Sticker In My Craw: DC Metro Moms Post Up

I've been ranting again over at DC Metro Moms, this time about marketing to our captive children via those ubiquitous doctor's office stickers.

Hope you're having a healthy summer!

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Join the Make It From Scratch Blog Carnival

I'll be hosting the Make It From Scratch blog carnival next week (Tuesday), so if you'd like to submit an entry (note that you don't have to cook! it could be anything you make from the basics, my frugal, environmentally conscious, creative friends), shoot it my way before the weekend's over. Heck, for you readers, I'll take 'em on Monday, too, but you'd have to email it to me directly for me to get them. Here's the carnival guidelines:

Share the things you make from scratch. No strict definition of scratch here, use your own judgment. (Only one post per blog per week please!)

I can't tell what I'm posting yet (it's a secret) but the entries already have my mouth watering.

xo
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Eco-Baby Birthday: Edible Flowers

Here's a birthday cake fit for our five year old Girliest of Girls: purple frosting with pink dragee lettering and edible flowers! I broke my April Buy Nothing Challenge when I got some viola seedlings at the farmer's market. But the results were spectacular, our plants are blooming again so I can make more...and I'll teach you how to make candied flowers, too, as penance.

EGirl wanted a chocolate cake with purple frosting. This was easily accomplished with items we had in the house. And by that I mean I scavenged around for what we had, trying not to buy anything, aside from indulging my flower obsession. (I decided that using up what we had trumped fair-trade chocolate issues or the strange verbiage on the India Tree sprinkles website indicating that they were for decoration only despite being glittery and made of 90% sugar, and that the colors I have in my possession are not available for purchase in the health-conscious state of California - WTF?!). We had both cocoa powder and purple frosting tint, the faaancy kind with the most artificial of dyes, in the house from failed prior frosting rose creation efforts. La-la-la-la...that is me blocking out all but making my kid a birthday cake and trying not to waste too many resources.

The coolest part was, of course, the edible flowers! They were super easy. (And no, I don't recommend dropping $40 for 25 flowers.) First, choose a flower to grow (or buy some seedlings like me, just make doubly sure they are organic). Then, whip up some meringue powder (again, you can find this at a highbrow baking store) unless you have your own chickens and have no fear of salmonella. If you are trying to steer clear of raw egg whites then meringue powder or milk are the way to go. Follow the meringue instruction and use it or some milk to moisten your flower. Dip the flower in some superfine sugar. If you are lazy frugal like me, you can just send your sugar through the food processor for a bit. I might recommend using parchment paper instead of foil; ours stuck to the foil which made for difficult flower removal. Anyhoo, put your oven on the lowest heat you can and let the flowers dry for about 20 minutes. They should keep for a bit (tightly covered during this, ant invasion season) in a cool, dark place. Some recipes say they'll keep for up to a year! We candied mostly violas, and a couple chive flowers that had just come out in our window herb boxes (onion cake, anyone?).

Here's a couple recipes for candied flowers and lists of edible flowers for your reference. Maybe for Mother's Day?!

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Buy Nothing Challenge: Sunday Confessions (Part 2)

As Crunchy would say, "Forgive me, people, for I have spent." It has been 13 days since I signed on for the Buy Nothing Challenge and I continue to struggle not to consume.

First, a plea: my kid's birthday is coming up, so if you have eco-friendly ideas for party favors that I can make with the supplies in my house (think a closet-full of random art supplies and scavenged materials befitting a former teacher) I am all ears. I signed up for this challenge with the full awareness that I would be trying to throw a five year-old birthday party without any consumption and I am still game to try.

This week's recap:

Stuff I wanted to buy and didn't:

• I really wanted to go to the beauty salon for any number of reasons. No big loss. I am a ponytail type anyhow.


• I also (corollary thought) wanted to buy a pair of hair scissors to cut my daughter's bangs for her (and stop us from going to the hair salon for her which she'd like to do weekly, if given the option). A good friend offered to lend me some already, so it's a convenience thing. How lazy am I that I don't want to borrow them once a month? Need to do it and stop whining.


