Condo Blues: travel
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts

Friday, April 8, 2011

Make an iPad Cover and Stand

I won an iPad from ConAgra* in a drawing at Blissdom.  I’m still pinching myself! I never win anything super cool like that.



Now I know what the heck Angry Birds is and why it’s insanely addictive.

Bonus.

Griffin Screen Care Kit for iPad, Matte
Seriously, order one of these. You won't regret it.
The first thing I did is order a screen care kit. I had sectors on a screen kill a just-out-of-warranty PDA (remember those?)  As a precaution, I always buy a screen protector to my touch screen devices and recommend you do the same. It will be the best $13 you spend to protect a $500 investment. I'm not joking, go buy one. I'll wait.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Sew a Quickie Cloth Camera Strap Cover

I’m going to Blissdom. I want something to identify my new black DSLR as mine because it looks like everyone else’s black DSLR camera. I don’t want someone to accidentally pick up my precious and get weirded out about the crazy amount of dog photos on my camera's memory card. What can I say? Blitzkrieg loves the camera.

I always meant to buy a wider camera strap for my Minolta and regretted it. Its thin webbed camera strap digs into my neck – ow! My Cannon has a wider strap – yay! But it’s webbed material – boo! I suspect more digging into my neck – ow!

Hey! A cloth camera strap cover would solve both of my problems. Let's do it!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

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!

Sunday, August 15, 2010

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.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

8 Ways to Eat Healthy When Camping

Someone complained that it is hard to eat healthy while camping during a recent Girls Night Out (#gno) Twitter party. I disagree! Every vacation of my childhood involved camping of some sort. My parents often referred to our camper as their hotel room on wheels. Because we brought a kitchen with us, we ate healthy while traveling.

The first summer we were married, Husband and I road tripped from Ohio to South Dakota tent camping all the way. People pitied us because they thought we ate crappy food. Not so. Even when camping in a tent, Husband and I always eat very well. Generally our kitchen is a cooler, a propane grill, and an electric teakettle. (You may consider the electric teakettle cheating but I need caffeine in the morning or else I will turn into a grizzly bear, ‘K?)

Here’s how we eat healthy while camping in a tent. If you have a camper with a little kitchen it’s even easier.

  1. Plan ahead – I don’t do a weekly meal plan at home but I do when we were camping. That way, I can pack the car and cooler with what we need for our trip and nothing more since space is at a premium. My mom used this strategy to counter fussy kid eaters. We only have room in our small camper kitchen to bring certain food so that was what we ate or we didn’t eat. 
  2. Make what you normally would at home – Most of the food you normally eat at home can be cooked at a campsite with a few tweaks. You can stir fry vegetables in olive oil on a camp stove just as easily as you can on your big kitchen stove at home although you might consider serving it with pasta because it has a faster cooking time than rice and will use less propane to prepare. 
  3. Make things up ahead of time – Sadly, there isn’t room service at a campground, which means that the family cook doesn’t get a vacation. If you make things up ahead of time like Sloppy Joe or a cold salad, you can easily cook from scratch at home and have a quick healthy meal while camping. I like to make hummus at home and pack it in the cooler. Hummus makes a great sandwich spread and vegetable dip while on the road! 
  4. Sometimes you might want to take a cooking shortcut – While I’m a big advocate of cooking from scratch, sometimes the convenience or space saving aspect of prepared food will win out during a camping trip. Some of my favorites include spaghetti sauce and whole wheat pasta, veggie burgers, tabouleh mix, deli made stuffed grape leaves, and red wine. Yes, I consider stuffed grape leaves and red wine roughing it because I drink my wine out of a coffee mug. To save space I leave the stemware at home. 
  5. Take advantage of cooking outdoors – You can grill meat, veggies, fish, and kebabs on your patio just as easily as you can on a grill them at campground. Grilled bananas make an excellent camping treat! 
  6. Fruit as snacks – Fresh fruit is so much more refreshing on a hot day than salty snacks. In addition, you can easily park the kids outside when fruit juice dribbles all over their chins instead of letting it dribble all over the inside of your RV or tent. 
  7. Popcorn over the campfire (or camp stove) – As long as you don’t slather it in sticks of butter and pile on a mountain of salt, popcorn can be a healthier snack choice than potato chips.
    • Tip: Try sprinkling oregano or basil or both over your popcorn to make Popcorn Pizza – yum! 
  8. Think healthy drinks – Consider bringing iced teas, lemonade, and bring your own water from home if the water at the campground may bother your tummy (sometimes this happens with me.)
    • Tip: To save money and cut down on waste, fill up reusable water bottles with drinks for the family throughout the day.
    • Tip #2: Put your drinks in a separate cooler to keep the kiddos from opening and closing the camper’s refrigerator or the food storage cooler so often. This goes double if you’re tent camping and you have to keep your food cold in a cooler with ice.
While going on a camping vacation you can eat just as healthy as you do at home. Although I do let that slide a little bit when I’m on vacation because who can resist making and sharing s’mores with friends over a campfire? Not me!

How do you eat healthy while on vacation or camping? Or you do you follow the 80-20 Rule and figure that vacation or camping is the 20% of the time you can throw caution to the wind and eat whatever you want?


Reminder: Help me Win my Dream Job!

I've been selected as a finalist for the Salada Green Tea Spokesperson contest. Your vote will help Salada pick the winner. Please vote for me Lisa Nelsen-Woods and help me win my dream job promoting green living and healthy eating on a budget. You may vote once a day, every day from now until the contest ends on August 1st.

