The Grass is Greener on the South Side

We don't have a whole lot of grass in the backyard due to our gigantic maple that shades our house and backyard (which is great for helping keep our house cooler, meaning less running of the central AC) but also makes growing grass a bit of a challenge. We have made some huge strides in that we have some grass now, as last summer it was all dirt. Our house was rented for a period of time before we purchased it and therefore the lawn was slightly neglected so slowly but surely we are literally sitting back and waiting for the grass to grow in (more). We still have lots of grass that needs mowing though!

Last summer we found a pretty decent Honda lawn mower on Craig's list for about 40 bucks. The only problem was that the self propel part did not work which meant a heavier piece of machine to push without the help of the self propel option. Also we lost a piece that helped hold the handle up, so this year Keith was struggling to mow trying to get the handle to keep up. But we broke down and made a green change!

ahh..Noel is keeping you in suspense!

We bought this! 

"Great States" Reel Mower

It has awesome reviews and we even got to test one out before we took the plunge ourselves (since our friends down the street lent us theirs after our gas mower went south). 

We actually ordered it on accident. Keith was doing a little online searching and when we went back in to look at this beauty on Amazon we somehow had our account set up to "one click" shopping and bam it was on it's way to South Side! But it was only $99 and we got free shipping, so it would have been the way we would have gone anyway. 

Some assembly was required, which did not need the use of any tools. Of course Moose always around to lend a helping paw

And there we have it! Our new human powered lawn mower...GO GREEN!! We even read that the emissions from a gas powered lawn mower can equal up to that of 11 cars!! YIKES! so earth...here's your hug from us :) 

So it's obvious why this was a eco-friendly green move for us. But it was also a wallet friendly move. As these baby's are way cheaper than the typical gas powered mower. But we held off on making this purchase until we had a yard sale to see some extra cash come in.

Last weekend we did a yard sale on Saturday only from 8am-1pm and got rid of a TON of stuff (recycle and reuse people!) and we pocketed some nice cash. Enough for us to purchase this and stock some away for some other things. So we got rid of a bunch of junk (one man's junk is another man's treasure) and got to buy something great! Happy Yard Sale season! 

Tangent Post:

One day it occurred to me how many throw away paper towels I was going through during Noel's meals! So I cleaned out the linen closet and grabbed a huge handful of wash cloths (that we have way too many of anyway) and they are now stashed in the kitchen so be easily wet and ready to wipe and I can use one for a whole day and then just toss it in the wash! Simple green solution for free :)

You can see how useful this can be!

You Make me Happy When Rooms are Gray!

Hello my name is Elissa and I have decorators ADD! 

We have been busy little bumble bees making changes around the house and haven't even had time to post any updates on it all! 

First off I have a new love  distraction that goes by the name p*interest. which is only adding to my current decorators ADD. My poor husband is about to limit my time spent on there because I add about 500 "ideas" for new DIY to dos! And being in the pregnant state I'm in really limits the DIY-ing I can do in some areas (ie: painting, lifting heavy object, refinishing more furniture) the list really could go on and on.

So as you may know we have been working on bedrooms, being that we need another one!

So we started with our bedroom to open up the spare to make Noel's new 'big girl' room so that baby B (affectionately termed by my mother who thought that #2 sounded like something for the bathroom) could move into a newly designed nursery. 

Of course baby B is another girl, so you may say...you have a girl nursery already done. But come on folks, if you know me at all if there is an opportunity to do some decorating, I'M IN!

Plus, if we keep the nursery the same it will always feel like Noel's room, and I would like something new and special for baby B. Most things for her are going to be second hand from her "big" sister, so I think she deserves a little of her own design, and it really feeds into my nesting needs :) 

So among the regular day-to-day madness of just making the house run, laundry, groceries, dinner, chasing a very active 13 month old, we have been doing some updating. and really making some big progress. 

the biggest our MASTER bedroom! yah....so without further ado here are some before and after shots!

BEFORE: love the Nate Berkus Duvet cover but just a bit too "woodsy" (to be recycled later in our "Guest Lodge"

Note the old dresser and plain old cream colored walls

Yes, I purposefully took really messy BEFORE shots so my after ones looked even better! :)

Ok...so after snatching about 20 paint swatches from Lowe's, hanging them up in our room and mulling over them during all different times of day (hence different lighting) we went with a nice soft gray color. Our room is tiny so we wanted to keep in light and bright and not make it feel any smaller. Plus I was completely obsessing over a gray & yellow (more romantic feel). 

so drum roll please....the AFTER

WAIT, I forgot to add that we used this earth friendly drop cloth!

My wonderful husband doing his favourite thing!

...and of course Noel helping, these are the only pictures we can get of her these days...a blur of running baby!

Ok...now some AFTER shots!

Yah! So what do you think?? Of course I am a lousy photographer, and these pictures don't do it enough justice and we're still working on some finishing touches. But the big things are up. Best of all we did it on an almost nothing budget.

We needed more closet space, so to Ikea we drove and picked up to of the wardrobes you can see pictured above that flank both sides of the bed. adios night stands! which also meant, where do we plug in our phone chargers? what about lamps? and where do I put my glass of water at night? all solved. Look above and we bought a simple little pendent light $9 woohoo! that makes the room super cozy and we can turn it off right by our headboard. Our bed has extra wide side boards (kind of a faux platform bed) so there goes our phone chargers and phones for the night and inside the wardrobes there is a shelf so we can easily stick a nightly glass of water in there, which can easily be grabbed since we decided to curtain the wardrobes instead of doors.

The above picture has our new 'dresser' (also an Ikea book shelf) that we stuck in some storage boxes and then have some shelves for decorative items. The awesome window hanging above (just completed tonight) was a completely free find in our attic! SCORE! 

So there is is for now. maybe I'll break into more details on how-we-did-it's in another post. 

Hopefully I'll get some more time to keep you updated on the 1500 other projects we have going on currently!

for now signing off!

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!