going green

I was really inspired by this article I read in Ladies Home Journal (my mom sends them to me once she's done). Here are some easy changes that I think are helping reduce garbage and save the earth: Re-examine lunch:

I bought one of these bad boys for about two bucks at the grocery store. Not only does it keep Isaac's sandwich from getting smooshed, it saves me from using a sandwich bag every single time. BONUS: apparently several of his friends have them and they are the cool thing to bring your sandwich in. He brings his lunch to school in an awesome old school metal lunchbox too, so I am not wasting a paper bag everytime.

I used to buy bottles of water in bulk. Then I came to realize how irresponsible I was being using single use plastics (for more info look here, here and here). My friend Jami converted me to being a water bottle carrier and educated me a lot about the importance of using a metal one instead of a plastic one. I keep it with me at work and in the car, take it with me to the gym for yoga, and it fits in my bike cage.

I used to grab a spork packet from the cafeteria each day to eat my lunch with. I always discarded the straw immediately, used the napkin and the spork and then tossed the whole package into the trash. Now I just bring my own silverware back and forth from home.

Recycle obsessively: Where my parents live they can only recycle newspaper, not regular old paper. This would drive me crazy. I have a big bag on the floor or my pantry where I dump all the junk mail, toilet paper rolls, cardboard packaging from food items, Isaac's old school papers, etc. etc. I can leave it on the curb with my garbage, but now the elementary school where I work collects paper to be recycled as a fundraiser. Their other fundraiser is recycling juice pouches like these:

So, I'm making some good strides, but there is definitely room for improvement. I own a ton of those cloth grocery bags but I never, and I mean never, remember to take them with me to the grocery store. I still would really like to give composting a try.

What works for you? Would love to know.

So sick and weird... This state official has a blog completely attacking a gay college student. Watch the video. The guy is beyond creepy. "Do you consider yourself a bigot?" "Absolutely not. I'm a Christian citizen excercising my first amendment rights."

(SIDENOTE: I have a major crush on Anderson Cooper.)

This combined with the sad suicide of Tyler Clementi has me feeling really down.

Why can't people treat each other civilly?

hahahahaha

My horoscope for the day: You need to remember that there are limited productive hours in the day because some of them must be reserved for sleeping and eating. Although you can pack a lot of activity into a short amount of time, your tendency is to take on more than you should. You might even believe that you're being practical, or even cautious, but you can convince yourself of nearly anything now. Make your life easier by lessening your commitments before things get out of hand.

This post was written over the course of like 3 days

• There is a teacher at Isaac's school that I see every day walking in in the morning who is ridiculously, hugely pregnant. The odd thing is, she spoke on the little intro to kindergarten day last May and she looked ready to pop then. It's weird.
• It hardly rained all summer here but this week it has rained almost every day. I don't mind though. My lawn could sure the water. This year I don't do recess with either of my grades, so I avoid the dreaded indoor recess.
• This an interesting article.
• I did kickboxing tonight at the gym. I loved it in college but I haven't done it since. It felt awesome to put a pair of boxing gloves on and wail away on a punching bag. Highly therapeutic after a somewhat stressful few days at work. Although my upper back and shoulders are already burning.
• Isaac is so ridiculously excited to homework. It's adorable. I hope it lasts.

It's that time of year again...

The leaves are starting to turn gold and red...

There is a crisp feeling in the night air...

And everytime you turn around....

You run into one of these:

I don't know if they have them out west or in the south.

But in Pennsylvania the stinkbugs are everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE.

**shudder**

USA #1

I love him, love him, love him. Can't wait for his rally in Washington...

whippin out the sewing machine

The directions for blogger's mobile photo uploader thing are kind of confusing. I haven't had too much luck with it yet. I can be really slow with that kind of stuff though. Anyways, here are some crappy cellphone pictures of my latest crafting adventures. I'm on a banners kick lately. It started off with this cheerful happy birthday one. My house is the most centrally located and has the biggest kitchen, we tend to have celebratory birthday dinners here. Occasionally, I try to be domestic and decorate. Last year I made a really cute paper happy birthday banner for my brother's birthday. It didn't store well though and got kind of crumped and I thought it would make more sense to have a fabric one handy. I just followed the tutorial I found here. I didn't bother using the tiny iron to press open the seams though. I don't have a tiny iron and I find ironing seams open to be extremely tedious. Anyways, there are also cute tutorials for other variations found here and here.

I don't think my poor quality pictures do justice to their utter adorableness, if I do say so myself and they are wicked easy to make.

I just picked up some fun fat quarters for the little pennants, some bias tape, some wunder under. The letters I cut from an old pair of jeans.

I decided I was so happy with the way that came out, I bought some fallish fat quarters and made one for fall. Then I made two more for gifts.

I don't even have a mantle. My brother helped me put up this shelf which serves as sort of a makeshift mantle between two of my windows.

Hopefully next time I am out in Lancaster I can pick up some little pumpkins or something to beef up the mantle a little.