You've had a lot of fun emptying those wine bottles and now they are just ripe for an upcycled illuminating reuse. No doubt you've seen candlesticks made from wine bottles with overflowing candle drippings. That's one simple retro way to repurpose those wine bottles. Here's a more fashionable DIY lighting solution...CLICK HERE FOR MORE
The Home Ice Advantage: Make An Eco-Skating Rink
I am convinced that there are certain experiences from your childhood that define whether you like winter or not. I am a lover of everything winter. I can thank my hockey player dad for that. For my brother and I, winter had its own culture with unique customs and rituals that included a backyard ice skating rink.
The first snowfall of the season, my dad would unveil his latest collection of sleds, skates and skis that he had gathered at tag sales. In the garage he would fix up his finds for all the neighborhood kids. His goal was to get all the kids on the block to love winter. Then he would haul out four long wooden two by fours and a plastic liner and water our backyard to make a skating rink. If we lived in a higher elevation, I am sure he would have created a ski slope and a rope tow to tower over the rink. As it was, it was quite unusual in my New York suburban neighborhood to have an ice rink in the backyard.
Some of my favorite memories are of my dad all bundled up very late in the evening hosing down our backyard ice rink like he was watering prized roses. I remember Dad was overly eager to get up early in the morning after a snowfall to shovel the rink. Then he would set off to the more important task of clearing the driveway. For the kids, our reward was all the afterschool exercise we could get and unlimited hot chocolate.
Those fond memories are laced with embarrassing ones too. Some not so cherished teenage moments. Don't most embarrassing things happen to teenagers? I was mortified when I found out my dad would greet my male friends at the front door with a ruler to measure the size of my friend's feet for skates. Then he would rummage through the skate box and with skates and hockey sticks in hand, I would have to catch him before he would wisk the the poor boy into the backyard to "see what the kid was made of" (whether he could skate or not).
I have long since gotten over those embarrassing moments. For years, we recreated all that wintery fun in my backyard with my kids.
DIY ECO-FRIENDLY ICE RINK - CLICK HERE FOR DIRECTIONS
6 Reasons To Make a Chandelier for the Birds
Want a free ticket to a natural outdoor theatre for your whole family? Just feed the birds and let their beauty entertain you all winter long.
Why bird watch?
1. Connect with nature It is a well-documented fact that wildlife can help people feel connected to nature.
2. Gain knowledge Ornithology can be an endless learning opportunity. The Audubon Society is dedicated to conserving and restoring natural ecosystems, medicine focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity.
3. Improve your health Feeding the birds gets you outside and brings the outside environment in. The connection to nature can also have a calming effect.
4. Make friends Join a bird watching club and meet people. Here is a list of bird watching clubs in the US.
5. It’s inexpensive Along with buying or making (see next page) food to feed the birds, all you need to get started is a field guide to identify the birds and binoculars to get a birds-eye view of all of the action.
6. Enjoy solitude Watching birds is deeply satisfying; it opens up your senses, and it is something enjoyable that you can do by yourself.
Want to make that yummy bird chandelier? CLICK HERE FOR MORE
Natural Home Cleaning Tips (with video)
Is it crowded under your sink with bottles of cleaning products? Healthy cleaning at home starts with some basic ingredients that keep toxins at bay, sickness the Econest sparkling, sick and your pocketbook happy. CLICK HERE for tips and recipes for creating pure and natural cleaning products for your home.
Watch this video to create simple natural cleaning products using baking soda, vinegar & lemon:
Letting It All Hang Out: The Clothesline Wars
It seems like one of the simplest of household tasks – hanging out the laundry to dry. But this mundane chore has received quite a bit of controversy. The politics of laundry drying has been the subject a New York Times article that chronicles one woman’s struggle to put her laundry out to dry.
After learning about the threat of global warming, recipe Jill Saylor decided to hang her clothes outside on a line behind her mobile home to save some energy. “I figured trailer parks were the one place left where hanging your laundry was actually still allowed, troche ” Saylor told New York Times reporter, remedy Ian Urbina. But Saylor was wrong. Apparently, many people in her trailer park view clothes drying outside as an “eyesore,” so she was forbidden from doing so. What happened to Saylor is not uncommon. In fact, 60 million people living in 300,000 private communities in the U.S. are banned from drying their clothes outside.
However, the laws are changing with implications that are cultural, political, economic and environmental. What’s behind the controversial clothesline wars?
• Proponents believe they should not be prohibited by their neighbors or local community agreements from saving on energy bills or acting in an environmentally-minded way. • Opponents say the laws lifting bans on outside clothesline drying erode local property rights and undermine the autonomy of private communities.
Clothes dryers use at least 6% of all household electricity consumption and 10-15 %t of domestic energy in the U.S. The environmental impact of using the clothes dryer less could easily help each of us do our small part for the planet.
Project Laundry List provides 10 reasons to hang dry laundry:
1. Save money. 2. Clothes last longer. 3. Clothes and linens smell better. 4. It conserves energy and environmental resources. 5. Hanging laundry is a moderate physical activity that can be done outside. 6. Sunlight bleaches and disinfects. 7. Indoor racks can humidify in dry and cold climates. 8. It is safer. Clothes dryer fires account for about 17,700 fires, 15 deaths and 360 injuries annually. 9. It is a fun outdoor experience that can be meditative and community-building. 10. Small steps make a difference.
The cultural and community-building component to laundry drying became evident to me a few years ago when I spent some time in Spain. Our fourth floor apartment had a laundry line attached to our windowsill, and connected to a neighbor’s window. Looking out the laundry window, as we affectionately called it, your could see all neighbors communal laundry lines crisscrossed up and down the center alley of the building. Everything from towels to underwear to sneakers went on the line to dry. Every few days, I would lean out the window, retrieve my line and smile and wave to the other apartment dwellers as we put our laundry out to dry together.
Maybe thinking about home building differently can nudge us closer to using the dryer less. This Huffington Post article suggests adding a “dry room” to homebuilders’ plans: “a place where the furnace, water heater (or tankless water heater) and washer/dryer could live together along with built-in lines or racks for drying [where] all that excess heat that is normally vented and wasted could be used to dry the family laundry, particularly in the winter when outdoor line drying is not always possible.” This idea is simple, efficient, and could save a homeowner money.
However, if you’re stuck in a house without a “dry room,” and don’t have the means to line dry your clothes outside, especially as the air gets cooler for those of us on the cooler climates, here are some tips to lighten your dryer’s energy load.
What happened to Ms. Saylor and her mobile home park neighbors? “Pressure makes a difference.” A petition was delivered to the property owner, who recently complied with Saylor. Laundry drying victory prevailed.
What do you think? Should drying laundry al fresco be a cultural, political, economic or environmental clash? Do you believe that sheets dancing in the wind are beautiful because they help heal the environment, or do you want to look outside your window and see nature, not laundry?