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!