Sew an Insulated Casserole Carrier

Lucky me got an insulated round casserole caddy with hot and cold packs for a wedding present. I don’t make a lot of casseroles but the thing is fan-tabulous for taking food to work potlucks, family gatherings, and all around food toting around goodness.

I wish I had a caddy for my rectangular covered Pyrex dish. I use that thing to store and tote cupcakes, and like here there and everywhere. A carrier would make toting my cookies easier.

Pin this tutorial for later, it makes a great gift!

All of the insulated carriers I saw in stores came with a new dish and hot packs. I don’t need a new dish and hot packs. I only want the carrier.

If I can’t buy, I’ll DIY!

How to Make a T-Shirt Skirt

Last year’s summer wardrobe is snug. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on clothes because I’m trying  to lose the 30 pounds I gained (all on fresh, whole foods even!) when my doctor switched me to a different medication. (It’s nothing serious, it just doesn’t relate to this blog.)  I kvetched enough about the meds compelling me to eat THREE sandwiches at lunch every day that she switched me back to my old prescription.

In the meantime, I need some new clothes.

I found plain t-shirts on sale but no shorts or skirts.

No problem! I’ll sew a skirt from a t-shirt or four.

5 Recycled and Repurposed Laundry Room Organizers

After successfully organizing the linen closet with chalkboard labels, I set my sites on spring cleaning and decluttering the laundry room.

Um, no I didn’t redecorate my laundry room. It’s always been The Evil Dead Laundry Room**  and superhero action figure hangout. They are NOT dolls. Even though they look like dolls. Every guy I know says they are NOT DOLLS.

I still say they look like dolls.!

I think laundry, and ironing especially, is an evil chore. This room sums my feelings up nicely even though it looks a cubical in an IT firm. Some of these things may or may not have lived in former cubicals or the computer room of our old apartment, ahem. Does that mean our plastic toys fall into the green creative reuse category? Yeah, I didn’t think so. It’s an insane fun room though. At least to us.

On an more decorative note, I hope I can redeem myself in your eyes with my distressed wall treatment  and the sisal rope I used as crown molding. I was going for country rustic until the room turned into psycho toy land.

Book Page Storage Shelves

They say the cheapest way to spruce up a room is to paint it. I say cheapest way to spruce up a room is to clean and reorganize it.

The utility room is one of those rooms I walk into that makes me go ARRRRGH!

Clutter makes me cranky.

How to Give a Dog a Pill

A Facebook friend asked how to give a dog a pill so the dog doesn't spit it out. I have a sure fired way to give a dog a pill so the pills gets into the dog every time! I made a quick YouTube video for her.

Welcome to my very first vlog starring Blitzkrieg! Oh, and me. But I know you are really here to watch Blitzkrieg .He's the real star of the show.

Does Your Dog Shred Paper?

Blitzkrieg is feeling much better after his knee surgery. I can tell he’s feeling much better because he was a bit stand offish before and obviously after his surgery. Recently he’s super cuddly. If anyone sits in Blitzkrieg’s favorite armchair, be prepared to have a dog on your lap.

Blitzkrieg wasn’t always Mr. Mellow Cuddle Buddy. Once upon a time, he was a scared abused dog. Once he started to come out of his shell, all of the energy Blitzkrieg spent worrying about being hit needed to go somewhere. That somewhere was my bathroom, where Blitzkrieg grabbed toilet tissue from the roll and shredded it.

A little privacy please? I have a roll to decimate.

One Small Change: Buy a Bagless Vacuum Cleaner

March’s One Small Change is something I avoided forever – getting rid of my 14-year-old sweeper for a bagless HEPA filter model because the greenest and cheapest thing is to use what you already own, right?

