Friday, August 27, 2010

Plarn part 2

So i had so much fun making my ball of Plarn that I have decided that I am going to knit a tote bag with it. I am going to give it away for free to whoever write the best comment describing something great that they have done to help the environment.
Used grocery bags












Plarn ball I made!













 The start of the tote bag!

Plarn!

Today thanks to another green blog I am going to show you how to make "Plarn" or Plastic yarn. This is something I am super excited about because I think that there is nothing that gets wasted as much as plastic grocery bags. Now I have been using reusable tote bags for groceries for some time now but every once in a while I forget. We do have a recycling for grocery bags and I recycle them a lot but we still end up with a ton. By making this plarn you can not only reuse plastic bags but knit or crochet some interesting and sturdy things...such as a reusable tote bag lol (ironic).

So here it is thanks to "Textiles4you" at http://textiles4you.blogspot.com
First gather up all your plastic grocery bags. Cut off the handles and the bottom. Now cut the rest into 1 inch loops. Now loop the loops together. Make a string of them and ball it into a ball like yarn. Now crochet or knit with it.
If you would like to see pictures here is the original link. http://textiles4you.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-make-plyan.html
I am going to go try this right now and I will post my own pictures.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Recycled clothing

So one of the easiest ways to save a little green and be a little green is to buy second hand clothing. For kids this is especially important because children's clothes are expensive and most children grow out of their clothes before they even get a chance to wear them. By selling/ donating your used baby and children clothes to a second hand store you are helping people recycle baby clothes. By buying baby clothes second hand you save a lot of money and can often find really unique and adorable pieces, and of course you are taking clothes that would otherwise end up in a land fill.
A local store in my town that sells secondhand children's clothing is the "Kidz Closet". It is an adorable little boutique that sells really nice clothes. They are usually barely worn. I can almost always go in with less than 20$ and walk out with several outfits. Yesterday I took my little man down there because he achieved the monumental feat of going poopy in his potty for the first time at the amazing age of 11 months. I told him he could pick out a toy. So we ended up finding for less than 15$ we found a really nice toy, a shirt and 4 pairs of pajamas.


































































































So go out and buy used! Recycle clothes!

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Exciting News

So I have some cool news! The Green Mommy has been asked to have a booth at the Sustainability Fair this September. I just need to get some info together. I am thinking a poster and some hands on stuff like a few different kinds of cloth diapers, some compost tea, maybe some cloth wipes.... My head is already a buzz. So In that spirit the Green Mommy Blog is going to really get cracking on some good informative entries. So far I have been focusing mostly on Green Mommies with babies... since that is where I currently am in life, but there are a lot of ways to get older kids (4+) interested in being Green. So I will keep posting some cool activities you can do with older kids.


Today's experiment is to test your local rainwater for acid rain. This is best tried on a rainy day, since you need rain water.
The things you will need are:
1 bucket (clean)
3 jars
tap water
vinegar
masking tape
pen or marker
red cabbage
coffee filters or white printer paper
bowl
scissors


Before you do anything set the bucket outside where it can collect rainwater.
First take the cabbage and the bowl and cut the cabbage into little pieces into the bowl. Next pour very hot water over the cabbage. Let an adult do this part. Let the cabbage water sit until it is dark purple. Then take the cabbage pieces out or pour the water into a new bowl. Throw the cabbage away and keep the purple water. Then dip the filter or the white paper into the purple water. Let it dry. After it is dry cut it into strips. Now you have made your own litmus paper. Litmus paper lets you tell if something is an ACID or a BASE. 
Now into one of the jars pour just tap water. The second one pour half water half vinegar and label it "strong acid" with the masking tape. The third jar pour mostly water and just a little vinegar. Label that "weak acid". 
Now dip a strip of litmus paper in each jar. The two with acid in them will turn pink. 
Now dump out the jar with just water and label it "Rainwater". Pour some of the rainwater from the bucket into the jar. Test it with the litmus paper. Compare that strip to the other three. Does it still look purple like the tap water strip or is it just a little pink like the weak acid or very pink like the strong acid? This will tell you how acidic your rainwater is.


Acid Rain: Acid rain causes acidification of lakes and streams and contributes to damage of trees at high elevations and many sensitive forest soils. In addition, acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation's cultural heritage. Prior to falling to the earth, SO2 and NOx gases and their particulate matter derivatives, sulfates and nitrates, contribute to visibility degradation and harm public health.



