Happy Holidays

While unpacking last spring, I ran across this card from my niece whom we lost in 2012 at 12 years old.

I don’t know when she created it for me. It must have been before I got married as there is no mention of anyone but me on the card.

It was as if a quiet whisper of her voice rang through my ears encompassing me in peace and love for that moment. All I could see was her smile.

When I find things like this randomly, I believe she left them for me in that very spot for me to find.

Handmade Harry Potter house

My cousin built this AMAZING Harry Potter house in 8 months from scratch, 80% of it from recycled and repurposed materials–Pringles containers, cardboard boxes, tissue paper, packing materials, small plastic tips off nasal spray. Many of these items he found in his own recycling bin, some out on the curb that folks had put out with the trash.

 

Free teaching tool

By signing up on line and participating in the Recyclebank program that Jamie told me about (thank you Jamie), we get points for recycling every week. By answering surveys on line to learn more about recycling, I can accumulate even more points. The points can be used for various things—to buy items from a refurbished and green-ish store, a magazine subscription, every once in a blue moon a coupon for 10% off groceries at the grocery store, Publix, and lately to park at the beach for $1 all day, just to name a few.

I hadn’t received a magazine subscription in forever. In my opinion, it was something else to read, get rid of and just more waste.

But wait…

After I look through it, I can leave it at the V.A. Hospital for someone else to look through, recycle it, or use it as a teaching tool by cutting the pictures out which I find relaxing.

 

Trying shampoo bars

So, no poo was a big fail. I wrote about that disaster here.
How about shampoo bars?

This is what I found.

 

 

The tree we chose this year

 

The hunt for an environmentally sound tree starring Goldylocks.

Commissary find

My husband sent this little nugget from the commissary on base while in Hawaii. A recycling bin sat beneath this advertisement for bags to be used again.
Kudos to the commissary!

Reusing what you have

Though we planted too early this year in the hot southern sun and everything flowered and bloomed and bloomed and flowered and never produced any food, we did learn a lesson.

So we got a new dishwasher…

I’ve never purchased a dish washer before. We always washed by hand until the last two houses we rented. And then I fell in love with convenience…

The former owners of the house took the dishwasher so we hit the stores on Black Friday this year.

“It’s like Wal-Mart or Target set afloat.”–Eriksen

My mother shared an article with me by Will Dunham from the Sun Sentinel published Thursday, December 18, 2014.

I wanted to pass the article on.
Made me blink twice.

Can’t recycle it? Terracycle it.

Terracycle is yet another resource to help with zero waste for the days when… well, we’re just not so perfect and give in to the chip bag. I know I’ve written about it before, but I tell ya, even through all this moving, it’s one thing I’ve kept up with.

(My dad even keeps all his non-recyclable trash for me and I send his in with mine. Thanks daddy!)

Sorting party in living room.