Ways I have GONE GREEN

I wanted to do a post that included all the things I have changed in my life to better the environment. I thought it would be a good way to give others ideas and hopefully you can leave me some MORE ideas in your comments below. I know there is room for improvement in my life. Let's see my list...


We would like to use less plastic packing, everything seems to come in plastic. Rice bags, bread bags, pizza crust, etc.. Why do I HATE plastic so much you may ask??? Because I find it so very wasteful. It's made from crude oil and takes over 100 years to biodegrade. So much plastic ends up blowing around in our trees, gets in our rivers and lakes and ends up in the ocean. This is one of those "REDUCE" things. When recycling isn't good enough in my opinion.

We finally found organic pasta that comes in a cardboard box! I won't buy strawberries that come in the little plastic container anymore. We buy our mushrooms out of the bins at the grocery store. I also buy celery now that doesn't come in a plastic bag. If there is a "better" package option, I buy it. We will probably start going to Whole Foods to buy more things in bulk and make our own bread more often to help cut down on plastic.

This is one of those super easy things that we can all do. It makes me sad when I see people at the grocery store getting 10 plastic bags and thinking to myself, "Those are probably going to go straight into the trash can." We have three really nice grocery bags that seem to always be enough for us every trip to the store. I have the foldable one I use and keep in my purse for all our other shopping.

We still get looked at like we are crazy sometimes. Lots of cashiers are caught off guard when you pull out your own bag. I even do it for tiny items because I want everyone around me to see me with my bag. People NEED to see them and get used to the idea. We also are currently reusing our plastic produce bags week after week. I plan to buy the cloth bags eventually, but the plastic ones are working out fine. It's the same thing as getting a new one every time. They do just as good as a job the second time around. Less plastic, less waste, less need to recycle them and less wasted crude oil. YAY!

This one is more Cody then me. He only uses bar soap now. No more bodywash. I however tried the bar soap thing and hated it. I missed all my suds from my bodywash. I currently have been using the same huge gigantic bottle of bodywash for months. When it is close to running out I plan to start making my own bodywash from bar soap and reusing my big plastic bottle. What to do about all those plastic shampoo bottles though? I've seen shampoo that is actually a bar of soap but haven't tried it yet. My hair is bleached so I need stuff for damaged hair. Any suggestions?

Cody got a straight razor for Christmas. He hasn't actually started using it yet because it has to be sharpened. It's so funny when will tell people about it because they seemed scared for Cody. Like he is going to cut his throat open. This decision was all his. No more plastic razors!!!

We are now using our own homemade laundry detergent. We have been using it for almost 2 months now. Everything seems clean to me. :) It doesn't have a strong scent to it but I suppose we could add more scented oil. We also switched to biodegradable dryer sheets. You can view my blog post about us making our laundry detergent HERE.

Instead of recycling all our glass jars, we reuse them to store our rice, peanuts, spices and other food in. It's way cheaper then going out and buying a bunch of glass jars or canisters. We already paid for them so why not use them?

I am a firm believer that buying bottled water is a joke and a waste of money. We used to do it though. Week after week. We liked that "filtered" water taste just like everyone else. We purchased a PUR water filter for $25 and hooked it up to our faucet. Now we have filtered water when ever we want it and use reusable plastic bottles. Paying for water is silly and wasteful. There are countries that don't even have clean drinking water! :(

We used to go to Starbucks a lot, so it made sense to me to just buy a glass reusable mug from them. I use it everyday when I go to work also. They give you a discount on your coffee if you bring your own mug. All the plastic cups that us coffee addicts drinkers waste everyday is mind boggling! When all we have to do it take our own! You can read my blog post about the coffee mugs HERE.

We recycle tons. Almost everything we use is recyclable. We use so many less trash bags. One bag a week and it's never stuffed full. It's mostly all food waste so in the spring we plan to start composting what we can. We are also switching to biodegradable bags. We don't mind spending more on them because we don't even use that many anyways. :)


One of my things on my 32 Things Before 32 List was to recycle, reuse and reduce MORE.
In a perfect world I would bike everywhere everyday. That may be in my future eventually.
Also buy a Prius. My dream car, complete with bike rack...