What Society Can Do About Acid Deposition:
Understand acid deposition's causes and effects
Clean up smokestacks and exhaust pipes
Use alternative energy sources
Restore a damaged environment
Look to the future
Take action as individuals
Turn off lights, computers, and other appliances when you're not using them 

Use energy efficient appliances: lighting, air conditioners, heaters, refrigerators, washing machines, etc.
Only use electric appliances when you need them.
Keep your thermostat at 68 F in the winter and 72 F in the summer. You can turn it even lower in the winter and higher in the summer when you are away from home.
Insulate your home as best you can. 
Carpool, use public transportation, or better yet, walk or bicycle whenever possible 
Buy vehicles with low NOx emissions, and maintain all vehicles well. 
Be well-informed. 

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Crafting

Another way to be green is my hand crafting your own clothes, hats, scarves...and other items. You can recycle old clothes into blankets or new clothes. You can use up some old balls of yarn to make a new hat and scarf.
I wanted to share some things I have made over the past few years. I am thinking of starting my own Etsy store and wanted to showcase some of the things I make. I am going to keep it to the Mommy related stuff though. If people want to see all my costume and clothes and purses I can post more pics.

This is a cloth diaper I made. I haven't made any more yet but I plan to soon.
















These are 2 hats I made for 2 about to be 1 year old kids. The left one is for my son. It is a replica of the famous Jayne hat from Firefly. The girl's hat is for my son's friend Olivia who loves butterflies.










This is a wet bag for carrying wet cloth diapers. I lined it with vinyl.
















This is a wreath I made for our front door. It is about 2.5-3 ft wide.















These are curtains I made for my nursery.














This is a wreath for our living room.














These are our family stockings. I made them all free hand no patterns.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Another great Mommy owned company: Blue Dinosaurs

Here is another great Mommy owned and run company for Green Mommies to peruse and hopefully buy some of her wares. The company is called "Blue Dinosaurs".





It can be found at http://hyenacart.com/BlueDinosaurs/
The owner and creator is an old acquaintance of mine. She and her husband went to the same Inter Varsity group as me as well as the same church. Now they have 2 children, 1 of whom is in diapers still. I am not sure if she herself cloth diapered with both kids but she makes not only cloth diapers but bibs, toys, wipes...ect. The cool catch with her company is that since she and her hubby are both of the geeky persuasion (which is great!) and her hubby is a video game creator,  a lot of her patterns and creations are game themed or geeky themed. She said she plans to dive deeper into that genre soon. I would love to see more of that personally!
The items she has for sale currently are all bright and colorful and just great!
The above pic is an example of her work, a space themed bib. She mentions in her intro to her store about how plastic snaps work best for cloth diapers and bibs. I couldn't agree more. I honestly have pretty much given up on bibs because of velcro and am currently in the process of switching out all of my sons velcro diapers for snap ones. 
Here are what her diapers look like. 


Her prices aren't bad. They are higher obviously than some places but for great quality craftsmanship and made at home, mommy made, mommy approved products.. I would say the prices are pretty reasonable. I love her site and am planning on buying a few geeky bibs for my son ASAP. (Probably for Christmas!)
This site is all owned and created by a Green Mommy and certainly gets a thumbs up from THIS Green Mommy! 
GO BLUE DINOSAURS!!!!

Edit: The owner of Blue Dinosaurs recently gave birth to her third child. Welcome into the world little man.

New Diapers: Happy Flute Diapers


So recently our friends who gave us their diapers to borrow until they had a need for them back, needed them back (and that's all I am saying :D ). So since Aleks' diapers were about 1/3 prefolds (bought by us) 1/3 borrowed all in ones and 1/3 all in ones bought by us, this cut his diapers down by a third. So I went looking for new ones. We don't have a lot of money right now so the first place I looked was eBay. I found a China based company on eBay that sold pocket diapers made with fleece and PUL with a thick inner liner.


The company was called Happy Flute Diapers.
At first I was very skeptical about a company based in China but the lady who runs it seemed very up and up. It seems to me that it is more of a family based company using eBay as a way to reach outside there borders and in a round about way is very Fair Trade since the money goes to those who make the products.
That being said I was very very impressed both with the price (5$ each including shipping) and the quality of the diapers. They are designed to be just like "Fuzzibunz" brand diapers in that one diaper fits from newborn to potty training.
This picture shows the small medium and large settings.
However "Fuzzibunz" retail for about 20$ a piece. These have solid construction and are quite pretty too. They come in an abundance of colors and even designs and soft fuzzy covers.




The only draw back that I could see is that shipping can take 2-3 weeks and also you may not always get the color you order. I ordered baby blue and got white... but I am not miffed. I will probably be ordering several more. I want at least 5 more.
I really recommend this company. Here are all 4 diapers I ordered.

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