One of my favorite things about St Patrick’s Day is that it is the one day of the year that even mainstream places will play Celtic music. Listening to a good jig or reel always puts in a good mood no matter what.
The only thing I like better than listening to Scottish and Irish music is dancing to it. I performed as a Scottish Country Dancer and even had Scottish Country Dances at my wedding reception.
Scottish Country Dance is social dancing somewhat like American Square Dancing. Competitive Irish and Scottish dance is a completely different thing.
Since I like the music so much, why not decorate our door for Saint Patrick’s Day with a quick and easy shamrock featuring The Swallowtail Jig sheet music? The Swallowtail Jig is one of my favorite jigs because of the lyrical flute part that I’m still trying to nail down because I'm out of practice playing the flute.
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Disposable kitchen pot scrubber sponges are one thing I was happy to kick to the curb after trying washable and reusable Paperless Kitchen sponge scour pads (you can learn about them here.) Finally I had a plastic free dish scrubbie that I could pop in the top rack of the dishwasher to clean on the regular! (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links for your convenience.)
Until the garbage disposable tried to eat one.
RIP pot scrubber.
So much for zero waste :(
Fortunately More than one reusable dish scouring pads came in the package so it wasn’t a total loss. I also used it as the motivation I needed to try an idea I have been mulling around for awhile: crochet a plastic free pot scrubber from jute twine.
Well, that and Cabin Fever.
But you know what? It worked!
Removing and replacing the entire master bathroom subfloor is a job that I haven’t been looking forward to and is the reason why we put the renovation off for so long. Everything hinges on the subflooring is cut perfectly to size and level. Once I removed the old moldy subfloor, I realized that there wasn’t anything to screw the new flooring to around the edges of the room. I can’t leave it this way or the new floor could slope over time and we’d have to start the process all over again. Trust me, once is more than enough!
I nicked a couple of joists when I was cut the floor to remove it with my circular saw by accident. This might create a weak spot where the flooring could squeak, crack, or sag or it might not because the cuts are not too deep.
Some of the things they don’t tell you about trying to reduce your household trash with zero waste living is that it depends a lot on where and how you want to live. Most of the year’s worth of garbage in jar folks have access to big fill your own container stores, year round farm markets, or huge gardens where they can grow almost everything they need. Not all of us are that lucky, would rather not drive all over the place, or crunched the numbers and found some the prices in those shops sky high. *raises hand*
But’s not to say that zero waste is impossible! Instead try the more realistic goal of concentrating on reducing your household waste than making it absolute zero. By focusing on reusing, the Rule of Half, recycling, reducing, and composting (when the bin isn’t frozen shut) my family has reduced our weekly household waste to approximately one grocery store size shopping bag (ish. We reuse any packaging, dog food, etc. bags for garbage which means the size varies) a week. We average a 3/4 full recycling bin every two weeks. We also give ourselves a break if our output is more than that because we have seasons and that can determine what we can do and how we do it.
To give you some realistic ways to reduce your household waste (and possibly save some money doing it) I made a list of the zero waste practices, tips, and tricks I do in a normal week to give you some ideas and jump start your thinking machines to find a zero waste solution that works for you!
On Master Bathroom Demo Day I found black mold on a chunk of the wall and on several areas of the subfloor.
After creating a design plan and ordering supplies in July, everything has been delivered (thank you for the lesson in patience due to pandemic delivery delays Covid) to let me start on my master bathroom remodel!
Through experience I learned that Demo Day is also Surprise Day and my bathroom did not disappoint. I found the source of my regular ear and since infections (with bouts of bronchitis thrown in to keep life interesting) when I removed the bathroom vanity.
What a long, strange, trip this year has been. My husband and I kicked off 2020 at a Roaring 20's party and shortly afterwards everything roared to a full stop. While it is all too easy to focus on the boatload of the bad things that happened this year, for my sanity and mental health, I'm trying to focus on the few positives I experienced:
- I did a lot of projects on my Do It Yourself Honey! list. DIY, craft, and otherwise. As a result, I got new and repaired clothes, household items, home improvements, and cleaned out a bunch of my fabric stash and scraps. Yay!
- A Christmas gift from my mother in law inspired me to relearn how to crochet. Something I haven't done since my grandmother taught me as a kid.
- Zooming all over the country to see friends, family, and performances regularly instead of the once or twice a year we normally do in real life.
- Having the free time to shop at farmer's markets and can a boatload of end of season sale tomatoes.
- Lacey is absolutely thriving with both of her people being at home 24/7 (although her people have gone a little stir crazy at times being home 24/7.)
Time to show off your creative recipes, projects, and ideas for the last time this year!
Time to show off your creative recipes, projects, and ideas!
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Every Christmas I give my niece and nephew a Christmas ornament. Usually they mark special events (such as the year my niece danced Clara in the Nutcracker,) hobbies, from places my husband and I traveled, or something really cool and unusual. Sometimes I make their Christmas ornament gifts but most years I buy them.
Except last year when I made their glass Christmas ornaments with fire!
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After taking my glass blowing workshop (I made a glass pumpkin,) I’ve been on the lookout for more glass blowing workshops. I like blowing glass in a workshop setting because an instructor is with you every step of the way to make sure you create a glass sculpture in the safest way possible.
Unfortunately I don’t have the space for glass sculptures (especially when Lacey spits a ball at my feet and demands a rousing game of Catch at the end of the workday. I swear that dog can tell time!) so I tend to lean toward the practical yet pretty glass art projects. Luckily blowing glass Christmas ornaments ticks all of those boxes.
With the added bonus of impressing my teenage nephew with photos of me in front of a furnace working with 3000 degree (F ) molten glass! (That is not a typo.)
Christmas is my favorite time of year because there are so many fun places to go, things to see and performances to do before we get the extended family together for a big, happy celebration on Christmas day!
Except this year. It's a pivot. pivot. Christmas pivot kind of year.
But you know what? I'm enjoying the change.
