Everyday Life for Four Seasons

This fabric is going to get ironed out and made into a birthday present for 'A', who turns 5 on Friday...

This is something we'll be watching soon... along with this, which I've yet to see...

Have a great night!

What a wonderful day!

We attended our Unitarian Universalist service and the girls each received a pot of daffodils during the service. It's springtime! UUs may not celebrate Easter but we do celebrate new life, emotional rebirth and all things that Mother Nature touches.


I spent the afternoon outside with the girls, cleaning up the yard and getting outdoor furniture ready for the nice long warm season ahead. All this warm weather is getting me excited about cooking again. A trip to the Farmer's Market yesterday yielded the same produce we've been seeing for a while: beets, onions, mixed greens, and potatoes... but this week, I'm inspired to cook differently. Tonight we enjoyed a gourmet dinner composed of roasted potato wedges with fresh rosemary; roasted beets; crushed cannellini beans with sauteed garlic and olive oil; mesculin greens with dried cranberries and a homemade dressing of shallots, honey, dijon mustard, red wine vinegar and olive oil; sliced baguette; and local goat cheese to mix with everything. Delicious, just delicious!


Above is a photo of our bedroom in its current state. We had wet walls, so Jeff ripped them out. We patched the moisture sources and now it's time to get the walls back up. It takes time to get it all done! For now we're camping out with 'A' and 'H' in their bedrooms.


So, it's time for an update on the "no-poo" routine. It's been 5 days since I last used shampoo. I've tried a few different things: just water; baking soda paste with a cider vinegar rinse; and today I used Jeff's peppermint castille soap with a vinegar and cold water rinse. I understand that there might be a few weeks where my hair looks a bit oily, before it all evens out. It's not that bad yet. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, I was wondering where my hair dryer fit into the plan. My question was answered today when my hair dryer sparked and burnt out as I started to use it. I guess that answers it.

Today marks the first time Erma has been outside, wandering the yard, smelling the woods, lounging in the sun, in 13 years. Good for her. She turns 17 years old in a month.

I'm a grouchy environmentalist today, frowning on a whole bunch of things we're doing in our household that make me feel upset. I'm tired of ruining the planet. Sure, we have made a lot of changes that are positive, but there are always more things we can do, new ways to respect Mother Earth.

My One Small Change for April is actually a number of changes, things I am able to commit to today because I'm ready to move ahead.

1. No, this first one is not a joke. I'm going to try to go without using shampoo. My sister and Jeff were talking about it recently and I was pretty grossed out, but after learning more about it, it might not be so gross after all. It will take a few weeks for my hair to look good again, for the oil production to level out. Even though we use natural shampoo and conditioner, this is a good step because it will eliminate all of those plastic bottles. And if we didn't already use natural products, this step would be even better because the chemicals in ordinary shampoos are just so darn toxic and horrible for our health and the health of our planet.

2. The cats. I'm sick and tired of scooping their non-biodegradable, horrible-for-the-planet cat litter. When I was little, our cat didn't even have a litter box, she just went outside. So, it's back to nature for my cats. I'll use Swheat Scoop in the box for their nighttime runs (flushable! made from wheat!), but during the day, they are to be outside, spending time in nature. Now that it's warming up, they can do this. In fact, they're outside right now (begging to come in). Done.

3. Coffee. I've whittled myself off of straight-up caffeine. Now it's time for the next step: Stop drinking it entirely. Even though we buy organic, fair trade coffee, it's time to say good-bye to this habit. I sweeten it with sugar (the horror! Sugar is just plain horrible for the planet, period.) and I lighten it with soymilk (Silk started making organic soymilk again but who cares? Soymilk doesn't have the lightest carbon footprint and I hate the little plastic caps that come with each half-gallon container). There's nothing green or eco-friendly about my coffee habit. I'm going to wait until my current container of soymilk is empty to start this one, okay?

4. Food. Sure, we eat local, organic produce, which cuts down on the carbon footprint of each meal. Sure, we don't eat meat, which also reduces the footprint. But we still eat a lot more food than our bodies need to. Part of reducing means... reducing. So we'll be reducing our food consumption.

