Hooray for Mother Earth! It's her day, celebrate your way!

Today is a global celebration 40 years running of our lovely planet earth.  Home to diverse species of plant and animal.Don't be limited by the April 22nd date.  We can all celebrate Earth Day through our everyday actions to live with less impact.

Over at the Project Earth Day website, you can explore key issues related to Earth Day such as Climate change, politics, education, conservation and more. 

Or check out the EPA website where they are encouraging us all to learn, teach and share.  Why not pledge to pick 5 for the environment.

Learn the history.  Here's a link for exploring the very first Earth Day from The Envirolink Network

Here in our little island community there's an Earth Day celebration that will combine work with party as volunteers will help with a spring clean up of the Otto Preserve trail

Personally I'll be celebrating Earth Day with a round of recycling bags.  I think I'm going to make myself a green bag.  It's about time I had one of my own!  Then weather permitting I plan to tend to my worm factory and compost bins.

What is going on in your community?  Are you doing something special today to honor the earth?  Leave me a comment, or click on my photo (below) and send me an email with your Earth Day suggestions and plans.  I'd love to hear how you get down for the planet!

My Blog is Carbon Neutral

Speaking of planting trees....  I was catching up on my reading over at  Going Green Crafters and Artists when I found this program for neutralizing the carbon footprint of their blog.  What a great idea!  I want to have a Carbon Neutral blog too! 

Easier said than done, right?  Well not really, Mach's brun (rough translation:  Make it Green) really is making it green by offering to make any blog carbon neutral!  This German program is planting trees in patnership with Arbor Day Foundation at Plumas National Forest in Northern California .  This is in an effort to reforest the area that was devistated by forest fires back in 2007.

So Yay!!!  By making my blog carbon neutral I'm helping make the world a little greener. This spring they will be planting  Douglas-fir, red and white firs, and incense cedars alongside ponderosa pine and sugar pine trees. These new trees will help prevent soot and soil runoff into Plumas’ precious water supplies. And one of those little trees is forever linked to my blog :0)

Here's my new badge to show off my neutral status!

Don't have a blog of your own but want to participate in reforresting?  Don't worry, Arbor Day Foundation has many other ways you can help too!

Sunday Planet Saver

It's easy to get overwhelmed when greening up our lives.  I mean there's so many habits to change and so much to learn about that at times it can seem like a lot of effort.  That's why I'm all about simple steps.  Just like any journey in life, it doesn't happen all at once it starts with a single step.  So for today's planet saver suggestion I'm appealing to your eco-sensibility to BYOM (bring your own mug)

My favorite Coffee Mug!

I don't know about you, but I don't even try to start my day without a fresh cup of coffee.  When I worked in the "real world" I often had 4 or 5 cups of coffee throughout the day just to stay productive. You know how much we love our coffee in the Pacific Northwest, home of Starbucks, Tully's, Seattle's Best and my favorite Fidalgo Bay Coffees!  Up here you can't throw a stone in the city without hitting an espresso stand! Even if you are just drinking 1 or 2 cups a day, or taking tea on your break, those disposable cups, lids and stir stix add up quickly in our landfills and most of those disposables are not recycle-able!

Think about it in these terms:  There are 365 days in each year with 260 weekdays, so if you work 5 days a week, each year you may be sending 260 plastic, paper or foam cups to the landfill along with plastic stir stix and lids.  That is a lot of unnecessary waste!  

Instead, why not bring your own mug (and spoon) to the office.  You can reuse it all day long without worry of the bottom giving out and at the end of the day just a quick rinse and it's ready for use again tomorrow.  Plus, with your own mug, you can express yourself!  I love that!  When I worked in corporate America I always tried to find a fun happy and colorful mug to express myself in the gray cubicle rat-maze where I spent 260 windowless days every year!  It was a little something that I could do to brighten my workspace up.

So tonight when you are getting your backpack, briefcase or purse ready for the week to come, take a second and add your favorite mug from your cupboard. It's a simple step with a huge impact!  It's easy being green when you take it a step at a time!

When we all do our small part, we really can change the big picture!

Spring Work Out

It feels so good to be outside in the sunshine and I'm already feeling my muscles growing too!

My easiest compost ever bin last summer

Remember my post about the easiest compost ever?  I swear by this method!  Everything from fern fronds & grass clippings to egg shells & cilantro stems make it into my compost bin and magically with no mixing or moving, I get a tube full of black gold each spring! 

Now that my tube of compost is ready for use, I just pulled off the wire frame to harvest my black gold. Theres always a layer at the top that is only partially decomposed, but that's ok.  This layer along with all the worms inside of it is removed and placed in the bottom of the empty wire bin where it will jumpstart this years compost.  All the enzymes and microbes that aide in decomposition are already in that partially done layer.

