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!

big "plans"

Here we are moving right ahead into spring!
I love spring, it gets my blood flowing and my brain running wild with decorating ideas. Spring cleaning, is it sick that I actually look forward to this a bit? But there is something so therapeutic about getting rid of the old and making room for the new...or just enjoying less of the old. Either way *sigh* it gets me excited!

Noel is getting soo close to her 1st birthday...my how the time has flown! As we get ready for this new milestone, we are also getting ready to re-live it all again! If you didn't catch already in our recent facebook updates, we are expecting #2!!...#2 is also what we are affectionately referring to as new baby :)
This was our Christmas surprise. After a good week of 'shock' and confirmed blood tests we found ourselves making Noel a big sister.  We didn't know how far along we were as I was still nursing Noel (hence lack of monthly indicator), so we had to hold out for a good 2 weeks until we could get an ultra sound to find out. @ the ultra sound we found that we were 10 1/2 weeks along, so we zipped right through the first trimester without hardly blinking! Of course once reality set in we became very excited for our coming second bundle of joy :) We are due August 2nd, however a c-section will be scheduled at 39 weeks. so our babes will be about 15 1/2 months apart! :)

Anyway with all of these coming changes mean some MAJOR physical changes around the house (not just my belly size)! One of which is the fact that I currently consume the entire closet it our "master" bedroom and Keith consumes the closet it our current guest bedroom. Well being that we live in a 3 bedroom house, Keith is going to be getting kicked out of this nice organized closet (to make room for Noel's new room) and have the dreaded privilege of sharing a closet with me! For those of you who do not know my husband well, he is a bit OCD about his closet/clothing organization. (i.e. remove a shirt from a hanger and he will know which shirt is missing just by telling him it's the 5th hanger on the right side). My closet on the other hand is a place where all my clothes get thrown :( Bless his heart, so far in our almost 5 years of marriage he has not had to share a closet with me yet, as our last 3 homes did not force us to do so.
Priority #1 Get rid of some clothes! and create a nice built in his/hers closet in our tiny "master" bedroom!..yah! so we'll still share the big closet in the room and then each have a little closet to ourselves..ahh you can just hear Keith sigh in some relief! I'll get the in's and out of that up here once we get started on those...but first..we paint! the fun part of moving & redecorating our room, since we have done ZIP to it since moving in! silly to make built ins before painting..so we just picked up paint.."filtered shade" by Valspar. We really wanted to use no VOC Olympic paint (keeping to our green roots, which are a bit brown from winter!) however we could not get the same color, so after some debate, and the reality that the pregnant wife probably wouldn't be doing much painting anyway, wrangling after our almost walker... we went with the valspar that we have used in the past and really liked.

Then came the hours...literal HOURS of searching for a new duvet cover..fellow americans apparently aren't really into the whole duvet vibe as I had a horrible time finding one!!! I probably logged about 24 hours of online shopping, hoping around town, looking out of town to find nothing..well nothing under $100 bucks..which was NOT our price range.
But then BINGO a duvet cover that I had loved from West Elm (that was originally out of stock and only available on ebay for $180!!!) was back on their site AND on sale for $59..better yet, I scored a 15% off presidents day sale and knocked it down to $50! woohoo..although because I was online shopping I had to chalk up $11 for shipping..oh well still a great price (@ $65 after tax & shipping) for what I had been seeing! No shams available but oh well I could easily find some gray and yellow pillows to match our simply patterned cream and gray duvet!
Then a week goes by and UPS doesn't know where our package is?!! So I call west elm, no problem they would get it shipped right out, somehow I got missed! Then, same day, checking online to show a friend my sweet score to find that now the shams were available and even on sale for $14 each..awesome!! So I quickly called west elm to see if my cheapo talking would score us some free shipping in hopes that they could ship them together. That's when I got sent to "customer service." I was then informed that they 'oversold' the duvet and did not even have that to send out to me...UGH..SIGH...I already pictured more hours of searching!!..then this wonderful man (Scott) tells me, oh they are showing available in the California and Florida stores, lets see if they have one they can ship to you..sure enough they did! AND it was on sale @ the store for $39!!!..and the shams on sale for $10...could this get any better!?! OH YES! Scott nicely reimbursed my shipping for the duvet for the mix up, and then upon ordering the shams they also nixed my shipping for having a hard time! so now I scored the duvet AND shams for $65 after tax and ZERO shipping..a savings of almost $100 buckaroos in the long run!! yah!! I *heart* West Elm!!
So the hours of searching and talking really saved us a HUGE chunk of green..and all the materials are organic cotton..ahh sweet victory!

So we will be happy to show you some nice before and after shots after all our hard laboring! as soon as we officially get started.

Then it will be on to redecorating and moving little Miss into her new room...and then..some new nursery planning!! yah!!

