Wait, Weight?!

At work, the TV in the lounge is always on.  Every time I walk in to get a drink I am bombarded by some sort of news station.  Today must have been a slow day because I caught a story about these over weight ladies dramatically portraying their experience at one of their local restaurants. 

CSA-- Why you should try it!

It has been nearly a month since my last confession.  Shame on me. Now now, where to begin....

A Florida Stay-cation, hippie style!

I have been a camper most of my life.  As a kid my family would go on trips to central Florida to camp.  I have many happy memories of those experiences the most surprising of which is the time we went camping and came home with a new dog.  The poor thing wondered up to our campsite, all skinny and covered in ticks, and didn't leave no matter how long we were gone.  I remember distinctly the car ride home.  Our dog Cocoa shared the middle seat of the minivan with my older brother, and I shared the back with the smelly, dirty, flea bitten dog we would come to name Tyler.  He became the doggy love of my life and one of the best things I can remember about camping.  

Everything Tastes Better When You Make it Yourself!

I am a huge snacker.  I eat a bit like a hobbit--I routinely have three "breakfasts" before lunchtime.  It probably doesn't help that I eat my first breakfast before 6 AM.  I have converted Adam into a chronic snacker, too, and now our lunchboxes are packed full of healthy-ish munchies.  

Laundry and Soap DIY Continued

In keeping with my previous post I'm going to continue blathering on about my new found homemade recipes!  In addition to my awesome DIY dryer balls I've been using white vinegar in my rinse cycle.  This recipe for homemade fabric softener isn't a dilution of store bought stuff.  It is actually a combination of vinegar and essential oils.  I made the homemade fabric softener and although next time I will add more essential oil I am happy to have something to add to my wash load that leaves a scent for the clothes that don't go into the dryer while reducing static to boot!

Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Armpit Stains?!

I have been collecting/pinning DIY ideas for quite some time.  Shameless plug:  Follow me and check out my pins!  Some I've tried and some I am still meaning to, but recently I've been on a roll with laundry related homemade remedies.  

Oily-Face Challenge Week 4 Update and Conclusion

Week 4 left me utterly confused! By the end of week 3 my face was so greasy I could have fried chicken with the ooze coming out of my pores.  By midweek of week 4 my face was so dry it was literally flaking off my face.  I broke down and used St. Ives apricot scrub and Adam's face lotion on my face one night during my final week.  In my defense, you wouldn't have wanted my face flakes in your operative site now would you?!  I didn't think so!  I couldn't handle my face leaving dandruff on my scrub top. Thankfully, that small exfoliation was enough to re-balance whatever the hell was going on with my face.  

Fall Garden Extravaganza 2012 Part 2

Here are pictures of the completed garden area:

Fall Garden Extravaganza 2012

It's that time of year again here in the SOFLA.  

FALL!!

Oily-Face Challenge Week 3 Update

Week 3 Formulation:

1/3 castor to 2/3 apricot kernel oil
 
Holy Gross, Batman!!   

The moment I've been dreading has finally arrived! My skin is rebelling!  At the end of week 3, I am 100% grossed out to look in the mirror.  

Eeeek!

Oily Face Challenge Week 2

I'd like to be able to say that I kept a daily log of my face washing experience this week but that would be a total lie.  In fact, I didn't jot down a single thing.  So.... This week's update is going to be a weak one.  I am still using the same formulation from last week:

1/3 castor oil to 2/3 apricot kernel oil

Week 1 Oily Face Challenge

This weeks oil formulation was:  1/3 castor oil, 2/3 apricot kernel oil
(Approximately 1/2 TB per cleansing)

What's the combination of your skin?

I'm sure you all will be thrilled to know that I am still happily experiencing the effects of a poo-free lifestyle.  I have recently started adding tea tree oil into my "shampoo" and have found it works nicely.  I'm not sure my flakes are gone but the itchy scalp is much better.  The ratio of tea tree to shampoo is 12 drops per 56 oz.  Also, I've found a great product to use in my hair that washes out nicely with just water but gives nice hold and frizz control.  It's called Soft Hold Styling Creme by Sei Bella*.  It works nicely when I wear my hair curly and supposedly it helps when used before straightening (though I haven't been that energetic yet).  Adam even uses it, too!  

