Are you forever asking people to bring a casserole plus a chair or two? Or do you have the proverbial stack of metal or plastic chairs in your basement? Guilty on both accounts.
FlexibleLove furniture, a honeycomb, accordion structure-type furniture, is not only eco-friendly, it will save your aching back from lugging those chairs up from the basement every time you have a party. The furniture is made of readily accessible recycled materials such as wood waste and paper and accommodates a variety of different configurations as well as seating for a number of people. [click to continue…]
Well, you thought it was safe to go back in the water? Not with Monsanto rearing its ugly face. Did I hear “genetically modified” again? Yep. Your organic food might not be organic anymore.
As many of you know, we have GMO corn, GMO soybeans, and now we could have de-regulated GMO alfalfa. Isn’t that rich? According to the USDA,
“On December 18, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the availability of APHIS’ Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that evaluates the potential environmental effects of deregulating two lines of alfalfa genetically engineered (GE) to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate, known commercially as Roundup®. The GE alfalfa is commonly referred to as Roundup® Ready (RR) alfalfa and is referred to as glyphosate-tolerant (GT) alfalfa in the EIS.”
Watch the above video from Healthy Child, Healthy World and heed the wake-up call to change the way we do “chemicals” in our world. Have you noticed the rise of asthma, learning disabilities, autism, cancer, and many other diseases?
Many of you know me for my green building articles but may not realize that I built my house using non or low toxic materials for my children. I am one of those parents who has children that have learning disabilities, ADD, JV diabetes, eczema, and asthma. I know parents who lost their children to cancer, and friends who are fighting cancer. Chemicals are in our air, the ground, in our food, and our water. We wear chemicals, eat chemicals, and sleep in chemicals. So, am I surprised at the rise in illness? No. [click to continue…]
Do you need to put on a mask before coloring your hair?
I have been turning gray since my early twenties. It must be hereditary since my grandfather was all gray at an early age. When I had just a few gray strands, I would literally “wash that gray away” with the product of the same name. It would cover the gray for about a week. As the years progressed, I became grayer and grayer. As I approached my late twenties, one of my clients remarked that my gray hair aged me. That was it for me.
The next week I made my first appointment to rid my dark brown hair of those ugly gray stands in my hair. This decision started a twenty year love/hate relationship with hair color. I yearned to stop coloring, but my gray hair was wiry and unattractive. At this point in my life, I am almost one hundred percent gray. When it is time to color, I look like a skunk with a silver band running down the middle of my hair line. [click to continue…]
Until I moved into my house on the hill, I never saw a turkey vulture before. Or at least I did not pay attention. They love to perch on top of my chimneys. Well, lately they have come to love my house. Since I am on a mountain like hill, my roof is a great vantage point to see where the food is. The dead food.
Turkey vultures are scavengers. They look for dead animals. They are nature’s incinerators. I got to witness turkey vultures in action when we had a dead deer which we had to drag to the curb. (Yes, it was the grossest experience with the deer’s you know what hanging out of its side.) [click to continue…]
After all the holiday presents have been exchanged, the tree taken down, and the ornaments put away, how many of you still have up your holiday cards laying around? I tend to keep mine up a little longer because I love the festive colors that adorn my mantel.
Usually, I take off the pictures that my friends give me of their kids and store them away in my albums and toss the rest into the recycling bind. Diane at the Big Green Purse mentioned that she uses her old holiday cards for gift tags. I thought what a brilliant idea. [click to continue…]
Watch this 3 minute video of This is Our Moment with Leo DiCaprio, Edward Norton, Forest Whitaker, Jason Bateman, Felicity Huffman, Chace Crawford, Emmy Rossum and Justin Long to tell our elected officials to vote for the American Clean Energy and Security Act pending in the Senate. This video was the brain child of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC.) I absolutely loved Justin Bateman and Justin Long in the video. Short, sweet, to the point with some humor added in.
What is this video all about? On the NRDC’s website,
The House of Representatives has passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, an historic bill that sets the nation’s first limits on global warming pollution. But the House vote also unmasked some energy villains: those who said NO to millions of clean energy jobs; NO to reducing carbon pollution; NO to breaking America’s dangerous dependence on oil; and NO to making America more competitive.
Now, the U.S. Senate will take up comprehensive clean energy legislation and we need Clean Energy Heroes – these clean energy heroes can take action to restore our economy, revitalize our communities and safeguard the health of our families.” [click to continue…]
How many people do you know take pictures with their blackberry of paper plates in BJs? Probably just me but I had good reason to be excited. Here in front of my lovely doe green eyes was a package of 165 Chinet Classic White paper plates that I could compost in my magical composter!
Some of you are murmuring. “Um, Anna, I don’t get it. I know you love gardening but I just don’t see the connection.” Okay, let me explain. Up until that astonishing moment at BJs, my only hope for a greener large party was using biodegradable plates and silverware. So, what is wrong with that?
A lot. Biodegradable plates can only be composted in a commercial facility, not my backyard composter as grand as it is. How many of you have commercial facilities available in your areas? The closest one that I have is in the middle of the state. I don’t know whether I can just take a 45 minute drive down to their facility and hand them a bag of my biodegradable plates and cups, and say “Go forth and compost.” [click to continue…]
How many of you struggle with door air infiltration in your home or office? Does it seem like your exterior office or home doors or perhaps, your overhead doors leak like sieves? How about if you could just brush those air drafts good-bye with a simple weatherstripping product? Look no further. Memtech weatherstripping and draft sealing brush door sets offer an affordable alternative to stop those nasty drafts.
So, how did I find Memtech? Believe or not my energy star house suffered from leakage from its front doors in the winter. My double front doors were custom made and were installed with a special locking device on the bottom which did not leave any room for a sweep to stop air from infiltrating. When we moved into the house in the Spring, there wasn’t any noticeable leakage. But when winter came around and small specks of snow was seeping under the door, I knew I had a problem. [click to continue…]
Have you been a recipient of an Intuit’s try me disk? I have receive quite a few especially around tax season, but I never realized so many other people had too. How did I know? When I was cleaning out my My GreenDisk box which was spilling over with computer junk, I noticed quite a few Intuit Disks in the pile. Some of them were probably mine.
In fact, I will be adding to the pile with the above pictured Quicken Disk. Coincidentally, I received this disk in the mail today urging me to activate the new 2010 disk since my 2007 disk will be expiring soon. Funny thing is I use Quicken’s 2009 software. So, the 2007 expiration warning does not apply to me. All Intuit had to do was check their records or cross check against my address since my husband and I use different name to see which version I owned.
I know Intuit is trying to drum up business for itself, but why do they need to send out so many CDs that get thrown in the trash? [click to continue…]
