Overthrowing Christmas

I haven't been out shopping, but maybe once or twice during this Christmas season. We are trying to make this season more about being together and celebrating the birth of Christ than about having the most elaborate decorations, extravagant gifts, and an excessive amount of food. Yesterday, I had an opportunity to get out of the house without the kids, so took advantage of that time and drove into town. The traffic was ridiculous, the crowds were out of control and worst yet, everyone was in a fowl mood. I was feeling rather chipper and I wasn’t going to let anyone spoil my time to browse around at the different shops so, when someone pushed, grunted, or snarled at me I smiled and said, “I hope you have a happy Christmas!” My joy was met with several shocked expressions and a few death stares. It reminded me of the year I was working at a home décor store. I was ringing a customer up when I heard someone yell at one of the other employee, “You have ruined my whole Christmas!” As it turned out, she wasn’t going to be able to enjoy her Christmas because our store was sold out of a particular ornament that she wanted.
Is this what Christmas has be come? I think it’s time we all stepped back and took a look around. I doubt there is anything we can do about the traffic or the crowds, but we certainly don’t have to walk around in our self-centered, self-serving bubble bumping into everyone we encounter trying to make Christmas something special. It already is special. All we have to do is enjoy that glory. It’s not too late; join the conspiracy!

IS Foundation

I think most of you know that I am committed to doing my part to help preserve the environment and will support anyone I can in their efforts. That's why I want to encourage you to support the Ian Somerhalder (IS) Foundation. The goal of the IS Foundation to ”…empower, educate, and collaborate with people and projects to positively impact the planet and its creatures.” Today is the official kick off and the foundation is asking for donations. Ideally, they would like for you to donate $32 to help celebrate Ian’s 32nd birthday, but it doesn’t have to be $32. If you are unable to give that much or if you have more to give, you can just click on this link and donate what you can afford. In addition Vampire Support, who’s mission is to “…raise awareness of the Gulf oil spill…” is selling t-shirt and donating the profits to the IS Foundation. The shirts feature one vampire biting a bunny with the words human rights activist and another vampire biting a human with the words animal rights activist. You can check out the design and purchase a t-shirt here. I hope that you will consider donating to this worthy cause, I know I will.

Green Gift Monday

Now that Black Friday is over it's time to focus on Cyber Monday. Five years ago Cyber Monday became the biggest on-line shopping day of the year. The Nature Conservatory wants to turn Cyber Monday into Green Gift Monday. The goal here is to give green gifts this holiday season.

The Daily Green has some great green gift ideas for everyone on your shopping list. I especially like their eleven ideas for not giving 'stuff.' I for one would love a volunteer vacation or a year of farm fresh produce. Treehugger also offers up some great ideas ranging from organic baby toys to recycled dog beds. If you really feel that you have to have a gift wrapped and placed under the tree Why Go Ecotourism offers eco friendly polar fleece blankets and reusable grocery shopping bags as gifts that can be given year round.

For those of you that like to send flowers why not send an organic bouquet this year. Or if you'd rather, Fiddler's Green Farm offers organic gift baskets at very reasonable prices. Of course you're going to need Christmas cards so why not buy your cards from Pear Tree. They have a variety of green holiday cards to choose from.

Don't forget that all that wrapping paper is only going to end up in a land fill unless you try out some more creative ideas. You can make the wrapping a part of the gift. Why not use a scarf or towels instead of paper or maybe give a tea pot with a gift card inside to that chef who has everything. If you are a die hard traditionalist the Green Field Paper Company offers 100% recycled wrapping paper. Have a very green Christmas!

give more; spend less

Today is Advent Sunday. This is a season that we, as Christians, prepare for the coming of Jesus. I want this season to be about more than running around to parties, fighting the traffic and getting the right gift. In preperation our family went and served Thanksgiving lunch downtown at Brownstone's Free Thanksgiving Dinner. It felt good to be take a small amount of our time and help out those who are under resourced.

Last year our church introduced us to The Advent Conspiracy.
The AC encourages congregations to, "think of meaningful acts of kindness as meaningful gift options to replace traditional gifts." This grassroots movement also supports Living Water International. LWI is addressing the world's water crisis in Ethiopia, Brazil, Haiti, and Mexico just to name a few places.

