Green SAHM

Technorati Tags: wordless wednesday

I’ve been having fun reading on a lot of blog posts about Halloween. Everyone has an opinion. Of course a lot of green bloggers talk about options to make Halloween greener, including the treats.

I have to admit that the Halloween candy is not one area where I’ve concerned myself with whether or not it’s green enough. Organic candies frankly are generally out of my price range for handing out, and I haven’t really seen any locally that would be good for trick or treaters, so I got the usual selection.

I think the biggest challenge to offering anything other than candy, as many suggest, is finding something that appeals to boys and girls, toddlers, elementary school age kids and older kids still wandering the neighborhood trick or treating. It takes a pretty good range of stuff, and non-candy treats often cost more. Just doesn’t really work on my budget.

But I am having fun creating my son’s costume. The fires slowed me down quite a bit, as I spent several days watching the news too intently to even think of grabbing the costume to keep my hands busy. So I’m a little behind but I hope to catch up tonight. I’m hoping to finish my creation of the spikes for his dragon costume. Might even get my husband to rebend the butterfly wings into dragon wings and lightly repaint them. With the paint and all, making it at home is probably not all that green, but it sure is fun and there’s something to be said for the expression of creativity over buying off the rack.

But I do intend to have my kids reuse old buckets or use a pillowcase or other bag we have around the house for trick or treating. The pillowcase is all I ever used and it works really well. Lots of room for candy. I think we even have some smaller cloth bags the kids can use so they don’t have to worry about tripping over them.

Halloween is definitely one of those holidays where I struggle with green. It’s a little tricky to do well at times like this, although I do make sure that decorations and costumes are things that can be reused. Good thing my kids love playing dressup.

Technorati Tags: green halloween, halloween candy, halloween costume

It’s taken me a few days back home to really get back into the blogging groove. I was fortunate enough to have my mother’s house to evacuate to, but living in a house with 11 other people is not exactly what I would call restful. Add in a rather large number of dogs, and things were pretty crazy over there.

But things are calmer now in my area. My home did not burn. My sister’s home did not burn, although the fire came very, very close. My in-laws home did not burn. My mother’s home didn’t even get an advisory evacuation because it was so far from the flames, thank goodness. We were all extremely fortunate.

But of course the air has been simply terrible, so bad the kids aren’t supposed to play outside. And I now know a lot about where my house leaks - that’s where the ash came in. The front door leak was no surprise, and seeing which windows leaked more or less was educational.

But of course the environmental impact is there. The ashes contain whatever chemicals were in the homes that burned. You know how bad that can be. And if this post on Green Options has it right, this could be something of a cycle building, due to global warming.

I know a lot of people have trouble associating global warming with increased risk of fires. It’s not that things get warmer that causes the fires, folks. It’s that the cycles of drought and rain become more extreme. More brush grows when it’s wet, and it gets drier and drier, easier to burn as droughts extend. Hence, more large fires when fires happen.

We’ve been in quite a drought of late. They were already talking about conserving water supplies and how we’ve been tapping into reserves before this; I fully expect this talk to get very serious now, especially if we have yet another dry winter. That will probably be another impact of the fires. I’ve been wondering how much of our water supply was used up fighting it.

One of my hopes is that more homeowners will think about what they plant after this. In a place like this, drought resistant plants are a must. If it’s not too easily burned, so much the better. There are plenty of plants that do grow pretty well out here without constant watering. Some are quite pretty.

Now I’m just sitting indoors at home, hoping that the spot showers that have happened elsewhere will happen in more places (especially anyplace still burning) and help to clean the air a little. I really do look forward to being able to let my kids play outside freely again. You know how crazy kids get when they’ve been mostly cooped up.

Technorati Tags: california fires, environment, global warming, california wildfires, fires

I won’t be posting much on this blog for a few days. I had to evacuate due to the fires in San Diego county. I’m fine, my family is fine, we’re staying with my mother and safe so far.

Rather than post on here, I’ll be posting updates on my blog at HomeWithTheKids.com.

I’ve seen a bit of talk around other green blogs on the new report in Forbes Magazine on which states are green. California, where I live, had rather disappointing results, being at #14.

They used six criteria, including carbon emissions per capita, air quality, water quality and policies.

The results can be surprising. The states that are greenest are not necessarily the ones you would expect. Oregon and Washington being in the top 3 is scarcely a surprise from what I know of those states. But Vermont came out #1. Even New Jersey and New York came out greener than California, which is certainly not how people think of those states.

California took big hits on air quality due to certain areas having relatively poor air quality, despite that California on the whole has great policies for the environment.

Technorati Tags: green states, air quality, california