Okay, now give me some more ideas please...
This post is part of my MAKE A DIFFERENCE series. View more posts like this one HERE. All the images are mine taken using Instagram.

What I Wore #12

Over the weekend the sun came out and finally melted away some of the snow. I have been dying to take more outfit posts outdoors. It's almost always windy outside all year round making it hard to do so. We took our chances and stopped by our favorite park to snap a few quick photos. I am in love with my mustard yellow jeans! I still don't know if I really like the gray sweater with the yellow. I do however think my owl necklace was perfect. I love him.


Someone had fed this squirrel some peanuts. He was so happy!


Cody always makes me laugh when he takes my photos. What you don't see are all the outtakes.
Most of them are me yelling at him saying,"Take good pictures! They are for the blog!"
He always responds,"I'm not a photographer!"
We just laugh about it and then at least we get some natural smiles if anything.
Below is my Wonder Woman pose...

The squirrel was not amused by our picture taking.

OUTFIT DETAILS
Gray Sweater - Abercrombie, Thrifted $3 | Pants - Old Navy $10 | Necklace - My Work $6
Shoes - Converse One Stars, Target | Black Tank Top - JcPenney $3

Please know that I am a clearance rack / thrift store kind of girl.
I do not have tons of money to invest in a wardrobe.
I do these posts to boost my self confidence and be cute on a budget. ;)
Plus it's fun.

Meet My Furry Friends

Today I am doing a guest post over at B is for Becky! Becky has a great feature on her blog every Friday where she has a blogger share their pet story. When Becky asked me if I wanted to do it I was super excited!! I love my Fur Babies! Here is my whole family below...


Head over to Becky's blog to hear about my pets and how I ended up with so many!
Have a great weekend friends! :)

RECIPE: PIRATE STEW

This was one of our favorite meals before we went vegan.
We realized we could still eat it though by replacing the beef with veggie crumbs! SCORE!

INGREDIENTS:
12oz package of Veggie Crumbs, (this replaces your beef)
1 cup uncooked Brown Rice
3 cups diced Potatoes
1 cup diced Celery
2 cups of sliced Carrots
2 cups canned Kidney Beans
1 tsp of Salt
1/8 tsp of Pepper
1/4 tsp of Chili Powder
1/4 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1 cup Tomato Sauce
3 cups of water

If you want to use a slow cooker instead of a big pot, only use 1/4 cup of rice and 1/2 cup of water.
Layer the ingredients in the slow cooker in the order given above.
Cover. Cook on Low for 6 hours, or until potatoes and rice are cooked.
We cook ours in a huge pot so that we can add more rice and veggies!



This a very filling hearty winter meal! Great for cold days. :)

My Favorite Pins #8

1   I have been looking at a lot of Vegan tattoos on Pinterest :)
2   Love this print. How adorable. We should all hugs trees everyday!
3   I actually started a Walking Dead pin board. I get with-drawls, okay...
4   Zion National Park, beautiful! Hope to go there this year
5   Just funny! I guess even cartoon characters have a thing for Ryan


6   Andrew Lincoln & Walking Dead = PERFECTION
7   I actually want to quit my job so I can dye my hair bright colors!
8   A dolphin and a cat friends? Awwwww
9   Beautiful.
10  I love windmills :)

Can you see all my pins HERE.
Pinterest is so addicting! I love it.

VEGAN FOR 1 YEAR & A GIVEAWAY!

So we did it. Vegan for 1 full year. A year ago we watched the film Forks Over Knives on a whim. Little did we know it was going to change our lives so drastically. It effected our everyday food choices, the products we buy, the way we view the world and our overall well being. Since going Vegan I view life completely differently. I don't feel like I have an empty VOID anymore. I feel like I have a life to live and it's full of things to live for.


The one thing I find frustrating as a Vegan is people always saying to me, "I couldn't do it." OR "I can't do it."
I can't give up Cheese.
I can't give up MEAT.
Etc..etc..

