I just learned that May was National Vinegar Month...so in honor of Vinegar here ya go!

Did you know that it can:

-Kill grass on walks and driveways. Pour full strength on unwanted grass.

-Kill weeds. Spray full strength on growth until plants have starved.

-Prolong the life of flowers in a vase. Add two tablespoons of vinegar plus three tablespoons of sugar per quart of warm water. Stems should be in three to four inches of water.

-Deter ants. Spray vinegar around door and window frames, under appliances, and along other known ant trails.

-Keep car windows frost free. Coat the windows the night before with a solution of three parts
vinegar to one part water.


-Relieve itching by using a cotton ball to dab mosquito and other bug bites with vinegar straight from the bottle.


-Relieve sunburn by lightly rubbing it with vinegar.


-Freshen up the washing machine. Clean the hoses and unclog soap scum.Once a month pour one cup of vinegar into the washing machine and run the machine through a normal cycle, without clothes.


-Clean the dishwasher by running a cup of vinegar through the whole cycle once a month to reduce soap build up on the inner mechanisms and on glassware.


-Deodorize the kitchen drain. Pour a cup down the drain once a week. Let stand 30 minutes and then flush with cold water.


-Unclog a drain. Pour a handful of baking soda down the drain and add 1/2 cup of vinegar.
Rinse with hot water. Plus your kids will love watching it, and lets be honest, I do too!


-Stubborn stains can be removed from the toilet by spraying them with vinegar and brushing vigorously. The bowl may be deodorized by adding 3 cups of distilled vinegar. Allow it to remain for a half hour, then flush.

These are just a few of the things you can use vinegar for! No wonder we need a whole month to celebrate it! I'm going to try a few of these things out and let you know what I find. The best part about vinegar is that it is environmentally friendly and CHEAP!!! T

The challenge of the week: switch to vinegar instead of using some of the chemicals that you might usually use! Let me know if it works!

Go green girl Go!

Happy Earth Day!!

I was so excited to see one of my family's favorite chips stepping up and making the first compostable chip bag. NICE WORK SUN CHIPS! Check it out!! Now we can crunch and not feel at all bad about the waste our munching creates!

I have placed one in my compost pile and will keep you posted on the progress.

Leaves are falling on the ground, on my roof top, all around!

We have a huge English Walnut tree in the backyard. I love it! It was one of the many things that "sold" us when we bought our house. It' has been right there, being a house for the squirrels, creating shade and yummy walnuts, for over 50 years. The people that built the house planted it. It is the center of activity in our back yard. It gets climb in, swung from and relaxed around. I love everything about this tree except the leaves when fall comes. They are huge, just like the tree, and there are a ton of them. Most years they fall almost at the same time. One day they are there hanging on the tree and then next morning we wake up and they are on the ground.

Fall creates a dilema for me because I can't compose these leaves, they are acidic and once they fall I have to get them off the lawn. Mother Nature was pretty smart with these trees. Everything they drop (leaves and walnuts) has a built in chemical that kills everthing aroung it- excellent survival of the species. So what to do with bags and bags of leaves?

This year I saw paper leaf bags!! I had never seen those before and was so excited to find a better option than pastic (because we all know that plastic is not such a great option). Sears sells them and you can find them online as well. This fall take one small step and use the recycled paper leaf bags. They'll break down with the leaves and help the environment.

Go green this Halloween!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, but it's not so healthy or even green with all those indiviually wrapped treats and goodies floating about.  My cute friend Jessica sent me this website.  It has some fun ideas.  Take a look around and see what you think.

http://www.greenhalloween.org/

Over the years we have tried a few different things to make Halloween a bit more healthy and allergy friendly for the family.  The best one yet, is to have the Halloween witch comes to visit on Halloween night after the kids have rooted through their haul. They get to pick out 15 of  their favorite treats to keep and then the rest is left out to trade with the Halloween witch.  She usually brings something bigger and better like a book or legos or something the witch knows they are wanting.  At first I thought it would be a hard sell, to get the kids to give up their candy after their hard work of gathering it all.  But, it turns out they are more than happy to pick their favorites, give up the rest and look forward to waking up to a new treat!  The real trick is-to make sure the Halloween witch takes the other candy far far away from the house or you might be tempted to hide it and eat it all by yourself (I may or may not know this from experience). 

What are your traditions? 

Happy Haunting!!  

