How to Make Orange Essential Oil Extract from Orange Peels

It’s clementine season! I snatched a box up the first minute I saw them in the grocery store and raced home. As usual I ate so many so often I got canker sores in my mouth from the citric acid. I don't care. At least I'm safe from scurvy!

The orange peels piled up. I can’t compost citrus. I used most of the ideas I wrote about 10 Ways to Use Orange Peels. I still have a pile of orange peels. If I had the distillation equipment I could make pure essential oil from orange peels but I don't. Since I want to use this to give a citrus oil cleaming oomph to in my homemade cleaning products, I will make an orange oil extract (this is also called a tincture) instead. Orange oil extract is a bit less potent than a pure essential oil, so it doesn't really work well for aromatherphy, candle, or cold process soap making. I save real orange essential oil for those things.

However an orange oil extract (tincture) works well for things like DIY cleaning products, melt and pour soaps, and homemade room sprays.  You might need to use a bit more since an extract is less concentrated than a distilled essential oil depending upon how prominent you want the scent in your project.

End Table Upcycled into a Whimsical Dog Bed

I am loving all of the end tables upcycled into dog beds I see in blogland. Check out this whimsical painted dog bed Lucy Designs made from a discarded end table, finals, and a whole lotta talent.

 Photo courtesy of Lucy Designs

I wish it were bigger. I’d take a nap on it. Would you?

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Chalkboard Juice Lid Labels

My linen closet is small. That’s the excuse I told myself every time I had to put my hip into shutting the door because there was so much stuff in my linen closet.

No more.

After my inner brat threw a tantrum after doing the shove-clean-towels-in-the-closet- slam-the-door-follow-through-with-hip-action one time too many (mostly likely you have no idea what I’m talking about because you have a neat and tidy linen closet.) It was time to go into the closet.

I purged a bunch of towels and threadbare washcloths that were supposed to be dog towels but I always accidentally put them back into the bathroom towel rotation. Guest towels and such went into the guest bathroom (novel concept I know.) I can find everything and everything has its place. The closet door shuts without extra hip action. Yay!

Glass Clouche Pendent Lights

Husband and I ate dinner at Der Dutchman (nicknamed The Der by the locals) in Amish Country with his parents. After a country fresh dinner we waddled around the gift shop to work off the bread pudding I had for dessert..

Surprisingly there wasn’t much in the way of country too cutesie. Their buyer had the Contemporary-Country thing DOWN. There were so many things that my Victorian/Country Farm House antique loving mother in law liked and just as many things that made me drool with my Mid-Century Modern-Bauhaus-Contemporary-Found-and-Funkified-Retro-DaDa-Danish decorating style.

I saw this pendent lamp and my heart did a little jump.

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.

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.

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.

DIY Daily Shower Cleaner

Cleaning soap scum from the tub, shower door, and walls is number one with a bullet on my list of Stuff I Hate to Clean Because It’s a Pain.

When I discovered daily shower cleaner, it helped. I wasn’t so sure of the not so friendly ingredients in it so I stopped using it. After all, I have a dog to protect from such things.

I switched from bar soap to liquid soap on the advice of my mom’s plumber.  That worked as well as the shower cleaner so I went with that.

I’ve been bouncing from liquid soap (usually Castile) to handmade herbal bar soap (my frugal luxury!) and back again depending upon what’s available or price or whatever.  I likes me some variety in the soap department ‘cuz I’m a girl.

Method has a daily shower cleaner, it does the job just fine. I feel better about the ingredients in it. However, I’m trying to cut spending. I can’t find coupons for it so bye, bye, Method daily shower cleaner.

Until I tried making my own.

Extreme Green Couponing?

On Lazy Budget Chef (You didn’t know I have a food blog?!) I wrote about the show Extreme Couponing  and how I once was a couponer but stopped. Between careful shopping and cooking more from scratch the quality of food we eat went up, the price went down, our heath improved, and our lifestyle turned a deep dark shade of green.

I don’t generally take those “How Green Are You?” quizzes because they are very subjective based on the entity that creates them. Nevertheless, through One Million Acts of Green and helping out Practically Green, I took their quizzes and scored extremely green. I am Superbly Green (the highest rank) on Practically Green and been in their top 10 for almost a year.

Oopsie.

Pretty good for a gal who doesn’t have solar panels, a Pruis, or eats solely certified organic food, eh?

Accidental Anthropolgie Table Cloth Skirt

My sewing machine was deader than a doornail. My new to me serger never worked properly either (possibly why it was handed over to me.) I thought both were goners because my repair guy closed his shop. Fortunately, husband’s aunt hooked me up with her repair guy (thanks Aunt Judy!) Now both machines sew like a dream.

Whew!

Good thing because I couldn’t find a pencil skirt to save my life to wear to Blissdom last January. All I found where bathing suits when I schlepped from store to store in the snow. Silly me, wanting a skirt in December. I should have known better.

