Friday, September 19, 2008

Some green talk

Don't know how many of you subscribe / buy Real Simple, but I've been loving their articles on "How to Recycle Anything". Here's the link to September's entry (items starting with the letters A to M). This month's entries are N through Z and I learned a ton! As I've mentioned here before, I'm a bit of a recycling freak...

Did you know that these:


aren't recyclable?! Turns out that goldenrod paper (and dark and fluorescent paper) aren't recyclable because they have hard-to-remove dyes.

Also didn't know that you can just throw envelopes with plastic windows in with your regular office paper - the filters remove the plastic! Same thing w/ spiral bound notebooks (we don't have many of these around the house any more, but it's good for you folks w/ school-aged kids to know!). I used to rip out the plastic part of the envelopes, but no more- there's a few more minutes added to my day :)

Hope their tips help you out too! PS: Did you know that you can recycle used Crocs? Check out the Real Simple site for more info.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

A long time coming...

Hubby and I have waited patiently for 3 years to demolish our driveway and front yard... and we finally did it! Not that we really had a choice - when you have 4+ cars/trucks get stuck in your driveway over the winter, are refused delivery of your propane too many times to keep track (because of your driveway), and you need 4WD to get to the street on a clear day, you get the hint that something needs to be done.

Here's some before pics - the first 2 are from Oct '05 when we first moved in. Don't be smitten by the fall colors - it usually looked like a bunch of overzealous weeds and scrappy trees.


View from the porch

After we had construction done on the inside of the house, the little path that is shown above looked like this (pic from Oct of last year) because we used the front lawn as a place to park while the guys were there:



This big guy stayed with us for about a week and was a constant source of entertainment for Sydney - I think she's loving trucks as much as Nemo these days...


Day 1 brought the falling of all of the trees that were on the left side of our front yard - talk about a change!
The guys also fixed up the back yard (we had some water drainage issues that they kindly tended to - it's amazing what they can do with those trucks!)

Voila! About a week later and this is how we look - we're having the front hydro-seeded on Thursday and then hubby and I can get to the fun stuff. Plants, rock borders, pumpkins... whatever strikes our fancy! The best part of this project is that now we have a parking pad in the front of the house - easy in and easy out. Love it!

PS: Stacy and I are still gathering ideas for the next sew-along, so if you have any please drop us a line! :) Kris

Sunday, September 07, 2008

And the winner is.....

Hi all! We had 15 entries in the Skirt Sew-Along and the winner (using the random number generator) is....

wck

Congratulations! A new copy of Sew U Home Stretch: The Built by Wendy Guide to Sewing Knit Fabrics will be on it's way to you this week!

Wendy actually entered 2 skirts and this entry was the winning selection:
She also wrote up a review of the pattern she used (BWOF 01-2008-127b; Princess Seamed Pencil Skirt) on Pattern Review.com. You can read her excellent review HERE.

Thanks again to everyone who participated! We're planning on starting our next one soon, but need some project ideas. We were thinking of something that could be made for Holiday gifts (a bag? patchwork scarf?). Please submit your ideas to either me or Stacy - can't wait to see what you come up with!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! ~ Kris