Recycling is one of the easiest ways I turned my kitchen green.  Since style is important to me, I purchased a large wicker basket that could hold a week’s worth of recyclable plastics, glass, and metal.  Our county only recycles plastics that they can resell to container makers, so many items that are #1 and #2 plastics are not recyclable.  One of my recycling pet peeves is that our county and neighboring counties do not recycle #5 plastics, which are what many dairy and yogurt containers are made from.   As Treehugger.com points out, “The essence of recycling is the cyclical movement of materials through the system, eliminating waste and the need to extract more virgin materials.”   I love my morning snack of yogurt and fruit and I also love hummus (another #5 plastic), but the fact that our county does not recycle #5 plastics meant that I was contributing to the problem.  So I visited our local grocery store and obtained a recipe for homemade yogurt from one of the chefs on staff.  Once home I boiled a gallon of milk and got started.

As I found out, a gallon of milk makes more yogurt than I can eat in a week, which meant that I whipped up some green gifts of yogurt for my neighbors.   I also tried several different hummus recipes, and after three attempts have found just the right taste.  Here’s the recipe for my homemade hummus:

2 cloves garlic

1/4 cup lemmon juice

1/4 cup water

14 oz. garbanzo beans

1/2 cup tahini (buy a good quality brand for improved taste)

salt to taste

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When I decided to go green, I introduced changes day by day. One tip that I’d either read or had been suggested to me by a green friend was to unplug electrical items around the house. When I realized how little my husband and I actually used our land line and the energy absorbing answering machine (our only house calls were from telemarketers), we unplugged the answering machine and made plans to cancel our land line.

A friend then informed me that bees are disappearing and were unable to fly. Her explanation for the dying bees and my solution to canceling the energy sucking landline: cell phones. Well according to a source on Treehugger.com’s Food and Health blog, the problem isn’t as severe as I’d been told. In fact, Treehugger says the dying bees are more victim of the media than anything else (why doesn’t that surprise me?). Click here to read more.

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Before my beautiful angel arrived nearly 6 months ago, I loved photographing flowers. Of course now, I cannot take enough photographs of her. Here are a few tips on taking good photos from little birds.

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One of my favorite green designers is Danny Seo. His book Simply Green: Giving is full of simple tips for giving beautiful and often secondhand or earth friendly gifts. For the last eight years of my life, I remember feeling uncomfortable when the holidays rolled around and many a gift was being given and unwrapped. So much paper was wasted, all on top of the excess of material goods consumed. I like green giving because it reduces waste, reuses materials, and can even be a more direct way of giving what people often need and want. Here are a few items I made using Simply Green: Giving or my own inventive design (the bottlecap picture frame for my nephew’s first birthday).

A Housewarming Box

A good friend and neighbor just returned from a stint in California. Inspired by Danny Seo, I lined a wooden (and reusable bathroom box) with a shower curtain and filled it with odds and ends needed around a new home: a phone book, scented candles, room spray, bathroom towels, and a hanging plaque to keep spirits high.

Cigar Box Sweets: Organic Treats in a Romeo y Julieta box

Also from Danny Seo, this is Romeo y Julieta cigar box full of organic chocolate chip cookies that I whipped up for my sister and her husband’s renewal of vows ceremony. Apparently my brother-in-law ate the whole batch of cookies in one sitting.

Bottle Cap Frame and Star Spangled Paper Bag Wrapping

Meanwhile, I collected bottle caps from fruit nectar bottles and brainstormed a way to reuse the caps. After purchasing an unfinished frame and pre-painted airplane, I put together this picture frame to celebrate my nephew’s first birthday.

Potpourri Box

And last but certainly not least, I decoupaged a cigar box with sunflower craft paper, filled the cedar sweet box with potpourri, and included a paper weight as a thank you gift to my mother for offering us her king sized bed on our last visit to New England. She can use this potpourri box in her office to freshen up when guests visit.

More Green Gifts Ideas

Treehugger.com details more than ten different ways to green your gifts.  Two of my favorite green gifts include consumable gifts (chocolate chip cookies or organic fruit) and microloans like Kiva, which a friend gave to me for my baby shower.   Click here.

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One of the first green lifestyle choices I made was switching from disposable landfill diapers to flushable, earth friendly G-Diapers.

Here is an old post from my other blog detailing G-Diapers and how I use them. Surprisingly, Annabelle’s gramma is a big fan of them too and was eager to give it a whirl when she babysat for A-baby a few weekends ago. Oh, and many a post on A-baby’s blog is written in what could be her voice:

G Diapers. That means, Green diapers. Mommy discovered these awesome flushable diapers that put poop where it goes–in the toilet! All I have to do is pee and poop, and then Mommy pulls an inserted pad out of my G-Diaper cover, tears it, swishes it with a wand, lets the filling fall into the toilet and then flushes it away (in 2 flushes). Pretty simple, but it takes some getting used to. Mommy overflowed our toilet one time, which actually turned out to be a good thing for her. Our upstairs neighbor Donna was visiting when it happened and was able to keep me entertained while Mommy cleaned up the floor. Now, Donna wants to visit Mom and me every Thursday so that Mommy can get some chores around the house done. So, all around, these G Diapers have been great. Plus I look really cute in them. If you have questions about them, e-mail Mommy, ok?

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