spring GREEN cleaning

Spring is here and it's time for some *spring* cleaning! It all started as the Jewish tradition of removing all the leavened bread & food from the house in preparation for Passover (the quick version anyway). So maybe it is some innate strive from deep within, nature, or nurture? But either way..time to clean house! 

First off I started with a small update/refreshing in the kitchen with a 1 hour DIY project:

The Before: Sorry it's so dark, I fixed it in iPhoto, but not showing up so great here.

You can see the BORING green curtain that came with the house above the window that is the exact same color as the paint color in our kitchen. it's been driving me nuts since we moved in...so to JoAnn Fabrics I went! 

The Process: Moose working very hard to help me
I picked up some hemming tape and....

The Result: We also added a black "faith" word above the window that continues to tie in our black appliances with our country while glazed cabinets. 

Not a big change, but by adding some more black accessories around the kitchen, and switching out the beige carpet with a black and orange Pier 1 woven rug, it's coming together. Now I just need some more pops of bright orange here and there and it will be even better...
But I am needing to do the less fun part of spring cleaning too, and trying to be a bit green about it. Here is how I do some "cleaning" around here.

First off, mostly an everyday thing but I love these sponges. They are made from recycled materials..yah! When I'm done doing the dishes I place the wet/moist sponge on a small piece of paper towel and pop it in the microwave for 60 sec. this "disinfects" the sponge for later use. (I can't remember where I read this, but I remember thinking it was believable). Plus once that wet sponge cooks in makes the inside of the microwave nice and moist and steamy, so I take that little piece of paper towel and use this prime opportunity to wipe down the inside of the microwave, while everything is steamy and easily wiped off. 
I also have a basket full of re-usable cleaning "sponges." For the life of me I can't remember who they are made by (but you can use anything really) my mom picked them up off of QVC at some point. But I use these for dusting, cleaning mirrors, and other random things and then I just throw them in the wash when I wash my other towels. Don't get me wrong we go through our run of disposable paper towels, but this cuts down on some waste.

Cleaning products..I typically go to Method Products from counter top cleaners, tub scrub, multipurpose cleaners, dish and hand soap etc. I also LOVE their hard floor and hard wood cleaners, which make my rarely clean floors a bit safer for my pooch & baby girl :) I do also use their "o-mop" which has a re-usable/washable microfiber pad. 
Other ways that I love to spring up the house are by letting in lots of sunlight and bringing in some real plants (if I can keep them alive). 


We also have a garage FULL of items that we hope to recycle by having a yard sale soon! So we're clearing the clutter...less is more! Whatever we don't sell, we'll craigslist the bigger items and donate the rest. Hoping to not add to the landfill in the process. 


We're making real progress in our bedroom transitions. The "master" (by master I mean the room that is the same size as the other bedroom but just happens to be where we sleep) bedroom is just about done, as we're adding our finishing touches. So we'll get some pics and such up about how how we semi-DIY'd some stuff in there. 


TANGENT ALERT: I'm getting lots of ideas from my new obsession pinterest. it's an AMAZING site, which I'm still awaiting my "invite" to start pinning up all the ideas I love!, but I can still browse in the mean time. 

Then we'll be moving onto making the now guest room Noel's new 'big' girl room...so many ideas I think my head it going to explode before I can make it all happen, and that on top of new nursery ideas..yikes!! here's a sneak peek on some ideas I have for the nursery. excuse me as I wipe the drool off my keys...ahh..so excited!!!


Hope you all are enjoying the sun when it peeks out and HaPpY SpRiNg!

toys, toys, & MORE toys!

There is something about having an *almost* 1 year old. Once you get accustom to something, it changes. Whether that is sizes of clothes, or what she's eating, or what she likes to play with. It always amazes me how much can change in 1 week!
Being that in 11 short months we have already filled 2 large pink totes full of clothes that no longer fit, and have played out many of the toys we have. It's time to do some shopping! Luckily someone has a birthday coming! :)
So there in lies the dilemma on being *green* in the toy area.
First of all, we don't want to overload our house with a million toys that will get boring in a few months anyway, plus we really like to focus on Noel not thinking life is all about toys (or TV or movies) but experiencing the world. Like exploring the outdoors or learning what's around the house. Now don't get me wrong, we love toys and she surely has lots of them. But we would rather have a few really great toys than a boatload of a million plastic, beeping, music playing "toys."
We really would like to do a lot of eco-friendly toys. My current favorites are a line by Melissa & Doug Toys of wooden foods, some that velcro together that you can "cut" part and pots & pans and an           A D O R A B L E wooden kitchen

I also love this wooden kitchen from 'Little Tikes" with the laundry and ironing board :)

This is the Melissa & Doug

SOOO cute right?!

So doing a little online shopping to see what we might get for Noel's big ONE year! 

I also love this company that makes their toys out of recycled materials! Green Toys

I have my eye specifically on this:

The hard part is we know we are not the only ones to supply our little peanut with all her toys, so we are always grateful for what people are happy to and have fun buying for her. 

So happy early birthday peanut. :)

Goodbye TV

We sit down OFTEN and look at our budget, where money has to go, where it should go, and where it actually goes. Always surprising are those tiny little things that add up to big money! Of course then there are always those extra unexpected expenses. For us that is something huge coming soon...did I mention we're going to be having a second child!
But there are other things, that are part of having a resident spouse (non-citizen) to which we have poured buckets of money into just to get the resident part and now pour on more buckets as our deadline for citizenship is upon us.
Then of course there is the oven, which has not been working since January. Locking our food in..maybe I'll blog the whole story about that some other time. But has been quite a pretty penny so far and still not working.
Then the muffler on the "new" (which we officially own now 100% paid off!!) car sounded like it was going to fall off, which actually ended up being a pretty cheap fix...but while I was at the garage they mention that "by the way I'm going to need 4 new tires soon"..awesome..let me just go pick another $400+ dollars off our money tree out back.
Spring is coming and we need to plant more grass since we have almost none out back due to our amazing gigantic tree, which unfortunately does not produce great grass beneath, we're working on it.
But there will always be these extra things I guess..happy home-owners!
So one thing that we thought we put quite a bit of money into each month and don't really need is TV, well more specifically cable. err I guess..satellite tv.
Anyway, for a pretty small package we were spending around $75 every month...ouch!
So we decided to jump on the Netflix bandwagon

                      

We cancelled cable and now only pay $8.99/ month for "TV"  We figured 90% of the channels that we had we weren't watching, we typically feel like a movie when we can watch TV (usually weekends), and lastly our favorite new shows we can stream for free online! Our $8.99/month allows us one DVD at a time with un-limited amount of DVDs to have per month, plus hundreds of TV shows and movies that stream instantly through our Wii or online..yah! 

Best of all they offered a 30 day, no obligation free trial, so we got to try it out for a month to see if we would like the change. well 2 months in, we have hardly noticed any compromise and love catching "the Cosby show" from season 1 :)

and Noel also loves that she can snatch the Wii remote and make whatever we're watching, pause, stop, move ahead etc. and really isn't just about everything we do for her! :)

We're also still in the stone-age when it comes to our TV equipment as we still have a giant black box for a TV instead of a nice sleek flat screen. so maybe with all the money we'll be saving and we pay some stuff off we can have a little reward of a new TV someday! :)

So maybe not an eco-green move, but definitely getting more *green* in our bank account!