Splendiferous Gluten-free Crackers!

Yesterday afternoon I made a horrible discovery. The rice cakes we’ve been giving EcoBabe in bountiful supply have more than just rice in them. They also have corn. But I knew that. What I didn’t know, what caught my eye as I was reaching into the cupboard for something else entirely but just happened to glimpse the rice cake packet in doing so, is that the little cakes, advertised as rice-corn cakes also have WHEAT and OATS in them. In fact, there’s more wheat then there is rice! EGADS!!!

***This story ends well. Click on that pretty Read More link to discover the happy ending.***

Last Giveaway of 2009!

Are any of you making New Year’s resolutions? Are any of them related to your environmental impact?

I’m hoping to further reduce our footprint this year. I’m hoping to grow some of our own vegetables on the balcony. I’m hoping to get some composting going. And I want to keep learning about and contributing to new environmental initiatives.

Many years back, I committed to using my own bags when grocery or market shopping. Any kind of shopping really. I take fabric bags with me when I go out, always. I love them. They’re more comfortable to hold than is plastic. They’re much, much more durable. And they’re not toxic nightmares, as are plastic.

***What’s this got to do with a giveaway? Link through and find out!***

Last Minute Gifts

I’m facebook freak. I log in multiple times every day. It’s how I stay in touch with my family and friends, concentrated in Canada and the UK, but scattered all around the world. It’s a fabulous thing. I won’t ever deny my love of that fine social networking site.

The past few days on facebook, I’ve noticed that lots and lots (I mean LOTS) of my contacts are fretting about finishing their Christmas shopping and are desperately searching for last minute gifts, stocking stuffers, and ideas about what to give the person who has everything.

***Link through for EcoMum’s solution to the problem!***

Jack and Will Went Up The Hill

My friend Jenny, who you’ve heard about here on You Can’t Diaper Their Faces before, is undertaking a fantastic initiative. She and her family have committed to raising $5000 to give a community in the developing world clean water. Clean water for 20 years. Her little boys, who are each a year older than my kiddos, are fully involved in the project too. (Hence her project’s title, Jack and Will Went Up The Hill… To Fetch a Pail of Water! Jack and Will are her remarkable children.)

***Link through to learn more about Jenny’s project!***

Click to Give… and win!

It’s December 2nd, folks. Day two of my blog-as-advent-calendar project.

So what are you getting today?

You’re getting a contest designed to help others. It’s fun!

***Link through to get contest details!***

All I Want For Christmas…

… is nothing.

Okay… I want world peace and an end to famine, war, discrimination, pain, suffering and the other usual fodder of beauty pagent contestants. (Cuz you KNOW I’m beauty queen material with the dark circles under my eyes, spare tire round my middle, and ass that jiggles as I strut to the store to buy more chips… I’m beauty, baby, and nothing but…)

Seriously though. I have everything I want and need. Two great kiddos (even if one could stand to sleep a little a lot more,) a spouse who adores me and whom I adore in return, a great family back home: I’ve got it all. Sure, I’d like there to be less animosity between certain family members and I’d like to have my children closer to their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. All in all though, we’ve got a wonderful life.

(link through for a fantastic Christmas giveaway!)

What do MEESE look like?

Do you know what meese look like? Can you draw them? If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to either of these questions you should enter the Meese Fridge Art Contest. Heck, even if you don’t know what meese are you can enter. It’s all about creativity, folks.

EcoKid and I collaborated on our entry. We used some cardboard from the box her potty came in, Christmas card scraps, paper bound for the recycling bin, water colour paints, and coffee grounds…

***link through to see our artwork!***

Going Green Tip #4: Christmas Cards

For those of you sending Christmas cards (or holiday cards or New Year’s cards– whatever you may call them), there’s an easy way to green them up and help reduce the amount of paper in your recycling bin.

Use the cards you received last year.

Pretty simple, huh? EcoKid and I have been hard at work cutting, glueing, and piecing together cards we saved from last Christmas. EcoKid has really enjoyed using scissors, though she hasn’t gotten the hang of the quite yet.

We’ve been dazzling them up with glitter and stickers (because EcoKid has a mild sticker addiction and no craft is complete without slapping a sticky bit on it…)

List Week, Day Six: In My House

Right now the EcoFamily lives in a three-bedroom apartment in Ankara, Turkey. Our housing is provided by the university. We have a pretty nice place, but we don’t have much say in it. It’s not a bad arrangement, really. Nonetheless, I like to dream about the house we will one day own when we return to Canada permanently.

The following is a list of things I don’t have in our current dwelling that I’d like to have in my future abode:

Thing 1. A composting toilet. What a brilliant idea. Something to turn poop into nourishment for the land instead of toxicity for the water table. I don’t know exactly how they work, but I look forward to figuring it out.

Oh My! Oh My! Oh Sewing Machine!!!

My friend H and I bought this beauty yesterday. It’s a sewing machine. So far, that’s about all I know. It makes stitches. I am giving myself a crash course in sewing.
If I am absent from the blog for weeks on end, you will know that it is because I am [...]