Making A Difference: One Toilet Paper Roll At A Time!

Awesome! Scott brand toilet paper has come up with toilet paper rolls that have no inner cardboard tube and use no glue! That's definitely progress! It would be a bit better if they also used recycled paper for the rest of the product, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

*Side note... if you're as brave as I am, you may also venture into using cloth wipes as reusable, washable toilet paper! I don't use it for everything, but I have some super soft bamboo fleece wipes that I can wash and reuse - further reducing the amount of toilet paper I use. I'm also pretty excited that once we start cloth diapering, these wipes can be washed with the cloth diapers to reduce laundry loads and water usage!

Honeymoon Fun!

Just some photos from a very relaxing few days in Seattle!

 

Lunch!

The Little Things

I whole heartedly believe that there are lots of easy changes we can make to lessen our impact on the environment. It is incredibly sad to hear of people who think recycling is 'doing their part.' It is the bare minimum. No, it is far below the bare minimum. There are lots of things we can easily do - big and small!

Here are some ideas to get you started!

• When baking or cooking a dish that takes a long time (30 minutes or more), turn the oven off 5 minutes before it's done. As long as you don't open the door, the oven will retain the heat and keep cooking your food! (Be careful with things like chicken and fish, it's important not to eat undercooked meat!)
• In the winter, after using your oven, leave it open a crack to cool down. The heat will warm your house and you can turn the thermostat down for a little while!
• Turn your heat off at night! You most likely sleep under a blanket, and possibly with another warm body beside you, so the thermostat is just plain overkill.
• "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." Enough said.
• Before discarding anything (whether it be to the trash or the recycling) try to figure out if you could use it again as something else (tupperware container, storage divider, etc.)
• Make conscious decisions when you're shopping. Compare packaging amounts and choose the one with the least packaging, or the least plastic packaging. Compare where foods are from - choose apples grown in your home province/state instead of shipped in from New Zealand. Skip the plastic bags - you don't really need a plastic produce bag for 3 oranges do you? Better yet, buy cloth produce bags that you can reuse!
• Cloth grocery bags. Seriously. I am still in shock when I see people walking out of the store with all plastic. For the love of God, WHY?!
• If you have kids, resist the urge to purchase a million snack packs of pre-packaged tiny portions of real food. It's 99% junk anyhow. Instead, designate some time once a week to creating these 'snack packs' yourself. Divide foods into several small tupperware containers and group them so that each day you just grab one group of snacks and toss them into the lunch bag. Better for your budget, the environment AND your kid's health!
• Coffee. Now, we all know I'm a HUGE coffee fan. Organic coffee is great... but fair trade is even better. Fair trade means the coffee growers are paid a fair price for their beans instead of getting ripped off by big corporations. Best yet - organic, shade grown, fair trade coffee! 
• Hang your clothes to dry. Seriously, even in the winter. Just hang them inside. They will still dry and be perfectly wearable. They'll even last longer since they're not being beaten to death by the dryer once a week. 
• Take short showers. Seriously. Set a timer if you have to. 5 minutes should be plenty. Unless you do other things in the shower... in which case I don't want to know!
• Grow some of your own food! Tomatoes can be grown out of a bucket that you hang upside down on your balcony - how easy is that?! Herbs can even be grown inside on a window sill! You don't necessarily need a garden to garden.

Okay, that's enough for today. I'm sure I'll add to this list over time. If you have any ideas, please feel free to leave a comment!

Apple Crumbly Goodness!

This is what happens when you mean to write an entire post about delicious fall desserts (mmm apple crumble!) but then you get all wrapped up in the joy of baking and forget to take a picture until it's in the oven!

* See those organic sugar crystals gleaming in the flash?? Delish!*

Cleaning House

Admittedly, you probably don't want to read about the enormous task of cleaning my house top to bottom. Fair enough - I don't really want to write about it either! What I am trying to work out is how to make house cleaning easier. I figure that if our house is de-cluttered and everything is organized (as in everything has a place to be put back to) then cleaning would take less time and we would be less likely to avoid it.

Much easier said than done. For some reason I started the de-clutter and organize process with our junk drawer. Big mistake. It is mainly tools and loose nails and screws. It took forever to clean out, but now I am left with a bunch of things that clearly don't belong in the same drawer. Worse is that I have nowhere else to put them right now. So, they will sit on the floor beside the drawers until I can get to the store for some much needed items.

Here is my de-clutter and organize shopping list:

• hooks for hanging bags (ie. our dish cloth/towel laundry bag)
• small containers for collections of small things (ie. coin rollers, batteries, etc.)
• medium containers for collections of larger things or larger quantities of things (ie. candles, first aid supplies/medications, etc.)
• large rubbermaid totes for those larger items that never seem to have a place (ie. Adam's fishing gear, my craft supplies, pet supplies that aren't in use, gardening supplies that aren't in use, etc.)
• more 'under the bed' storage bins for seasonal clothing items or camping items
• baskets
• a magnetic container we can attach to the fridge to store spare pens (I remember having something like this for my locker when I was in school)

I think that's it. It sounds like a lot, but it will really help to have all surfaces de-cluttered and organized so things don't get left sitting on the coffee table for months for a lack of somewhere better to put them. 

