Expunging the Sponge

After months of diligently disinfecting and reusing the same green, oval sponge it has finally quit on me. I found this product at Whole Foods this week for under 5 bucks and thought I'd give it a shot. It's a washable microfibre cloth featuring an embedded scrubber. I can toss it in the wash and this is touted to last a long time, and to be an eco-friendly product. So far, the scrubber works well, and I'm liking using a larger wiping/cleansing apparatus (huh?) for my dishes and pots. I will keep you posted as to how long this guy lasts!

Photo by: Eve

Mystery Friends

Early Spring is a great time to take inventory of what you have in your yard. MAN! all sorts of friends popping up here and there. This is the first year since we moved here in Spring 2008 (I was like, 1,000 months pregnant with my current toddler) that I have the energy and capacity to want to delve into this project: Plant Identification! Will post slideshow on flickr one of these days soon. Feel free to comment on who you think my mysterious friends are....

Oh My Sprouts!

K. Not a good shot, but if you see on the bottom
half of the picture are my cucumbers sprouting happily! They were moved from their pete discs over into these egg-cartonesque pots today. This was a bigger undertaking than I had planned for. I moved about 20 sprouts to their respective containers today during my son's nap, it took about 45 minutes to mix the new pete with water, saturate the pots, place the sprouts and cover them. My daughter needed attention and didn't want to participate (cranky!) so I needed to stop after a bit. Then before I knew it my son was up and at 'em and the evening cranked up to dinner, baths, and bedtime. It was not the best day for 'family greening' work - I still have about 50 to go. I will make a go for another chunk of sprout transfers tomorrow. Let's see if the little ones are in a better mood tomorrow!

Not Bad for a First Timer!

Happy Easter Friends!

Hmmm....Easter

Eggs, paint, candy, cellophane, baskets, decorations, trinkets, prizes, chocolate bunnies, peeps....

umm...no way. just can't bring myself up to it this year.

Today's plan:

Reuse plastic eggs from last year, put reusable stickers on them with the kids. (no mess!)

Put them in our ONE family Easter basket from last year (new tradition!) which will be donned with bows from fabric scraps, and NO fake grass (just an old blue and white gingham kitchen curtain from our previous house). Add some carrots for the Easter Bunny and there you go.

Easter Bunny will come and bring ONE good sized chocolate something for the family to share, and outdoor or crafty goodies for the family to enjoy this spring (a ball, boomerang, etc). Egg Hunt and a basket of carrots left for our real family of wild bunnies in the backyard......and....well, that's a wrap. Well, kinda: now for the question of explaining the spiritual part to these little ones of Jewish and Catholic, but kinda organized religion confused parents...

Ah...i feel better. Happy Easter!

Nice Surprise on Earth Day

Look what came today! The Compost Brackets!!! WOW. that was fast. i'm sooo excited. Will share the process of putting these together. Click on the Compost tab on the header in the future!

Happy Earth Day!!!

Ready for Earth Day

Compost bin brackets on the way, seedlings planted, eco-friendly birthday party for my soon to be 4 year old and soon to be 2 year old planned and having an Earth Day picnic on Friday :-)

CSA Alternative in the Works!

We are working on planting our sustainable garden seeds. This process has been easier than I thought it would be, and I was able to enlist the help of my almost 4 year old daughter with no problems. Some of my seeds were purchased from Whole Foods Market, some were a gift from a friend who is starting a beautiful garden, and some were from the organic seeds that Lowe's has to offer. The planter shown here is made of plastic, and although i'm trying not to be paranoid about plastic, i did line the tray with paper towels to minimize direct contact between the pete moss and the plastic tray. it made me feel better. If i start to have nightmares about it i will transfer these little guys to a wooden starter tray. I'd like to post my experiences with the garden here, so there will be a labels tag on this blog named "Gardening Journal" that you can click to follow my gardening process. Have an awesome day!

Balancing the Greens

The most fabulous Peter Rabbit Garden idea has been revamped to maximize sunlight for the fruits and vegetables, minimize time spent on building, as well as save costs on building material. We decided to move a bistro set we had on the patio a la Design on a Dime by our cute little shed to create sunny, romantic spot for our garden. Speaking of, the actual garden will be mobile: it will reside in large planters staged elegantly around the table and chairs, with a white lattice backdrop featuring our existing bird bath. The garden won't be as close to my favorite tree, but she'll have other goodies planted at her feet.

Incidentally, the money saved allows us to splurge on....you guessed it...THE COMPOSTER BRACKETS! Hooray!

Temple Throbbing Templates

...i am determined.. ...to get a WordPress template

....that works well

....with my current Blogger template

....ughghghghgh!!!!

....i will be patient

....diligent...

....and continue to be completely off my rocker for attempting this on my own ;-)

Found 'Em!

....just not anywhere local. boo!

It's called a Composter Bracket Set, and looks like only Lee Valley carries them. They cost 89.50. Hmm...not sure i'm sold on the price for these, since they don't come with wooden slats. They are based on a 20th century design which I LOVE, but it's the price i don't love. Trying to go green on the cheap. But it makes for a beautiful compost bin design and will be very easy and not very time consuming to put together. I may have to sit on this for a few days more. The weather is starting to turn warm here in New England, so my "sitting" time will have to be short.

Lemon Meringue a la Bedelia

My kids and I adore Amelia Bedelia. We thought it would be fun to make her lemon meringue pie today! YUM! Organic ingredients, cheap, fun to make with the kids. I'm going to experiment and try not use my mixer, but to do as much as I can by hand. Will post finished product tonight!

Weight of the World Washing Me Over

Earth Day is coming up on April 22nd of this year. I have been awakening each day to the gravity of how humans have negatively impacted the Earth, and I am feeling overwhelmed by my duties. This is not a foreign feeling, for I feel it most acutely when I wonder "how the heck am I going to raise two upstanding, connected world citizens?" But now, I ask myself "How the heck am I going to raise two upstanding, connected world citizens who are helping change the world and who are reducing their negaive impact on it with the everyday decisions they make about the daily business of living?" I look around and I have noticed that about one year ago I had WAY more plastic in my house in the forms of containers, toys, junk, cups, plates..etc than I do today. This took almost a year! I bet tons of plastic are manufactured every year. And I am still not where I want to be. Where DO I want to be? I have a rigid frame of mind at times that dictates a goal of using NOTHING plastic that can be helped. Can that realistically be done? I don't know. But I'm going to try.....maybe that will be what my next blog is about. Recently I discovered the MONUMENTOUS MESS called the Great Garbage Patch of the North Pacific Gyre. I was caught in the undertoe of a provocative video about the debris floating in the Pacific Ocean, most of it plastic.

Synthetic Sea from GreenPlate on Vimeo.

Horrors. What are we going to do? How are we going to do it? What can I do? I feel literally ill and have a physical urge to gag when I am sitting alone with my thoughts about the devastation that we don't want to look at. How can we not look? It's like deciding to ignore a festering sore on a limb because it's too ugly to look at.

Where is this Hardware?

Going to the hardware store today to find the green hardware shown in this bin design that holds the wood slats. Been looking all over the internet and cannot find it! What is this called???!?!?!? It's going to be fun trying to describe this to the hardware store folks today.....maybe i should print out this pic and bring it with me.

Kozy Shack Revisited

This recipe is AWESOME! very close to the original. I promised I would keep you all updated and after several attempts since my August 2010 Daily Musings entry of several months ago, this one is the best. I will play around with a less calorie version but so far I love that my version is organic :-) Thanks Copy Kat!

Dump Day!

And away we go.....