I would be promoting simple healthy meal ideas just like the one in this post. It would be a dream come true!

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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

I Greened My SunScreen

I gave up trying to get sun tan years ago because my pale faced Scandinavian skin makes me burn like a vampire in the sun.

Really.

I got a sunburn by sitting too close to a sunny window at work once, OK?

My New Year’s Resolution for 2010 is to green my health and beauty aids so I switched to a zinc-based sunscreen.

I bought Alba Botanica. Alba scores a 2-3 on the Skin Deep Database for safety. There are other sunscreens that score better for safety but they are much more expensive and most are only available on line. I go through so much sunscreen I wanted to find something I can buy locally when I run out. Price is also important because I buy a lot of sunscreen during the summer.

So far, I like the protection Alba offers. My only negative is that it’s thicker than my old chemical based sunscreen and takes a bit more time and effort to rub it in completely so my skin does not look whiter and more ghostlike than it already is.

The big test was when I marched in a parade. I slathered on one coat of Alba sunscreen and let it dry. I hoped it would protect me because I knew I wouldn’t have time to reapply sunscreen throughout the day. Even if I could, the last thing I needed was to make my hands slippery with sunscreen because I was twirling a flag in the parade.

After a full day in the sun, I came home hot and tired. To my delight I didn't find a sunburn on my face, arms, or legs. Yay! I jumped in shower. For some reason my head hurt when I shampooed my hair.

Because…..

I got a sunburn on the part in my hair!

Sunburn on my head.

I never though of putting sunscreen there!

Yes, I got a sunburn on my scalp.

File this one under “these things only happen to me.”

Next time I am wearing a hat.

Do you have a strange sunburn stories or am I the only one?

Reminder: Help me Win my Dream Job!

I've been selected as a finalist for the Salada Green Tea Spokesperson contest. Your vote will help Salada pick the winner. Please vote for me Lisa Nelsen-Woods and help me win my dream job promoting green living and healthy eating on a budget. You may vote once a day, every day from now until the contest ends on August 1st.

Did you enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to the Condo Blues RSS Feed  or to Condo Blues by Email.

Disclosure: I bought the sunscreen with my own money. Alba did not pay me to say nice things about their product nor are they responsible for my sunburned head because I'm an idiot. This post includes an affliate link. If you choose to purchase an item I will recieve a small commission at no extra cost to you. This will help me with my goal of making Condo Blues a self hosted blog.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Wine Box Wall Treatment

While I was in Chicago, met up with some of the other members of the Green Moms Carnival and went out to eat at an Italian restaurant. After we were seated at our table, I looked at the focal wall in the restaurant – it was covered in the fronts of wine boxes – genius!

I think this wall treatment would work in a dining room or bar area in a home as a focal wall.


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Fortunately I was eating with a bunch of fellow bloggers and good friends who thought nothing of me whipping out my camera and taking a few photos of this creative reuse wall treatment in public.

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My dinner companions. Left to right ; Micaela of Mindful Momma, Maryanne of Not Quite Crunchy Parent, Karen of The Best of Mother Earth, Jennifer of The Smart Mama, Beth of Fake Plastic Fish, Me! Lisa of Condo Blues, Lynn of Organic Mania


Public photo snapping in inopportune times is quickly becoming a blogger occupational hazard – especially when I want to document a great recycled art project like this.

What do you think?

This post is part of Trash to Treasure Tuesday.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Martini Tote Bag Revamp

I got a freebie tote bag with a mesh water bottle pocket at The Pet Expo. This bag would be perfect for carrying around town if it didn’t have a big ol’ logo on it.


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I contimplated sewing some sort of decorative patch like thing over the logo. The Queen left the following comment on that post:



"You totally inspired me to cover up the fugly logos on my shopping bags. I was always having to explain to cashiers that no, I'm not a librarian, I just went to a book conference, etc. I did NOT have a giant needle punch kit laying around (sad), but I do have a sewing machine and a giant box of scraps! DH thought I had gone nuts, and I did. In good way. Really. I took all my giant fugly-logoes totes and put pretty pretty pockets on them. Yay, place to put coupons and no more logos. Thanks for the idea."

Friday, February 20, 2009

I’m Going to BlogHer ’09!



Going to BlogHer
Wrangling mics, greening conferences
Will I see you there?

That’s right kids, this July I’m packing up my bags and going to BlogHer ‘09. But me being me, I can’t just attend a conference. Oh no. I have to get involved in some way. So, I volunteered to use my mad podcasting skillz and will be a Mic Wrangler during the conference. What does that mean? Well, it means that if you want to ask a question or make a comment during one of conference sessions some woman who is fleet of foot is going to sidle up to you and thrust a microphone into your face so you can make your voice heard during the conference and be recorded for the conference sessions’ podcasts. And one of those fleet of foot women might just be me! So make sure you say a big “Hi Lisa!” or “Hi Condo!” to me during the conference!

I'm Going to BlogHer '09

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Save Travel Time and Money with a Zero Waste Road Trip

Husband, Blitzkrieg, and I took off for an 8-hour road trip from Ohio to a tiny mountain town in Northern Georgia. When we travel with our dog, we bring a picnic lunch because we don’t want to leave the dog alone in a hot car for health and safety reasons. I wondered if we could do it as a Zero Waste or Low Waste road trip beause depending up whom you read on the Web or watch on TV (hello Planet Green!), doing something the Green Way is always:

· More expensive
· More time consuming
· More difficult
· but better for the environment


Long story short – we did it! And guess what?