• I wanted to buy a birthday present for my daughter's little friend who's celebrating today. When I already had a great gift in the house. Doh! Glad the challenge stopped me from spending and consuming needlessly.


• I'm hankering to buy some compost and organic soil amendments (not to mention delectable little seedlings) for our community garden plot. There is an informal plant swap coming up, though! I am awash in aloe plants so let's hope my wampum will go forth and return me some tomato plants.


• A digital camera. I've been eyeing SLR digital cameras for over a year now. Anyone love theirs (for May purchase, of course)?

Mea Culpa:

• My husband and I went out to a really delightful dinner complete with two frosty cocktails -- and I certainly in no way regretted my Saigon Cinnamon Sugar Dusted Donuts. But I'm sad about my delightful pineapple halibut. Some halibut is sustainably fished and some is not (thanks to my favorite fish guide, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Program, which cross-references food safety concerns like mercury contamination with sustainability issues). I dunno which the restaurant had 'cause I didn't have the info for FishPhone at my fingertips while I ordered. Should have texted for the info! Because Atlantic halibut's overfished and Pacific halibut gets a green light. Which means that either way I made a bad choice. Overfished if local and if sustainable? Shipped across the country. Sigh.


• Then the chocolate dessert: definitely not labeled as fair trade chocolate, although I rationalized by guessing that a shmancy place would use highbrow chocolate, which is sourced from individual farmers and therefore not awash in indentured child labor. Either way, I should have asked about both the fish and chocolate, if just to raise the issues with the chef. Enviro redemption? My plate was scraped so clean there was no dilemma about packaging waste for the nonexistent leftovers.


• Two pictures of CBoy for his passport (no, we are not going anywhere, I just want to get one in case someday we win the lottery and take a carbon-neutral vacation to Costa Rica).


• The sheer mention of the book Calder's Circus in last Sunday's confession sparked not one but two purchases of said used book. One, by a concerned grandmother for her 16 month old grandson, cause he might want to see it any day now and have a sudden rush of reading comprehension. (It came! Thanks, Mom!) ...the other, a purchase by a loyal reader immediately after reading my description of said book. Sigh. At least they were both used copies....


• A tank of gas. Ergghhhh. For all the reasons you'd have.

Lessons:

Planning and time are essential. If I'm going to consume (be it restaurant food or material goods) I need to choose carefully and weigh off relevant manufacturing and sourcing issues. I need to do my homework ahead of time and have resources with me when I'm out and about. I think I need to program FishPhone into my cellphone, and I need to state my concerns while I am purchasing goods and services (or choosing not to) so my wallet speaks. I'm going to go email the restaurant now. And all of my bibliophile friends? We need to start hitting up local used booksales and online bookswapping services. And each other. The book buying desire runs deep.

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Buy Nothing Challenge - Sunday Confessions

As Crunchy would say, "Forgive me, people, for I have spent." It has been 6 days since I signed on for the Buy Nothing Challenge and it's been interesting so far to track what's been most difficult. For about six months, I have been trying to curb our expenditures for a host of reasons so I thought this exercise wouldn't be very different. But it is! It's curious how you can delude yourself. I mean, I thought I was being pretty restrained. But faced with an absolute (Buy Nothing!), I'm getting to see the pattern of my consumption.

I kept track of both things I wanted to buy and didn't and things I went ahead and bought. Some stuff I bought because I decided it was worthy and some stuff I was just careless or weak.

Stuff I wanted to buy and didn't (thanks, Crunchy)!

