Communal Living: Working out my fantasies.

First of all, I want you to know that I'm sitting here in sweats eating my second slightly strange tasting blueberry scone. I accidentally added too much vinegar to the almond milk, forgot to put the sugar on top and either added too much salt or there was some kind of salty residue on my baking tray. But you know, I can push through it for the warm berries and fluffy vanilla carbs. There will most likely be a third. 
Tonight was a bit of a write off. Richard and I have been keeping crazy schedules the past week or so, where aside from 3 hours of sleep between 4-7am and a 30min window when he runs home to grab dinner, we're in and out of the house at pretty much exactly opposite times from each other. So, this evening after coming home from work and having to clean out glass from the bottom of our oven (a dish exploded in there last night, v. scary - both the exploding glass and the bottom of our oven) and watch Glee on my own I was feeling a little sorry for myself. This usually means some kind of baking and internet escapism. Tonight it came in the form of this video, that I originally saw over on Liz's blog awhile ago. In a sense communal living is something I've grown up doing. When I was really young, my aunt and uncle lived only a couple houses down the street from us and we spent a lot of time there or at my grandparents place as well as our own home. Then as I got older, I spent the years between 12 and 23ish years old living and/or working at a camp with a small staff and multiple dwellings. More often than not we all ate together, everyone was a short walk away when we needed something and the sense of community was something I really thrived on. 
I now live in a co-op, which isn't exactly the same especially as this co-op is a fairly large one, but there's still aspects of it. We have awesome neighbours and there is a communal feel within the gates of this place. It's funny how the idea of a commune has always sounded a little crazy cult like to me, but the actual act of living communally is something I'm really invested in. The story in this video is so inspiring to me, and we both really hope to be able to make something like that happen once we move home. I'm sure some people would find the idea of living in such close quarters with other people to be a completely terrible idea, and I totally get that, but for the moment I can only see the possibilities and comfort it would bring. 
And with that, and this totally inspiring film I found at Loobylu's place, I am going to resist a fourth scone and head to bed to dream of my future hippy life. 

A little help...

In August of last year I heard (via Anabela) about Emily Richmond who was planning to sail around the world. This completely blew my mind, 24,000 miles in 24 months, by boat! I will admit that as much as sailing seems really dreamy to me, the idea of being on a boat and not being able to see land terrifies me. So on one hand what Emily is doing scares the hell out of me, but on the other the idea of all the incredible things she is going to see and experience, the people she'll meet and not to mention completing such an amazing feat, excites me to no end!

Emily used Kickstarter to help her raise the money she needed to initially get her boat ready, get equipment, etc and be able to set sail in January, and it was amazing to see the huge amount of support she got. Kickstarter is a pretty amazing organisation, that's all about helping people fund all kinds of creative projects. Each project has incentives for the backers, so for certain pledge amounts the person will receive some kind of goody. For example, I'm eagerly awaiting the day when I receive a polaroid from Emily's trip as my reward for pledging money, and others are getting a coconut mailed to them or even a sailor hat!

The thing is, Emily is now in Mexico and is planning to leave soon for the South Pacific and needs to purchase a bunch of safety equipment to help get her there in one piece. She needs to raise $5000 by tonight and is so close to getting there! With Kickstarter, if you don't meet your goal then you don't actually get any of the money pledged so it's really important that people help her out. You can see all the details of this project here, as well as all the sweet rewards for backers, and you can pledge amounts starting at $1! I'm looking forward to receiving my Huck Finn inspired sticker pack, but even more so to continuing to watch Emily live her dream and sail around the world. Please consider helping a sister out, and also follow Emily's incredible journey on her blog over here.