Happy Earth Day!  I like to joke that every day feels like Earth Day here in Seattle.  Every restaurant, coffee shop, and bakery has a complicated waste disposal system of recycling, composting, and sorting.  Even the farmer’s markets typically have separate recycling and compost buckets.  It’s great to live in a place that is both literally and figuratively so GREEN!

My Earth Day pledge this year is to try to keep this basil plant alive.  I bought him on Wednesday, and I’ve only had to revive him once so far, so we’re off to a good start.

My mom has this amazing green thumb, and I don’t know how it totally passed me by.  She’s the type of person that keeps plants for years – rotating them inside and outside seasonally, and spending hours watering her garden in the summers.  I am lucky to keep something alive for one entire season, but maybe this year will be different!

In celebration of Earth Day, I thought it might be fun to share one of the ways that we are being a bit greener in our house.  There are a lot of ways we try to reduce our environmental impact as a family – cloth diapering, commuting on the bus, using chemical-free household products, making some of our own cleaners, etc.  Of course, there are also areas where we could really stand to improve – we drive way too much, don’t compost at home, and we buy too many things in bulky packaging at Trader Joe’s. 

But there is one big change we’ve made this year that has greatly reduced the amount of waste in our house…

We have eliminated paper towels. 

They are so convenient and easy to grab for quick messes and spills, but I was starting to cringe at the frequency of giant 12-packs I was hauling home from the grocery store.  So last year, we started a new system and tossed our towels for the last time.  I picked up two of these waste sorting bins from Ikea for about $12 a piece.  They are the perfect small size for fitting in the cabinet underneath our kitchen sink.

I also picked up three of these ten-packs of cheap washcloths (for $5 a piece).  So two trashcans + wash rags = a total investment of about $40.  Very affordable when you consider how much it has saved over the course of a year. 

We keep the bins under the kitchen sink – the left one filled with clean rags, and the bin in the right waiting to be filled with them once they are dirty.  I also use the dirty bin for Cullen’s bibs after mealtimes, as well as dirty dish towels – it makes laundry more efficient.

Every few days, I grab the dirty bin and wash it on our sanitize setting – to make sure we get rid of all the gross germs from food and dirt.  Having 30 clean rags has turned out to be a good number – it can definitely last us a whole week if needed. 

When you just use one paper towel at a time, it’s easy to feel like it’s a small thing.  But in our house, especially with dogs and kids, we were using them way more often than we realized.  I often found myself feeling guilty for grabbing a whole paper towel for something as simple as wiping Cullen’s nose.  Now that we have washable, reusable rags, I don’t care how many I use at one time, because I know I can just throw them in the washing machine and start over. 

Here are just some of the many different ways we use them:

• wiping dog paws after a rainy trip to the backyard
• wiping Cullen’s hands and mouth after meals
• wiping runny toddler noses
• wiping down kitchen countertops
• dusting other areas of the house
• drying wet pots and pans
• cleaning windows and glass doors
• wiping up spills/dirt on the floor

It’s a small change that has made a big difference for us as a family, and hopefully a difference in our environmental impact as well!

Happy Earth Day!

Yowsas – Wednesday already?  My lack of posting is making me sad.  I think that sometimes I think I need to come here with a long, planned out post, when really – sometimes on busy days I just want to stop by and say hi.  Maybe I’ll start doing that more. 

Casey is traveling this week.  So it’s just me and the boys here at the ranch.  There’s been a lot of this going on…

Rain, rain, and more rain.  Typical for this time of year, but I forgot how much it sucks.  The weeks feel long when I’m on my own and we are trapped  inside.  We do a lot of eating.

And I’ve done quite a bit of baking.  Which is always a bad idea when it’s just me, because then there is NO question as to who at the whole loaf of banana bread.

Although I actually had help with this one – we had friends over for a few hours on Monday afternoon, and I made bread for all the hungry mamas.  It was loosely based on this recipe, and turned out really well.  Crispy on the outside, soft inside – just right. 

I also baked up a big batch of baby muffins for Cullen.  Yes, they are quite possibly the worst looking baked good ever photographed – blame the blueberries.  These were a combo of banana, blueberries, oat flour, and almond flour.  He is OBSESSED – can’t eat them fast enough.

I’ve also been baking up some new recipes!  Now that Cullen is on a one-nap-a-day schedule, it’s getting harder and harder for me to find time to work.  I usually end up writing and working during that afternoon nap window, but that means there is no leftover time for cooking.  My recent lack of recipes was making me sad, so this week I spent nap times cooking, and my laptop sat closed.