• A new pair of earbuds for my Shuffle because I really, really love to listen to music while I exercise -- I feel like I get a double endorphin whammy. This one was silly because I knew I had the missing pieces at home (think small child stuffing chewy portion of earbud into his mouth and shrieking in outrage when said item was removed from his mouth - I hid the chokable object a little too well and couldn't find it in the 15-second scramble to get my gym stuff together). Anyways, a mere 6 days ago I would have walked right into the hardware store that's next to the gym and tried to snag another pair. I forced my sulking self not to and you know what? Not only did the earbuds stay in place (for the most part) just through the sheer force of earwax, but 3 days later, I found the missing piece! And, as a friend pointed out, you know we probably have at least one extra pair stashed in our house somewhere. Maybe the non-consumption will also spur organization.
• More sunflower seeds because I gave a bunch away to little friends of ours. Ditto for peat pots to start the sunflowers in. No worries; we have more seeds left than I thought, and we can make newspaper pots to start our seeds.
• Another copy of the (used) book Calder's Circus by Maira Kalman (recommended by Lori from Camp Creek -- thanks so much for the rec!). I gave away ours (before even letting my husband see it! I think he'll last the month, though). You have to check it out, I love the great photos of Calder himself and his curious wire creations and the text itself is pretty magical, worthy even of Susan' Preston's wit). But this can totally wait and is so optional. Except of course my mother is already tracking one down for me which smacks of cheating! Really, I told her I could wait!

Mea Culpa:

• Believe it or not, my sins have predominantly and oddly revolved around coffee. Yet I am a sporadic decaf drinker! Kind of a surprise weakness this past week. I hate the effect caffeine has on me but in my defense I was sleep deprives and had endured, in the past two weeks: 3 trips to the DMV, 2 hour-plus chats with Verizon customer service, 4 trips to the pediatrician and 1 to the Social Security Administration (at which I was given an assigned number, a two hour wait, and a quizzical "I don't think you can get that done here" even though I'd spent many an hour on the phone discussing my desires...) Sent me scurrying around the corner to an Illy coffeeshop. Sigh. As I took the first (admittedly delicious) sip I remembered! Aaaigh! And that was on Day ONE. A mere ten minutes after I'd been daydreaming about how on earth I'm going to pull off my soon-to-be five year old's birthday with no expenditures.
• 2nd coffee expenditure: just this morning, I bought another coffee (long night last night) and a travel thermos/tumbler. I didn't want to use a disposable cup and we don't have a travel mug that's not made of suspect plastic. This one was really cool, made of metal (plastic top, but not inside the stainless steel like lots I've seen. And it has a cool drinkable cap. Still, it was a $20 acquisition. And could I really just skip the caffeine already since I don't like how it affects me?
• I bought eight nuts and bolts from the hardware store to assemble my composter. I'm not too worried about that one. ;)
• I had to pay the plumber to fix a pipe that inexplicably developed a pea-sized hole under the kid's sink. Obvious need.
• The other sins are of the eating-out variety. A friend came in town from Vermont and we went out to a fancy dinner with him (not sorry!) and we went out for bagel sandwiches this morning. Also, I got a pre-made quiche one night for dinner at Whole Foods that was not only egregiously expensive but also egregiously plastic-encased. Almost a clamshell dinner.

Victory of the Week? Getting hand-me-down shin guards for the five year old's first soccer game. I totally didn't think I would pull this off since I didn't realize until the day before that I needed them. But my neighbors rock! A friend with whom I trade kidstuff even scolded me for looking around on the local listserv without checking in with her first!

So, all in all, good lessons:

• I clearly spend more than I admit to myself on a routine basis.
• My first impulse is to buy something (ie earbuds) even if I know I have that thing already if my convenience is affected. Time to develop patience and forbearance.
  
• Food, drink, and gifting are areas I can examine to see if I can accomplish what I want (nourishing, healthy food; tiny caffeine boosts; and communicating love to friends and family) with less consumption/waste.

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Buy Nothing Challenge

Click through if you're game for an exercise in controlling your consumption for the month of April. Crunchy Chicken's at it again! A bunch of bloggers who are fumbling towards a greener life (ok, that's me, lots of them have actually made great strides!) are publicly committing to buying nothing for a whole month. Obviously, food and medicine are fair game (although I think I will try to eat as much as I can from the stores we've got -- and buck up, little immune systems! When I was a kid, we didn't even *have* amoxycillin). I keep talking about trying to stop consuming -- this is just what I need!

xo Read more!

Letting Go and Just Saying No: Eco-Thrift via Organization

Discardia is happening right now -- let's join in! To celebrate Spring, clear out old clutter and ideas and make room for the new: new ideas, new life, new (truer to one's) self.

