Before we get to this week’s Giveaway Friday, congratulations go out to Todd Howard.

According to Random.org, Todd won our giveaway from two weeks ago (everyone won last Friday) for An awesome cutting board!

On to this week’s Giveaway Friday!

In the summer of 2009, I volunteered to work for the Denver Green festival. It was a fantastic experience where I met a lot of amazing people.

I also learned new approaches that people are using on to solve some of the largest environmental problems the planet is facing today.

One of the neatest and most unique businesses I saw was at a booth manned by the inventor/creator of the chopstick basket.

Every year, millions of used wooden chopsticks are thrown out after just one use. They go to the landfill with other food scraps.

Over 25 million trees and bamboo plants are needed every year just to support how many chopsticks are used (in China alone). While chopsticks are most often wood and will break down, it seems strange that humans would go to all the expense and effort of creating a chopstick just to throw it out after a single use.

I guess there are lots of things like that, but an inventor in Oregon saw this as an opportunity.

Chopstick Art is the original idea of founder Bryan Parks, an American who lived in China for several years, and discovered that billions of chopsticks are thrown out in China every year.

Bryan decided to invent the chopstick basket.

Working with local Chinese and Thai food restaurants, he collects the old chopsticks, soaks and sterilizes them, and turns them into baskets and light fixtures.

They are decorative, stylish, functional, and made from something which is otherwise just tossed away.

Bryan calls his chopstick art “exquisitely designed accents of enduring quality and ecological significance.”

You took the words right out of my keyboard Bryan.

To be entered to win this awesome chopstick basket, all you have to do is follow the instructions below.

I am selling my backpack.

It has been a great backpack. I took it to climb Kilimanjaro and have used it for a few other travels.

It came from REI and is great!

Overall, it is like new, minus a few dirt scuffs.

Why, then, am I selling it?

We’ve been gone for 2 ½ years. It sat in a box the entire time we were gone. We have a lot of stuff that we’re coming back to, and realizing that we would like to keep our lives filled with things we love and use, while being free of clutter.

Because of that, we’re donating some things, giving away some things to friends, and selling some other things.

I’ve made a video to show off the cool features of this REI backpack.

I’m looking for $40 or better, but make an offer and depending on who else makes an offer, this backpack may be yours.

Today’s giveaway is something any computer user/photographer can take advantage of.

In most of the photos we post online, you can see our Copyright CarrieAndJonathan.com and the name of the place where we were when we took the photo.

Some people have told us that the watermark interferes with the pictures, but we have the originals, and the idea is to protect the pictures while giving them context.

(So while we could make our watermark smaller, we choose to keep it larger.)

Today, I’m going to show you how to watermark any photos you want using the exact same tool we use, and you can make your watermark any size you want.

The program we use is called Fast Image Resizer for Java (FIR4J) which is basically geek-speak for “really-cool-program-that-resizes-and-watermarks-pictures.” The program is free from SourceForge.

You can download it for free here.

Some genius built it.

So once you have the program on your computer, unzip and run it.

There are lots of options you can use within FIR4J, and I run through a few of the basics in the screen capture video below.

If you have ever wanted to watermark your photos in bulk, or watermark them in a simple way, I highly recommend fir4J.

It has saved us gobs of time (that’s the official amount of time – gobs) while sharing our travels with people via our website in the photos we watermark.

You don’t have to comment or anything today… because the giveaway is right here in the videos below. If you’ve ever wanted to know how to watermark images, these videos will be a big gift for you.

Basic Watermarking

How To Watermark Images (Advanced)

“The light shines in the darkness.”

This is a common theme in Christianity (and other religions).

I’ve been particularly aware of this message, in various ways, in the past few weeks. Perhaps this is because we returned to America over the Christmas holiday.

But this statement has caused me to think about it’s affect on a great portion of society.

Implicit in the statement is that Jesus is the light.

Also implicit in the statement is that we humans are “in the darkness” here on earth.

But why should we live with this belief (that humans are in darkness on earth)?

Why should anyone believe the world is darkness?

This is a belief which Christianity holds as one of its fundamental teachings – Christianity is here to “save” people from the darkness of the world.

But what if the belief changes?

What if the world is beauty – if we choose to see it?

What if we are the light in the world, if we choose to see ourselves that way, and live our lives as bringers of light to the world?

What if… as research shows… our perception of reality is the greatest influencer on the reality we experience?

Could changing my perception change my reality?
Of course it could.

Could changing my vocabulary (the words I use) change my biography (my job, my friends, my life story)?
Of course it could.

Could changing my biology (the chemical and physical make-up of my body) change my experience of the world?
Of course it could.

Could changing my language or location affect the way I see life?
Of course it could.