So the bad news is that some of you thought I’d either died or dropped off the face of the earth (and I love you and so appreciate your concern!).  But the good news is that most of you probably didn’t even notice and are like what is this chick talking about, AND I have a few new recipes headed your way.  Hope to type one up during today’s LONG nap – fingers crossed for more than an hour…unlike yesterday.  Did you hear that, Cullen?

Can I show you my holiday decorations?  And in showing you those, I also have to show you that we rearranged our furniture!  I know everyone is obsessed with “open floor plans.”  I watch House Hunters.  At this point saying you want an open floor plan is like saying you want the house to have a bathroom. 

Anyway.  Our house is really open.  Like, almost too open.  I didn’t know that was possible, but it is.  The way our furniture was set up before, it was really – well, open – but no matter where I looked I could always see eveeeerything.  And so I’d try to relax at night and be lazy on the couch watching Survivor, but I could see all the dirty dishes and sink full of sippy cups beckoning me from the kitchen.  The kitchen is the focal point of our floor plan, and while it’s beautiful, I don’t want to feel like I’m in it all the time. 

Here’s the set up from before (it was Cullen’s birthday party so ignore the balloons and streamers. And a few more before pictures here.). 

So we moved things around!  It took a few days for me to get used to it, but now I really like it.  It’s more crowded, but much cozier, and feels like a better use of the space.  I’m not a huge TV over the mantle girl, but that has grown on me too.  The couch faces the fireplace and TV now, and makes it feel much more like a living room!  Adorable stockings and twinkling lights have helped ease into the adjustment.

This year’s tree, which is sadly still not decorated.  What use to be one afternoon or evening of tree decorating is somehow turning into a week-long project.  I got the lights and garland up while Cullen was distracted on Sunday.  He has shown zero interest in the tree itself, which is awesome.  Except any time I try to decorate, he gets really into the box of (sharp, glass) ornaments, so I’m seriously putting on like one red ball at a time.  It’s ridiculous.

I have a feeling that at this rate, our tree will be decorated by mid-December, and ornaments will only be on the top half. 

Here’s a shot from the same angle as the “before” up above.  The new arrangement chops up that open space, which as it turns out is much better.  My close up camera lens probably isn’t doing it justice.

Another angle of the “living room” – and from this one you can see the other reason I wanted to mix things up.  Cullen has a play corner!

We have these great built-ins, and the way it was set up before, they were mostly blocked by furniture.  We have some great play areas in our house, but none on the first floor.  I have been having a really hard time doing anything in the kitchen without Cullen at my heels.  Now that he has his own play space down here, he’s much more occupied.

And many of you have asked about his chair – it’s the Land of Nod “Nod Chair.”  I scored it on major sale ($35!) a few weeks before his birthday – it was his first birthday gift.  He is (finally!) reaaaaaaally into books right now.  His main source of entertainment is sitting and paging through book after book after book.  It’s the cutest thing you have ever seen.  Casey caught him reading in the chair on Sunday…

But his favorite thing to do – of course – is to stand on the chair and read books on the windowsill.  This gives me a small heart attack, but thankfully he’s really good at climbing down backwards.  I’m so glad he’s using it, even if it’s mostly as a climbing gym.

Last shot of the living room.  I love that it feels so festive and bright.  We are hosting Christmas in Seattle this year, so I want it to feel extra festive for all our traveling guests!

More decorations in the dining room.  I’ve been putting up the same decorations for many years – the couple of things I bought after Casey and I moved in together forever ago.  I’m telling myself that this year I’m going to take advantage of the post-holiday sales and buy super discounted Christmas stuff in January.  It will be such a fun treat to have waiting for next year!  But I know by January I’ll be over it and won’t do it.  The cycle goes on.

Since it’s just been me this week, I’ve been trying to fill up our schedule with fun things going on – play date, a friend over for dinner, mom’s group, and more.  And when the going gets tough, there’s always the fun game of spinning in circles with the nail clippers in your mouth.

Or playing with two favorite toys – a bottle of Advil and a thermometer. 

At least when I’m on my own I have two eager watch dogs, protecting our house and keeping us safe.  Oh wait…

I’ll be back soon (no really, this time) with a few yummy new recipes!  Thanks for your patience during the downtime.  I have missed you guys!