Wonder Years -- Yet another digression from the hippie world

I spoke to one of my childhood best friends on the phone last night and it got me thinking about how much has changed.

People are Strange, When You're a Stranger

I took a sociology class back in college and thoroughly hated it.  My professor was a sexist ass but that's besides the point.  The take home message I got from that entire semester of torture was that people are sheep.  When put in a group most people will go with the general flow of the crowd.  Not necessarily in the herd type of way either.  I'm referring to the concept of group thought.  Studies have shown time and time again that when put on the spot in front of a group of peers individuals will outwardly agree with the consensus of the majority even if they truly feel otherwise.  Makes you wonder about our justice system doesn't it?  Having a jury of people convene about a person's innocence or guilt is not my idea of "justice."

Mel vs. Dishwasher

 

Poo-Free (Belated) Week 4 Update/Challenge Conclusion

So, not only is this week's update almost a week late, but it is also half-assed.  My hair has been so normal that I didn't keep close tabs on my washing schedule or my day to day thoughts on its results.  How about we skip week 4's day by day, play by play and move straight into the results of the entire 30 day challenge, shall we?

Childlike vs. Childish

Another boys weekend has come and gone.  It was a weekend filled with new experiences for the boys.  They got to make smores and camp out in Grandma's RV.  They were able to eat pancakes cooked over an open fire. Christian is learning how to swim with his life jacket.  Watching them do those various things made me realize the vast difference between being childlike and childish.  

Poo-Free Challenge Week 3 Update

In keeping with my new P.O.A.:

Poo-Free Challenge Week 2 Update

6/20/12 – It seems as though all the product has finally washed out but I used extra shampoo to do it. My poor hair is the texture of straw! I am going to make a new batch with ½ tbs of baking soda instead to see if my hair will be less dry.

Poo-Free Challenge Week 1 Update

First poo-free washes with NJ well water and minimal humidity:

6/14/12 – I had a hard time applying both “shampoo” and “conditioner”. Hopefully it will be easier with my honey bottles back home. Oddly enough, I didn't find the lack of lather all that disconcerting. I'm attributing this to the fact my mother's shower has no water pressure so not having to fight the battle of rinsing shampoo or conditioner out of my hair was a blessing. I think I might have splashed some of the baking soda mixture on more then just my ends because my hair seems a little dry. Hard to tell when it's still drying, though.

Taming the 'fro: 30 day poo-free challenge

For those of you who do not know me personally, I have struggled with problem hair my whole life.  As a child I suffered from seborrheic dermatitis. I was forced to use prescription shampoos that smelled bad and burned my eyes to the point where my mom would wash my hair in the sink for me. 

A vacation so close I can smell it!

I just have to make it through Monday.  That's what I keep telling myself.  Monday is the first day of my much needed vacation from reality.  Work, responsibilities, and life in general are getting me down (along with rainy days and most Mondays).  Thankfully, my yearly pilgrimage to NJ is quickly approaching.

New Jersey?!? Yes, New Jersey.  No, not "The Shore." Quite the opposite, actually.  Most people (wrongly) associate NJ with factories, Guidos with bad fake tans and low IQ's, and over-populated commercialized boardwalks.  Let me assure you, if all of NJ were like that, I would not choose it as my vacation destination.  The area of the state that I spent my summers as a kid (and a couple weeks every year as an adult) is located in the northwest corner near where Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York meet.  There's trees. There's birds. There's squirrels. Lets bless them all until we get farshikkert. Oops sorry, that was my token Robin Hood Men in Tights reference of the day.  

Anyway, in the mountains, on a lake, sits a little cottage.  Inside this cottage lives my mother, whose father lived in it before her.  The yard is filled with tiger lilies, hosta lilies, pines, and oaks. This little cottage is surrounded by other little cottages, that over the years have housed my childhood friends. The street is not paved, nor is the driveway.  The nearest mall is 45 minutes, and if you want a movie theater with more then 2 screens or a bowling alley you'll have to go to the next town over. 