I'm thrilled that I wound up with a lot of ready to use compost!  It was about 8 wheel barrows full of 100% free organic soil amendment! And with no backbreaking work or constant turning.  I just stack it in, water it when it's dry and let mother nature do her thing.  You just can't beat that! Composting is the epitome of the old saying "waste not, want not".

Beautiful black and rich.  Last years waste will

feed the plants that will feed us this year!

If you've been following my spring garden frenzy, then you know that I've run out of room in my garden beds for planting anything else.  Soon Ben will be building me some more recycled beds and bringing home a few yards of 4 way organic soil to fill them, but the sun is shining and I just can't wait.  So I took a look around the yard to see what I might repurpose for planting in some odd shaped areas of my garden where buiding beds would be difficult.

First I found the top half of an old plastic compost bin.  The bottom section had split open and was not really good for anything (that's why I'm not using plastic for my bins).  It seemed like a great candidate for a garden container.  I drug it down to the garden and found a spot for it, next to my ugly but useful recycled laundry bin planter.  I filled it with compost, leveled it out and planted another type of carrots inside.  It might not be pretty now, but it will be gorgeous when those carrots come up!

 

You never know what might make a good garden bed. 
This container lived it's first life as a compost bin,
now it will get a second life as a carrot planter!

I still had loads of compost, so I took the wire mesh tubes from last years failed potato tower experiment and carefully cut them in 1/2 to form 6 good sized containers.  These would fit perfect in the sloped corner of my garden.

 

This wire tube tower for potatoes was too tall last year.

 

That's more like it!  Now these shorter tubes I can work with. 

Each tube became 2 - 18" tall planters.  These are perfect for this spot because I can mold the shape a little bit before filling them.  Then I found some old plastic woven bird seed bags I've been saving for a project and cut those down to line the bottom of each of these new planters.  I cut drainage slashes in the lining and got to work filling each plant tube with compost.

8  loads full!  I highly recommend a 2

wheeled barrow like mine for ease of use.

Eight trips to the back yard with my wheelbarrow and I had created a whole new planting area from recycled and repurposed items I already had!  I love recycling in the garden!  

The mesh planters are full and ready
for seeding.  And now a wasted space in my
garden is going to be a productive.  Yay! 

I decided to go ahead and try potatoes in these again now that they are a bit smaller.  I have several different types of spuds that have sprouted in my cupboards that should work. I placed 3 little papita starts in each tube.  I don't know if they'll all grow, but at least some of them should.  I know potatoes grow in compost bins all the time.

Red, white & russet potatoes from the kitchen get

replanted here  along with an onion and some garlic

centers that need planting.

Oh I almost forgot, each day when the sun is out I'm opening up my boat/greenhouse to get some direct sun on the soil and the plants.  I've also placed my jugs of water strategically throughout to absorb the heat of the sun durring the day.  In the evening I'll recover the boat and those recycled containers of water will radiate the warmth back into the greenhouse. 

Those empty jugs from our ceasars and screwdrivers

become passive heaters in the greenhouse

I bumped into my neighbor Leslie as I was out enjoying the sun. She's also been hard at work cutting back her fern fronds and generously offered them to me for my garden mulch. Thank you Leslie! I think I may have enough fronds to fully line the non-growing areas of the garden now! It sure makes the garden area look nice too. A few hours of work in the sunshine and what a payoff!  I love it! 

An interview with the girls at Girls Go Green

Today I wanted to tell you about a great group of girls from Seattle who are blogging for a greener world and working to create a positive change in the world!

I "met" Anna of Girls Go Green through blogs and then she requested to have their eco site listed amongst the Friends of FatBottomBags!  If you aren't a follower of Girls Go Green, you'll definately want to be! 

Girls Go Green is 4 girls who go to a tiny girls school in Seattle.  The girls started their blog last year when they were 11 and 12 years old.  Now at 12 and 13 they are blogging about living a green teen lifestyle!

I sent the girls a few questions to learn more about them and their green efforts.  Here's that interview:

     FBB: How did you girls decide to go green?

     GGG:  The school had scratch paper bins around the school for paper that had been used but was still usable, but nobody really used them. We sorted the paper in the scratch paper bins and in the recycling into scratch paper and recycling. We decided to start a green club at our school and that a blog would be nice to have. The school year was almost over so the club never happened, but the blog certainly did!

     FBB: What is your goal for your blog?
         
     GGG: To encourage other girls to make an effort at being green.

     FBB:  How have Girls Go Green influenced their peers to make better choices for the future of the earth?