My old Hoover upright uses bags. I can buy them for a dollar a package at Dollar Tree so the price of bags isn’t an issue. In a pinch, I can always open the top of the bag, dump the contents in the trash or compost bin, and staple the top of the bag closed so I can reuse it again. I learned this trick from the Tightwad Gazette. The Condo Blues whammy dictates that if I run out of vacuum cleaner bags it is going to be when I am in the middle of cleaning the house. 

With a Pekingese whose hobby is shedding, my trusty Roomba Red got the daily dog fur tumbleweeds and the upright came out every other day for the heavy cleaning. Roomba doesn’t use bags so I figure the waste thing was 50/50.

Not long ago, Roomba’s rechargeable battery heaved its last breath. Being one of the first Roombas, it is not as powerful as the current models but it did the job. (I like a clean house because I am my mother’s daughter. I like gadgets and tech because I am my father’s daughter. Super early adopter robot owner me.Yay robots who do your bidding!)

Want a New Sofa? Reupholster It!

Husband came into my life with his own sofa. It was kinda like a gift with purchase. There was only one small problem with his bachelor sofa – the print.

 1994 called. They want their sofa back.

Dried Sweet Potato Dog Chew Recipe

Blitzkrieg rested comfortably after his knee surgery, well, as comfortably as you can with your leg bandaged up from your hip to your foot. He’s making very good use of the little gift basket of meat flavored baby food his dog cousins gave him for Christmas. I hide Blitzkrieg’s pain medication in a spoonful of baby food and he gobbles it up as a low calorie treat. It’s important to keep his weight consistent as his leg heals. Also, he wants to keep himself svelte for da ladies. 

My little dog is resilient. Three days after the surgery, he was running, climbing stairs, and jumped on the sofa with his leg in cast - all against doctor's orders. It's been a stressful time for all of us. I hate hearing Blitzkrieg whimper in pain and be frustrated that he can't be the independent dog he wants to be right now.

Ow.

Yesterday Blitzkrieg got his bandages off. This surgery has pushed every fear button we all worked so hard to conquer from his abused stray days. I need to give him a positive distraction from licking his stitches before they dissolve on their own. Our favorite yuppie puppy pet store did not have dried sweet potato chews (they had no idea it was an emergency) so I made them myself – and saved a bit a cash. Yay!

11 Green Ways to Clean for the Holidays

One of the last things I do before the holiday gathering starts is clean my house. I suspect you might too. Or at the very least will need to do a through cleaning AFTER the holiday hordes have invaded your home.

You can still have a clean house and keep it a green house. Here are 11 tips for green cleaning from some of the coolest bloggers around. If you look closely at timestamp 0:40, you’ll see little ol’ me!

Three Great Gift Bag Ideas

Oh gift bags how you make wrapping gifts so speedy! Gift bags are fabulous for wrapping odd shaped gifts like soccer balls and stuffed animals. Gift bags can easily be reused from one year to the next, which makes them an easy and  inexpensive way to go green without being so In Your Face Trying To Send a Message. 

Don’t you just love it when the cheapest and easiest way is the greenest way?

According to an article on Lehman’s blog: “We throw away 25% more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year’s than any other time of year.  This amounts to 25 million tons of extra trash.”

Wow.

30 Homemade Gift Ideas for Women, Men, Girls, Boys and Dogs

I Christmas shop year round for items as well as for ideas. That way I have time to make sure my gift is meaningful to the recipient. It spreads the spending out throughout the year so I never have to pay with credit. Sometimes I buy and sometimes I DIY it really depends upon what I think the person will like or need that year.

Jenn of The Green Parent  suggested to those of us in The Green Mom’s Carnival with craftier blogs could write about gifts/decorations that folks could make with the stuff they already have around the house as a way to offer suggestions on how to celebrate the holidays without going overboard.

This year my DIY options are severely limited. I killed my sewing machine last year making Christmas gifts. Seriously. The thing won’t run. At. All.

*whimper*

Since I can't make anything new, I went through some old posts and came up with 30 ideas for homemade holiday gifts for women and girls, men and boys, families, and your little dog too!