I think that's it. I think that's enough!

Back from Florida, finding a few photos from the trip to share...


Today is April 1st, so in addition to thinking up a few April Fool's jokes for my kids, I'm thinking about how my One Small Change project for March went. To sum it up, it didn't go well. I still have no idea how to change my bag situation! I did iron together a few pellet stove bags but since the plastic bags smell while I make them, I am thinking that the whole process is a bit toxic and shouldn't be done often. I tried to cut a pellet stove bag into a long strip to knit something from it, but it didn't knit up well.

I asked our farmer, Michael, what to do with all of the produce bags and he didn't know if he could take them back and reuse them. That seems a little gross to give them to someone else. He's thinking of offering bulk greens for sale, in which case I could use my existing bags. But I have SO MANY! Still no answer on what to do with them.

I didn't make bread bags yet. Waiting to find the perfect flour sacks or tea towels in a thrift store.

So that leaves me with nothing for March.

What are we going to do in April? I'm thinking about that today. I plan to head over to the One Small Change site to get some inspiration.

I'm still around, just a little warmer and more relaxed. I'm in Florida for a bit, appreciating the flowers, my family, and the warm-to-the-bone weather. See you again soon!

Planting peas;
Playing with water on this warm, spring day;
Enjoying the catnip (the first thing in the garden to come back to life!);
Family game night.

Cleaning up pinecones today in the yard and feeling like I'm not making a difference...

The volcano experiment was fun and a little funny today, for me anyway.

I put in two jars: 2 tablespoons of baking soda, 2 tablespoons of clear dish soap, and a few drops of orange food coloring. We took it outside, buried it so it looked like a volcano, and added 1/4 cup white vinegar. Then we sat back and watched it erupt.

It wasn't actually that simple. A lot of time has gone into the volcano project in our house. The girls have had an obsession with volcanos recently and we've read a lot about them. They incorporate erupting volcanoes in their play. Before we set these experimental ones off, I showed them what happens when vinegar is added to baking soda. I explained that the experiment is less of a way to show how a real volcano works and more of a way to show that interesting things can happen when a few substances are added together.

We all took turns adding the vinegar to the jars and then 'H' decided that she was afraid of the hot lava and she ran back to the house...

...and 'A' was nervous about touching it because she was afraid it would be hot...

...and I started to wonder why this experiment is made to look like a volcano at all!

We should have just called this one the "Fizzy Baking Soda Experiment." I might do it again soon, calling it just that.

After some discussion, Jeff and I have decided to start a new family tradition. Easter is coming up, as is the first day of spring. When I was little, the Easter Bunny would stop at our home on Easter Sunday. My family would dress for church and go and listen to the whole "Jesus is resurrected" story. Fast forward all these years, and I don't believe in the resurrection story. Coming to terms with my personal beliefs has helped me to stop self-identifying as a Christian. But the Easter Bunny has continued to stop at our home every year and leave our children a present. This has never made sense to me. I love the Easter Bunny idea, because to me it represents the start of spring, but I don't like tying it to a holiday I just don't believe in.

Enter the Spring Chipmunk. It's a friend of the Easter Bunny, and it picked the first day of spring as the holiday it celebrates. Just as the Easter Bunny doesn't stop at all homes, the Spring Chipmunk doesn't stop for everyone. It does stop for us though, and it brings a basket with candy my girls love (like peeps and jelly beans) and it works with the birds to hide eggs around the house and yard.

Explaining this to the girls was relatively easy (thank goodness!), and we feel good about it. Celebrating the first day of spring is certainly something our family can get behind.

Spring will be here soon!

Today:

We've got spring clothing to take out of storage;
A volcano to build in the backyard;
A vegan cookbook to pick up at the library;
Workout machines waiting at the gym;
Cookies to make for a workshop tomorrow night (I might add beets and chickpeas to the recipe this time... shhhh);
... and hugs to give all around.