     GGG: We have encouraged out classmates to use scratch paper and compost.

     FBB: Do you find most of the kids your age are thinking about how we are affecting the planet with our decisions?

     GGG: There are some, but not really.

     FBB: What's your best green tip for other young people who want to make a difference in the world?

     GGG: Make an effort to do little green things. It's the little things that count!

     FBB: Do you think adults are receptive to your green message?

     GGG:  We think that they care more that we're kids actually doing something, not really about what what we are doing. They don't really believe that we are going to actually accomplish anything.


I'm so impressed with these girls and all of their green efforts! I hope all you readers will join me in following their blog and encouraging them to keep working to create positive changes!

Bee Green Greenwashing

So yesterday in my post Welcome to 2010 an Earth Odyssey I talked about simple ways to green up your life and our future.  One of those suggestions was to be aware of packaging when making purchases and that brings me to todays topic, Greenwashing.   Greenwashing is a term used to describe companies and products who are jumping on the ecomovement by trying to claim to be green, but on closer inspection are simply trying to fool us all.

This Christmas I received this wonderful and thoughtful gift from my mother.  She chose this for me because she knows how much I love houseplants and being green.  I love it, however it is a great example of a green wash.

I love to Bee Green!

So this company is selling an idea of being green, but check out the next photo and you'll see that they aren't actually green at all.  My cute little plant pot came wrapped in 1 layer of cardboard (not so bad, I'll reuse the box for sorting colored bag strips and when it's worn out I can recycle it) and 2 layers of *gasp* styrofoam.  Yuck!  Styrofoam has NO place in a green product.  I can't recycle it, I can't burn it, it doesn't compost.  It's NOT GREEN! 

 

But this company obviously doesn't really believe in being green

If this company was actually green they would have used cardboard made from recyled content for their packaging.  For a comparable price to styrofoam they could have used EcoCradle natural and compostable packaging material or another natural material.

I hope that by sharing this example, you too will become more aware of the packaging used in your purchases, and be aware that there are many unscrupulous companies out there who are trying to take advantage of environmentally minded people and Greenwash their products and services.  Another example of the age old adage "buyer beware!"

Welcome 2010 an Earth odyssey

Here we are starting a new year and a new decade, and there's no better time to go green.  Here's a 7 simple steps you can take to make the coming 10 years and beyond better

1.  Change from high energy incandesent bulbs to compact florescent lighting.  An ENERGY STAR compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about 6 months. It uses 75 percent less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb.  It's estimated by the EPA that each CFL bulb can keep 400 Lbs of greenhouse gasses from being released.  Just be sure you know how to dispose of them properly!  Here's what to do if you break a CFL

2.  Turn down your thermostat just a couple of degrees can save a significant amount of power.  Earth911.com estimates a 5% savings on your power bill for each degree you turn down the thermostat. 

3.  Be aware of packaging when making purchases.  So your standing in the grocery store trying to decide between 1 brand and another, do you consider packaging in your decision? Will you choose glass or aluminum over plastic?  Will you choose a refill?  Will you purchase in bulk to save on packaging?  It's a small thing that can make a big difference.  Here's an inovative and very friendly solution by the creative folks at  Ecovative Design

4.  Start a compost bin!  Your garden will grow greener and healthier and you'll save a lot of waste from hitting the landfills.  There are many designs for composters, here's how I made my "Easiest Compost Ever"

5.  Buy local and organic foods whenever possible.  You'll save jobs, help your local community, get fresher and healthier food and help to reduce the emissions that come from shipping over long distances.  Have you heard of the 100 mile diet?  They have a great getting started guide for eating local

6.  Reduce, Reuse and Recycle!  Simple yes, and makes a big impact.

7.  Plant a tree or have them planted by Arbor Day Foundation Just 6 pine trees at Twenty-Five year old absorb up to 1 ton of CO2.

How to recycle 6pack rings into snowflake

I got the original how to information from Craftbits who had a quick tutorial on how to make these, but then I was asked by a couple of followers if I could make a more comprehensive step by step for this project.  Here it is:

Here's what you will need to make 1 large snowflake ornament:

   

    *20 six-pack beverage holder rings

    *1 foot of fishing line

    *Stapler

    *Staples

    *Scissors

 

Take 2 of your 6 pack rings and lay them back to back on top of eachother.  You'll notice that they curve in one direction.  Stack them so they curve away from eachother like the next photo

 

Staple them together here and here

Now you'll fold them to match the Staple marks

 Repeat on the back side

It will look like this when both sides are done

Get 2 more 6pack rings and repeat, then you will connect them together:

Staple at the arrows, flip over and staple in the same place on the other side

Now continue until you've connected 10 of these together like the next photo

Now you'll run your fishing line through 1 side

Now pull the fishing line taut to form a ring.  Knot the fishing line. Now staple to connect the 2 ends. Flip and staple connecting 2 ends on other side

 

Cut off excess fishing line and use to make a ring to hang your snowflake:

Here's what your finished snowflake will look like.  So pretty!

