Planning a Green Baby Shower
It’s easy to throw an eco-friendly baby shower with a few quick adjustments to the usual routine. Start off right — go paperless! The pre-designed cards at Punchbowl (www.punchbowl.com) are cute and easy to manipulate — five minutes from start to send. Comparable services exist at www.pingg.com and www.evite.com. Your matching set of custom save... [Read more]
Review: Lucid Food
Lucid Food arrives, already a present, gorgeous with scrolling artwork and vibrant images, wrapped and ready. I am enamored. Also, I am hungry. Thumbing past photography for Chickpea Cakes with a verdant green Cilantro-Jalapeno Sauce, Fall Fruit Focaccia succulent with apple wedges, Crispy Yuba Rolls that look toasty brown and crunchy, ready to dip,... [Read more]
Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
I read Blue Like Jazz, Miller’s first and wildly successful memoir, in what seems now another life and another frame of mind. But Donald Miller is travelling with me in a freakish parallel universe. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years tracks Miller learning to view his life through a camera lens. This hook, life as a story, snagged my inner writer,... [Read more]
Review: Good Mail Day
Innovative, bright ways to re-invent your junk mail and build relationships via the old-fashioned art of correspondence wait for you in this book. Gone are the days of the pony express, sadly. Yet we humans still loiter around the mailbox, rallying our hopes if the postal worker’s bundle looks interesting. If I received any of the resourceful... [Read more]
Review: Green Mama
A compelling, well-written book for aspiring environmental mommies, Green Mama manages to fulfill its “guilt-free” promise with solid, simple advice that’s easy — for even the busiest moms! — to implement. “Leaving things better than I found them even started to seem, well, a little like something Jesus would do,” says... [Read more]
FURemover: Pet hair removal without waste
Last week I found this FURemover, a zippy brush that promises painless pet fur removal, for sale at my local Walmart for $4.99. I was skeptical. I’ve been promised results before. But, aware that my foot-long lint roller with sticky sheets made for pet hair removal was using 8-10 sheets on a single couch, I thought it was probably worth a try.... [Read more]
Paper Towels — Necessary Evil or Expendable Disposable?
There’s a war going on between my husband and I about the importance of paper towels. Occasionally, I’ll admit, it’s a relief that he wipes his grimy car-parts hands on the disposables rather than my fresh white linens. Even when he’s washed them three times, he leaves a gray trail of grease after he changes the car’s oil.... [Read more]
White Vinegar and Baking Soda
Vinegar is a natural sterilizing agent, and white vinegar’s clarity is preferred for cleaning. With similar acid content and purpose, it can replace lemon juice in most cleaning solutions, and essential oil may be added to mask the scent. Vinegar has thousands of household uses. Visit www.vinegartips.com to see some of them. [Read more] SHARETHIS.addEntry({... [Read more]
Non-toxic Products—Worth the Scrub?
With spring around the corner, I find myself stuck aboard the cleaning wagon. When I first started making homemade cleaning products, I’d occasionally find it challenging to get an area completely spotless. It can be frustrating to scrub twice as hard, when a chemical-laden spray used to eat through the grime in seconds. Using all the tips I’d... [Read more]
More Cleaning Essentials
Nontoxic recipes for home-cleaning come together easily for daily use. You may already have most of the ingredients on hand, as well as various re-usable bottes, spray-top bottles, glass jars with screw-top lids, salvaged old t-shirts and sponges. Add a little elbow grease, and your home is sure to shine. Some newer ingredients now available to homemakers... [Read more]
