Being a Responsible Citizen

My goal this summer is to become more sustainable. I've been working on this for a LONG time, but it doesn't seem to be progressing at a pace that makes me happy.

Since we get our produce and dry goods in a weekly bin and our meat in a monthy box, that saves us on a huge amount of crappy plastic bags. Somehow, my kitchen and laundry room and STILL becoming overrun with them. I am however recycling all of those extra bags so that makes me somewhat feel better. My goal though is to bring in NO plastic bags to the house. I have a market bag and 2 reusable grocery bags as well as a couple of canvas bags but they don't end up coming with me in the car. Need to make a plan to help this!

Reducing the amount of waste that goes out. Recycle, recycle, recycle. I'm doing a ton better and now that I have built our compost- that's saving us about a plastic grocery bag a week of waste. My goal is to only have 1 bag a week of garbage leaving the house. (and that will make it more enticing to purchase biodegradable expensive waste bags). There really is no excuse to having even a full bag of garbage going out of the house considering you can recycle so much, and compost. What is getting thrown out? I have to figure this out.

I need more ideas...

Great Soup

I have to post this recipe before I forget!

-Make a rue from coconut oil, onions and garlic
-Add can of coconut milk, 2 tbsp curry powder and simmer
-brown a lb of ground beef in a frying pan
-When the coconut milk has simmered and thickened fill the pot with water and chopped veggies
(I added broccoli, baby bok choy, bean sprouts,mushrooms and celery)
-Add the ground beef and juices, and a cup of pearl barley
-If you want it a bit thicker then add a cup of milk
- I added some different spices, salt and pepper to taste

YUMMY!

Oops- I've done it again!

OK- I need to start a new rule. Blog everyday, or else I'll lose my readers (do I have any?)

Everything gearing up for spring is getting even busier. I've been finished work for a month now, and the days have been even more full if that is possible!

I'm determined to have a garden, I've been tilling up a storm. Avari's little garden area is almost finished, just waiting for the bizarre weather to be over so we can plant some little seeds for her. She's been helping fill it up with worms! I've constructed a compost and it's filling up quite quickly as we do the yard work. I'd say that the front yard is about 80% done. Just needs a couple more hours of tilling and weeding and some gorgeous new soil, some edging and presto!

We've also been keeping our weekends busy constructing and making things. Besides the compost, I've dyed some playsilks with kool-aid, made a wooden spindle and a birdhouse. We're planning on making Avari a set of playstands in may that have some shelves for her to play with and then a playsilk can be draped over for shade.


She already loves her little table set we created for her out of some old stumps that were left in our backyard




All in all, I suspect that I will have the front yard done by April 15th, then it will be the construction of the backyard garden and seed planting for May 1st. Yea me!

My crafting has been lacking due to lots of tax stuff, and doing my new advertising job- that has to be done in the evenings, and it's alot of set up work. April 13th I start my photography assistant job and I'm SOOOOOOOO stoked about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So, after quitting work, I now have 3 jobs and a fulltime mom slot all wrapped up in to a day, and I LOVE it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm also catching up on technology. I'm getting a cell phone- a blackberry and it's PINK! yippee! I can now check email all day, any time of the day, and do MSN stuff all day. I'm not going to get in to web surfing, but it has an organizer, so instead of having a zillion little pieces of paper getting lost in my pocket - they will now be engrained in my new beloved toy. Can you tell i'm excited and it's not even here yet!

I got a wonderful little gift in the mail today. I'm so fortunate to be a part of a great group of mommas online and we're doing a mother's day swap. Today I got a little note in hte mail with 3 beautiful handmade gift cards that are getting put in a frame as soon as I can get back to the store to get one. Thanks so much secret sister!!!!!!

OK- back to do a few rows of my spring cardigan before naptime is over