My first refashion - skinny jeans!

I've been doing a lot of sewing over the past two years, but have been way too chicken to try making, or refashioning, any clothes. I'm not sure why - if it's something I'm not going to wear anyway, I might as well give it a shot, right?

Well last week I ran across a tutorial on mmmcrafts on turning a pair of boot cut jeans into skinny jeans. Like the author, I have one pair of skinny jeans and could really use another to wear with a few pair of boots I have. Here's the before and after~

They turned out great, so I wore them out to dinner that night! I guess it's kind of hard to take a picture of your own legs, without a full length mirror at least.

I'm just sayin' #2 - cookin' with cola

Mr. G bought a big ol' pork loin and was cutting it into chops today when he noticed this recipe on the package. I'm not knocking people who try new things when cooking...I'm just saying...is soda in your dinner really necessary?

Okay, off to watch Food Revolution.

Gardening problems...already

Mr. Greenhab and the kids planted a bunch of seed a few weeks ago and we've got a bunch of great little plants growing in our upstairs loft already.

Unfortunately, sometime in the last week, they became infested with tiny little bugs.


We have a lot of plants in our house and none of them seem to be infected -- only the garden plants. I've tried several variations of the "vinegar in a bowl" trap, with no luck. So help me please, gardeners of the blogosphere - what are these tiny creatures and, more importantly, how do I get rid of them?

Hometown Seeds

I blogged recently about our attempt, in vain, to find good seeds at the stores in our little town (Home Depot or WalMart). We weren't quite sure what we were looking for in terms of quality. I was just hoping to find something marked "heirloom" or "organic" or "non GMO", but didn't find anything of the sort.



A few days later, I was contacted by a garden seed company called Hometown Seeds and was excited to browse their website.

Hometown offers vegetable, herb and wildflower seeds, which they guarantee, and have their GMO stance posted on their website~

"Seeds are the core of our business and vital to life on our planet. We must protect this foundation as a safe and genetically stable source for future generations. We pledge that we will not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds. We are not confident in the safety of GMO seeds and therefore will not sell them to our valued customers. We believe they are being released for public use prematurely. More research and testing is necessary to further assess the potential risks of genetically engineered seeds."

Hometown sent me a variety pack of seeds to try; I think we'll start some of them inside this week. Has anyone else purchased from the company, or have another company you like?

My MIFS Market Tote

Check out my market tote tutorial on the Make it From Scratch blog today. All you need is one of the many freebie canvas bags you have in your trunk and a piece of cute fabric!

Fish...the other green vegetable

Marc and I often joke about starting a blog called "I'm just sayin'..." This would definitely be on it.

Natural Products Expo 2010

I'm home from the Natural Products Expo in Anaheim and finally have a minute to blog about it. Wow. What a fun experience!

A little background... The Natural Products Expo is the biggest of it's kind. It's put on by a local Colorado company -- New Hope Natural Media of Boulder. This year was the Expo's 30th anniversary and they drew a crowd of almost 56,000 attendees.

New Hope is the parent company of Delicious Living Magazine, who recently partnered up with my company, iVillage, to find out just what women are looking for when they do their grocery shopping. Admittedly, what I'm looking for is a bit different from our mainstream user. Most of us are looking for healthy food for our families, but our definitions of "healthy" vary widely (For example: "Lunchables" made the list of products that were viewed as healthy, yet I wouldn't let my kids touch them with a ten foot poll.) But the fact of the matter is that we are all consumers. What we look for isn't right or wrong...it just is.

At any rate, the results of this study were presented at the Natural Products Expo so that the companies attending could hear first hand what consumers are looking for. As part of the presentation, I was able to participate on a panel of moms interested in healthy living.

Besides being a fun experience in and of itself, I had the opportunity to meet some neat people! The CEO of the conference (and Penton Media which owns New Hope), Sharon Rowlands, kicked off our presentation; Nancy Coulter-Parker, Editor-In-Chief of Delicious Living Magazine, presented the findings of the study; and Catherine Balsam Schwaber, our CMO, participated in the presentation on behalf of iVillage. Catherine came from MTV where she worked on the Rock the Vote campaign (among some other really cool accomplishments).

Needless to say I was happy just to meet all of these people, never mind participating on the panel and getting to see the show.

More on all that later though...

Meatless Monday ~ Ethiopian Alecha

Despite the mushy looking appearance, this Ethiopian vegetable stew -- called Alecha -- is quite good. It's made with half a head of cabbage, 1/2 of an onion, 5 potatoes, some garlic, and a few carrots. It is seasoned with salt, pepper, berbere, and turmeric. For roughly $2.00 it made about 8 servings. Traditionally, alecha would be eaten with injera, but we were out. I guess that's a good excuse to go to Habesha sometime soon!

We've come a long, long way together...

I was sitting out on the deck yesterday reflecting on our weekend and how different it looks now than it did 10 years ago.

Back then we lived in the city. We would have slept in late and maybe gone shopping on a Saturday afternoon just for something to do. Saturday night was club night and Sunday was for lounging around the house. These days we're up at the crack of dawn with the kids and clubs are a distant memory!

On Saturday morning the sun was shining and I broke out the portable umbrella-style laundry line for the first time this season. I got it all set up on the deck and a fresh load of laundry hung while Mr. Greenhab and the kids transplanted some of our seedlings into bigger containers.

Later, while the kids napped, we watched The Future of Food. (Mr. Greenhab thought he had requested Food, Inc. but this was waiting for us instead at the library.) It's informative, but almost identical to The World According to Monsanto documentary that I blogged about last year.

That afternoon we decided on a few other vegetables we wanted to grow this year and found some heirloom seeds to try.

On Sunday we loaded all of our recycling into the back of the truck and drove to the recycling center. After that we headed to the grocery store with our bundle of reusable bags in hand, then hit the Habitat for Humanity building surplus store to see if they had any previously-loved fencing we'd be able to use for our garden.

Quite the difference from our "past life" I'd say. Whenever I'm feeling stagnant in this journey, it helps to look back at how far we've come.

Meatless Monday ~ Quinoa w/ asparagus

I have finally joined the quinoa club! I know, I'm actually embarrassed to admit that I hadn't tried it before tonight. But my family is a little bit hesitant to try doesn't go for new foods at all. Somehow they've come to accept that Monday is Mom's-let's-try-something-new-and-crazy day -- aka Meatless Monday. I'll take what I can get!

This quinoa was cooked with chicken broth (I'm not partial to it or anything, I just happen to have a lot of homemade stock. You could definitely make it with veggie broth instead.) in a 1.5 cup quinoa to 3 cups chicken broth. In a separate pan I sauteed red bell pepper with asparagus (cut into small pieces) and some garlic. When they were both done, I mixed them together and served with a few spears of asparagus on top.

Mr. Greenhab said "It's a start. Needs more flavor." which I actually take as a good sign. At least it wasn't "Blech, can you NOT make this ever again please?"