Another organization that has recently entered the scene in the Ian Somerhalder Foundation. They want to, "empower, educate and collaborate with people and projects to positively impact the planet and its creatures." Vampire Support has teamed up with the IS Foundation and is selling t-shirts where, "All profits made will go directly to the IS Foundation. [The foundation] will set aside the money from the shirts for projects with The National Wildlife Federation and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean up efforts."

If you are interested in supporting an organization that's goal is to end poverty and hunger, you may want to give to Heifer International. We had the opportunity to tour Heifer International's green office in Little Rock, AR several years ago. HI believes that they can't end world hunger without also saving the earth. Their philosophy is offer a long term solutions by empowering those in poverty and encouraging them to pass along their knowledge and the off spring of their animal to others is their community.

Rice and Bean Ministry is trying to feed 500 families for a month. It takes approximately 100 to feed each family. I know Fred and his team would appreciate your support. They are, of course, trying to feed families all year around in Costa Rica. It only cost $10 dollars to buy a bag a food to feed a family for a week.

If you are ready to give more and spend less (two of the AC founding principles) I encourage you to consider giving some of what you would normal spend on Christmas gift to one of these worthwhile causes.

Bullying is an epidemic

Who are the people that have most impacted you life? A teacher? Your parents? An author? Friends? Did those influential people affect your life positively or negatively?

At some point we realize that we don’t make ourselves; we are shaped. We are who we are because of other people. Hopefully, by people who have made sacrifices, people who have been present in our lives and not by those whose impact has had an adverse effect.

Bullying has harmful effects. It is a topic that has been receiving a lot of air time lately, but it is not a new problem. Bullying affects thousands of children every day, bringing some to the point of suicide. I was bullied as a child. It started out as verbal abuse by the popular girls when we moved from the South to culturally different region of the US. I was in 6th grade. The bullying persisted for the three years that we lived there, becoming more aggressive as time passed. I can recall being bombarded by water balloons on the way home my last day of school.

But I was lucky, once home, I was safe inside my house. That is not the case with children today. They are bombarded through cyber bullying. Due to the growing role of technology in our lives it stands to reason that the harassment these children are receiving at school would follow them through texting and onto social networks.

If you or someone you know is being bullied there are a few thing you can do. Most importantly don't get physical with those bullying you. If you let them know that what they are doing is affecting you it will fuel their cause. If possible walk away. It is going to be important that you take charge of you life and who you are. You may need to talk to a counselor, friend or parent about your feelings. Also, you need to find out who your true friends are, and stick together. There is a campaign called Stop Bullying Now that offers information for both parents and children. I urge you to read this information and become aware of how we can overcome this epidemic.

Distracted Driving

I have a friend that was seriously injured in this car accident recently because, the other driver (that ran a red light and plowed into my friends truck) was texting. Just weeks before that, it could have been me that cause that wreck. Yes, I am guilty of texting while driving, I admit it. I don't even have a good excuse, because the reality is, there is no reason that anyone should text and drive.

I read an article that reported that 81 percent of people in the US admit to texting while driving in their vehicle. Did you know that there are only eight states that prohibit using handheld devices while driving? Only seven are primary enforcement laws, which means that the police can pull you over without there being another traffic offence. Twenty eight states prohibit novice drivers from using cell phones while 30 stats ban texting while operating a mother vehicle.

Until the law catches up with technology, it has to be our responsibility to say no to text messaging while driving. While I'm not a huge Oprah fan, I am aware that she is against distracted driving. In fact, she has a pledge that you can sign that says you won't text and drive. I've agreed not to text and drive, won't you?

What You're Really Eating

I've talked about how important it is to buy locally and eat seasonally. Neither of which are very easy things to do when we are so used to getting what we want when we want it. So yes, I buy produce at the grocery store, all of the time.

Now if I'm eating my own fruits and veggies I know I can just rinse them off and they're safe. If I buy from my local farmers market I can just ask the guys I'm buying from if they use any pesticides. Of course I won't buy from them if they're using anything stronger than compost tea. But what about the lettuce I get at the Corner Market?

