The Consumeristic Green

So, does the marketing behind "being green" ever strike anyone else as funny? Even incongruent?

I just think it's interesting how easy it is to "save the environment" (according to the marketing) by buying a new green item and throwing out the old environmentally wasteful product. I'm sure many people who really care about the environment wouldn't so easily throw something away. I mean, if you really think about even the petroleum that it takes to manufacture and ship your new green item to you, and then the old item's pollution in landfills... you'd have to have a dang polluting product to make it worthwhile to throw out.

Anyway, I just think it's funny (in one of those not so funny ways).

Interesting Movie, Interesting Book

My parents are right-winged... extremely so. I imagine if they read this post, they'd be mortified. (As it is, my Dad said his feelings are hurt because I didn't buy him the Sarah Palin book for Christmas.)

Last night I watched "Food, Inc." I've been pretty interested in seeing it for a while. I ran across a blog talking about it while I was killing time*. So, I checked to see if I could put it in our delivered movie queue, when, lo and behold, I was able to watch it online right then. Woohoo! My hubby (who is incredibly indulgent about my fruity tendencies) watched with me.

If you decide to watch it, I'd suggest going into it with an open but critically objective mind. It's not a watch and go on with life documentary. You have to be ready to evaluate how you're going to let it affect your life. Anyway, that's my take on it (and, actually, most documentaries).

I liked it, and so did my husband. We are making changes to the food we purchase and eat (I'll post about my new honey another time). We are also lucky enough to be well enough off to afford those kinds of changes. Of course, if you read this from Consumption Rebellion, changing your food purchasing habits doesn't have to break the bank. (Luckily for me, she just posted about this.)


As for the book... what do you think of the title "The Humanure Handbook"? When I told my husband the title of this next book in my reading queue, he looked at me and said, "Please tell me that doesn't mean what I think it means."

It does... kind of. It's a book that explores how nature dealt with our excretions pre-sewage system, the enormous water and pollution damage the current system has created, and a fairly simple process for safely composting humanure so that it is nearly pathogen free. Just as an aside, the water treatment methods explained in the book (as in what our cities use today) sounds a lot like meat (specifically meat pathogen) treatment described in "Food, Inc."

You want to know something awesome? The guy who wrote the book published it himself because no publishing company would touch it, and then he made it available to download FREE on his website. Is that not so totally cool? That's when you know someone really cares about the message that they're putting out. He also includes basic instructions on how to make/find everything you'd need for this. (Just to state it: the author makes some decidedly atheist comments; doesn't mean I can't glean something from the other 250 pages.)

Does this mean I get to humanure? (sigh) Somehow I doubt it's going to happen at this point. Besides my hubby's reaction there's also the fact that we're renting and I just don't think we're allowed to uninstall a toilet. I don't know where we'd put a humanure friendly toilet! I'm just going to be happy that we're changing out incoming, and work on changing the outgoing later.


*killing time - isn't that such a sad figure of speech? When you actually consider the imagery behind it... it makes me never want to kill time again. Though I'm not sure what exactly writing my posts would be... therapy, I guess.

Watercolors and other Kids Painting

My girls love to paint. And I love them painting. It takes a little set up, but then they just paint. It keeps them from being in front of the TV, and it's fun to see. The paintings are also great to send to grandparents!

First off, watercolors. We got our first set of watercolors from a friend when my oldest was 2 or 3. We've gone through many of the plastic tray sets since then. In fact, the cost was kind of adding up. Recently I decided I wanted to get some quality art and craft materials for my kids. Using some Christmas gift money, we went to the craft store. We did it all in one go. If your craft store has weekly cupons and its close enough for a weekly trip, it's actually more economical to do a little at a time.

Here's the point I want to make about watercolors: If you plan on having your kids paint with watercolors fairly often, get the paint in tubes! I have a picture of our set here, next to the plastic tray set we still have. It costs something in the realm of $2.50 for one of the plastic tray sets, maybe $1.50 if you have a cupon. We get probably 8 good uses out of it. The tube set we got cost $13, or $8 with a 40% cupon. Based on what I've used so far, I'll get anywhere from 50-75 good uses out of them. Allowing for the different prices, that's 10-35 more uses for us. Since mommy is the only one allowed to touch the paint tubes, the colors only get mixed up on the palette, and the kids get pure colors to start with every time they paint. Since the paint is more concentrated and doesn't get as overloaded and diluted with water, they also have more control and seem more confident in their creations. The downside: I'm not sure if they're non-toxic. Since my kids don't put paint in their mouths, I don't really worry about it. Not everyone is that lucky, though.

Basically, I'm saying,with little artists in the house, decent quality paints are worth the expense to me. Just wanted to share in case anyone else gets frustrated with the expense of paints for their kids.

On a less monetary note: there are so many fun ways to paint! Or do crafts for that matter. We've started checking out kid craft books from the local library. One I have really liked is Crafty Kids Paper & Paint. It has a lot of ideas you could find online, but my kids like to look through the book and choose what to do. We just did q-tip paintings and paper towel food coloring paintings. Another fun resource is kidscraftweekly. You can sign up for a newsletter to be emailed to you, and it has fun home craft ideas for kids. I just love painting and crafts and coloring for my kids. It keeps them engaged and is so much fun.

Happy painting!

Really fun Refashioned Girls Dress

I did remember to take a before picture this time. Yay! This was originally a regular knit t-shirt. The color is wrong for me, though.

What did I do to it? I tried it on my daughter and measured how much I needed to take it in on each side just above her waist as well as at the arm pit. Turn inside out. Plot the two points and draw a curved line connecting the dots to each other and connecting to the end of the sleeve and the bottom of the shirt. Sew along the line (use ball point needle and zig-zag or knit stitch if sewing a knit). You may want to start with a basting stitch. Try it on again before cutting the excess fabric. Put a final stitch in if you need to and cut the extra fabric. If it's a knit, no need to zig-zag or serge edges.

For the frill, measure the circumference of the bottom of the shirt/dress. Cut fabric curves (see the second picture on this site if you need to visualize). You'll need to do several sets, enough to measure somewhere 2-3x the circumference of the bottom of the skirt (measure along inner curve). Keep the fabric approx. the same width all along (it's a little forgiving).

Sew pieces together at short sides, keeping the inner curve next to each other. Be careful that your seam faces the same way each time you sew. It should make one really long circle/oval. Hem the outer curve. Run a basting stitch along the inner curve. Gather basting until inner curve matches the bottom of the shirt/dress. Attach to the inside of the bottom of the dress with a zig-zag stitch and take out basting.

For the "flower" (which didn't turn out as I'd planned), I loosely followed the instructions at this blog. It may not look perfect, but it looked well enough for me. And my daughter LOVES this dress.