When we have babies some day, we don’t have to worry about them taking up permanent residence in our bed. There’s not much room, because we already have a warm little body who sleeps between us.
Her name is Tessa.
She’s an 11 lb. miniature dachshund who undoubtedly thinks she is a human baby. And this is how she sleeps with us. No joke. All cuddled up, on her back, completely passed out.
In the cold winter months, she usually burrows under all of the covers and sleeps curled up next to our legs, but now that it’s too hot under there, she’s back up right in between us. And even after three years with our little “baby,” we still can’t get over the hilariousness.
I have to say, though… she is an excellent cuddler. Top notch.
I suppose this post would have been more timely if I had posted it a few weeks ago (Earth Day!), but I guess there’s really never a bad time to talk about “going green,” is there?
Within the last year or so, I’ve become more and more conscious about “being green.” Thankfully, I live in a county that has always had recycling, so it’s not that I was ever ungreen. But I’ve started to realize that we can definitely do more.
As far as recycling… we have always been extremely diligent about recycling every single thing we possibly can. All paper, cardboard (including cereal boxes, pasta boxes, etc.), packaging, plastics, etc. All of that has always gone out to our blue recycling bins to be taken away by the recycling collectors. The nice thing is that we don’t have to sort. All recyclables go in the same blue bin and for us, there is no fuss.
In addition, we have to pay a $0.05 deposit on soda and beer cans/bottles, so we’ve always recycled those, too. We have to return them to recycling centers at our local grocery stores to get our $0.05 deposits back! The $0.05 on every can and bottle really adds up over time, so it’s so worth it to return them–not only is it green in terms of the environment, but it results in a bit more green for your wallet, too!
When we moved into our house in 2005, we installed a programmable thermostat right away. In the winter, we keep it at 68 degrees when we’re at home, but drop it down to 56 (yes, 56!) when we are in bed (under our nice, fluffy, cozy, completely warm down comforter), and also while we are gone to work. The thermostat timer bumps it back up to 68 degrees about a 1/2 hour before we wake up, and again 1/2 hour before we come home from work, so we are never freezing waiting for the temperatures to come back up.
In the summer, we do the same for the air conditioning–keep it at 78-80 degrees when we’re at home, but let it get up to 85 degrees while we’re at work. I’ll admit that the main reason we installed the programmable thermostat was for money savings, but it’s certainly good for the environment as well.
OK, so those are things we’ve been doing for years. Now onto the changes we’ve made more recently.
We have started using reusable bags almost exclusively–for groceries, trips to Target, BJ’s, etc. We have four of them, and it is the perfect number for my weekly grocery trips. The groceries for the two of us always manage to fit inside the four bags (aside from gallons of milk, bags of apples, cartons of soda, etc. which we never bag anyway). We bought the reusable bags probably a year ago now, but we weren’t always great about using them. We’ve recently become really committed to it, and I feel great about that–especially after seeing a special on TV about how horrible plastic bags are for the Earth. I was actually quite horrified by it, to be honest.
Related to the plastic grocery bags… for several months now, we’ve been buying biodegradable bags to clean up after Tessa outside. I know, I know! Paying for bags to pick up poop with! It sounds crazy, but we have to use SO MANY bags for this. Previously, we were using the plastic grocery bags we collected, or the plastic bags that our newspapers come in. But again, I learned how absolutely horrible those are for the environment, so we wanted to stop using them. Not only that, but with the reusable grocery bags, we don’t even have enough of them on hand anymore to do the dirty job.
Since we live in a complex and we don’t technically have our own yard, we are required to pick up after Tess immediately after she goes–every time. We don’t have the choice to conserve bags by only doing the clean-up every couple of days. SO we’re doing what we can by using the biodegradable bags.
Currently, I’m on the hunt to “green” our lunches. We already use reusable lunch bags, but we are still guilty of using ziploc bags for sandwiches, baby carrots, grapes, chips/crackers, etc. This week, I’ve been researching reusable containers for these items so that we can stop using plastic bags for this, too.
I know what we’re doing isn’t much, but we’re trying. Unfortunately, a lot of the eco-friendly stuff is more expensive than the norm, and we don’t exactly have a lot of extra cash to be throwing around for this stuff. Therefore, budget friendly options are always well received in this house!
So, I’ve told you what we’ve been doing… what are the things you do that are green? I’d love to hear other ideas that we can perhaps add to our routine.
I challenge all of you to look at ways that you can make small changes in your lives that will help make a BIG difference.
I am finding the whole swine flu issue to be extremely interesting. Well, I’m actually more interested in the public’s reaction to it than I am in the flu itself.
Sure, when you hear about an outbreak, or worse, a pandemic, it’s a bit scary. Because in all likelihood, with the way our current society uses and abuses antibiotics (I used to work in a pharmacy, so I know all about that, and don’t even get me started), there is bound to be a super bug that comes along and kills a LOT of people some day. I just don’t think swine flu is going to be the bug to do it.
But, of course, the media turns everything into a huge deal, even if it’s not.
My favorite example of the media frenzy surrounding the swine flu occurred last week. I turned on the morning news to hear: “First U.S. Swine Flu Death Confirmed.” It was sad to hear that an infant had passed away, and the news kept going on and on about how big of a deal it was that someone from the United States had died.
When I got home from work that day, I turned on the evening news, only to find out that the infant who died was actually a Mexican baby who was visiting Texas. She had not received the medical care she should have, and had basically just come over the border from Mexico. So, I mean… does that really qualify as a “U.S. death”? I don’t think so. But leave it to the media to take something and run with it.