Packin'

Ready or not, it has begun. School. I was not ready! I'm not basking in the fact that now I have to have a schedule! Let alone keep people focused on their homework and deal with all the annoying paperwork that comes home the first week of school. Why can't they do it all online? Another thing that doesn't float my boat is packing the sack lunches.

I found these statistics interesting:

Close to 2.7 billion juice boxes end up in landfills every year. (Container Recycling Institute)

Each child who brings a brown-bag lunch to school every day will generate 67 pounds of waste by the end of the school year - that's 18,760 pounds of lunch waste for an average-sized school! (EPA)

According to the 2004 U.S. Census data, there are 36.4 million elementary school-age children and 16.8 million high school-age children. If every child adopted a waste-free lunch (including finishing all of their food), we could divert more than 3.5 billion pounds of trash from our landfills each year.

Each year the U.S. consumes over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps. (EPA)

Lunchtime trash is second only to office paper as the leading source of school waste. (Green Teacher Magazine, Fall 2004)

So you ask what is a green girl suppose to do? Here is a quick guide to packing a eco-friendly lunch.

1. Buy a reusable, washable, colorful, character laden (if you want) lunch bag or box. There are some way cute ones out there! They even carry some that are made from recycled material on this website. http://www.reusablebags.com/store/lunch-bags-more-c-4.html


2. I bought some of these re-usable wraps for sandwiches and snacks. They are fun and easy to use and clean. (You can wash them in the washer or just by hand) But what I really love is not throwing away the little plastic sack each day! Here are some links for cute ones.
http://www.snacktaxi.com/
http://www.reusablebags.com/store/lunch-bags-more-sandwich-snack-bags-c-4_13.html

3. Buy reusable bottles. Stop buying bottled water and juice boxes and pack your own. Your best bet for a reusable bottle is stainless steel. You can find these just about anywhere. Even Old Navy had some last time I was in there a few weeks ago.


The initial cost for your lunch supplies will be more up front but do not fear!! You will not only help the environment you will save money going green! And who doesn't want a little more money these days! If you are going to purchase online make sure that you do a search for a coupon code. I saved over $15.00 on my order by doing this.

A disposable lunch costs $4.02 per day, versus $2.65 for a waste-free lunch. That translates to a savings of about $246.60 per child per year. wastefreelunches.org

I better start planning how I want to spend my $739.80 that I'm going to save this year! Disneyland, Moab, Snowboarding passes.....hmmm the possibilities are endless!

Go green girl Go!

ROCKIN' Utah

Did you know that if you live in Utah you can check out a state parks pass from your local library? How stinkin' cool is that!! It is part of the ROCKIN' Utah program that the Utah state parks is running. They are wanting to get families and kids outside, in nature and having fun!! There have been studies that show that time spent outside is just as important as having enough sleep and the right nutrition!

ROCKIN stands for Reaching Out Connecting Kids In Nature! They are offering classes and clinics on all sorts of outdoor activities. Here are some examples: fishing, hiking, camping, wildlife viewing, kite flying, boating or history exploring. They are all filled up for the 2009 season but plan on running the program next year. For additional information, email them at rockin@utah.gov or call (801) 537-3123.

The park passes are available all year long to check out. So head to your library and check it out and go see what great things are available around our fabulous state. Check out their website at http://www.stateparks.utah.gov/.

You could head out the Bison Round Up at Antelope Island!
The 'Wild West' returns to Antelope Island State Park! Join us for the 23rd Annual Bison Roundup, October 31 and November 1, 2009. Volunteer wranglers will saddle-up and move the park's herd of 600 free-roaming bison from the southern tip of the Island to the bison corrals on the northern end of the island.

All events are open to the public. Park visitors are welcome to come out and watch as we bring in the herd. See these wild bison up close as they rest comfortably in our bison corrals.

I think that we will try that this year. Could be very interesting!!

Organics 101

The book The Unhealthy Truth, is so packed with interesting information that it will take several enteries to tell you about it. This blog will be Organic 101. It can be so confusing out there with all the different labeling that goes on. Robyn has a great section in the back of her book that breaks it down. Here is a summary of that section.

Health Benefits of buying organic:
A recent study into organic food found that it appears to :
-Strengthen your immune system
-Improve sleeping habits
-Cut the risk of cancer
-Reduce the risks of heart disease
-Reduce a child's exposure to hidden allergens
-Promote weight loss.

