Personalized Bike Art

I am not into tchotkes. While life with three boys and my own overly-relaxed attitude about cleaning cause us to live with a certain degree of clutter, I tend not drawn to little things that sit on shelves. I am, however, pretty addicted to Etsy. I love the idea of all these artisans working away at home, knitting and painting and sewing and silk-screening and baking. There are times I get on Etsy, not because I want to shop, but I simply want to see what people out there are making. And I find all sorts of cool stuff.

Some weeks ago, I was drawn to an Etsy shop. It wasn't because these artisans were making things that I was particularly searching for. No, I went to their shop because I learned that the artists behind indigotwin are identical twin sisters from Maine. And I have identical twin boys. And we had lived in Maine. So as I was perusing indigotwin's very cool folk art, I got an idea. How about a family Christmas gift? And wouldn't it be cool to have those personalized portrait statues? And while it was really personalized, maybe we could include something really personal, like one of our bikes?

So I emailed indigotwin, and they were totally up for the idea of creating our family portrait complete with bakfiets. I filled out the questionaire and mailed them a few photos. They emailed me a sketch of their design and we had a nice back-and-forth about a few changes. And then, a package arrived on our porch. And no, I couldn't wait until Christmas to share it with my family.

So now on one of our shelves, sits this very cool portrait statue of my family and our Dutch bike and I love it:


Cortney and Kristen totally got it right. They even included the polka dots on the bakfiets, the first set of removable wall stickers we used to decorate the box of our bike:

And here are a couple of close-ups so you can really admire indigotwins' work:

Yup, that's me. Complete with purple eyeglasses, blue hair streak, essential coffee mug,
and orange hoodie with bike graphic.

The Ethicist takes on Family Biking

Randy Cohen, a.k.a The Ethicist, is an avid bike commuter. Look at his response when a parent asks about the ethics of transporting his kids by bike.

Could you ever imagine a parent asking about the morality of transporting a child by car?