Did you know that there are pesticides that are actually absorbed by the plant? Systemic pesticides circulate through the plants tissues. The idea is to increase food production by killing the insects that feed on the plant, but unlike traditional pesticides, you can't wash off the residue because it's in the plant's tissues. These chemical are absorbed by the plant and poison all of the plant including the pollen and nectar of the flowers. The butterflies and bees that pollinate these plants are in turn poisoned. Imagine how this affects our entire ecosystem. After a good soaking with these pesticides, this poison is not only eking its way into the tomatoes you’re planning on putting in your salad, it’s in the soil. Now imagine that it rains, those poisons are being washed into our public water supplies and our streams where they are contaminating the fish and other sea food that we eat. Pesticides are poisonous! The most notable case would have been the Bhopal, India disaster in 1984. I realize that may be an extreme example, but people are poisoned by pesticides every year.

There are alternatives to buying contaminated produce. You can purchase organic produce and you don’t even have to search out a speciality health food store anymore. Organic fruits and vegetables are offered at most grocery stores, in fact, I’ve seen them at that big superstore that we invariability run to every week for some necessity. However, you may need to ask for organic fruits and vegetables if they are not currently being offered in you local grocery store.

Another option for avoiding contaminated produce is to support organizations that are trying to protect the health of people and the environment. One such group is the Northwest Coalition of Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP). Supporting organizations like the NCAP is a great way that we can help make pesticide use nothing but a bad memory.

If you want to read more about systemic pesticides you can find an article in the October/November 2010 issue of Mother Earth News .

FEMA moving at government speed

In August of 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Three years later FEMA's trailers still sit in Hope, Arkansas. Now there's government bureaucracy at work.

Why Recycle?

If you've ever wondered why you should recycle

or thought, "what's the use it's just one aluminum can"

then please read the following.

Each of us uses approximately one 100-foot-tall Douglas fir tree in paper and wood products per year.
To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
If you recycle a 4 foot stack of newspaper you will save a 40 foot tree.
If only 100,000 people stopped their junk, mail, we could save up to 150,000 trees annually. If a million people did this, we could save up to a million and a half trees.
Recycled paper can also be made into paper towels,construction products, notebook paper, envelopes, copy paper and other paper products, as well as boxes, hydro-mulch, molded packaging, compost, and even kitty litter.

Lighting consumes up to 34 percent of electricity in the United States.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs are an energy-saving alternative to incandescent bulbs. CFL's produce the same amount of light, use one third of the electricity, and last up to ten times as long. If every household replaced its most often-used incandescent light bulbs with CFLs, electricity use for lighting could be cut in half.

About 75 percent of the water we use in our homes is used in the bathroom.If just 1% of American homes replaced an older toilet with a new Water Sense labeled toilet, the country would save more than 38 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. That's enough electricity to supply more than 43,000 households for one month.

The average bathroom faucet flows at a rate of two gallons per minute. Turning off the tap while brushing your teeth in the morning and at bedtime can save up to 8 gallons of water per day, which equals 240 gallons a month. A full bath tub requires about 70 gallons of water, while taking a five-minute shower uses only 10 to 25 gallons.

Americans throw away enough glass bottles and jars every two weeks to fill the 1.350-foot towers of the former World Trade Center. Glass never wears out, it can be recycled forever. We save over a ton of resources for every ton of glass recycled.

Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap Texas. Americans go through 2.5 million plastic bottles every year. If every American household recycled just one out of every ten plastic bottles they used, we’d keep 200million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year.

Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours. An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now.


I hope I've convince you to start recycling. Remember you can make a difference.

Being Green

There was a time that the three R's were readin', riting' and rithmatic, but those time have long since past. Do you know what the three R's are now? Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. We are told to Reduce the amount and toxicity of trash we discard, reuse containers and products; repair what is broken or give it to someone who can repair it, and to recycle as much as possible, which includes buying products with recycled content. Being green is big business. Not that I'm complaining, I think we need to be more aware of the way we treat mother earth. I just hate that it cost us to be earth conscious. We have moved around over the past several years and I can tell you some states/communities are much more conscious (or should I say they are more green) than other places.




One thing that's really easy is to use cloth bags instead of plastic or even paper when you go to the store. I workied at a home decor store and was sickened at the amount of packaging required to ship merchandise. Trust me when I tell you that that company did not recycle. Each week they received 300 + boxes of merchandise wrapped in plastic and styrofoam.

I think composting is another way to to decrease the amount of garbage and it helps out your backyard garden too. My parents gave me this counter top compost keeper that has a filter in the top that keeps the stench out.