I long to hear the rocks crunch under my feet, smell the clean fresh air through the trees, and the damp smell of the lake.  I want to pick wild raspberries and blue berries off their bushes and stuff them in my mouth without washing them or checking for bugs (mmm... protein).  I want to eat sweet Jersey corn and fresh Jersey tomatoes.  I can't wait to shop for nectarines, plums, and Rainier cherries at the corner fruit stand.

Like every year, I will spend the majority of my week off perched on the deck overlooking the lake.  I will hear the whispers of my childhood in the breeze.  I can already hear the Perry kids yell, "SPUD" and us all arguing over whose turn it is to trek through the swamp to find the baseball.  I will see ghosts of us jumping off the banana float into the water to chase away the horseflies and all of us eating peanut butter and fluff sandwiches at the picnic table in the Perry's yard.  Or perhaps I will see the Bell's and I tipping over a canoe so we can share secrets in the air pocketed underneath it.  The memories are almost haunting in a place like Lake Owassa.  So many generations of kids have come and gone and so little has changed.  

It's impossible not to feel the energy of nature when you are surrounded by the beauty of the lake.  It will, no doubt, be the ultimate hippie recharge that I so desperately need.  Pictures of this vacation will follow!

Double, Double Toil and Trouble...

My recent obsession with homemade cleaners happened innocently enough.  Adam's 3 year old son, Christian, can hold his own playing DS or Wii but can barely hold a pencil, let alone color in the lines.  To capitalize on his current, "I wanna help" stage, I bought him his own spray bottle so he could help me clean the kitchen after dinner.  It didn't seem right for me to let him play around with the chemicals found in most household cleaners so I googled homemade glass cleaner recipes.  Low and behold, there was a whole homemade cleaner movement I was not aware of!

What started as a way to help a 3 year old with his motor skills turned into a passion!  My first glass cleaner was a simple mixture of white vinegar and water.  Christian wasn't a fan of the smell but it worked fine.  After making my first successful batch I spent an entire evening on the computer and found a bunch of recipes I simply had to try! 

Conveniently, I was almost out of Windex antibacterial, so I knew I needed a multipurpose cleaner with disinfectant properties, an improved glass cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner (since I was low on that as well), and I've never been satisfied by any of the dishwasher detergents I've tried so I wanted to try another option for that as well.

Here are all the ingredients you'll ever need to make your own cleaners!

There are a million different recipes out there for all of my above mentioned cleaners but these are the recipes I've tried myself:

All Purpose Cleaner

• 1 tsp borax
• 1/2 tsp washing soda
• 1 tsp Castile soap
• 2 cups warm water

I got eucalyptus scented Castile soap so I love the way this cleaner has disinfecting qualities and leaves a fresh scent behind!  My only complaint is it leaves a wet residue.  Not a big deal to either let it dry or wipe it with a dry cloth, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Pretty Much the Best Glass Cleaner EVER

• 1/4 cup rubbing alcohol
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1 tbsp cornstarch (sounds weird I know but do it anyway!)
• 2 cups warm water

Make sure to give this a good shake to redistribute the ingredients before use.  The cornstarch seemed like an odd addition to me but I gave it a try anyway.  All I can say is wow!  It initially wipes on so streaky you'll think I must be crazy to promote it, but give it a second.  It not only gets all the kiddy hand prints, doggy nose prints, and tooth paste off the mirrors and glass, but it dries streak-free!

Toilet Bowl Cleaner

• 1 cup white vinegar (pour in toilet first)
• 1/4 baking soda

This will cause a fizzing reaction just like your old volcano science project did in 3rd grade.  Let it sit for 5 minutes and do it's thing.  When you go to brush the bowl it will fizz up again to help you scrape off the grime.  Works like a charm and has the added benefit of being completely innocuous to your septic tank (if you have one, of course).