Winter=Lack of Green

I never realized, well probably sort of, how much time I would need to make this blog good, at the very least up to date and interesting!
Whew...time has flown and I haven't had a new post in months, and as I follow my other blogs I become envious in their ease of words, their poetic writing and so many interesting topics..ahh..someday!
We have been SO slacking on making any new green updates in our lives in recent months, but I guess that's where the reality of this pursuit comes into play.
As we sadly watch our money pour into our oil tank this chilly winter and everything in sight is white, my motivation is somewhat lacking to say the least.

However we do have some BIG changes coming our way, some shifting/redecorating (woohoo!), some growing, some major financial decisions! YIKES! and this is my sincere promise to get more info up here as life makes some changes around here!

But here are some simple things we're TRYING to do to make our 1920's drafty house SLIGHTLY more efficient this winter.
We are turning the thermostat down at EVERY chance. When we step out the door, when we crawl under our warm down comforter (we did purchase a small energy start/safe space heater for Noel's sleep time :).
Also keeping blinds and curtains shut at most windows..arg! our drafty windows. God grant us new energy efficient windows!

But I am sad to say that is really all we have done..ahh there is the slap of green guilt :0/
But this is all about the journey..right..so off we go this part I guess is uphill!

So I'll mark this my accountability post to keep more updated!

green poop!

that's right I said it...
poop around here just got a lot more GREEN!
Four reasons why!?
1.)green veggies, which are in fact making poop literally green. I would apologize for the inspection of poop comment but my fellow parent friends will understand :)
2.)green colored diapers
3.)green to the planet
4.)green in our wallet!
So after MUCH talk & MUCH research we are officially cloth diapering parents! yah!
It was actually a good time for us to make this switch as we were just getting low on our LAST order of disposables, and as we had found out through the grape-vine-of CD (cloth diapering) parents/users. They have the best fit on babies from 10-12 lbs. So now was a great time as our petite almost 6 month old peanut is somewhere just over 12 lbs.
(Official weigh in yesterday @ the doctors 14 lbs! @ 6 and half months (still 10th percentile)

We are loving the transition! Which is great because the hardest part of making the decision was that once the diapers were ordered we were committed as they are pricey upfront but will save us TON of money in the long run, as well as giving the earth a big 'ol hug!

First and foremost we looked at cost which then also helped us determine exactly what type and brand of diapers to go with. With what we were currently spending on disposables and our 'forecast' of the future, we would be spending at LEAST $1000 more dollars (oy!) in diapers until Noel is potty trained.
These will also last for more baby bottoms in the future. So really we just spent nearly the last bit of money on diapers...EVER!!
Plus we were going through about 220 diapers/1.5 months..so think of how many diapers we would be throwing into the landfills!
So green reason #1..less landfill waste. Now some may say, what about the energy to wash them?
Being that we have a high efficiency (HE) front loading washing machine & do most of the drying by air & do the last little bit in the dryer this energy factor became a void point.
We do however do a full hot dryer run on occasion because the waterproof outer layer actually needs this at least once a week for the material to continue to last a LONG time!

So here's what we bought:

We decided to go with the Bum Genius all-in-one Elemental Organic dipe.

We decided against the insert options because then we would be having to pull out a disposable piece and discard after, since we have an older home (built in the 20's) we thought not so hot idea to try to flush these either. If we're going to have to wash the diaper, we may as well wash the whole thing!

They are super absorbent (we did have to pre-wash them 5 times to build up their absorbency prior to use)

They have snaps vs. velcro (longer lasting, as the velcro gets less sticky over time) and have size adjustments to fit baby from birth to potty training..yah! 

We got mostly neutral colors for future bambinos and we bought 12. This has been a perfect number for the amount of diapers we use in a day and a half. We may invest in 6 more in the future as a newborn goes through more diapers quickly.

They are cheaper to buy in larger quantities & even scored a 12% discount on the site we used! 

We will still use disposables when we travel for longer than overnight & for the time Noel spends @ childcare-which is only 10 hrs/week or diaper wise only 2-4 diapers/week.

We also had to change up our change ups! Because we were using a diaper genie to dispose & just putting the used wipes in the diaper we had to make some adjustments with that method.

So I bought one of these: 

It's a wet bag! you can find them here: Planet Wise Wet Bags. LOTS of sizes & prints available.
We bought the large one that hangs on the bag of the door. Machine washable & doesn't leak a single drop! Plus when we're done with diaper duty here @ the Veldhuis home it can be used for transporting wet towels or bathing suits or muddy shoes. I love items that multi-task!
To dispose of the dirty wipes. I simply saved an old wipes container to put on the shelf next to the box full of clean ones. So it was FREE and it's an easy to wipe out plastic container that we just empty like a trash can. Also here's a small peek @ Noel's room too :)

the baskets below the changing table hold these

white container=clean/green container=used

Washing the actual diapers is also a breeze. If it's just wet it goes directly in the 'wet' bag. If it's soiled we take it over the the toilet drop the contents in a give it a quick rinse with this!