What a world we can live in, if this most fundamental belief and practice of religion (that the world is in darkness) is replaced with a different belief. We can all live with the core belief that we, and the world, are beautiful, healthy, and strong, that life is the greatest good, and that humans, and our planet, are miracles of unparalleled proportions.

Before we get to this week’s Giveaway Friday, congratulations go out to Patricia McCormick, who, according to Random.org, won our giveaway last week for Carrie’s Masala Chai!

Now on to this week’s giveaway…

Traveling as much as we have, we have prepared food in a wide variety of kitchens around the world.

We have also done a LOT of chopping of fruits, veggies, bread, meat, etc.

We’ve also used a variety of cutting boards.

Wood cutting boards:
Good for chopping, but unless you only use them for slicing bread, wood cutting boards are prone to absorbing the juices of whatever you’re cutting. Bacteria can be attracted and grow in the spaces in the wood, and over time you can actually be adding bacteria to your food, simply by using wood as your cutting surface.

If you rinse your wood cutting board with soap and water, it can become quite difficult to get all the soap out, which can leave your next meal tasting a bit soapy.

Glass cutting boards:
Jonathan actually likes them, but the sound of chopping on a glass cutting board hurts Carrie’s sensitive ears.

Marble/stone cutting boards:
Some of these are actually laced with naturally antibacterial materials like copper or silver, but we find that even with rubber foot pegs, they tend to slide around while you’re cutting on them. They can also be heavy, expensive, and discolor over time. Then what do you do with a chunk of discolored polished marble?

Plastic cutting boards:
Depending on what type of plastic they are made from, plastic cutting boards can be re-used for a variety of purposes. They also stay in place when you chop on them, are light to carry, and can be thrown into the recycle bin when they discolor or become overused.

Of the four cutting board types we’ve mentioned, we obviously recommend plastic cutting boards (followed secondarily by stone cutting boards).

Today’s giveaway is for a cutting board from Progressive International.

Check this out! This 11-1/4-inch by 17-1/4-inch cutting board has a drip tray around the outside and really works well for cutting pretty much anything.

To be entered to win this cutting board, all you have to do is follow the instructions below.

Step 1:
Like this giveaway on Facebook, +1 it on Google, or Tweet it on Twitter.

Step 2:
Visit Progressive International’s Facebook page, and see what they have on offer. Then come back and in your comment, say what kind of food you most enjoy chopping, cutting, or eating.

Make sure to include a good email address in your comment so we can contact you when you win!

Three or more years ago, Carrie had heard that IKEA would not open a store in Denver.

Supposedly IKEA had a rule about how close their stores had to be to a port.

Colorado is a 20 hour drive from the nearest port (if you’re driving in an aggressive way).

But we returned from our 2 1/2 years of travel, and POOF!  There’s now a HUGE IKEA store right next to I-25.

IKEA in Centennial is every bit as big as everyone says it is, and it takes a while to walk through the store.

The maze through the store reminded me of the episode of Friends where Chandler tries to help Ross quit the gym, and instead ends up joining the gym himself because… there are… other interesting things at the gym.

“I want to quit the gym!” 

There’s too much interesting stuff to check out in here!

The place is huge.

Carrie got some new spice jars $1/each (what we went in to buy).

For our new apartment, we got some shelf liners as well as trash cans with a nifty sliding plate/drawer underneath them, so that we can pull them out easily.

We also bought some whole-wheat bread you make yourself in a milk-carton box (so smartly done and with all-real ingredients), as well as some Norwegian salmon. 

“You can buy salmon at IKEA?”  YEP!

Visiting IKEA also reminded me of the month that we spent in Finland with our friend Anu. 

The practicality of Scandinavian design is amazing because it’s so simple.

Both in IKEA and in Finland, I found myself saying… “That’s so simple!  Why doesn’t everyone do it that way?”

We miss our friends around the world, and it’s nice to have a touch of Scandinavia here in Colorado, even if we did get stuck buying some extras at IKEA.

That IKEA could be built and fully operational in Colorado, in 2 1/2 years, with the kind of inventory it has, is something of a testament to what is possible in the world we live in today.

Truly amazing, and we’ll likely be back… probably soon.  We do, after all, want a bookshelf.

What is SOPA?
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) is on the surface a bill that attempts to curb online piracy. Sadly, the proposed way it goes about doing this could devastate the online economy and the overall freedom of the web.

It would particularly affect sites with heavy user generated content. Sites like Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, and others could cease to exist in their current form if this bill is passed.

What is PIPA?
The Protect IP Act (PIPA, S. 968) is SOPA’s twin in the Senate. Under current DMCA law, if a user uploads a copyrighted movie, music, or text to sites like Youtube, EzineArticles, or MP3 sharing sites, the site isn’t held accountable so long as they provide a way to report user infringement.

The user who uploaded the movie is held accountable for their actions, not the site.