Liquid Dishwasher Soap

• 16 cups water (divided)
• 1 1/2 cups washing soda
• 1 cup borax
• 1/2 cup Castile soap

Bring 8 cups of water to a boil and remove from heat.  Stir in other ingredients, one by one, until dissolved.  Add remaining 8 cups of water and stir.  Let cool and store.  This makes about a gallon so feel free to scale down to your needs.  Give it a good shake before use.  It is suppose to become gel-like over time, but I've found that doesn't really happen.  I stored it in two different containers and had one container (a recycled white vinegar jug) gel up fairly nicely and one container (recycled cascade jug) stay watery to this day.  The website I found the recipe on said to use approximately 1 tbsp per load but quite frankly that doesn't seem like nearly enough to me.  I've used probably 3 times that with varying results.  Sometimes everything comes clean, sometimes I find caked on food particles.  Most of the time everything comes out with a haze of soap residue.  The key to minimizing residue is supposedly using straight white vinegar in the rinse cycle (where you would put your jetdry).  I still have leftover jetdry in mine but I top it off with vinegar before each load just for good measure.  I was having residue and food particles with my store bought detergent as well so at least now I'm not only paying less for the same result but also it is less toxic then the store bought stuff.  Another perk is before I could actually taste the detergent on my tupperware when I reheated my lunch in them (gasp!!! microwaving plastic... the horror!!!) but now the milky white residue is tasteless and odorless.  I am going to try and scale down on my quantity of detergent per load and see if there is any improvement.

So, the recipes aren't perfect.  If you find the glass cleaner didn't work as well as I said, don't fret.  Store bought cleaners leave residues that take time to remove.  Try it 2 or 3 times before you write it off.  Obviously the dishwasher detergent has the most room for improvement.  The multipurpose cleaner is awesome for wiping down walls and baseboards.  Just double the batch and put it in a bucket with some towels.  Baseboard cleaning could be a fun chore for the little ones since they are closer to the floor anyway!

There is something inherently satisfying about creating your own cleaners.  It has a mad scientist feel to it that appeals to my inner nerd.  It is also CHEAP!  I found every single ingredient necessary for the recipes at Publix.  The washing soda is in the laundry isle, and the Castile soap is with the beauty products (typically found in the organic/natural soap section).  Giant boxes of baking soda are in the baking isle and white vinegar is with the salad dressing and olive oils.  The most expensive item is the Castile soap.  If you aren't willing to invest too much, buy a small container and the whole lot will probably cost you less then $15 for gallons and gallons worth of potential cleaning products.  Castile soap is also great for bathing.  If you find you aren't into making cleaners anymore you can always put it in your shower and use it as a body wash.  It comes in all kinds of awesome scents to choose from.  Here is a link with more information!

Not satisfied with my recipes and want to learn more?  Here are some links to help you get started on your own homemade cleaner journey:

http://eartheasy.com/live_nontoxic_solutions.htm
http://frugallysustainable.com/2011/09/homemade-liquid-dish-soap-that-really/
http://choosingsimplicity.blogspot.com/2012/01/choosing-simplicity-homemade-liquid.html

Happy Trails!!

How Black Thumbs Bare Fruit

Despite my lifelong love of nature I didn't grow up fond of yard work (I'm not a fan of sweating or manual labor), nor did I seem capable of keeping even the hardiest house plant alive for any length of time. A perfect case in point is when I bought a potted palm that was thriving in the indoor section of my local warehouse store. I watered it a couple times a week, and kept it in a sunny spot in my living room. Within the first week of being in my possession it started turning brown around the edges. Then, whole fronds were turning brown and falling off. After a few months of watching it slowly wither away I finally took the plant outside and hoped being outdoors would revive it. No luck. That damn thing was dead as a doornail. Eventually, I got tired of looking at the pitiful reminder of my black thumb and it played it's inevitable role in nature and became compost.

I really love the idea of growing my own food but was hesitant to do so after my previous failures. Thankfully Adam isn't cursed with a black thumb. Last September/October Adam and I built a planter box and started our garden.

This is how we did it:

a rake to de-grass a part of the yard

3 cedar 8' planks (one cut in half)

a roll of weed cloth

a couple bags of sand

bags of manure and top soil

a staple gun

nails and a hammer

We assembled the cedar into a 4' x 8' rectangle and nailed the ends together. Once the box was secure we stapled weed cloth to the bottom making sure to wrap it up and over the sides so when we laid it down there was no way the pesky weeds could sneak in. We cleared a spot of the yard of grass, spread out some sand to help with drainage, and laid our planter box on top. We filled it ¾ of the way full with a mixture of half top soil/half manure, making sure to leave the dirt as loose as possible.