Well, if I can’t buy, I’ll DIY!

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.

Garage Workshop Transformation Part 1: Paint Walls

Husband and I are going forward with turning part of our garage into a wood workshop for me. We adjusted the budget a bit due to Blitzkrieg’s knee surgery. We still plan to buy as many materials as we can for the project from the Restore.

Some of the storage and insulation extras may wait unless a good sale comes our way. This will be a cash only project.

Here’s the before.

The beer sign is how dudes decorate. That is what Husband told me as he hung it up after I banished it to felt it worked better in the garage.

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!)

Wood Pallet Wall Treatment

Some people call my home the House of Wacky Wall Treatments because I like to use more than just plain paint on our walls for stylish effects. I can appreciate a wall treatment that colors outside the lines like Mom and Her Drill’s wood pallet living room accent wall.

 Photo courtesy of Mom and Her Drill

Would You Buy a Thrift Store Mattress?

I popped into my favorite Thrift Store. It often has donations from retail stores. That day it had new furniture. A sofa, a chair, and a few mattresses and box springs were so new they were still wrapped in plastic. The quality was that of a low end discount store, but the prices were excellent. If you were buying furniture for a dorm room or first apartment, this is your place! A queen size mattress was selling for $199 and the matching box spring was $75.


Thrift store shopping is an affordable way to shop green. Husband and I needed a mattress for our guest room. We don’t want to spend thousands on a super duper uber green guest room mattress since we have overnight guests maybe once or twice a since we moved in six years ago. A more affordable option with an allergy ban cover to keep the flame retardants and such at bay will do just fine. It's working out well in our room.

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.

How to Fix a Garage Door Opener

My automatic garage door opener works fine in the summer but never in the winter. When I push the button on the wall or the remote, the garage door opener does one of two things:

1. The door goes down and pops back up when it reaches the garage floor.
2. The door doesn’t go down at all. The light blinks and that’s it.

Turns out that these two problems are common with garage door openers in winter. The cold weather causes the metal tracks of your garage door to expand ever so slightly which can knock the sensors and force of your garage door opener out of position just enough so the opener will not work properly in winter.

Fortunately, both issues have very quick fixes and take a less time to complete than a TV commercial break.

World’s Cutest Reclaimed Four Poster Dog Bed

The Speckled Dog  literally turned trash into the coolest treasure! She found this nasty looking table on the side of the road and carted it home.

 Photo courtesy of The Speckled Dog

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!

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!

How to Buy a Mattress

Husband and I need to buy a mattress for our guest bedroom. I'd like a green mattress if possible. I also want the mattress to be comfortable.  Of course, as the saying goes not too comfortable, or my guests will never leave!

Mattress shopping is nothing short of stressful. Unlike a car, you can’t comparison shop when it comes to mattresses. There isn’t anything to stop a mattress manufacturer from making the same style of mattress and putting a different name on it for every store that sells it. In fact, it’s a common practice. The price points for the same brand of mattress sold under different names vary wildly from store to store too.

That’s why mattress stores can guarantee that you won’t find a cheaper mattress at another store and if you do, they’ll give it to you free! Because you may find the same mattress brand, you won’t find the same mattress model name in another store – the individual model names are proprietary to each store.

Mattress Shopping? Prepare to Be Screwed

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Five Repurposed Home Organizers

I am organized because I’m lazy. If I have a flash of inspiration I don’t want to hunt all over the house for the things I need to make my vision come to life. That is why I live by labels. It also keeps me from putting something “in a better place” and then promptly forgetting that I moved it leading to a whole house search.

As much I love wondering the aisles of the Container Store, I’m kinda cheap green. I try to repurpose what I have before I buy. If it works, I might upgrade it.  Sometimes I don’t under the if it’s not broke don’t fix it mantra.

Wood clementine boxes are fantastic for storage! I store my tea collection in two Clementine crates in my pantry. When I want a cup of tea, it’s easy to pull all of the tea from the pantry and take my pick.

 Yes I have a lot of tea. I don't have many vices, so this will have to do.

Do You Use Cloth Panty Liners?

I’m kicking off the New Year and my January One Small Green Change in an up close and personal kind of way. So if you are any of my male relatives or current or feature employers this post is probably not for you because I’m going to talk about lady bits.

Lately I’ve had the need to wear a daily panty liner. Strangely wearing a disposable panty liner has lead to a few bladder infections. Odd, since I haven’t had any issues with disposables until now.

Going without is doable but not very comfortable ifyouknowwhatImean.

I though making cloth panty liners would be a good use for my fabric stash. I searched Craftster for patterns and emailed Crunchy Chicken a few fabric and construction questions.

Epic craft FAIL.

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!

AEP GridSmart: Electricity Saving Tool or Intrusive?

When it comes to electricity, we all want it. We all need it. We keep creating more and more items that use it to make our lives easier or more fun or more efficient. However, I can’t help but think where is all of that extra electricity we use going to come from?