Have fun and enjoy this great recycled Christmas project!

Planet Savers, the next generation.

I was so thrilled this summer when my neice Samantha took an interest in making her own recycled bags.  She has several that I've made for her, in fact some of the cutest ones went home with her.  Even still she wanted to learn to make her own. 

Recycling runs in the family.  Here's Sammi learning

to make her own FatBottomBag recycled bag.

We spent an evening together sorting and cutting plastic bags into strips.  I explained how to hold her crochet hook and get her bag started. As she worked on her first bag, she told me how she recycles at home.  She even goes as far as cleaning up recyclables she finds in her neighborhood.  A budding environmentalist!

Another young person who is taking up the torch for the environment is my facebook friends son.  Kori purchased a bag from me a while back and she sent me my biggest compliment.  Her young grade school son Tyler wanted to let me know he was proud of me for helping the planet.   I was so touched with the compliment I actually cried!

This week my friend Mattie sent a photo of the bag her daughter Sarena made.  They have a FatBottomBag of their own and a Minibag from the recycle exchange and Sarena used those to come up with her own beautiful design for another recycled bag that she made for her mom.

Sarena's recycled bag!  Great design awesome work!

I'm loving making these bags and helping the environment.  I love that others are being influenced to do the same and make their own efforts to help.  I'm thrilled to have made a small difference in the lives of these young people and I'm proud of the efforts that they are making.

If you want to try your hand at making a recycled/reusable bag, check out my video tutorial and I'll show you how.

More Recycle Crafts For Christmas

Christmas countdown at FlashBannerNow.com

I love a homemade Christmas. One year I made all of our tree ornaments from fabric scraps turned into "lollipops" another year I crocheted and starched string snowflakes.

Each year I try to do something homemade for Christmas because I think that is what the holiday is really about, sharing the gift of yourself with friends and family.

This year I'm continuing with my handcrafted Christmas tradition with a recycling twist. I'm finding fun and fantastic ways to make recycled decorations and sharing what I've found with you.

Recyled 6pack rings turned into this beautiful snowflake decoration!

Over at About.com, Sheri Osborn will teach you how you and your children can turn those old puzzles into very cute ornaments for your tree

Ehow has a quick and easy tutorial to make a drum ornament from common "throw away items"

Happy Bird's Crafting Haven has a real easy project for recycling your old cards into tags for Christmas.  You could use the same idea to make tree ornaments too!

Use your colorful junk mail or recycled cards to make these pretty tree ornaments

Here's an easy and beautiful way to reuse your old scratched up ornaments

InsidiousNeth shows us a really neat oragami gift box to make in this YouTube video

Have an old computer keyboard?  Try this ornament made from the recycled circuitry.  Suprisingly beautiful!

Turn an old soda can into a beautiful 3 dimensional star ornament

Or you can make the whole Christmas tree out of cans like they did over at http://mdewtree.com/
Here's the video from YouTube



Heres another 3 dimensional star, make this one from recycled Christmas cards.

You can use recycled paper and then follow along with iespila to make a 3 dimensional snowflake



This might be my favorite one.... Recycle a wool sweater into an adorable polar bear ornament from Fun in the Making

You'll never believe these pretty stars are made from recycled plastic bottles!

WOW!  This is amazing. She just used glue, glitter, garland and Toilet Paper Rolls and made gorgeous tree ornaments!



Let me know your green holiday ideas and don't forget to enter the Green for the Holidays FatBottomBag Giveaway

Bag Lady!

Today is a bag recycle day for me!  I sold the last few bags from my inventory yesterday.  (thanks Mom!) So today there's no more procrastinating or finding some other chore to take priority.  Nope, today is the day for cutting bags.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle!  This bag of grocery sacks

is destined to become the next series of  FatBottomBags!

I've received a lot of donations recently and my bag closet is getting pretty full.  When I work on cutting bags for plarn, I like to work with a lot of bags so this is great!  I usually sit for a few hours and fold and cut them, sorting them into boxes by color.

Here's a couple of the boxes I've cut up this morning.  I see some

beautiful tan and white FatBottomBags in our future!