Because we were concerned with water conservation and heard it worked better, we set up drip irrigation for our box. Once all that prep work was done we planted green beans, wax beans, carrots, and onions. The benefit of the raised planter box with weed cloth was that for the first few months we had hardly any weeds to contend with. Even now it isn't difficult to keep in check. Our beans were pitiful, sadly, but the carrots were awesome! For the most part they looked like real carrots and tasted delicious! The onions were a later addition to the garden and are just now starting to bulb.

Right now we have chives, leeks, basil, and mint in old wooden wine boxes we re-purposed from our neighbors trash pile.  All we did there was drill out some holes and nail scrap wood on the bottom of each crate for drainage.  Filled them with a little bit of gravel, and then soil/compost mixture and planted! We also squared off another section of yard and planted some marigolds, zinnias, and cosmos so I could fill my vases with fresh flowers from my garden. We didn't make another raised box so this part of the garden is extremely weedy but it is still dutifully producing beautiful flowers!

Overall I'd say our gardening adventure has been hit or miss. We learned a lot this first planting and hope to improve our yield the next time around. Maybe next year we'll try our hand at broccoli or lettuce or cucumbers or kale, or maybe even asparagus! The possibilities are endless!

In the distance there you can (barely) see the veggie garden and the flower garden behind it.  And the ugly shed and my canoe, of course!  Better pictures to be posted as soon as it stops raining long enough for me to snap some photos!

Next up on the blogging agenda is homemade cleaners!  I'm excited, aren't you?!

A digression from the regularly scheduled programming...

I sat down with every intention of writing about my gardening adventures. I did, in fact, (to be edited and posted at a later date) but it wasn't inspired. I have something else on my mind.

I work in a hospital operating room. Four 10 hour shifts each week. 6:00AM-5:00PM. The entire department has fluorescent lighting in addition to the OR lights used when a surgery is in progress. My facility, in particular, has no windows anywhere in the department. There are times in the winter, that I go days without ever seeing the sun. It is tough for a FL person like me to go that long without recharging my solar batteries.  By the end of the week, I feel drained.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job. I love the great group of people I get to work with every day. We make an excellent team. Most days, my coworkers manage to make a potentially tiring and stressful job fun. In the sage words of Andy (one of the circulating RNs), “If you can't have fun at work, GO HOME!” So that's what I try to do.  I make the best of my job and hope that some day I will win the lotto (that I never play) and not have to spend the better part of my life slaving for the almighty dollar.

I recently subscribed to a blog called Frugally Sustainable. It got me pondering what I would do if I didn't have to worry about money. It would be such a freeing existence to be able to focus entirely on doing things that I love to do.  Now, like many others, I work in order to be able to afford to live.  Life is what I do after work.  A lot of us would jump at the chance to not have to work 40 hours a week in order to pay the bills.  The question is: What would you do with those extra hours?

That's the part I'm having trouble answering.  No 6-5 existence?  Sign me up!  From there, I'm lost.  I love making candles, and homemade cleaners.  I'm an avid outdoors woman and wouldn't mind joining archery and/or skeet leagues.  Would I still love doing all those things if I started making a living off of them?  More then likely, yes.  Do I really think I could make enough to live comfortably doing one or more of the above mentioned hobbies?  Not so much.  

Ever since I started making candles last Christmas I have been repeatedly told I should get on Etsy and try to sell them.  I took a few minutes a couple months back and checked out the competition.  Unbelievable!  So many people are trying to sell their homemade candles, too.  My ego says mine are better (of course!) and unique but my ever present rational side says that the chance for success with a flooded market like that is unlikely.

I'm not a risk taker by nature. I don't function well flying by the seat of my pants.  I'm more of a plodder.  You know the type.  Nose to the grindstone, dependable, reliable, responsible.  So, odds are I will never take the leap to make the above mentioned lifestyle a reality. A girl can dream, though, right?!  Perhaps the more I dwell on it the more I can convince myself it's possible.  Wish me luck!

