EARTH DAY!

Happy Earth Day!

My family still has a long way to go to be green but we are trying.
Today in honor of Earth day I am giving up soda. I will not buy anymore bottles of soda! This is HUGE for me because I do enjoy drinking soda but I know all it does is add calories to my diet, cost money I could spend on something better, and put a plastic bottle in this world that doesn't need to be here. I don't like plastic bottles but some things my family buys is in plastic containers. We often buy milk, juice, yogurt, and other things that are packaged in plastic but most of them I feel I need for the children's healthy diet. Soda for myself because it tastes good isn't the same as a glass of milk for my growing children so I am going to try to never drink soda again. I will let you know how this goes.

Other things we do is
Cloth diaper I have cloth diapered all of my children.

Turn my heat down in the winter (around 62 drives my hubby crazy).

Turn the heat down even more at night (family is sleeping so they don't notice).

I keep the air off most of the summer.

When my hubby turns on the air in the summer I watch for him to leave the room and then I turn up the air temp setting to 70 when he isn't looking. Often when I do that he doesn't notice.

I hang clothes to dry. I would like to say all our clothes hang to dry but when I am behind on laundry I use the machine.

I wash and rinse clothes on cold (except diapers because they need hot water to clean and sanitize).

I cook many meals at the same time. I put bbq chicken, shake n bake chicken, honey mustard chicken, and seasoned chicken all on large baking dishes and cook them all together then freeze them to warm up when needed.

I try to keep junk food out of our house (my hubby does sneak in a bag of chips in on occasion).

We have replaced all our light bulbs.

I use vinegar a lot instead of cleansers.

I use my steamer instead on chemicals to clean floor, tub, toilet, sink, toys, and other areas I want to kill germs.

I use a non powered bissell broom on our area rug so I only have to plug in our electric vac once or twice a week.

We have no carpet in our house. I can sweep it all with a broom and run a damp mop over it all.

I don't buy paper towels or other paper products. We do have to pick up paper towels every so often for a school project (I don't know why so many school projects say you have to use paper towels) but other than when something like that comes up we use microfiber towels that we wash and reuse.

We are growing some veggies. We hope to have a large garden this year.
We have 4 chickens and 1 bunny.

Our bunny is a French angora rabbit. He gives us his warm fur.

I spin yarn. I use my rabbit's fur and wool from a local farm to spin yarn.

I have learned to knit so I am using my yarn to make things.

One of my favorite things to do is take old clothes and cut them up and sew them into new stuff for my girls. I have fun taking a pair of jeans or a top that don't fit me anymore or worn out and make several little things for my children.

I don't drive much. My hubby does our shopping for us. He picks up all food, clothes, electronics, and even goes in the craft and fabric stores for me. He works in the city (OK larger town) so he makes stops on his way home to pick us up whatever we need.

We don't cut the grass to all of our yard. We own over 15 acres and most of it we just let it alone. We do cut the grass around the house and an area in the back to run, play, and have fun in but most of our land we leave for the deer, groundhogs, foxes, and other country critters.

I have the TV off most of the day..

I am getting better at unplugging things. I plan to take a good look at what we have left plugged in this weekend. I want to unplug the coffee maker and toaster oven next. I wonder what Rob will say when I do this. He is very supportive of what he calls my "tree hugging ways" as long as I don't make life difficult on him. He might not like having to plug in the toaster oven or coffee pot so I might have to leave them plugged in on his day off. I will unplug them the rest of the week.

I can't think of anything else so I will try to write more when I think of other things.


Here are a few pictures of the girls.
Zee having a happy day.Travis built a huge house with the blocks. He went out to play when he came back in his house was torn apart. LOL!
Zee had lots of fun taking apart the block house. I was able to make Demi an outfit when Zee was tearing down the blocks.
Once Zee was done destroying the blocks she took a nap.
I made Demi a matching sister outfit but she didn't keep it on for long.
Once I got this pink outfit done she insisted on wearing her pink princess outfit and didn't want to be dressed like her little sister anymore.

Demi and I played soccer a bit in the yard. She is very good kicking the ball.

Here she is singing and dancing. She is such a silly and fun child!