Does you community have curbside routing?

Go check out the World Environmental Organization here to learn how you can reuse different household items.

What are you doing to help out the environment?

Please Buy Local

If your not up for the 100 foot diet challenge

Stop by your local farmer's market

Or the stand on the side of the road

But, make sure you ask them where they are getting their produce.

Some vendors get their food from whole sellers, which mean you have no idea where that produce is coming from.

Genetically Modified/Engineered Foods

Are you aware that many of the foods you buy every week have been genetically modified?

Do you even know what that means?

Plants have been genetically modified in the laboratory to enhance the desired traits. This was traditionally done through breeding, but conventional plant breeding methods can be very time consuming and are often not very accurate. Whereas genetic engineering can create plants with the exact desired trait very rapidly and with great accuracy. Not only can genes be transferred from one plant to another, but genes from non-plant organisms also can be used.

Now having drought resistant, herbicide tolerance, and pest resistant crop does have it's advantages. But I think it's important to look at some of the disadvantages too. I am mainly concerned about the human aspect. One big concern is the unexpected allergic reactions that can occur especially in children. There really aren't many studies but there are several papers that tell about the monarch butterfly and the rats eating GM potatoes that I encourage you to read. If you are still not concerned about the risk go here.

I have a few updates on what's going on with your food from some fellow blogger that you might find interesting.

Anne over at Twice Bloomed Wisteria talked about her bees and GM corn, you might want to stop by and see what she has to say.

Also, Tocco from Coffee, Coffee, Coffee just posted about how "leading U.S. sugar providers have announced they will be sourcing their sugar from genetically engineered sugar beets" If you stop by to see Tocco she has also provided a link to sign a letter if you don't want genetically modified sugar.


I recently read that the Arkansas rice farmers have filed a law suit against Riceland. The lawsuit claims Riceland knowingly withheld information from Arkansas rice farmers that one of the company's genetically modified strains had mixed with their crop in 2006. The mixture led to major international rice customers rejecting the crop because of strict policies against such foods.

On a happier note, at Life in the Lost World Jayedee informed us all that the Clabbergirl family of products have come out and clearly stated that they will put no genetically modified corn in their product. Clearly our voices can be heard.

Made in the U.S.A.

I want you to go around your house and look at the tags on your furniture, home decor, children's toys and clothes. Where are they made? I took a trip around my house after reading this article. I found that the majority of things in our house come from China. It made me want to cry.

I used to work at a home decor store. As I unpacked boxes, I found two very disheartening things in common:

1)everything was made poorly and

2)everything was made in another country. Of course 95% was made in China. Remember them? I also found that the amount of packaging with Styrofoam and plastic is in an abundance. I won't go into the fact that I saw WALL-E yesterday and I believe we are going to bury ourselves in packaging. I'll save that for another post.

Back to China, they poisoned our small children with their poor craftsmanship of toys. Surely you haven't forgotten the recalls, but the good ole USA companies are still outsourcing. Not only to China, but to India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam to name a few. And it's worst than that, watch this YouTube clip.

If you're not upset by the state of our economy and watching friends and family members get laid off doesn't bother you, then you might want to look at what your putting into you very own body. I realize you have seen the benefits of genetically engineered foods, but that's not the whole story. Anne over at Twice Bloomed Wisteria has told us all about how the genetically modified corn effects the bees and your honey. You might want to read this article and decide if you want to eat the food others are growing. Also, there's a book that discusses the way we eat called Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer, Jim Mason.

Jayedee over at Life in the Lost World turned me onto the 100 Foot Diet Challenge. It is really very interesting. It doesn't take that much room to grow a few veggies and fruits for your family, Hell, I'm doing it and I haven't got a clue, but you've seen how much were getting from an 8 by 30 foot piece of land. This is only our second year to have a garden and we're feeding more than our family with what we're growing. This year my goal is to learn to can!

I know that this is pretty scary stuff, but I don't think I can sit back and ignore what's going on around me. If the outsourcing of jobs does effect you and if our food is being shipped in, out of season, from half way around the world doesn't bother you and if we buy it with out asking questions we are contributing to the problem.

If you can't grow anything please buy local and try to buy made in the U.S.A. Also, you should check out this Wall Street Journal article on 50 Things being Blamed on Rising Oil Prices.