Monthly Archives: December 2009

Homemade Play Dough – An Easy Last Minute Gift to Make for Your Kids

Kids want so much for Christmas, especially if they watch much television at all. They see all the cool toys out there. But sometimes one of the best gifts  can be one you make yourself.

Homemade play dough is a great choice for kids in the right age group. They love it.

My plan this year is to prepare a couple containers of dry play dough ingredients and have a part of the gift being getting to choose the colors they make while spending time with Mommy. It’s a really inexpensive gift, and the ingredients I need are right on hand. Here’s my recipe:

2-1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
1 tbs cream of tartar (optional but helpful)
1-1/2 cups hot water
3 tbs cooking oil
Food coloring
glitter (optional but pretty)

Mix dry ingredients together. Separate into containers if you want to do multiple colors. Add oil and food coloring to each batch. If you’ve separated colors, estimate the right amount of oil for each. Add hot water slowly and mix until the consistency is right. Too much water makes dough gooey and less fun to play with. But you can always add extra flour to work it out.

We like this recipe because it lasts a long time. Keep it in a sealed container. Refrigeration is helpful.

If you don’t add the glitter this is of course completely nontoxic, which is nice. Especially if you’re like me and have a near toddler to deal with as well as the older children.

What to Do with All Those Christmas and Holiday Cards?

Much as you may try to limit your own use of cards and such at this time of year, you can’t easily stop other people from sending them to you. What do you do with all the kind Christmas and holiday wishes sent by card by loving family members and friends?

For a time, they do make nice decorations. You can hang them around a door frame or have them set up on a table or shelf. But what about after?

I know some people keep them all. But I’m not into cluttering up my life that way.

They can of course be recycled in many areas as well.

But I like to give them a little bit of reuse before they hit the recycle bin. I have kids, after all, and they love to do crafts. Cards give them something fun to work with.

Kids are good at coming up with their own ideas, which is nice for temporary use before you send their projects off to the recycle bin… those that the kids don’t want to keep for a time, of course. But you can direct their creativity a little bit as well. There’s a lens on Squidoo with some cute card craft ideas.

Another good use is to send your used cards to St. Jude’s Ranch. They are accepting cards now, and will continue to do so until February 28, 2010 for the current program. They do this many years, so keep it in mind for the future also.

Gift cards can also have the backs cut off, and then they can be reused as gift tags the following year. Just be sure nothing is written on the part you’re reusing.

Are You Ready to Clear Out Some Clutter?

This time of year makes me think of two things. The first is of course how I can do my Christmas shopping efficiently and with buying a minimum of junk. The second is… how do I get rid of the stuff that keeps accumulating?

I don’t feel that I do that badly overall, but still stuff that I no longer need manages to hang around.

I like thinking about how to get rid of things at this time of year also because it’s a good lesson for the kids. Even those times I’m not thinking about what I really don’t need anymore there are the toys they never play with. At this time of year it’s easy to get the kids thinking about less fortunate children.

And so, here are some ways to get the clutter out of your house. How you determine what is clutter is your own problem.

Have a Swap Party

This can work for children’s toys, clothes for people of similar sizes, even rarely used kitchen or garden tools. Just get together with some friends and see who can use the things you don’t really want anymore.

My sisters have even talked about doing this regularly with children’s videos. That way one copy can be enjoyed by many children, and it can always make its way back to the original owner when it’s really wanted.

Send It to the Thrift Store

This is the classic solution, of course. Just call up your favorite charity as soon as you have things boxed up. They’ll haul it away for you and it’s out of your life.

Pay attention to what they will and will not take. Working electronics are one thing. Broken are quite another, for example.

Craigslist and Freecycle

Two different sites, but you can use them with the same goal in mind – to get rid of things you don’t particularly want anymore. If you think you can get some money for it, Craigslist is a good option. If you don’t want money for it, even if you could get some money, try Freecycle.

Plan Regular Vegetarian Meals – Green Step By Step

While not every family is up for going completely vegetarian, most can enjoy the occasional vegetarian meal. Incorporating vegetarian meals into your regular rotation is a great way to cut back on meats, which are much less environmentally friendly as well as less healthy when eaten in the usual American excess.

Decide how you want to go about it. You might try buying a vegetarian cookbook or you can check out vegetarian recipes online.

Think about how often you want to go vegetarian. I try to have any lunches that I’m not eating as leftovers be vegetarian and I also regularly cook vegetarian meals for dinner. For you it might be once a month, once a week, whatever works.

It can take some experimentation to figure out what works well for your family. Some people have a very low tolerance for changing their eating habits and you may have to go more slowly. On the other hand, you may hit upon a well loved vegetarian meal that quickly goes into rotation for your family. Mine loves Sand and Shells, for example.

Eating vegetarian meals gives you a lower environmental impact from that meal, and you’re likely to be eating something healthier as well. You might be surprised at how delicious some of these meals are.

Does Anthropogenic Global Warming vs. Natural Global Warming Matter?

Reading this post about AGW (anthropogenic global warming) skeptics made me smile. I’ve always been frustrated most by people who agree that climate change is happening but feel that humans aren’t causing it and shouldn’t try to do anything about it. The arguments presented very much mirror my own feelings on the matter, especially:

Even if you deny that GW is man-made, how is this an excuse for inaction? Using the same rationale, would the commenter refuse to put out the fire in his house simply because it was hit by lighting – not a man-made fire?

So often people mistake disbelieving in the causes or existence of climate change as a reason to ignore all environmental issues. That the issues are far more complex than what the cause is seems to escape a lot of people.

Pollution matters.

Even if one doesn’t care about the possibility of climate change, pollution should be a concern. That’s the garbage patch in the Pacific, for example. It’s the litter you see every day on the street. It’s the gunk contaminating our air that comes from cars, burning coal and so forth. It’s the runoff from chemical fertilizers causing dead zones in the ocean.

Limited resources matter.

This is another one some people just have trouble with. Even our oceans aren’t infinite. Our resources aren’t infinite. Potable water resources aren’t infinite.

Change means opportunity too.

A lot of people worry about what making the changes that environmentalists talk about mean to the economy. And certainly buying less means that there will be less consumption. But there’s opportunity there too.

Changing to renewable energy presents tremendous opportunity, for example.  Plenty of chances for businesses to make it big.

Finding ways to do just about anything more efficiently is an opportunity too.

Will it be enough? I don’t know enough to say. No one yet knows if improved technology can dig us out of the hole we’ve dug with current and older technology.

Which side to bet on?

Finally, for me it comes down to which side of the equation I’m willing to bet on.I’d love to be wrong about the potential consequences we’re facing. That would be wonderful.

But denying the possibility and then getting that wrong strikes me as the greater risk overall. Being wrong when denying climate change means risking it all, potentially, or pretty near to it.

I’d rather fight the fire than fuss about the cause or if it even exists.