you can barely see it to the left

Super easy installation (as mentioned by Keith). Just open the toilet & one quick spray rinses it clean for later laundering.
Every other day we toss the whole lot..diapers, wet bag in the washer...one 'quick wash' on cold followed by a hot wash & presto..soft clean, never stained diapers!
We use bum genius cloth diaper detergent (to keep up with the manufacturers recommendations for warranty purposes).
Plus there is NEVER a yucky diaper smell in the house! and now not in the landfill either!
So in closing here is Noel enjoying her new comfy & super cute CLOTH DIAPERS! (AND she's standing all by herself..big girl!) [Thought I should add here, that we have been using these for several weeks now, but just waited to post this until we had a bit of use under our belts]

Green Goals

So I am going to make for myself a bit of a short to-do list of sorts that will include, some small & big *green* changes we would like to make in the NEAR future with our home!

So here we go...
1. Start a compost bin & grown our own veggies!
(sadly this one will have to wait until spring, which we knew would happen as last spring we had another 'growing' project on our hands..a small human!)
But we're starting our research now on how to best start, maintain, and use a compost bin.
Reason: we would cut down on even more garbage (which we are hoping to ALWAYS keep to one bag/week, no matter how big our family gets). Plus it would be a great way for us to do some natural/organic veggie growing of our own.
We have a 'garden' already built in our back-yard, however it was built with treated lumber, which is now rotting. So next spring we hope to rebuild & plant a garden as well with some fun & tasty veggies. I think it will be a great project for Noel to learn with us too.

2. Make preparing/cooking/storing food more green!
First off this is on my wish list! Cuisinart Greenware to replace all our chemical-producing Teflon or not 100% stainless steel cookware & stop leaching chemicals into our food & our air
Secondly I would like to slowly move our storage containers to rid of the plastics & use the glassware that we have.
I also want one of these Life Factory Glass Re-usable bottle!!! I always like to use my reusable water bottle, but the plastics often have BPA (which actually is becoming less and less) or they never seem clean. and the metal ones are great for holding my beverage, but I don't like to put my mouth on the metal to drink out of. So as my dad always says "only the best comes in glass" (since he worked in a glass factory his whole life)..yah! Stuff really does always taste better in glass!

3. Replace all of our household cleaners & soaps with chemical & toxin free versions.
Because I don't want to go out and spend an arm and a leg on these things. I am making this switch as I run out of my current products. We already use & love, method wood floor cleaner & hard floor cleaners so we don't have chemicals on the floor around small baby girl & big harry Moose. I also use chlorox green works wipes for wiping down the john. As well as Seventh Generation & Methods Multi-surface cleaners in the kitchen and bathroom. However I have been reading up on the hazards of antibacterial soaps to the environment as nearly 100% of it goes down the drain. So I will be switching those out in the future too.

4. Avoid "cheap" plastics in products for Noel. Not only do I want to look at this with feeding supplies but also her toys..being that EVERYTHING goes in her mouth. So I would like to stick to natural wood, or BPA free plastics. & organic materials when possible. We love these toys! www.melissaanddoug.com

5. NEW WINDOWS...ahh can you see me salivating over this home improvement project! Our home was built in 1920..and yes..still has the original (beautiful & drafting) windows!
New windows would be green in SO many ways! It would cut down on our heating costs as we would lose our drafty current ones, meaning less oil in the tank, more efficient heating & cooling. And the ability to open some windows in a beautiful day. (Our current windows do not have screens, so being that I am moth-a-phobic...open windows without screens NEVER happening! (there are even great tax rebates right now too..financially green too!! woohoo!-although we had to put a new sewer line in our house..not sure how to make this happen.ugh!)

6. Invest in a pellet stove. Fun little pellets made of compressed saw-dust to heat our home..genius! I would love to put this in our finished (in need of a make-over) basement. To make it cozy down there, and allow the heat to 'rise' to the rest of our home. They are one of the most efficient/green ways to heat your home. This is probably going WAY on the back burner as this would get pricey this would also need to include some sort of chimney (even though there are great tax rebate on these now). The windows would be a wiser earlier decision.

7. We have a small back yard that is in need of some grass (when Keith ever has a life outside of Grad school he'll finish his post on that later). But we'd like to do this without pesticides or chemical fertilizer. and we'd be open to trading in our gas push mower (obtained for $30 on craigslist) for a good old fashion "reel mower"...hmm..we'll keep thinking about that one.
7 1/2. Last summer we tore down our old/rusty clothes line, to which we are going to put up a new sleek line that will be easy to take down & put up, to avoid, wet moldy line AND ducking under it all the time!

8. Get rid of stuff & don't buy so much stuff! "LIVE SIMPLY SO OTHERS MAY SIMPLY LIVE"

Of course there are always the simple things to maintain like turning lights off & appliances not in use & so on..but here's the start of a few things and  I know there are a TON more things to add, but here are some basics we're starting with.
We actually recently made another GREEN change in our lives..but there is too much involved to post here.
So that post is coming soon!