Discardia is the time to get rid of things that no longer add value to your life, shed bad habits, let go of emotional baggage and generally lighten your load.... One thing you might like to consider is the idea of culminating the Discardian season with a particular act of letting go. For example, on the Discardian new moon you might decide that you won't buy anything or bring anything into your home and that you will instead just enjoy the fact that you have enough. (metagrrl via LifeHacker)

Definitely my kinda holiday. I love how the stars align sometimes to reinforce mutual objectives. In my case, organizing, thrift, and ecological awareness all dance together like elusive plums almost within my grasp. But no guilt here, just excitement at the baby (feotal?) steps I've taken and those I plan to tackle. If you know me IRL, you know that I am about as messy as a person really can be in this universe. I love the creativity that spontaneity can bring, and I won't give it up. I love sacking laundry in favor of a walk in the woods. Yet I also want to honor the side of me that loves structure and order. I truly believe that organization can free you up to be creative. I want, therefore, to fine tune my balance between the two.

Here are some resources I've gathered to help me build structure into my life:

• Getting my mind around valuing what we already have is a key part of my strategy; I find that whenever I organize and purge -- be it toys or clothes or kitchenware -- that I rediscover old favorites. I use what I keep more effectively because I can access it, I remember where it is, and I've consciously chosen to have it. Rotating our toys -- both within our house and among friends and family -- also increases their entertainment value.
  
• No Impact Man recently interviewed BC Professor Juliet Schor, author of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream. As they discussed America's planned obsolescence-based materialistic culture, Schor mused, "If we treated the material as sacred, we might become more spiritual about the way we consume and that might help us solve some of our problems." I like this image. Valuing, even revering the items we choose to keep in our homes. As we've chosen to live in a small space, this resonates with me. With a couple kids, we are at the point that we have to consider our physical surroundings.
  
• This post links basic principles of leading an organized life (acquiring less, purchasing items of high quality so you can use them for longer, trying to use virtual storage/bill-paying, simplifying, saying no to things you don't need, and downsizing by giving away or selling your unused stuff) with a basis for respecting the environment. Reminded me of the great quote by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who, when asked if he wanted a goody bag for his keynote speech at an enviro conference, said, "Thank you, but I have everything I need." (via Treehugger)
• A Parent Hacks post on the Top 20 Tips for Organization, Kid Optimization, and Happiness included the following promising tips: attitude-wise, remembering to be on your kid's "side" when defining a problem with entropy (ie the child is never the problem); creating toy libraries so the next toy to be played with has to be checked out; using timers to easily carve out manageable chunks of time for children (we do this for toy cleanup/tooth brushing with intermittent success and I'd like to build on this); and creating calendars so that even small children can visualize the flow of their days.

In general, I'm finding that to really change our habits, instead of reacting to the chaos, I have to step outside of what I think a house ought to look like. A small example? I work in our living room since our baby sleeps in our former office. But I hadn't adapted to that reality. Now that I've cleared out an entire bookshelf of parenting books (smile) to allow for filing and office organization, every horizontal surface in our living room isn't covered with papers. Another example? Slapping up 5 hooks at my kid's height so that she can hang up her own backpack and coat when she comes in the door. As it turns out, the hooks don't punch holes in the wall by the back door. They don't look strange. What they do is empower my child to take control of her own environment. Today, after hanging up her own coat (and her brother's!), she walked around the house "picking up and organizing" without my asking!

What do you have in mind for this season of lightening your load?


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Chucking Catalogs

About five years ago I compulsively saved every mailing label from every catalog and every solicitation for credit card offers (and every privacy notice from anywhere on earth) and sent back a form letter with our address/data asking to be taken off their mailing list. I'd say a full year of anality resulted in my putting a finger in the dike, or at least giving them some kind of finger. Sad to say, once I had children, there was no time for keeping up my bit part against the onslaught of junk mail. Online ordering? So easy. And thus the catalogs returned....

Happy to say it's super easy to take care of the catalogs now. Go to Catalog Choices -- right now -- and sign up. Then bookmark the site and return in about 3 weeks when you have saved the address labels from a bunch of catalogs. I just removed myself from 28 mailing lists! So satisfying and only 20 minutes.

