Laundry day

I'm setting myself up for spam here, I know. But I need some sort of miracle laundry product or concoction. My little girl was recently given an adorable pair of white capri pants with embroidery on the cuff. They're just precious. But they're white and, naturally, she wore them to play outside. Now the entire tush is covered in tree sap, with dirt ground into it.

I used an old bottle of Shout Gel that I had lurking in the back of my laundry shelf. No luck. Any miracle cures out there?

And speaking of laundry, my clothesline challenge has been a bust this month. Well, a bust for me. I started the month with 13 loads of laundry in a row being line dried. Then came the rains. Now I'm down to about 16 load line dried and 8 machine dried. (Yep, 6 people in a house = a lot of laundry!)

Hopefully next month will be better. And sunnier.

Withdrawal

I think I've been going through thrift store withdrawal lately. Marc was gracious enough to let me sneak out of the house on Monday to hit a few. Lucky me, Memorial Day was 1/2 off day everywhere I went. I bought tons of great old linens, vintage napkins and a huge pile of skirts in cute prints. I can't wait to start sewing!

More on BPA

As if you need more reasons to ditch BPA... YourTotalHealth.com reported today:

"The latest study, from Harvard School of Public Health, shows just how quickly the compound goes from bottles to bodies. College students drank from hard plastic polycarbonate bottles made with BPA. Levels of the compound in urine rose by two thirds in a week"

Read more here. (Then go check the plastics still in your cupboards.)

Wish List

Sewing Green by Betz White has been on my wish list for a few months now. If you were my husband and you were wondering what to get me for my birthday next month, you could actually see my wish list on Amazon.com. {hint hint}

I've seen some photos from the inside of the book and there are some adorable things I'd like to recreate. Like these little bird nest brooches.


But since I don't have the book, or those little felty ball things, I had to make this (very loose) interpretation instead.


I like it! It's going off to a special someone who I happen to know likes bird nests. I hope she likes this.

Simple pleasures...

A few months back my mom gave me this pretty wood & wicker chair. I love the curvy legs. It's been sitting in my living room, in a place where the kids wouldn't use it as a launching pad from which to dive onto the couch. Of course that means it's in a place where no one actually uses it. It's a shame because it is a chair after all, not a decoration.

So this week I moved it to the head of my dining room. Why not? But it needed a comfy pillow to make it feel inviting. I used some scraps to make this:


Perfect!

Wait.


Perfect.

These are the things I think about...

This morning I went to make banana muffins with some ailing bananas. These are the thoughts that crossed my mind.

1. I've stopped buying that "Pam" stuff in the spray can. It seemed like such an eco-sin to throw away those cans since they can't even be recycled.

2. I don't want to use muffin papers, because they just get thrown away as well. I guess I could compost them? But still, why use something that doesn't really need to be used?

3. Okay, I guess that leaves me with oil or butter to grease the muffin pan with. Good choices!

4. Boy I really need a napkin or paper towel to rub this on with. D'oh. Never mind.

5. All this and I haven't even made the damn muffins yet. What have I become when I'm up at 6 am on a Sunday morning worrying about muffins.

For the record, I ended up rubbing it on with my (clean, of course) fingers. What do you do?

And do you worry about things like this too? I know some would say to stop worrying about the tiny little things and do something big. But we've done the big picture things - we've cut consumption, we recycle everything, I line dry, we freeze our buns off in the winter and don't use a/c in the summer, we've downsized our cars, I work at home, we compost, we conserve water....

I'm not saying that we couldn't improve upon each of these things - there is always room for improvement. But I wonder if there comes a time when one really does have to take things like muffins into consideration?

It's that time of year again...Clothesline Challenge!

Gift of Green has issued her annual Clothesline Challenge!

It's a beautiful, sunny day here in the mountains of Colorado, so I decided to finally break out our clothesline...which reminded me to check the Gift of Green blog. Seems the challenge actually started on May 1st, but you can join in any time. It runs from May - August this year.

I signed on for Advanced level, which requires you to line dry 9 out of 10 loads. At one point last summer I was line drying 100% of our laundry but I'm cutting myself some slack this year since we have two new family members to dry for (and chase after).