Due to my fascination with space, I have been drawn to the writings of Carl Sagan. Most of you have heard of him (he wrote the book Contact that the 1997 movie was based off of), but I don't know how many of you have actually read his works. The following is by far my favorite excerpt from his novel "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" and is based on a picture taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 from a distance of nearly 4 billion miles away. By the request of Carl Sagan, after the Voyager had finished it's mission, NASA turned the craft around to take one last picture of the earth. The "sunbeam" that earth appears in is actually an artifact of light scattering in the camera lens.
"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Of course there is etsy, but you have to have an idea of what you're looking for otherwise you can get stuck in that site forever. There are a number of different artistic methods that have caught my attention as of late and one of them, which can be found on etsy, is papercut designs. They are incredibly detailed pictures that are cut out of a single piece of paper. The artist who created the papercut to the left creates designs around kitschy quotes and the another fantastic one I found creates papercut maps of large cities like Rome and London.
Those are just some of our easy at home recipes. Here are a few that we've tried and loved from other sources. One of our go to TV chefs is Alton Brown of Food Network's Good Eats. Here are a few of our favorite recipes: macadamia nut crusted mahi mahi, broiled spiced salmon, overnight slow cooker oatmeal, edamame dip, protein bars. 