Now I just have to stop consuming. Because if you identify yourself as a consumer of a company's products, they will, justifiably, market to you. Repeating to self: reduce, reuse, recycle. Local and handmade, baby. Read more!

Beckham Bends Brain

Cockroaches the world over are cheering the carbon creation of LA fuckwit footballer David Beckham and wife Victoria, who have won the dubious honor of the world's most enormous carbon footprint. For the second time.

What's a jet-setting celeb couple to do? Carbon offsets are trendy and lucrative these days, but the Federal Trade Commission's set to study the industry to see if the companies involved are legit (story via NPR). For example, were the companies already going to reduce their carbon emissions anyways to, say, save money, before they double dipped by selling that puppy? Are they selling offsets to multiple bidders? Should the Beckhams consider paring down their fleet of their fifteen cars in addition to turning to professional greenwashers?

Treehugger's got comprehensive advice for carefully offsetting carbon use -- and notes that offsets are not a Get Out of Jail Free card for a planet needing to slam on the brakes of consumption and warming -- plus a wealth of background info, from the climate-neutrality of Syriana to a comparative look at carbon offset entities, non-profit and for-profit alike (via Ecobusinesslinks.

In case you're curious where the presidential candidates stand on Posh's flight plans enviro issues, here, here, and here, are green election guides. Read more!

More Better Bunk

A couple people wrote to tell me they liked yesterday's post about stuff so I thought I would share some particularly compelling writing (not mine, these guys'):

Check out this article as it lays out the anti-consumerism message so eloquently: "Our happiness does not depend on the consumption of conventional economic goods and services, but instead is enhanced when we have more time and space for socializing, for nature, for learning, and for really living instead of just consuming." Yup. When above a certain threshold, of course, which nearly everyone we know is.

Then there's this MoJo article from back in the spring written by Bill McKibben which has an amazing take on our desire to consume from a historical and anthropological standpoint. It hit upon all the nagging questions I had -- doesn't money equate with happiness if you're living in a shack? (yes, but only up to about $10K a year) and don't we need huge industrial farms to feed all the people on the planet? (no, they are actually less productive than small farms using mutually sustainable systems instead of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and he backs it up with large scale research done in developing countries). He also notes that our American psyche developed in the roots of some serious poverty and that the Founders were right to focus on economic growth when our ancestors only had one dress to wear (if they were lucky gals) and no shoes.

McKibben cites research on happiness pointing to more sustainable ways of living (note to self, gotta read this book by a 2003 Nobel Prize-winning economist) -- like the fact that having social networks makes you physically stronger as well as happier (a researcher injected flu viruses in college students' noses to prove this, which is amusing considering, well, the kids who got sick might actually have a word or two to say about how much happier that participant fee made them!), bringing us full circle to the idea that acting in environmentally sound ways being better for us as well as the planet. Going to a farmer's market involves 10x the human interaction aka connections than going to a grocery store.

Even better if you can swing actually going as a family instead of depleting all of your marriage capital for the weekend by leaving the children with your spouse for hours while you fetch said sustainably-produced farm products. Convenience did emerge for a reason, so we could spend more time with our families instead of churning butter.... If we're really hanging out with our peeps (which I guarantee this unit is as much as humanly possible) instead of jumping on the hamster wheel to churn out more duckets, it makes the sustainable food endeavor somewhat like being a Luddite as I tap my computer keys. My Polyface beef bones are in day one of a three-day long simmer into delightful stock as I write, and that whole process, beneficial as it is to the environment (local farmer!) and to our health (grass-fed!) is not without its cost (procuring the food, preparing it=time not focused on those I love). But that's a whole 'nother struggle: enviro-friendly, slow-food savoring vs efficiency and convenience, which doesn't have to instantly translate into the Golden Arches, just less prep more family time). Whew! I'll stop hair-splitting here.

(Couple quick shares: When Santa Turned Green looks so cute and perfect, you should snap it up to put in your kid's Christmas stocking wait until it comes to your local library and borrow it!

For those of you who are following the presidential election lead-up, I've found my fave new source of campaign news: Political Nanny.) Read more!

