Oct 15, 2009 | Green Living, Uncategorized
Happy
Blog Action Day!
The topic?
Climate Change
My family thinks about climate change daily. I’m not kidding. My kids worry about it constantly.
We have been trying to live a “greener” life to make changes in our own little ways. But is it enough?
People brush off the issue, we all want to pretend like nothing is going on.
But- look at the changes happening in our short little span on this beautiful planet…
I have personally seen coral reefs that were once gorgeous when I was a child, almost completely disappear or turn into brown deserts due to slight temperature changes in the water. Oceans are rising at a rate three times faster than the historical norm!
(Ask any fisherman, surfer, scuba diver and they will tell you it is true.)
My grandfather (now in his 90’s) tells us how he used to ice skate on the pond in his hometown. Now it’s rare to see snow there at all.
Storms have intensified. Natural disasters are now a yearly event. Water shortages abound, and as a result disease and famine spread.
The ice caps, glaciers, and mountain snows are disappearing. 2008 was the 8th hottest year in recorded history according to the NOAA. Polar bears are drowning because the ice is so thin in places.
Even if you don’t believe in Global Warming or that Climate Change is not occurring, how could changing your own little world hurt?
Hopefully we can make a difference if we TRY.
What have we got to lose?
Our futures,
Our lives,
Our planet.
Sep 28, 2009 | Green Living, Uncategorized
I bit the bullet and dyed my hair last night. I was trying to NOT color it, but I am so grey now! My hair was orange on the ends where the old henna was coming out and turning red as it did- brown in the middle and white on the roots about four inches down! Ick. Plus- at the Girl Scout fall event on Saturday a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile thought I’d sprayed that colored white hairspray in my hair (THAT is how white headed I am!)
So, this time I didn’t try the
cassia obovata like the last. It turns white hair blonde, and didn’t quite look right on me. I used a mixed henna product called
Light Mountain Natural. This does look better, but it’s pretty dark. I’m hoping it lightens up in a day or two. It did cover ALL the grey and it’s really soft and healthy.
Maybe I won’t look like such a dork in Disneyworld. W
Well, maybe?
Sep 15, 2009 | Green Living, Uncategorized
I just got a box from our friendly, neighborhood UPS man. (He really is the happiest man I’ve ever met!) It’s an awesome Citizen Pip lunchbox I won on Kellie’s Greenhab blog. I was only expecting the lunch box itself, and lo-and-behold it’s the entire kit (canteen, napkins, 5 containers, lunchbox with tag!)
My kids will be fighting over this. Maybe it’s all mine!
My middle guy started group guitar lessons yesterday. I wanted to get him in something while we were waiting for E to get out of dance, and went in to ask. We ended up coming back in an hour and starting lessons! He really enjoyed it. There were 5 boys and they got to play Guitar Hero, talk music, and jam!
Aug 20, 2009 | Green Living
I am thinking about the footprints we leave on this earth.
We really try to do the right thing, but as Americans we have some bad habits.
I was looking for Carbon Footprint Calculators, and thought this one was the easiest (and coolest to look at) that I’ve found so far. (It’s also posted as a widget at the bottom of my blog.)
Now, I do these periodically, just to see how a change we’ve made as a family has impacted our footprint. I was surprised at ours. The calculator breaks your footprint down in four categories:
Transportation
Housing
Goods/Services
Food
My household came out normal in transportation. (Do you know how hard it is to find a car that will hold 6 people that gets decent gas mileage? IMPOSSIBLE!) But, we do try and combine our trips- getting all errands run on a certain day, etc.
In Housing we were high. We have an old house, which I love, but our energy bills are crazy. Not sure what to do there. We’ve gotten all new appliances that are Energy Star rated, have all energy efficient bulbs in our lighting, etc. I think our main problem is our heat/air unit. It is OLD and probably really inefficient (thus the crazy electric bill.) Insulation would help a lot too, I’m sure. Our gas and water bills though are lower than normal. (Yay for the rain barrels!)
In Goods/Services & Food we do much better than average. I really have been trying to make conscious choices when I shop (and if I shop.) Trying to buy everything local and Arkansas made is my first wave. I make my own cleaning products which saves on packaging. We are buying all our produce at a local farmer’s market. I get my eggs and cheese there too when available. We don’t eat red meat, which also saves on carbon emissions. Watching what type of packaging when you shop is important (but I’ll admit that is hard sometimes.) We buy clothes only when needed, and lots of times we find what we need at the local thrift store (but I do love Hanna Anderson for the kids!)
Try the widget out and let me know how you fared!
Aug 13, 2009 | Green Living, In-Edibles, Recipes, Uncategorized
Liquid Laundry Detergent
1 cup Washing Soda
1/2 cup Borax
a bit of tea tree oil (to cut the mildew smell front loaders can have!)
1/4 cup or so of Dr. Bronner’s Baby Castile liquid soap
4 cups hot water (first) then added about 8 more cups
**My mom pointed out that this makes a VERY concentrated soap. It does! If you use this recipe you’ll only need a tablespoon or so for each load. She uses quarts instead of cups of water in her recipe (same amounts of everything else) and it makes a not-as-concentrated recipe that you’d use a capful of a normal washing bottle. I am using the quart method now myself because the other was overflowing!
I mixed it in a bowl with a whisk because the washing soda (soda ash) gets hot when it gets wet. (Luckily I knew this from my pool or I’d have probably burned my hands trying to get the clumps out.) I did put the end of it in the blender and mixed it there to try and get all the clumps out. Here are more recipes.
Jun 9, 2009 | Green Living, Uncategorized
I’m waiting for J to get up so we can go to the NLR Farmer’s Market this morning so I thought I’d post this.
My honey found a guy on Craig’s List that makes rain barrels and sells them very reasonably. He came in one day and installed this rain barrel at the back of the house by the pool yesterday! It’s tucked in a nook so you can’t see it from the back doors or windows- only from the pool or the laundry room window. It’s not the best picture, can’t seem to find my camera so this is with my phone. Also, forgive the messy deck. That’s right after the gutters were cleaned. I really hope this works. He didn’t put in an overflow valve, so a bit worried about that. I think we can watch it though and make sure it doesn’t get too full. If it does work we plan to put them on all the downspouts (and get more gutters on the house to run them to.) Maybe it will help with the water bills this summer!
Also, I found a neat new site: Low Impact Living. You can determine your family’s impact on the environment. The calculator they use seems to be more accurate than others I’ve seen because you can input in actual lot size, square footage, and individual improvements at the end. We do more things that I couldn’t find on the list, but the main bad guys for us are our old heat/ac unit which we really need to replace (but waiting for it to go out.) Also we REALLY need to insulate the walls and ceilings better. Want to do that before another crazy summer and our AC bills are out the roof (HA!)