PIPA would change that – it would place the blame on the site itself, and would also provide a way for copyright holders to seize the site’s domain in extreme circumstances.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation laid out four excellent points as to why the bills are not only dangerous, but are also not effective for what they are trying to accomplish:

• The blacklist bills are expensive. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that PIPA alone would cost the taxpayers at least $47 million over 5 years, and could cost the private sector many times more. Those costs would be carried mostly by the tech industry, hampering growth and innovation.
• The blacklist bills silence legitimate speech. Rightsholders, ISPs, or the government could shut down sites with accusations of infringement, and without real due process.
• The blacklist bills are bad for the architecture of the Internet. But don’t take our word for it: see the open letters that dozens of the Internet’s concerned creators have submitted to Congress about the impact the bills would have on the security of the web.
• The blacklist bills won’t stop online piracy. The tools these bills would grant rightsholders are like chainsaws in an operating room: they do a lot of damage, and they aren’t very effective in the first place. The filtering methods might dissuade casual users, but they would be trivial for dedicated and technically savvy users to circumvent.

Want to do something to voice your thoughts about it? Go here.

First up, congratulations to Sue Zamora who won last week’s Friday Giveaway “The Potter’s Hands“. Sue will be receiving the poster in a size of her choosing (up to 3 feet*2 feet).

Congratulations Sue!

And now on to this week’s Giveaway Friday: Carrie’s Chai Masala!

In India, there is always chai.

When you wake up, you have a chai.
When you buy something, you have a chai.
When you sell something, you have a chai.
When you go to work, you have a chai.
When you come home from work, you have a chai.
If you’re eating lunch, you have a chai.
If you’re happy, you have a chai.
If you’re sad, you have a chai.
If something is happening, you have a chai.
If nothing is happening, you have a chai.
If friends come over, you have a chai.
If friends cancel their visit, you have a chai.

Chai is to Indians what coffee is to Americans.

However, Jonathan likes chai better – much better – than coffee.

We learned what goes into chai before we went to India.

But in India, we learned the full steps to preparing chai.

After drinking chai every day in India, we went to cooking school.

We learned the proper steps to prepare chai, as well as where to get the best ingredients.

We like our chai to have a nice level of spice in it.

Not only does it taste great, but the spice blend Carrie uses has lots of ingredients which are known to have natural curative properties.

If you win today’s giveaway, you will be getting a nice and spiced chai mix. 

A spice mix is called “masala”.

When you win today’s Giveaway Friday, you will be getting Carrie’s Chai Masala!

We will also be sending you instructions for preparation of the perfect cup of chai.

To be entered to win this spiced chai mix, all you have to do is follow the instructions below.

(Alternatively, if you want to purchase Carrie’s Chai Masala mix, which comes with Carrie’s special instructions for preparation of Chai in your own kitchen, click below to have a packet shipped directly to your door.)

Quantity

10 cups $4.95 USD 20 cups $9.95 USD

To get Free Chai Mix:

Step 1:

Like this post on Facebook and/or +1 it on Google.

Step 2:

Post the name (and recipe if you want) of your favorite hot drink when you comment.

Make sure to include a good email address so we can contact you when you win!

This is a funny guerilla real-world improv. which takes place in a grocery store with hidden cameras.

Hope you enjoy. It definitely got a chuckle from me.

India is a country comprised of some of the most different cultures (different from us) we’ve experienced on our travels.

It is also a country where it’s easy to find a lot of people who are living and working for a dollar or two per day.

Here is a video where we met a potter:

The man who we saw making these pots would make as many as 30 pots in a day.

He would make, on average, $5 for those 30 pots.

After his expenses for clay and tools, he would make $2.00-$3.00/day.

He and his family (including 4 children) lived on that salary.

What’s even more amazing than the small amount he earns for his manual labor is the quality of his work.

Watching him work was amazing.

He was a true master of his craft, handling the clay and creating beautiful pieces of art by hand.

Looking at this picture we took reminded me of a bible verse I heard a lot growing up.

It’s a verse about how we are shaped by a higher power. This guiding of our lives can be seen in “the potter’s hands”.

And so I’ve turned one of the pictures I took there into a poster for today’s giveaway.

Here is what the poster looks like:

For this giveaway, Carrie and I will be paying for printing and shipping.

You get to choose the size of this poster (up to 36 inches by 24 inches).

Alternatively, if you would just like the picture, with or without the bible verse, we can do that as well.

Alternatively, if you know for sure that you would like to buy a print of this poster, let us know what size of poster (in inches), and we’ll send you a price. (Will be less than $20, depending on size).

All you have to do to be entered to win this poster is 2 steps:

Step 1:

Like this post on Facebook, +1 it on Google, or Tweet it.

Step 2:

Post one of your favorite bible verses, sayings, or a favorite quote using the comment field below.

(Make sure to include your best email address so we can contact you when you win.)