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.

Egg Shell Skin Vs. the Monster Zit

This was just too awesome not to share. So, if you google, yahoo or bing egg shell dermabrasion, you get info on how you can take that fragile little skin from between the egg shell and egg to use for a skin treatment. I hope that makes sense. Look it up if you have questions; I think there are even vids on it.

Apparently, that skin draws out toxins and wastes from the egg while the chick is forming. So, when removed and carefully adhered to the skin, it can potentially draw out toxins. Awesome in theory, right? No expensive face treatment needed, right?

Ok, so I tried this. First of all, this does work (I'll say how in a minute). However, if you're looking for an all over the face treatment, don't count on it. It's lots of work getting the fragile skin in big enough pieces, and then you have to use hours of time and lots of eggs to cover your entire face. What a pain!

However, if you get monster zits like me, this is the awesomest thing EVER! A monster zit, for me, is a deeper skin infection than a regular zit. It usually never forms a head or takes about a week to do so. They are often so painful that if anything touches it pain sears through my face. As a teenager I actually had one that split my skin when I accidentally tapped it lightly with a paper plate. The problem is they're so painful that I can't help but try to relieve the pain any way that I can, which is not good for my skin at all.

This is why I love the egg shell skin. When I get a big painful zit, I put on a piece just big enough to cover the zit (rinse really well!) and just around it. I let it sit 10 min. I often do 2 or 3 sets of these because the zits are so bad. After I'm done I rinse and moisturize. Afterward, the pain is gone, the zit is smaller, and it disappears within about 2 days.

Just had to share, because if anyone else deals with this incredibly annoying, hideous, painful searing type of infection, you are probably like me: you want to do anything you can without killing your face. Oh, and for areas of recurrent infection, I've tried putting a layer of honey over the infected area for 20 min every night for 3 days or so. Honey is antibacterial and it seems to help. Good luck!

I love Vinegar!

When I first started getting into the whole frugal and eco living idea, I found articles on some of my favorite blogs that have to do with cleaning. There's lots out there, even on places like MSN. I grew up, like probably most of you, with products. Hey, products aren't all bad. But, I never washed a floor without lysol or pine fresh growing up. So, I thought it would be fun to try out something different.

Enter vinegar. I love it! There are lots of uses for apple cider vinegar and tons for white vinegar (just look at this site with 1001 uses for white vinegar). I mostly use vinegar in three ways: as a fabric softener, as a deodorizer, and as a general cleaner. Since vinegar is a renewable resource (just look up how to make it), I am even more of a fan. I buy mine in bulk instead of making it, because I just haven't really had a chance/success yet. I'll let you know if it ever works for me!

Fabric Softener - I put a 1/2 C in during the rinse cycle or 1 C in at the beginning of a cycle (if I'm going to be busy or out of the house). Since I typically hang my clothes to dry, I absolutely notice a difference when I use vinegar. My jeans used to come out like stiff dry newspaper; like, they were crunchy feeling. After I started using the vinegar, they're normal, and our clothes never feel stiff. You do not smell the vinegar; it's very diluted anyway, and then also dries itself out, even in the dryer. Love it!

Deodorizer - So, when there's a particularly foul stench and I don't have a fresh lemon (which is most of the time; cut fresh lemon peel is an amazing deodorizer), I put out a little custard bowl with some vinegar. Sometimes I put in a drop of peppermint oil or lavender oil, but that's optional. Once I had a friend who was pregnant coming over so I put out custard cups with vinegar, dried mint leaves and fresh cut ginger all over the house. She said it was the first time she'd come to a house and not felt nauseated by smells.

General cleaner - I keep a spray bottle of a solution of 1 part vinegar: 8 parts water at all times. I adore this! I use it to spray and wipe my counters, tables, stair railing, bathroom sinks... almost everything. I even use it to wash my floor. I just spray and wipe a bit at a time. If something won't come up, I give it a few sprays, wait 3 minutes, and go back and it wipes right up. For cleaning really bad stove scum, tile grout, toilet bowls, or clearing out a clogged drain, I use full strength vinegar with a little baking soda. (I hear non-aluminum is better; I prefer non-aluminum baking soda 'cause there's no metallic smell.) Since baking soda is a non-renewable resource, I recommend using it sparingly. I let vinegar do the heavy lifting.

So, I really really really like vinegar. It's really inexpensive. It's non-toxic. I can wipe the kitchen table or counters and if my kids put food on it right after, I know they're not going to be poisoned. And there's almost no smell. As opposed to product cleaners... I can barely tolerate the smell of those anymore; they give me a headache. Which means they probably aren't that good for us. I only use products for two reasons: I have some that I might as well use up and there are a very few things that products do head and shoulders better on certain messes. (Example, goo-gone is way better at sticker mess than vinegar.)

Warning: Do not put vinegar water (unless extremely diluted) in your garden! It holds onto nitrogen and kills plants. You can put it on grass growing in sidewalk cracks, though.

A Summery Autumn in Winter

No, I'm not bragging about the warm weather down here. Over Christmas break, I decided to do something I've been meaning to do for ages but just haven't gotten around to: figuring out my season. As in, the "season" of my skin's color tone. I first started to appreciate seasons and skin tone after my second daughter, a redhead, was born. My first daughter looks great in pink (much to my chagrin, since I'm not a "pink" person), but everything that looked great on my first looks pretty bad on my second. So, I talked to some older friends about it and was reintroduced to the idea of the seasons.

Now, over the years I've learned various tidbits about skin tone from various women's events. I've heard about skin undertones (everyone is pink, purple, green or yellow if I remember right). I've heard about hair and eyes determining your season (which is not accurate as far as I'm concerned). One site I read at one point said that even within all skin colors there are the different seasons. Maybe that ties into the skin undertone thing; I don't know. All I did know is that I was having trouble finding out how to actually determine my skin tone, and then, more importantly, what colors to wear in clothing, make-up, etc. once I have figured it out.

Enter one of my new favorite websites: http://www.beauty-and-the-bath.com/Season-Color-Analysis.html .

It has a drop down color palette for ever season, and on the side are links for all the seasons to determine more. It's worthwhile to read through for every season, because they put in different tips for different seasons that should actually be in all of them.

For example, under the link for summer skin tones is the best do-it-yourself method for determining skin tone. You take a piece of fabric (you can use fabric, existing clothing, a towel, whatever as long as it will cover the top of your torso). Drape the fabric over your shoulders. Stand in front of a mirror. Close your eyes. Open them. Do you notice the fabric or your face? It took me a while to really get it down. I noticed that even if I stood there for a while, if I had the wrong color on, my eyes were naturally drawn to the color. And the right colors, I just saw my face and barely noticed the color. Thinking about it, wearing the wrong color draws people to look at your body. If women wore the right color, I wonder if men would notice their faces more than their bodies. Just a thought.

Second critical piece of info for me: autumns can cross a bit into the other seasons. You see, I discovered I'm an autumn with some summer tendencies (hence the title of the post). I can pull off some summer colors, mostly in the blues, but sticking with mostly autumn colors look waaaaaaay better on me. I also changed the color of my blush and lip gloss (I love burt's bees camel shimmer gloss), and I think it looks lots better.

Anyway, it's been a fun discovery for me. Now I just get to revamp my wardrobe, 'cause I pretty much have mostly the wrong colors.

On another note, I just found my new favorite make-up tip: filling in your eyebrows a shade or two darker than your hair (unless your hair is already dark; then just fill them in, I guess). Not only does it define your eyebrows, it makes your hair look like you've had it highlighted without ever dying your hair!