Stuff It

Like all of us, well, more than many, I've been struggling with organization lately. Trying to keep the flow in our house efficient and pleasant...trying to keep our newly walking child from braining himself on the 18,000 items that are lying on the floor, trying to effectively store stuff from kid one for kid two, trying to keep the hand-me-down cycle well-oiled but not poised to fall on my head when I open the linen closet, and trying to figure out what to get everyone for Christmas (um, more stuff?!).

In that vein, thought you'd enjoy the following:

There's this perfect Gift Guide -- for the 3 and under set. You'll get a chuckle out of it, I promise.

This is an interesting look at how environmentally responsive (paper-wise) the companies inundating us with holiday catalogues are... Victoria's Secret gets a thumbs up and Sears gets a hilarious scolding for being naughty....

The Story of Stuff is a 30 minute (ok, kinda long, and mostly a reminder of what you already know about consumerism, but I liked it) short about trying to change the paradigm of the rape-the-earth, pollute, purchase, chuck out/pollute the earth more, buy more stuff trajectory. It's a simple line-drawing cartoon backing up a woman who's spent 20 years tracking trash. She ends up with exhorting us to try to close the loop, to re-value thrift and conservation, stewardship, to make a sustainable cycle. Did you know that 99% of the stuff people buy in this country ends up thrown out within 6 months? Wowza.

Annie Leonard, the narrator of The Story of Stuff, notes that there was a concerted effort by post-WW2 government officials and companies to spur consumer spending by weaving spending into our personal rituals and rhythms. (Remember Bush telling everyone to spend more after 9/11? It's our response to crisis, our response to celebrating....)

I think this is a fascinating dilemma. Of course it's silly that saying you love your family has come to mean buying them stuff that pollutes the planet that we have no space for. And we all do have lots of stuff, more than any other people on earth (we all know that an American's carbon footprint is gargantuan). So in the absolute, yes, we all have too much.

And yet there are still a few things on your secret wish list, aren't there? They might be expensive or frivolous or silly. But we all know that giving -- or getting -- compact fluorescent bulbs, while utilitarian, ain't gonna win any all-time gift awards. My mom laughed uproariously when I suggested she could get us rechargeable batteries, sigh. And I know more than one person who's been offended when told what to want (ie when they've been given a gift to a charity they didn't choose, or told that they wouldn't be invited to exchange gifts at all anymore for whatever valid reasons).

I think part of this gift-giving dilemma is rooted in the age-old divide between the list-makers and the "surprise me" folks. You know the deal, some people really like gift certificates! You can pick out what you want. They are practical, utilitarian. List makers don't end up with bric a brac that's going to take up prime real estate in already too-small houses. Then there are the creative givers, who often despise the exchange of wampum as defeating the spirit of the endeavor. You know, if you really knew me and loved me you would take notes all year long and I wouldn't have to tell you my secret desire...you would fulfill it. While the list-makers can rightfully point to the efficiency of their method, and the enviro folks can validly point to the insanity of our level of consumption, there's an emotional component to gift-giving and nurturing that we'll all have to wrestle with on our own in order to get this beast under control.

I think for me, gifting aka consuming may be a little like eating at the top of the food chain: something I want to do consciously, with awareness of the costs and drawbacks involved. Buying secondhand, reusing and regifting are all great options, as is buying exactly what someone wants -- even if it's at a premium -- so that they won't be replacing that item anytime soon. I think the long-standing tradition of going with what the receiver would most want is my right choice.

'Cause that is, of course, what the gifting spirit is all about, and perhaps the stuff, as well. Trying to nurture each other, to sustain and build relationships. And we don't all have time and creativity in spades... and some circumstances don't warrant a hand-written copy of a favorite Neruda poem. Or a compact fluorescent bulb for that matter. Some of my relationships would benefit more from hanging out for a weekend and actually spending time remembering what we love about each other. Gifts may just be a substitute for the time we all lack.... Which is why, when grasping for ways to connect, we should open our minds to the full range of options available (some of which don't involve buying stuff at all, some which do) as we try for that smile of surprise, of happiness, that spark of recognition that we get each other. Read more!