Monthly Archives: October 2007

I Gave in on My Daughter’s Halloween Costume

Sometimes you just run out of options, and so for the first time my daughter’s Halloween costume was bought from a store.

She wanted to be Cinderella this year. I’m sure it would be possible to get a pattern for it and sew one at home, but I’m not so sure that my sewing skills are up to that level. Couldn’t find one at the local thrift shops either. I was hoping I could at least go used rather than new, after all.

I even tried to talk her into a “Cinderella in rags” costume since that would allow for a bit more creativity. No go. So we have the basic, store-bought Cinderella dress.

My son is even more challenging. He wants to be a blue dragon. Yes, we have finally come up with a costume idea he likes. My husband has made wings before, so that won’t be too impossible. I can even stitch together a very basic tail. And of course there aren’t any such costumes that we can find to buy anywhere.

I guess I will have to pull out the sewing machine I recently inherited from my Grandma. At least that means it will go faster than my previous, handsewn Halloween costume tidbits. There’s a reason why I always kept them simple in the past.

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A Natural Beauty?

I’m not much into makeup and the like. A lot of it comes from my own trust that I look all right with or without, combined with a dislike for using chemicals on myself unnecessarily.

But there are a lot of products out there that claim to be natural or organic. The challenge is figuring out who really means it.

Green Options had a really great post on this topic a while ago, going into the things you want to look out for when you check the ingredients. Many people who want organic or natural products would prefer to avoid parabens, SLS and similar chemicals in their personal care products. But they aren’t too easy to avoid. Cosmetic Database has a Skin Deep section that covers the potential hazards present in a wide variety of products, and looks to be quite useful.

Out of curiosity I checked their listings for Arbonne products, as a friend of mine has recently started selling these, and is quite delighted with them. They come out reasonably well, I suppose, although most of their line are in the middle, yellow range, with a few in the green range and only one, old, formulation in the red zone.

This was better than Neutrogena, which while it had a number of products in the red zone, still had more than 3/4 of its products in the green and yellow zone. So really not as much better as one might hope in terms of what Skin Deep rates them.

This is a great site to check out if you’re wondering about the safety of some of the products you use.

I do have to share one of my favorite natural products – jojoba oil. I have very long hair, and it’s wonderful for that. Just a little on the ends really does wonderfully.

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How Do You Light Up Your Holidays?

The holiday season can be a tricky time to think green. There are so many traditions that really have a lot more to do with consuming than reducing, reusing or recycling. It can be pretty tough to get past that.

One of the most obvious things to do is to come to an agreement with your loved ones on limits for the holidays. This can be difficult if you have children, since they see what their friends get, but it’s not entirely impossible.

But it’s also a good idea to think about what you use to decorate your home.

The Christmas tree is an obvious place for many people to start. There are a lot of options with these: a living tree you can plant after Christmas, a reusable artificial tree (but what is it made of?), or making sure your tree is properly recycled after Christmas.

Then come the lights. Traditional incandescent Christmas lights actually use quite a bit of electricity. LED mini lights and other Christmas lights are now pretty readily available. They last many times longer than incandescents and use .072 watts per bulb, making them 80% or even more efficient than incandescents. They’re a really good option if you want to replace your current lights.

These strike me as a good option when it comes time to replace old Christmas lights. I like being green, but there are still ways you can enjoy special times while thinking about how you are treating the Earth. If you combine using more efficient lights with really thinking about how much you have them on, you can cut back on the extra energy you use in enjoying the holidays.

There are a lot of ways you can think about the environment at this time of year. I’ll be posting throughout the season on this topic.

It’s Blog Action Day

If you read even a few blogs, you may already be aware that today is Blog Action Day. It’s a day for bloggers to post on a given topic to encourage people to take action. And this year’s topic is the environment.

Since I post about the environment regularly, I thought I would share some of these posts with you. There are a lot of great ideas out there from blogs that don’t usually post on environmental topics.

We’ll start off with my home business blog, where I posted Do You Think Green in Your Home Business?

But there are plenty of bloggers sharing really great thoughts:

Blog Action Day – One Day To Discuss The Environment.

Blog Action Day: SEOmoz Goes Carbon Neutral & You Can Too!

Blog Action Day: a Michigan perspective

Blog Action Day: The Environment and WorkLife Culture

Blog Action Day tip: Know your source

The Butterfly Effect and the Environment: How Tiny Actions Can Save the World

Blog Action Day — The Green Home Office

I may post more later, but I have to take my son to his surgeon for his annual followup on an operation he had when he was 3 months old.

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