As it is, there are cities, even whole states, that consistently use more electricity than they can generate on their own. Building new power plants of any type (using alternative or conventional means of making electricity) is difficult because while everyone wants to reap the benefits (including myself) no one wants a new power plant in their backyard because it can mess with property values.

For now, the best course of action may be to collectively use what electricity we have a little more wisely. This is difficult, even for me. I really don’t know how much electricity I’m using until long after I’ve used it - at the end of the month when I get my bill.

One method is for electric companies, like mine, American Electric Power (AEP) to use gridSMART   smart meter and grid technology to reduce electricity consumption and improve system wide delivery and performance. It would mean having a smart meter, a Programmable Communicating Thermostat, and eventually appliances with smart chips in your home. That way, you can check your use in real time on line, be billed for your use at a flexible billing rate, and make adjustments as you see fit.  

 A conventional electric meter next to a digital smart meter

It sounds great! I also like that the gridSMART technology runs on auto pilot much like my current programmable thermostat. The only difference is that unlike my current programmable thermostat (which I learned that most people don’t use because programming them can be a pain) the Programmable Communicating Thermostat is easier to program. The Programmable Communicating Thermostat and smart chip appliances would also send information back to AEP about my use during peak use times such as sweltering summer days and allow AEP to lower my temperatures a notch to prevent a system overload or brown out.

That last part sounded a little Big Brother to Husband. Because as much as we like saving electricity and having a lower than normal electric bill, we hate people telling us what we have to do in our own home. Husband also wondered what prevents someone from reducing the refrigerator’s electrical use to the point it makes ice cream melt because they want to be mean. 

AEP GridSMART

I was invited to a blogger lunch and presentation sponsored by AEP, Mom Central Consulting , and Silver Spring  to discuss AEP’s gridSMART program and get some answers to Husband’s questions.

AEP’s new gridSMART pilot program will install new Smart Meter’s on customer’s homes (sadly not in my area of the city.) Unlike the current mechanical meters, digital Smart Meters have encrypted wireless two way communication between your house and the electric company so no one can mess with or access your information. Besides the flexible billing rates and allowing customers to set up an alert when you move to a higher energy pricing tier, the smart meter will automatically alert AEP when there is a blackout.

Under the current system, at least three homes have to call it in before AEP knows that there is trouble. That last part made me sit up and take notice, because as you all know Mother Nature likes to send me blackouts. They build character.

Opt In, Opt Out GridSMART Programs

All of those services get me excited but in the interest of checking things out thoroughly I had to ask about some of the things that gave Husband a Big Brother like vibe. Mainly:

·        “Offering consumers the option to receive a rebate in return for allowing AEP to send set back signals to a Programmable Communicating Thermostat during peak load conditions.

·        In the future you will be able to control the energy usage of the appliances in your home through chip connected to your home area network. “ AKA: Smart chip appliances.

Fortunately, under AEP’s gridSMART program these options are opt in only. You are given a financial incentive in the form of a rebate to have the AEP Programmable Communicating Thermostat installed but if you don’t want it, you don’t have to have it.

In addition, even if you have it installed and say, you’re having a houseful of relatives over on a crazy hot summer day, you can override the temperature if AEP wants to lower your thermostat a notch or two.  The same goes for the smart chip appliances – because who wants melty ice cream? Not me!

All changes need to be approved through the Public Utilities Commission (PUCO) before AEP rolls them out to their customers. So that lessens the chance that someone will be lowering your electrical use just to be spiteful to Not Going To Happen.

AEP Ohio is one of the first utilities to test this program. They tell me that gridSMART is the trend and something like it will eventually be coming to you. What do you think? Is it a money and energy saving tool or too intrusive?

Disclaimer: I wrote this post after attending an informational luncheon on behalf of Silver Spring Networks and Mom Central Consulting and received a gift bag and gift card as a thank you for taking the time to participate. This had no bearing on my opinions and all thoughts and opinions are my own. As you all well know, I can be highly opinionated.
 

I Changed 303,736 Light Bulbs. What Did You Do Today?

Even though I’ve been living a green life for longer than the three years I’ve been blogging about it, I don’t consider myself a dark green blogger or even an expert most days.

Yes, I was on TV last winter but I think that was more of being a crazy freak who keeps her house too cold during winter than being a held up as Big Green Champion. Saving energy is very important to me and I blog about it a lot , but let’s face it, saving energy is not as sexy or unusual as some other areas of green living that get more press.

So I do my daily green thing and try to do my best with what life hands me. If I can make you laugh or make you think or offer you a new tool for your Greening Living Swiss Army Knife, make your home a little prettier or challenge you to personally change 303,736 incandescent light nulbs for CFLs in fourth months then it’s a good day here on Condo Blues. 

“What?! Are you nuts?!” you say, “Do you think I could actually change all of those light bulbs in a such a short amount of time?!”

I sure do. It's easy!

How I Planted 8,209 Trees in Four Months

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.