10 Year Plan

I wish I had the patience to make a 10 Year Plan and then relax knowing I would get everything I want to do accomplished in due time. For me, that doesn't work. I want to do everything and I want to do it all right now.

~ I want to do the Hospital Unit Clerk program and spend a few years working in that field.
~ I want to volunteer for a local health-related non-profit for a few years before doing my Master's.
~ I want to do my Master's of Public Health.
~ I want to do more international volunteer work in a health related setting.
~ I want to accomplish all of this simultaneously and in the next few years. I'm a dreamer.

To some extent, this could work. For example, I have already started the volunteer work and could continue it while finishing my Medical Terminology course. I could then get employment (fingers crossed) in the medical sector while taking my Hospital Unit Clerk program. Once I complete that program, I could potentially move into that career field and then do my Master's via distance education. The tricky thing is, I also want to do the international volunteer work before my Master's.

And where does my husband and family fit in? What if Adam has a career change in this time as well and what if it involves relocating again? What if Adam wants to go back to school? How does 'life' fit into my plans??

I need to learn patience. I want to jump in and do everything all at once, but life doesn't work that way. There's applications to do months in advance, time spent waiting on test results, holidays, and of course, each thing I want to do takes time as well.

And don't get me started on finances...

Honeymoon Prep

As I begin to prep for our honeymoon, I wonder how traditional brides managed trip planning at the same time as wedding planning! I'm thankful for the break in between the two, because preparing for our honeymoon has it's own long to-do list.

We'll be going away for about two and a half weeks in total, so there are some things that need to be taken care of. Here's our list:

-book the dog into the kennel
-arrange for someone to take or babysit our cat (her flea allergy means a kennel would be a disaster)
-pay October's rent in advance
-pay September's phone bill in advance
-get travel insurance (oops! I usually do that when I book the vacation... not sure why I didn't this time)
-get traveller's cheques
-plan a food & souvenir budget
-buy Adam some new sandals
-find a bikini top to go with my bottoms
-pack
-get a hair cut (we both need one, although I could pass on this if time/budget don't allow for it)
-book our bus tickets (part of our honeymoon is spent in a city and the rest in a small village that we need the bus to get to)
-pay October's student loan in advance
-get rid of our van & cancel the insurance
-unplug appliances & give away any food that would otherwise spoil
-get a spare tire, jack and tire iron for the car
-leave a copy of our itinerary and passports with one of our parents

As you can maybe tell, our honeymoon plans changed a bit! We discovered that a road trip across this huge country would take a lot more time than we have for this trip. Although we could just do a partial road trip, it seems a shame to get as far as Ontario or Quebec and have to turn around and miss the Maritimes altogether. We still plan to do that trip someday, but not this year. This trip will be a nice, relaxing couple of weeks lounging on the beach or in our pool in Mexico. Much more affordable!

Excitement!

I just had a great meeting with a local non-profit that provides education, counselling and support to people living with HIV and Hep C. I'm going to be volunteering with them and my first gig is next week! I'll be happily handing out free condoms to students at the college's orientation day. Want free condoms? Come visit me!

Picture Perfect Project

We knew we wanted to do something unique with our wedding photos. We had originally planned on having our favourite photo put on to a large stretched canvas but our budget prevented that from happening.* Somehow we had never really considered the mismatched picture frame idea, even though I love it! Today we decided to head out to our local second-hand stores and see what kind of mismatched frames we could find. We were pretty darn successful, and thus, the mismatched picture wall idea prevailed.

Here's what we did:

Step 1: Scour second-hand stores for cheap frames.

Step 2: Purchase a can of spray paint and some picture hanging hardware (a couple must-have frames didn't have this feature built in).

Step 3: Lay down some newspaper, cardboard or other protective surface wherever you plan to paint.

Step 4: Sand and dust off your frames (it helps the paint adhere better).
 

Step 5: Paint, dry, repeat until each frame is evenly covered. (At this point I also painted the matting that came with 2 of the frames, because dusty rose and maroon just didn't 'go' with our bedroom colours).

Step 6: Attach hardware, put your pictures in your frames and hang them however you like!

We're still working on steps 5 and 6. We're no experts on spray painting techniques, so we ran out of paint with only a tiny bit more painting to do (oops). Then, we also need to have a few more pictures printed to fit the unusual frame sizes we bought. Lastly, we will hang them and enjoy our mismatched picture frame wall!

More pictures to come once the project is completed!

* Note that you can often do this fairly cheaply with web sites such as Shutterfly. They almost always have specials or discounts, especially when you first open a (free) account.