Oh Jungle, my Jungle

Adam and I found our home by accident. I had recently moved to Martin County for my job at the hospital and had not explored much of the area besides what I found in the route between my low budget apartment and my job.  Adam and I had just started dating and while he was basically living with me in my one bedroom apartment we weren't looking to move in together right away.

One random day, Adam decided to drive me around Martin County so I could get more acquainted with the area.  We drove through Jensen Beach, Stuart, Port Salerno and then into Hobe Sound.  I could see the giant houses of Jupiter Island across the intracoastal and asked him to take me there.  

In our efforts to try to find an East/West thoroughfare, we stumbled onto a for lease sign.  For no other reason then curiosity, we started driving into this little old Florida neighborhood until we stopped in front of the house for rent.  It was adorable.  Perfect. Picturesque.  It was really close to the water so when it didn't have the price on the sign we tried to guess how much it would cost.  He and I both grew up in southern Palm Beach County and were conditioned to believe anything by the water would cost an arm and a leg.  For shits and giggles, Adam called the number and asked for more information.  It was way cheaper then either of us thought but still more then either of us, individually, could afford.

Somehow we ended up meeting the landlord a few days later to tour the inside.  It was love at first sight and we knew it was too good to pass up.  I broke my apartment lease and we moved in a week or so later.  To this day I've never regretted our rash decision or as I like to look at it, leap of faith in what the universe had to offer.

---

One of the many reasons I love this area so much is because there isn't an over-manicured yard in sight.  Everyone maintains their respective jungle yards but no one really bothers with mulch or planting anything that isn't native.  It's a beautiful thing.  There seem to be more squirrels then people in our neighborhood and that suits me just fine.

Our yard looks like this:

Obviously, having such a jungle-like yard has it's pros and cons.  On the plus side we have complete privacy, very little grass, and hardly anything requires regular watering because they are all native drought-resistant plants.  The down side is trying to maintain the balance between quaintly jungle-like and completely unkempt.  While yard work in general is not my responsibility (Adam takes care of most of it with help from his boys), I could see that with the amount of yard debris collected after just a few hours we needed to do something proactive about our waste.  

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, we had a compost heap in our back yard growing up.  I talked to Adam about it and he was excited to start the project.  With 4 posts, some chicken wire, and a bag of manure (to jump start the breakdown process) we made our very own compost heap.

 It isn't the most attractive thing in the world but it does the job.  We try to maintain a 2 part brown to 1 part green ratio when we can.  For the most part we try to keep food waste out of it for no other reason then attracting wildlife (although with how lazy our worms have been lately I've been known to toss a corn cob or two in the heap without noticing any disturbance). Bringing the bottom contents to the top once a week and making sure it stays moist but not soaked is key to making an ideal environment for composting.

Composting has its perks beyond creating less waste.  The finished product is nutrient rich soil for a backyard garden.  Coincidentally, that is a perfect segue into my next post. Stay tuned for "How Black Thumbs Bare Fruit."

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out...

When I was in college, I signed up to take an Environmental Science course, despite the fact that I was firmly entrenched in my hippie-hiatus period.  It would seem that my subconscious was not so subtly trying to tell me something.

I don't remember a heck of a lot about the class aside from two things:

1. There are a surprisingly large amount of nature preserve parks in Palm Beach County.  I know this for a fact because 50% of my grade depended on me finding these parks, visiting them, and subsequently writing essays about their flora and fauna.
2. My professor was a total hippie.  Hair down to her waist, barefoot, worm composting kind of hippie.  When she was explaining her kitchen worm compost to the class she enthusiastically offered her surplus worms to whoever was interested in starting their own. At the time, I thought she was a total loon.  The thought of having a nest of worms on my kitchen counter sounded ludicrous to me.  

Well, this is me eating my words (thoughts, really).  The idea stuck with me all these years and now that I've embraced this hippie-feeling I decided a worm compost was just the ticket to minimizing my contribution to the landfills.  

Adam and I eat a lot of fresh fruit and veggies and it made no sense to me to put easily biodegradable food waste into a not-so-biodegradable plastic garbage bag.  Not to mention the fact that you can only feed so many raw veggies to the dog before his farts reach toxic, nose hair singeing levels.  After doing some online research Adam and I made a trip to Home Depot and our local bait shop.

