Oh my Honey

A few weeks ago I went on a local raw honey shopping spree. Since my kids are old enough (over 1 year) and one has had allergy problems before, I've been wanting to try raw honey for a while. Local raw honey is supposed to be good for preventing allergies as it contains pollen from allergens in your area. I don't know personally if it works, but either way it's also fun to support local producers.

What I wasn't expecting was the selection. (I knew about pricing, which is way more expensive.) I didn't know I'd be able to pick from several different local brands and lots of different flavors. I came home with 4 flavors from two companies: Wildflower, Sage, Mango, and Alfalfa.

Never have my taste-buds been so enthralled by honey. Holy cow. The Wildflower and Sage honey are the most like the honey you buy at the store. Still, they have awesome undertones. These are my daughters favorites.

Mango smells and tastes like mango. With honey, of course. I hadn't expected such a pronounced flavor. There is a bit of an aftertaste, but if you have it with bread or yogurt, it's loverly.

Alfalfa is my favorite. It's a deep amber color and it tastes divine. It's so rich and deep it almost tastes dark. You don't need much for a full flavor experience. I love it.

So, what's the end story? I don't care if it's more expensive; I am never going back to regular store honey. I never realized how much depth it lacks. Even my husband, who has never been a fan of honey, likes this honey. Local raw honey is just that good.

Green Laundry Love

Laundry can be such a chore. And it builds up so fast. But, there are some things I really love about laundry. Like, hanging my clothes out to dry. Now that it's starting to warm up (or out of the rainy season for some of us), we're getting close to a time when you can hang your knickers out.

Doesn't that take longer? Sure does. But, I still love it. At first, it was out of necessity. We moved into a new place and bought an old used washer but no dryer. I liked the idea of saving electricity anyway. We invested in collapsible clothes dryers (about $60 worth, new), which work great. I get about two loads done, up to 3 on a nice hot day.Luckily for me, just before the torrential rains (I'm exaggerating) an inspired friend was getting rid of her dryer and kept asking me if I wanted it. I figured it was better off in my garage than a dump, and it ended up being incredibly useful. I could've hung my clothes inside, but man would our house have been cramped for a few months. Guess I'm not that motivated (sigh). Anyway, here are some of my pros and cons to line/hang/sun-drying.

the Benefits of Sun-drying: Save electricity and give yourself a green ego boost without having to buy an expensive new eco-dryer. Your clothes smell like real sunshine. And spending more time outdoors, which can give a major emotional boost. Oh, and getting to do at least one household chore slowly, giving your brain a breather from the chaos that is modern life. Ahhhh.

the Detriments of Sun-drying: It takes longer; you can't just plow through the laundry in one crazy folding day. Bugs. As in, the occasional spider thinking your clothes horse is the perfect perch or a moth liking your clothes as a hiding place. These two problems only occur if A) you keep your clothes out overnight, and B) you don't use any kind of scent to keep the bugs away (I put some lavender oil and eucalyptus oil in with any washload I intend to hang-dry). Also, if you happen to leave your clothes out in the rain, you may or may not end up with mud splattered on your clothes.


To make my laundry even more economically and ecologically friendly, I use soapnuts (I use Naturoli brand; they also make a heavenly massage oil) with a drop of lavender and eucalyptus oil on the bag holding the nuts. I use Borax with whites. And I use 1/2C white vinegar as a fabric softener. I have yet to discover a really great homemade ecologically friendly stain treatment, but since most of the stains wash out with what I do anyway, I don't really sweat it. I've been using these for over a year with great success.

Someday I'm even going to drain my wash water into a big bucket and use that water in my garden. Since everything I use is plant based with no detergents (I'm pretty sure borax is ok; let me know of I'm wrong), there's absolutely no problem with using it for a garden, especially for flowers. And when my soapnuts are almost dead, I save them in a small container. When it's full, I boil the nuts to get the rest of the saponin (active agent) out and then use that soap to wash my car.

How do you keep your laundry green?

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!