Green week 4

I can't believe April is over.  What a busy month it was.  I figured since I've been busy talking about educating ourselfs about toxic chemicals in our cleaners at Earth Day Events I'd use that as some of my green tips.

Green Tips:

** Educate yourself and your kids.  Learning about the ways to go green is one of the most important things you can do, and as I saw over the last 2 weekends there are many interactive activities at Earth Day Events for kids to learn.  When I was in school they also had activities for use, find out if there's something going on in your area where you can take your kids out to.
**One great way to go green and include your kids is to have your own garden, you and your family will enjoy watching the plants grow and eating the fruits of your labor :)  I look forward to planting our own garden this year although we're still deciding on where we're going to place the garden.
 **  Hang up your laundry to dry instead of using the dryer and reduce the amount of electricity you use.  Also with laundry wait until you have a full load instead of doing mini loads.  You can also use a green laundry detergent, softer, and dryer sheets.  These dryer sheets go right in your paper recycling when you're done.  And this stain remover and laundry booster can double as a toilet bowl cleaner and is safe enough that it won't hurt your pets if they accidentally drink it.

Green website/paper: www.worldwatch.org 

This site talks about why going green is important and ways to do so and also gives you resources to buy about sustainable living.

Green Person: The Late Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her work in planting trees in her home country of Kenya, Africa.  She founded the Green Belt Movement which has planted over 30million trees in Africa!
I learned of her because she is very well respected in the Shaklee community this year I learned about the I am the Humming Bird  campaign where this year Shaklee has a goal of planting 1 billion trees world wide in honor of the late Wangari Maathai.

Green week 3

HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!

Quite a bit has been going on this week.  I had a BBQ on Sunday celebrating my birthday and my new business.  I tried to make it a green event and found a few tips I'll share.  I also went to an Earth Day event where I got to talk to people about toxic chemicals in their cleaners.  It was a great week.  I love how many kids came out to the event it really shows that there is hope for a brighter future.

 Here is a photo of Lisa Alexander and I at our booth: 

Tips:  Small changes for a party that everyone is sure to enjoy and the planet will like more as well.

I know that we always try to do things the easy way when it comes to hosting a party or event at our house.  We want less dishes so we use paper and plastic everything, we buy soda, bottled water, and make burgers and hot dogs.

What I planned on doing was having everyone use our plates and dishes but once we counted out how many people were going to come out we found we had to use something else, but I wanted to try to be more green so we found recycled paper plates and used them.  We also instead of getting plastic forks, knives, and spoons we sent out our real forks for people to use.

I made homemade sweet tea and filled an already empty plastic jug with my tea and a glass pitcher (which is what I used to serve it in. (pictured below)

The great benefit to this was that there was less sugar than store bough ice tea, and it was much cheaper!  And everyone commented on how great it was (score!)

I asked guest to BYOB so we didn't have the added cost of supplying beer for everyone.

I did not find a way around buying plastic cups.  

We helped minimize clean up by setting out a bin for everyone to put their cans in.

For food everyone asked what they could bring and told us what they were bringing so we didn't have to cook a whole lot and made some kabobs, fruit salad, and homemade dip.  Everything turned out great!  To our surprise we only had a few meat dishes and lots of choices for everyone!

A BBQ almost always requires a fire.  I love sitting or standing around a campfire with friends.  This year a friend of ours found a great way to reduce the amount of wood you use when having a fire, contain the fire well, and it makes the perfect way to cook when camping.  Check out the photos below and if you're interested in one for your next camping trip please send an email asking for more info.

I also sent out the invite over Facebook instead of sending out written invites to everyone.  I did snail mails some to people who aren't on facebook.  So I saved myself an added cost of prints, cards, and postage. And reduced the amount of paper we used.

Website: Earth Day Organizer's Guide 

Here's a great site for ways to celebrate Earth Day today and everyday by yourself and as an event.

People: The volunteers at Lacawac Sanctuary

Lacawac Sanctuary is a great place to learn about our ecosystem and enjoy the outdoors.  They offer many educational programs.  If you're in their area check out what they have going on or just stop in for a visit.

Happy April Everyone

I love April for a couple reasons: Easter, my birthday, Take Back The Night, Earth Day, Spring, and it's a month of sexual assault awareness.
I was molested as a child and on through my teen years so TBTN and raising awareness is important to me.  I realized over the weekend that I should have a blog for that and this month I will start one.
I love Spring; the warmer weather, new growth, fresh air, new life, just makes you feel alive and new yourself.
Earth Day.  As you know I wasn't always green, or healthy.  I wasn't raised to reduce, reuse, recycle - going green is new to me.  This is an adjustment for both my family and myself, but it's worth it to do all we can to save our planet.  Our kids should be able to see animals that are endangered (right now) all the time, they should be able to drink water from a stream, and think that the movie WALL-E will never become true because we reversed the problem and changed the direction our world is going in because we've opened our eyes to what we're doing.

For Earth Day I plan on writing one post every day this month with:

1-way to go green tip

1-green webpage/video

1-green person

I think it's also important that I follow my advice so I will be doing everything I share as well.