Warm a Winter Room with Free Heat!

To save energy and heating costs I don’t turn on my furnace until it’s consistently 40 degrees (F) outside. That makes for some nippy nights when the outdoor temperatures dip down to 40 degrees in the evening. BRRRR!

I put extra blankets on my bed to snuggle under. However, my bedroom has a pitched ceiling. I loved the high ceiling in that room when we bought the house until the first winter - because heat rises.  It is a spendy room to theat and even then it’s still cold.

Reversing the blades on a ceiling fan would do the trick but I don’t have a ceiling fan in that room. Not to worry, I have a free space heater for my bedroom and I bet you do too!

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!

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!

One Small Green Change: Silicone Ice Cube Trays

This month’s One Small Green Change is to switch from plastic ice cube trays to silicone ice cube trays.

Silicone is synthetic but it is considered safe because it does not contain BPA or phthalates. While the cold in my freezer makes the transfer of possible (and probable) BPA in my old plastic ice cube trays very low the silicone ice cube trays make it zero.

After seeing Dollar Store Crafts posted some killer silicone ice cube trays to use as sugar molds; I figured it was high time I made the switch to something I knew that was safer. I stalked my Dollar Tree for three weeks to get Blitzkrieg silicone skull ice cube trays because when you have a one eyed pirate dog like Blitzkrieg every day is Talk Like a Pirate Day! (It’s more of a lifestyle choice for us, really.)

10 Halloween Costumes for Dogs Who Hate Costumes

I love dressing up for Halloween. Now that I have a dog I want him to love dressing up for Halloween too.

But he doesn’t.

You wear a double coat of fur all the time. You won’t want to put on extra clothes, either.

We like to go to dog charity events to support the rescue organizations that have helped us rehabilitate Blitzkrieg and tell his story. Some of these events are Halloween events.

Blitzkrieg quickly learned the cuter the costume, the more treats humans give you. Blitzkrieg learned to tolerate several types of sorta dog costumes in order to swindle as many treats as possible celebrate Halloween.

Repurposed Dog Bowl Wall Art

After I painted the kitchen, I started putting artwork back on the walls for my family’s enjoyment. One family member didn’t have anything to look at when he was eating his dinner.

What about me? *Sigh*

I decided to make Blitzkrieg some doggie wall art.

I Painted My Kitchen with No VOC Paint

For 6 years, Husband and I have been going around and around about what color to paint the kitchen. Since he is the Head Cook he wanted a say in how I decorated “His Domain.” I guess I can give him that. I’m also fine with him calling the kitchen His Domain. Heck, he can call it Shirley for all I care as long as he cooks my dinner!

Being a green blogger, I’m supposed to automatically choose a low or no VOC (volatile organic compound) paint to improve the indoor air quality for the health of my family. However, I had a lot of questions and concerns if a low or no VOC paint job would last. Turns out, my concerns were not such a big deal. I found out that we painted our bedroom six years ago with a paint that qualifies as a low VOC paint, even thought the company doesn’t advertise it that way. The bedroom paint job has held up over time but as for a low VOC paint, it SMELLED just as much as the mistint of conventional paint I bought from the Habitat Restore to paint the laundry room.


Since that stinky low VOC paint job held up over time, I was ready to take a chance on a no VOC paint. Hopefully, with less stink.

Make a Woven Ribbon and Washer Bracelet

I open the email and sat there, stunned. Martha Stewart Omnimedia invited me to their Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Bloggers' Night Out! party to meet the Martha Stewart creative team!

Mecca!

Mindful Momma said we should make something to wear to the party.

Dare I?

Inspired by the belt on my new dress, I grabbed some washers left over from the cornhole game boards I built in the garage, a bit of ribbon from my sewing stash, and made a woven washer bracelet using A Steno Pad for My Thoughts woven washer necklace tutorial.

Another project that perfectly illustrates my tool girl side and my girly girl crafty side.