The Green Bag Lady

I don’t support laws that ban plastic shopping bags because it ends up hurting people that cannot afford to buy reusable shopping bags. I’d rather a store or city offer incentives for using your own bag because I think you get more flies with honey than vinegar. That’s why I had to interview Teresa VanHatten-Granath when I heard about her Green Bag Lady Project.

In an attempt to make her corner of the world greener, Teresa makes and gives away free cloth shopping bags! The project started in her own college classroom. She now has people using her free cloth shopping bags around the world!

Green Bag Lady Bag Number 111170.

How long have you sewn? How did you get started making shopping tote bags?

How Low Does Your Furnace Go?

My friends and family consider me the Energy Saving Maven because I reduced my home’s natural gas and electric use by 32% using cheap home improvements and new habits. So it wasn’t a surprise when a friend of mine asked me to come to his house and help him lower his sky high heating bill last winter.

I trudged through the new fallen snow on his sidewalk and rang the doorbell. He answered it wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

It was easy to find the answer to his high energy use and heating bill.

I don’t expect you to lower your daytime temperatures to my frigid 58 degrees (F), but if you accept Crunchy Chicken's Freeze Your Buns Challenge and lower your heating temperature by only a few degrees it will do a world of good. In the case of my friend, he has rescue birds so he came up with lowering his daytime temperature from 75 to 68 degrees (F.)

This year, I’m using the One Million Acts of Green Give the Gift of Green Facebook app to send my friend a reminder to not to jack his furnace this winter.

You can use the One Million Acts of Green Give the Gift of Green Facebook app this November trough December to send a green act as a “gift” that publishes to their News Feed. If the person isn’t on Facebook, you can send your message to them as an e-card.

How low does your temperature go during the winter?

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Disclosure:  Rockfish Interactive, in partnership with  Cisco are compensating me for my considerable time on this project. However, my ideas, words, and opinions are my own and are not influenced by this compensation. See what the other ambassadors have to say about One Million Acts of Green: Crunchy Domestic Goddess, Green Your Décor and Green and Clean Mom.

Reclaimed Barnwood Floors - Yea or Nay?

I love decorating and doing projects with reclaimed and recycled materials. I also like hardwood floors. Schlabach Woodworks is an Ohio company that combined my two loves and recently used reclaimed wood from an old Ohio barn to create these swoony hardwood floors in a house featured in the 2010 Parade of Homes.

 Look at that character!

You wont' find this in a big box store!

They also make staircases and mantle pieces from old barn wood too. Sadly I can't give you any more information than what I just did because Schlabach Woodworks doesn't have a web site due to their Amish roots.

Very green. Unique, but spendy and much nicer than laminate flooring. Although with a reclaimed barn wood floor like this, you really wouldn’t need to replace it as you eventually would with carpeting. It should last a lifetime!

What do you think? Reclaimed barn wood floors – yea or nay?


Looking for more wood flooring ideas? Check out the following options - and more! - below

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Trying Recycled Content Toilet Paper, Take Three

Monday I talked about how my family is doing a blind tushie test of two brands of recycled content toilet paper. White Cloud sent us two rolls of toilet paper marked A and B. They also said we should “have fun” with the testing.

Husband and I took this as a cue to do scientific experiments like on Mythbusters. That didn’t work out very well because all of our favorite episodes are the ones that involve blowing stuff up. Apparently they don’t sell C4 and blast shields to just anybody, let alone let you use the your local police bomb range to test durability by blowing up rolls of toilet paper. The nerve!

Make a (Cute) No Solicitors Sign

One of the drawbacks of living in a condo community with nicely planned blocks of houses with sidewalks is that we are ripe for the picking when it comes to door to door salespeople. Now that it’s election season, it’s becoming downright unbearable! I’ve had more than one person come to the door pimping the same issue despite asking them to please take them off our visitation list. It's not that I'm politically unaware, I am more than you know. It's just that I don't want my Saturday HGTV and DIY Network coffee + snuggling doggie + dream time interrupted three times in one day with a parade of people knocking on my door about the same thing. The worst offenders are the fake water testing companies trying to tell us our water will kill us unless  we buy their product allow them to test our water.

I decided to make a No Solicitors sign.

I bought a frame at Goodwill and sanded it.

 

 It doesn't look like much but this frame is an achievement. I went to Goodwill looking for picture frames and came out of Goodwill with picture frames instead of picture frames plus the dozen other things that tempted me. Yay me!

I used leftover outdoor paint from my porch chair revamp project to paint my picture frame since it will live outside.

Five Toilet Paper Roll Crafts and a Contest!

Toilet paper and paper towel roll crafts are an elementary school staple. Lately, adults are dipping into their recycling bins, making toilet paper and paper towel roll crafts that are more artistic than kiddie craft.

Who hasn’t seen the toilet paper roll leaves wall art and not been inspired?

Photo courtesy of Design Sponge

I am! The Design Sponge wall art inspired me to decorate my telephone book wreath with toilet paper roll flowers.

I made this!

