine two distinct and separate ideas: in one hand, I wanted to continue sharing my knowledge of products and companies within the natural products industry and beyond; and in the other, I had wanted to sell products I believed in. I hadn’t given enough thought to the fact that it’s hard to be impartial about products you’re selling yourself, or those products’ competitors. How could my product reviews and recommendations be believed when I was supposed to be selling those goods?

All in all, I’m glad that the store never came to fruition for all of the reasons already listed. But now I have a site that has been designed and crafted for commercial viability, and I’m finding that to be incredibly limiting and uninspiring. Indeed, these last six months have been incredibly predictable here at The Scoop. For a while, it was a post every weekday, with the biggest stories on Monday, a tip on Tuesday, a review on Wednesday, a guest post on Thursday, and something different every Friday. For a site that began out of so much inspiration, this formula-based posting is disappointing, and I’ve become aware of how little I enjoy it.

I’m sure you’ve all noticed how infrequently I’ve been writing here this summer. My Scoop slump started because of burnout, but that ended shortly; I still believe that this site has a lot to offer both its readers and myself. I’ve had to take some time away, to figure out just exactly how I want to proceed with it, what it means to me and all of you. I’m currently on vacation, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about these things. Though I don’t have a concrete plan yet, I do have some ideas about how to return to a format that’s as exciting as it is fulfilling.

For one, I’d like to simplify. I wrote a post a while ago about how I want to return to simplicity in many ways, ad you guys were incredibly supportive. I believe that the way to rekindle my love for this site is to do the same here, though how I go about that is important to me. There are lots of things about this site’s second inception that I’ve grown to like, and there are a few things that I’d like to jettison. I’m still feeling out how I want to revise this site on the level of ideas, and once I have that sorted out I’ll be able to have a clearer vision about how to go about making those changes.

As always, if you guys have any thoughts on what this site has become and where it needs to go, I would love to hear them. I think I need a little while longer to think about and reflect upon the Scoop’s future, and I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on any progress I make. The most important thing for me to do right now is to refresh the part of me that this site nourishes and inspires. What is depleted can be replenished, and that’s what I’m going to work on for now.

This month marks the second anniversary of The Sustainable Scoop’s creation, which was two years and five days ago. I’m always one to celebrate with music, so in honor of the site’s two-year-old birthday, I’ve created a summer playlist for you guys to listen to. I tried to include a good cross-section of what I like to listen to in the summer: a mixture of classic & modern rock, a little electronic, and (of course) some good funk. I’ve also given away my late-80′s/mid-90′s adolescence by including songs from groups like the Chili Peppers and the Violent Femmes. Also: make sure you check out the drums on the Tower of Power song, David Garibaldi kicks some serious ass. (Ted noted that the song I used isn’t nearly as good of an example of Garibaldi’s drumming, and suggested I use “Squib Cakes” instead. While he had a point, I already own “Down to the Nightclub,” and I would have to pay to buy “Squib Cakes.” That’s an easy decision.)

You can check it out in iTunes if you’d like to buy any of the songs. I’ll update this post once I work it all out. Happy birthday, Scoop!

SCOOP MIX: iTunes

In other news: May saw this site’s highest number of page views since it began. Yay! I want to thank you all for continuing to read The Scoop, your readership is what keeps me excited to write entries. I love the little community we have going, and I hope I can continue to write about things you’ll find relevant for a long time to come. Thanks for all your support!