An insightful four-year, $25 million European study found that:
-Animals fed an organic diet were slimmer (yes, skinnier) than their un-organic fed counterparts because fat cells appear to trap and store the heavy pesticide residues found in un-organic produce.
-Organics appear to promote weight loss by reducing your exposure to chemical pesticides that bind to fat and once absorbed may stay in the body for a lifetime (over 350 chemicals can accumulate in our body fat!).
-Organic fruit and vegetables contain up to 40 percent more antioxidants.
-Milk from organic herds contained up to 90 percent more antioxidants.
-Organic food also had higher levels of beneficial minerals such as iron and zinc, critical minerals in the development of a child's brain.


Here is what you are getting when you buy somehting organic:
The term "organic" refers to foods grown and process without chemical toxins, artificial ingredients, chemical preservatives, or ionizing radiation. The guidelines for organic foods were established on October 21, 2002, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To use these terms, producers mus pay additional fees and follow strict guidelines and regulations:
-100% Organic- All ingredients are organic.
-Organic-95 percent or more of the total ingredients are organic.
-mad with Organic Ingredients- At least 70 percent of the ingredients are organic.


Organic Fruits and Vegetables must be grown without the use of:
Synthetically created chemical pesticides
synthetically created chemical fertilizers
sewage sludge
genetic engineering that appears to introduce novel proteins, allergens, viruses and toxins into crops.
irradiation (a type of chemotherapy for produce)


Organic Beef and Chicken
Fed only 100% organic feed, are not the offspring of cloned animals, and have never been administered growth hormones or antibiotics. In addition, their meat must never be irradiated.
-Natural (or All Natural) meat or poultry products contains no artificial ingredients and are minimally processed. They are not necessarily organic.
-"No hormones administered" or "no antibiotics added" is sometimes seen on labels, but it can only appear if the producer can document the absence of hormone or antibiotic administration.
-Free-range or free-roaming poultry have access to the outdoors with out a minimum time. They are not necessarily organic.
-Cage-free poultry means nothing as most chickens are kept indoors (but cage free) if they are grown for meat.


Organic Milk
Comes from animals that were fed 100 percent organic feed and were not given antibiotics, prophylactic drugs, or genetically engineered and synthetically created growth hormones (such as rBGH) for at least the last year. (RBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) is a genetically engineered, synthetic chemical protein hormone vaccinated into cows to artificially boost their milk production.)


Organic Eggs
-Produced by hens that are fed 100 percent organic feed and have never been given growth hormones or antibiotics.
-Cage-free eggs are produced by hens that are not confined in cages. The hens might not have access to the outdoors, though, and are not necessarily organic.

Organic Seafood
-The USDA currently has no guidelines set for seafood: However, farm-raised fish is often caged underwater and treated with pesticides to prevent the spread of disease.


Organic Bread
Cereal and grain crops are regularly sprayed with pesticides that collect in the grain's outer layers, raising concerns about chemical residues in un-organic bread, cakes and cookies.


The following terms are often found on packaged products and can be confusing.
-Natural is often a misnomer. There are no true guidelines for this term when used on packaged products, although it is used frequently and often assumed to mean organic or healthier.
-Gourmet is another misleading term that leads consumers to believe that they are purchasing a product made with finer ingredients, when in reality there are no established guidelines or regulations.


The Dirty Dozen

According to the Environmental Working Group, "The Dirty Dozen" is a list of twelve fruits and vegetables that contain the highest levels of chemical and pesticide residues.
-Peaches
-Apples
-Sweet bell peppers
-Celery
-Nectarines
-Strawberries
-Cherries
-Lettuce
-Imported grapes
-Pears
-Spinach
-Potatoes



I know that buying organic is more expensive but there are a few cheaper options to consider.

-Check the internet and see if there is a CSA (Community supported Agriculture) in your neighborhood. It's a great way to support local farmers and get great organic produce weekly.

-Do a search for "slow foods" on the internet and see what you come up with.

-Shop your farmers market and roadside stands. (Ask to make sure they don't use any yuck stuff)

-Costco often has organic produce avaliable at very good prices.

-Check your local craigslist or newspaper ads for people that have produce to sell.

-See if there is a community garden close and join it. This is a great way to get involve with people in your community.

-Best yet, plant your own garden and eat yummy stuff all summer long. If you are ambitious, you could do some canning and freezing!