With my moring coffee close by and the TV tuned to the morning news I started cutting away.  Within a couple of hours I'd worked through about 1/2 of the closet where I store my donated bags.   That turned out to be around 500 plastic bags ready to be changed from ocean harming disposables into eco-friendly reusables!

I'm off now to start on the stitching.  I'm really excited to start a new series of reusable bags and I hope to have some new ones posted in the store for you tomorrow.

 Did you know that each FatBottomBag uses 100% post consumer recycled plastic shopping bags?  I'm fortunate to be able to recycle for over 20 families now!  I've connected to contributors through my local community, friends, family and even through the internet.  Today I worked through a stack of bags sent to me for the Free Minibag Recycling Exchange that I'm sponsering through FatBottomBags.com.  

Still time to plant your strawberries!

Today I went to check on my secret garden.  My dear friend down the road allows me a few beds in his organic garden to plant as I please.  This year I just took 1 bed for corn.  I planted late, so the corn never fully developed, but according to my motto "nothing to waste", I cut the corn stalks to use for harvest decorations. I cleaned up the corn bed to ready it for my spring planting.  Maybe pumpkins will go in there next year or ???? 

Ben posing with my "miniature" corn

This corn got planted too late to produce

But it sure looks nice as a harvest decoration near my new greenhouse!

After that I turned my attention to my friends strawberry bed.  He has a lot of everbearing berries in there and asked me to thin it out a bit.  The great thing about gardening and friendships is that there's always so much to be shared.  Where there is bounty in 1 garden, there is often need in another, and that was the case with us.

 I thinned out some of his beautiful strawberry plants from his bed, being careful not to over thin or leave any "bald" spots.  Each little berry plant that I pulled out was placed gently in my bucket to be transplanted in my home garden.

What a beautiful and abundant berry patch in the "secret" garden

The grey clouds held on to their rain long enough for me to get home and start my new strawberry bed.  I grabbed my bucket of strawberry starts and got right to work.

It's good to have friends who garden.  These are free starts for my own

strawberry patch.  If  I had purchased these it would have cost a pretty penny.

I chose an empty bed in my garden that receives plenty of sunlight.  Earlier this year this bed had purple cherokee tomatoes.  When planting in my garden from year to year, I try to rotate crops.  This rotation of crops helps to curb transfer of diseases from one season to the next.

This little bed is in direct sunlight most of the summer, a good choice for

everbearing strawberries

Fall is the perfect time to start a new strawberry bed.  When planted at this time of year, the plants have 2 seasons to develop good healthy root systems before the plant puts its energy into fruit. 

One thing to be aware of when you plant your strawberries is the crown.  These plants grow from a base and all new leaves and berries grow out of the crown.  When you transplant your starts be very careful about the depth.  You will want to bury all of the roots, but NOT the crown.  Be sure that the crown of leaves is at or slightly above ground level.  If you do cover the crowns, you will risk the entire plant which can rot below the soil surface.

By next fall I'll be thinning my own strawberry patch and be able

to share some starts with other friends

With a little bit of work and the satisfaction of assisting a friend, I came away with a brand new full bed of strawberries.  These everbearings will set fruit throughout the spring and summer next year.  Even now, some of these little plants still have berries and flowers!

Waiting for the frost and more green tomatoes

Beautiful Mount Baker and the sisters view  from the Lummi Island ferry dock 

Looking out at the fresh snow on Mount Baker is a good reminder that the first killing frost is not long off. Of course the trick is knowing when it will hit my garden and of that I'm not certain.

My neighbors a few miles down the road have all had a hard frost.  Not me! My garden seems to have a nice warm micro-climate this year.When I woke up yesterday morning and checked the temperature it was just dipping into the 30's at 39 degrees, still a lot of wiggle room for a hard freeze. But that little nippiness made me nervous.


Last week I posted about ripening some of my green tomatoes indoors.  At that time I harvested 1 box of fully developed green tomatoes and ripened those in my kitchen.  I still have 3 or 4 from that batch that are partially ripe and the rest have found their way into salsas, salads and tomato sandwiches.


This morning I felt was the right time to finish the harvest.  I had so many beautiful green tomatoes on my 5 remaining roma plants that I couldn't justify risking the frost taking a bite out of them.  With pruners in hand, I snatched up all the ones that looked fully developed and left only a few of the small weak ones on the plants.

Can you believe the loads of tomatoes still going in October? 

These Roma won't be as sweet as sun-ripened.

They will be better than store bought!

These tiny yellow pear tomatoes should be ready for topping

my autumn lettuce salad by next week

I've placed them all in shallow boxes with newspaper covers and added a ripened apple to assist the process.  I came away with 3 boxes of them!  What a fantastic harvest!

p.s - My dahlias are still blooming!