I get it, I understand. The difference for me I think is I watched a film on a complete WHIM and it simply just made sense to me. I didn't have a blogger or a Vegan sit there and tell me I needed to change. It all happened by chance. FATE I guess you could say. :) I ate meat, dairy, and everything else for the first 30 years of my life. The way I look at it is, I am living proof. Don't ever say that you CAN'T do something. You should never underestimate yourself or set yourself up for failure in anything you do in your life. I've lived my life both ways and I gotta say if someone would of gave me the information I know now SOONER, I would of went Vegan years ago.


I will admit that there are side effects to being Vegan. I do however feel like the side effects are different for everyone. My friend Kara who I inspired to go Vegan (woot-woot) has a hard time giving up Twizzlers and Mac N Cheese. (Twizzlers probably are Vegan, but loaded with sugar and chemicals. Which we also do not eat.) Giving up the food from my old life was NOT hard for me. There are so many great meals that imitate meat and dairy products that help you to fight your cravings. Being Vegan to me is not hard. It just seems hard till you try it out yourself.

The main problem for me is being judged by all the HATERS out there. If you follow my blog you may have read about it HERE. I get very emotional over people who DON'T know me at all, criticizing me for my lifestyle. This is not just a diet or food choices, it's the core of my being. It's becomes practical a religion. May sound crazy, but it just happens. I remind myself of the Grinch from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. At the end of the movie when his heart grows like 5 sizes bigger, that's me. Being Vegan has made my heart full of love for life.
It's amazing.

My last side effect would be the sadness I feel over watching all the people around me everyday NOT be Vegan. Sound crazy? You seriously judge the world so differently and it makes you sad when others don't seem to care about the things that you do. Again, this could just be me NOT all Vegans. For me I would love for my family and friends to adapt to my lifestyle. The health benefits is the number one reason. Of course second being animals rights. I want my family to live a long healthy life and being Vegan can help do that.

The way I look at it is, I went my entire life NEVER knowing about Veganism or evening knowing what a Vegan was. No one was around to tell me about it or educate me about the food choices I was making. Now I have the knowledge and the tools and I want to spread awareness. Especially to the people that I love. Like I said above, if I would of know about this years ago I would of changed then. When I watch the videos of how (most) farming is done in this country, it rips my heart out every time. This brings me to my last topic I want to talk about...


In my daily life I know lots of people who LOVE animals. Have many pets of their own, can't stand animals being beaten and abused and just have COMPASSION in general for animals. If any of this is you, I believe from the bottom of my heart that you could be Vegan. All it takes is COMPASSION. I recently have been debating on getting a Vegan tattoo. I lean towards just getting the word compassion tattooed on me instead. It's all about loving all living creatures. I went Vegan for the health benefits after watching Forks Over Knives.


Months later was when I started learning about how abused farm animals are. It's disgusting. How any human being can throw a LIVE baby chicken into a machine that grinds them up I will never understand. My heart aches for those animals that die such painful deaths just to end up on someones plate. I can say that up until last month when I watched Vegucated, I didn't realize how bad the treatment of farm animals is. So needless to say, I'm going into 2013 even STRONGER. I don't like to go into details on my blog posts about animal abuse. I know if you are interested, you will make the decision to research it yourself. In conclusion, for me the word Vegan and compassion have basically the same meaning. I also want to give a shot out to all the awesome Vegetarians out there!!! :) Now let me lighten the mood a bit and move on to my giveaway....


I wanted to celebrate my 1 year anniversary of being Vegan by giving away one of my favorite cookbooks. It's called Happy Herbivore by Lindsay Nixon. She is like a hero to me. She is making being Vegan super easy for people worldwide. Many of the recipes you see here on my blog are from her cookbook. I figured if you won the book for FREE, you would be more likely to try some of these yummy recipes out yourself. (Free is always good.)

How is this giveaway going to work?
Well just leave me a blog comment below just like you always would and also tell me how you follow my blog. :) Simple.
I am using Rafflecopter for this giveaway. Make sure to enter below...
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I hope to offer my readers more personal giveaways like this throughout the year. This book will be purchased by me with my own money. Make sure that you leave me contact information or a link to your blog so I can email you if you end up being the lucky winner! The winner will be drawn on Friday January 25th! GOOD LUCK! :)

(I will ship this this book international!)