I think Paint Cut Paste’s Toilet Roll Pumpkin Garland  is so clever! I want to try something like it with Danish Christmas hearts.

Photo courtesy Paint Cut Paste

This cartoon wall art looks like it uses both whole toilet paper and paper towel rolls. It reminds me of old eight bit computer game graphics. The computer geek in me digs it.

Photo courtesy of Toilet Paper World Blog

How to Gal’s turquoise toilet roll wall art is nothing short of genius! It looks like an expensive wrought iron wall hanging. Love! Love! Love!

Photo courtesy of How To Gal

What have you made with toilet paper rolls?

Imagination Unrolled Contest!

Put those toilet and paper towel crafting skills to the test. White Cloud is holding the Imagination Unrolled Contest. Take a photo of something you’ve made with empty toilet paper or paper towel tubes and upload the photo. If your entry gets the most votes you win the $1,000 Grand prize! Two runners up will win $500. Voting begins November 11th, so you a some time to create the perfect craft. Or gather your materials. If you need more, there are coupons available at White Cloud.

Imagination Unrolled Twitter Party!

To get everyone in the mood, White Cloud is hosting a Twitter party Thursday, October 21st 3pm - 4pm CST (1pm pacific, 2pm mountain, 3pm central, 4pm eastern.) The theme is Imagination Unrolled. They will be discussing how to 'Unroll Your Imagination' throughout the house. I think it would be the perfect opportunity for us crafty and green folks to jump in because repurposing and reimagining our old stuff into new stuff is something in which we excel.

Oh, and White Cloud will be giving away a $50 gift card every 10 minutes to a random Twitter party participant as an added incentive. The holidays are coming and who couldn’t use a little extra money to buy life’s necessities?

How to Participate in a Twitter Party

Log in to Twitter at the appropriate time in your time zone and follow the party host @WhiteCloudMom. Search and follow the hashtag #WhiteCloudMom. When you post make sure you use the #WhiteCloudMom hashtag in your post so everyone following the Twitter party can read what you have to say whether they personally follow you or not.

I like to use Tweetgrid to follow along in Twitter parties because it gives you different columns for the host’s tweets, your tweets and @’s and a third column for the party’s tweets. It also automatically ads the hash tag to the end of your tweet so everyone at the party can see it.

Twitter parties are a fun way to share ideas and meet like minded people you wouldn’t normally know to follow on Twitter. I always find new and cool people to follow after a Twitter party, every once and a while I win a prize. A nice bonus indeed!

Are you going to be at the Twitter party? Are you going to enter the Imagination Unrolled contest? Let us know if you enter the contest so we can all vote for you! I’m not entering because I’m not eligible. Why?

I’m a White Cloud (Mom) Blogger

White Cloud asked me to join their White Cloud Blogger’s group. What does that mean exactly? Well, first off I will be promoting crafting with toilet paper and paper towel rolls, which is something I do anyway because:

• It’s green
• It’s clever
• And it’s cheap :)

Apparently, I will eventually be asked to put my family’s hiney on the line with some blind tushie testing of recycled content White Cloud paper projects. This one should be interesting.  I just opened the last box of that sand paper like one ply recycled content TP I bought on Earth Day mega sale for my April One Small Change. It will be banned from our house forever once we’ve finished the box. We love it that much. Will the White Cloud Green Earth be any better or more of the same?

Why am I doing it? Well, because White Cloud is something that is available all over the place. I have family that live in itty bitty cities that don’t have access to all of the shopping places I do. I suspect that many of you live in areas like that too. I don’t think green living or products should only be for those of us who have deep pockets or live in large cities.

Most importantly, White Cloud agreed to play by my rules. I get to be me in all of my blunt and wacky self. I still get to say things like “I’m putting my hiney on the line for you and the environment” and “tushie” because you I’m still a professional jester at heart.

I also get to give you my absolute honest opinion about everything I do and my absolute honest opinion about their products. They are convinced I’m going to love their recycled content products. Husband and I are holding our collective breath, hanging onto our seats with a slightly skeptical “Prove it!” because we do not love the better for the environment but port potty like recycled content TP we are using now.

Who knows? I’ve been proven wrong about a product more than once (or like a zillion times.) It would be nice if this works out. We shall see…

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Disclaimer: White Cloud is compensating me for the considerable time I will spend on this project. However all opinions are my own and are not influenced by this compensation and long time readers know I am highly opinionated.

9 Green Big Lots Finds

Shopping thrift stores, consignment shops, eBay, etc. are all ways to shop green. However, sometimes when I’m looking for something specific, or I don’t see it in those stores, or I don’t have time to wait for it to show up in those places because I need/want it NOW, I buy it new.

This is probably doesn’t happen to you because you are all more awesome and more patient that I am.

Well, as I was looking, OK, obsessed, with finding silicone skull ice cube trays for Blitzkrieg I walked into a nearby Big/Odd Lots. Well, guess what? I hit the mother load of inexpensive green items! I had my camera with me and snuck a few photos of my finds for you.

Let’s take a look.

Glass bakeware. Some have lids!