We purchased:

• a 3 quart Rubbermaid plastic storage container
• 4 dome wall protectors (you know those things you line up with your door nob to keep it from whacking into the wall and leaving a dent)
• approximately 5 dozen red wigglers  

When we got home I drilled about 20 holes into the bottom of the container with a 1/4" drill bit.  I did 10-15 holes on each of the sides as well.  Next, I stuck the self-adhesive wall protectors onto the bottom 4 corners of the container.  (These will be the feet to facilitate drainage.)  Then, I dug into my perpetually full shredder bin (not something I ever remember to empty on trash day) and filled the container halfway with paper shavings.  A light mist of water to moisten the paper and voila!  A happy house for my new creepy crawly pets!  I put the lid under the bin as a drainage tray and used an old OR towel with a rubber band to cover the top.

Surprisingly I haven't noticed any smell associated with the essentially rotting plant matter on the kitchen counter.  I love the way this bin has basically cut our weekly garbage contribution by half.  We've had our worm compost for about a month now and have strayed a bit from the online guidelines.  Here are my observations:

• We have been lazy about burying the food waste when we put it in the bin so fruit flies have been a problem.  Learn from our mistake and when you drop the food in the worm bin, cover it up with some paper shreds.  It's worth the 2 extra seconds it takes.
• Research recommended feeding your worms once or twice a week.  We have been dropping food in daily as we acquire compost-able items.  Seems to me they are taking an awfully long time to munch our tasty morsels.  We haven't really figured out the ratio of worms to food yet because I can't bring myself to weigh the amount of worms we have and the total amount of waste we put in the bin per week.  I figure they will eventually procreate and make up for the apparent discrepancy.

So, there you have it, sports fans.  My worm composting adventure!  Stay tuned for the next exciting episode:  "Oh Jungle, my Jungle!" 

(For more information check out this link.  It, along with many others, were what I used as a rough guide for making and maintaining my worm bin!)

An Introduction:

I come by this hippie thing naturally. My mom is and always has been a self-proclaimed hippie. I grew up with a compost bin and a doggie dooley in the backyard. I swear she could hear me dropping an empty apricot nectar can into the garbage from across the house. The echoes of her shouts, “That's a recyclable!” rang in my head during my years of hippie-hiatus.

That militant recycling is only one of the many ways she brought me up to be green, long before it was trendy to do so. We regularly frequented consignment shops and thrift stores, not because that was all we could afford, but because my mom refused to waste anything. Hand-me-down clothes and toys are just another way of recycling to her. She is creative with her re-purposing and any and all MacGyvering I do I learned from her. She can make a toy out of a kitchen sponge that would keep even the most fickle child occupied for hours. Waste not, want not is a mantra I've learned to live by because of her.

This green way of life has been something deeply ingrained in me but not particularly embraced until recently. My years of hiatus can be blamed 90% on laziness and 10% on ignorance. After moving out of my parent's house at 18 I lived in a number of apartment complexes that didn't offer recycling. Add that to the fact that I was a poor, working, college student and you can see why I didn't have a lot of energy to devote to any endeavors besides surviving. I married young, to a kind but emotionally vacant man who had never worn a used article of clothing in his life. Needless to say, fighting the battle of being green was a losing one. After my divorce, I lived in yet another non-recycling apartment complex. (It still amazes me how prevalent complexes like that are to this day.)

Thankfully, my next (and current) home is in this beautiful little beach bungalow on a jungle-like corner lot in one of the few “Old Florida” towns left in South Florida. Just being in this place makes me feel closer to the nature child I was born to be. Add a very supportive and equally green-oriented significant other and you've got all the fixings for a hippie rebirth!

So here is my blog. A Chronicle of my evolving world of born-again hippiedom. Some of the topics I will touch on are: composting (both outdoor and worm), homemade cleaning products, green candle making, gardening. and anything else I stumble upon on my journey to enlightenment. The strides I will make to minimize my carbon footprint will occur simply by being truer to myself!