Archive for the 'Conservation' Category
Get ready to celebrate - Green Style!
October 13, 2008 | Comments
I am really excited to share this with you all - trust me, it’s been hard work keeping my mouth shut about this one until today!
The Holidays are just around the corner - coming up way too fast in my opinion - but I’ve got a resource that will make the whole thing easier AND more environmentally friendly.
Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations & Traditions for the Whole Family is a great handbook for the holidays. Instead of getting caught up in the madness and chaos of creating the perfect Good Housekeeping Holiday (and spending the small fortune and generating the pile of waste that goes along with it), Celebrate Green! gives solid, practical advice for injecting real meaning into the Holidays while reducing waste at the same time.
With four kiddos to outfit in Halloween finery, I flipped instantly to the section on costumes . . . and were my eyes opened! I always knew I didn’t like the Halloween store fare - it’s expensive and yet feels cheap. But I had no idea it was manufactured with (among other things) lead and formaldehyde. Fun, huh? So instead I pitched some of the ideas from Celebrate Green! to my kids, and voila - they turned on their innate creativity and started coming up with great ways to create costumes from what we have at home or could create ourselves. This way, they get a double benefit. Not only do they get to dress up, but they get the fun of creating their costumes as well!
We’re having a blast with this book, and I look forward to incorporating many of the suggestions all year long! I enjoyed it so much I signed on to join the blog tour. Check out a few of the other blogs talking about this book:
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October 1 http://www.village-green-gifts.com/536/book-celebrate-green/
Tamara Graham My True Genius
New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE) The NYWSE Blog October 2 Jenn Savedge The Green Parent Elena Lipson The EcoDiva - Sustainable Luxury www.TheEcoDiva.blogspot.com and www.CarrieandDanielle.com October 3 Jenn Sturiale Tiny Choices October 5 Sarah Sabado Photography, Travel and Life Week of October 6 Paige Torgrimson Green Paige October 6 Stacy Williams Sagan’s Universe http://www.sagansuniverse.blogspot.com/ Shirley Siluk Gregory Green Living/Suite101.com http://greenliving.suite101.com,
Julie Northrop Free Birthday Treats Blog http://www.freebirthdaytreatsblog.com Tiffany Washko Raw Kid Recipes & Nature Moms October 7 Faten Abdallah Global Arts http://www.theglobeandthearts.blogspot.com Cheryl Morgen Escape to Books http://escapetobooks.blogspot.com/ Elena Lipson The EcoDiva - Sustainable Luxury www.TheEcoDiva.blogspot.com and www.CarrieandDanielle.com October 8 Wenona Napolitano Green Weddings and More and Creatively Green www.everythinggreenweddings.blogspot.com and www.creativelygreen.blogspot.com Shirley Siluk Gregory EcoLocalizer.com
Penelope Anne Bartotto, Interview The Library at the END of the Universe http://bookwormsballroom.blogspot.com/ Linda Blanco SaferForYourHomeAndSelf Jen Vondenbrink Your Life Simplified |
October 9 Angie Goodloe The Herbalist’s Path www.herbalistpath.blogspot.com October 10 Cate O’Malley The Voice of Mom
Penelope Anne Bartotto, Review The Library at the END of the Universe http://bookwormsballroom.blogspot.com/ Alisa Bowman Project Happily Ever After http://www.projecthappilyeverafter.com/happy-qa.asp October 13 Mark Caserta 3r Living and 3r Blogging Tricia Ballard Living at the Speed of Life http://www.triciaballad.com/blog/ October 15 Jen Vondenbrink Your Life Simplified (interview) www.yourlifesimplified.com/blog1 Angie Goodloe Mama Goin’ Wholistic http://mamagoinwholistic.blogspot.com/ October 16 Karen Renzi Beyondus Blog - Musings on Marketing, Web, and Life Work-at-Home-Momma www.workathomemomma.wordpress.com Kirsten Aadahl EcoWomen http://ecowomen.wordpress.com/ Andrea McMann Simple Things http://simplethings1.wordpress.com October 17 Bethany Cagle Brynna Curry http://www.freewebs.com/brynnacurry Unsure of date Stacey Kannenberg www.cedarvalleypublishing.com/blog
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Check out http://www.CelebrateGreen.NET, where you can sign up for updates, blogs, find more tips, ideas, receive special offers and discounts. Authors Lynn Colwell and Corey Colwell-Lipson are also interested in hearing from their readers, be sure to let them know what you think!
Cut back on driving until the gas companies get a clue
March 12, 2008 | 4 Comments
Like most of the country, I’ve complained about the rising price of gasoline. Who wouldn’t complain when all of our budgets are getting tighter, everything we buy is more expensive because shipping costs are higher, the economy is tanking, and the oil companies are posting record profits?
But this is just too much. Last week, gas in my area was $2.99 a gallon. It jumped to $3.19 a few days ago. Today, the price is $3.46 a gallon! (Yes, I’m well aware that $3.46 is “cheap gas” in some parts of the country - I feel for you, and I hope you’ll hop on and share some tips - but I’m getting ahead of myself)
I am sick and tired of the obscenely wealthy oil barons playing chess with my budget. And they can quit whining about the Saudi’s raising the price of oil. I personally don’t have a lot of sympathy for them when, first off, they pass those higher prices right down the line to us at the gas pumps, and secondly (have I mentioned this yet) they’re making record profits! I’m pretty much convinced that all this business about the Saudis is blown way out of proportion just to give them an excuse to jack up gas prices again.
So, enough ranting. Let’s talk solutions here.
Hybrid cars and biodiesel fuels are great solutions to the big problem, but they’re also a pretty major thing to implement for most families. While I’d love to drive a smaller vehicle, reality is that we have to drive a car that seats 6 (4 carseats/booster seats, 2 adults), so that pretty much locks us into a minivan, and besides our family isn’t in a position right now to run out and buy a new car!
So I’m thinking of ways that our family can conserve gasoline as much as possible. Simple, practical things that we can implement right now, while we save up for that hybrid!
Here are the things I’ve come up with right away and will be implementing over the next week - please, add your own ideas and tips! I’m working on the details, but I’m thinking this will turn into a blog contest, where everyone who adds their own ideas and tips will be entered into a drawing for a prize.
- Consolidate errands into a single trip. This one’s tough, because to work well it means that one parent stays home with the kids while the other does the running around. Why? Because when you take young kids along on errands, they get bored. Then they get crabby. And eventually you go home just to get them out of the car - and then you have to go back out later to finish. BUT there’s a side benefit to this one too: it’s more budget-friendly to do errands in one big kid-free trip, because you do less impulse spending. You’re less likely to bow to the “Mama, we want Happy Meals!” campaign from the back seat.
- Buy in bulk. The idea here is that if you can purchase 2 weeks worth of groceries at a time, you can make one less trip to the grocery store. If you do Freezer Meals, you’re already ahead of the game!
- Relax when you drive. You’ll get better gas mileage if you slow down, accelerate calmly, and just generally chill out. Road rage is just too expensive these days!
I know there are more ideas out there - how will you cut back on driving until the gas companies get a clue?
