Hello, my name is Andrea Stewart, I’m 26 years old, am engaged to be married on July 11, and have an 11-year-old stepson-to-be.  We moved into our suburban home last July.  Both of us are interested in preserving the environment (and our bank accounts!).  We have a puppy named Devin, a cat named Zorro, and four fancy goldfish named Mojo-a-Jo-Jo, Cujo, Godzilla, and Fry.

Since my fiance and I work full-time, and our location is prohibitive, we’ll be looking at simplistic ways to increase our self-sufficiency.

Our Location
Ah, home sweet home.  We live approximately 5.5 miles from downtown Sacramento.  When the weather is nice, we like to bicycle in to work.  We are by no means in the middle of the country.

Home, Sweet Home

The view from our front yard - there's the Port of Sacramento

Our Backyard Deck

Our Backyard, we'll get to that terracotta-colored thing later...

As you can see, another constraint we’re working with is our neighbors.  Met ’em on both sides, HOWEVER, they can see straight into our yard.  So anything we do has to be neat, contained, legal, and quiet.  Preferably, it will be visually attractive.  No goats, chickens, miniature cattle…anything like that.  We plan to live here for a very long time, and would prefer not to be chased out of the neighborhood with torches and pitchforks.

I’ll be documenting both our successes (so you can duplicate them!) and our failures (so you can avoid them =( ).

So here’s to saving our planet and our wallets one household at a time!

…and in case none of that sounded good to you, here’s a gratuitous puppy picture begging you to stick around.

I'm a puppy