Truthfully, I think this swine flu thing has been blown completely out of proportion. From what I’ve seen and read (repeatedly, since it’s such a huge story), this flu is no more dangerous than the regular strains of flu that circulate every year. So why are people freaking out?
Wash your hands. Often. Try to reduce the amount of times you touch your eyes. Keep your distance from people who are ill.
Isn’t this all common sense? C’MON, America. Get a hold of yourselves. This isn’t the bubonic plague.
Technically, this post probably belongs over at Road to the Aisle, so I might post it over there, too. But a few people have asked me about this, so I figure, what the heck…
Back at Christmas, I mentioned how we had given our parents wedding albums for gifts. I promised to take photos of the pages and post a full review.
Well, 4+ months later, here I am, and I’m finally doing what I said I’d do. I stole my mom’s album for the weekend and took photos of it for all of you to see.
We had the albums made from Mpix.com. They are their “Assembled Albums,” and we chose the 8″ x 10″ size, with 40 pages. The cover is black leather, and it is quite beautiful, and very sturdy.
We had our names and the date foil stamped on the cover. This cost a little bit extra, but we thought it was worth it.
I designed all of the pages myself, using Photoshop. I created a separate Photoshop document for each page using the specifications (measurements) from Mpix. From there, I pretty much had complete creative freedom.
The photo pages are mounted onto the album pages leaving a 1/16″ border around the edges. If you decide to do collage pages like I did, you can make your background any color you want. I decided to keep it kind of classic-looking, and made my backgrounds black. I added a thin white border around all of the photos to give it a more finished look.
We did a couple of black-and-white spreads, too.
Mpix doesn’t offer any templates, so this was all me. I experimented with different sizes with the photos, different crops, different positioning. Once I found combinations that worked, I repeated them on several pages, sometimes just changing them slightly. Above, you see that the templates on these pages are simply mirror images of each other.
For the groomsmen and bridesmaid pages, I decided to add a little text. Our parents didn’t know all of the bridesmaids and groomsmen prior to the wedding, but everyone got along really well. I wanted them to be able to remember the names of everyone in the bridal party, so we had these pages that included a photo of each of the groomsmen and bridesmaids separately, with their names underneath. They came out really well.
Our parents’ albums were slightly different from each other. Some pages were identical in both albums, but we swapped out some of the family photos. For instance, above, you see a page with photos of my parents and me. In Michael’s parents’ book, that page contained photos of him with his parents.
I love that the pages lie flat when you’re flipping through them.
On the right, I cropped the photo to be 8″ x 10″ size, and uploaded it as it was so that it took up the entire page.
One limitation to these albums (as compared to some others) is that you cannot span a photo across both pages (as a two-page spread). If I had that option, I probably would have done it for the photo of our bridal party in the field.
The page on the right is one of my favorites. Our photographers had taken a photo of us dancing from an angle that included a lot of the floor in the shot. I cropped the photo to fit to the full 8″ x 10″ page, then layered smaller photos over the top of it (over the dance floor). I just loved how it turned out.
We had to have a full spread dedicated to the toast. SO. MANY. AWESOME. TOAST. PHOTOS. It was so hard to narrow them down.
This is another one of my favorite spreads. Love the huge full-page photo of the cake!
For the reception, I ended up using a lot of smaller photos. We had so many good ones, and we decided we would rather use more photos at a smaller size than have to narrow them down and use less of them at larger sizes. These turned out to be some of my favorite pages, simply because they are so filled with FUN.
Last page, with the back cover.
Here is a close-up of one of one of the pages with a full-page photo. You can easily see the 1/16″ black border that they leave around each page. The photos are mounted onto the album pages really well.
Here is another photo of one of the corners. I wanted to show you what one of the pages looked like that had the black background.
We are extremely happy with how these turned out, and couldn’t be more pleased with Mpix. These albums are a bit pricey–definitely more than you’d pay should you decide to use Blurb, My Publisher, etc. But the quality, in my opinion, far surpasses that of the other companies. These are professional albums, and if you look at it that way, the prices aren’t bad at all.
They were delivered to us really quickly, too. Once I uploaded the pages and submitted our order, I want to say they were on our doorstep less than a week later. I think they generally process and ship orders within 24-48 hours.
Disadvantages to these albums? Well, the biggest one is that you kind of have to know what you are doing. Experience with design and layout certainly helps, especially when you have to be mindful of leaving space around the edges for trimming. As I mentioned before, Mpix doesn’t provide any templates, so you have to start from scratch on your own. For some people, that’s a huge advantage–total freedom to do what they want with every page–but for others, it’s a disadvantage because it is wayyy more work.
We plan to eventually make an album like this with our honeymoon photos. I just have to find the time! For our parent albums, we had a reason to get them done quickly–I had a deadline! But it was all very time-consuming. I spent the better part of a WEEK in front of the computer designing pages.
In the end, it was completely worth it. Before we gave them to our parents, I was flipping through them myself several times a day. They’re beautiful, and the quality of the photos is fantastic. I have no doubt that these albums will stand the test of time, and will be something our parents will be able to share with people for years to come.
If you have any questions about the albums, please let me know in the comments. Be sure to check back, because that’s where I’ll answer the questions as well.
I made this weeks ago for Easter with my in-laws, but haven’t had a chance to post it until now. I had been on the hunt for a new dessert, and when I came across Toll House Pie, I knew I had to give it a shot. Ooey, gooey chocolate chip cookie batter inside of a pie crust? YES, please.
I started with the recipe on Allrecipes.com. As I always do, I read through many of the comments, and discovered that to use the amount of butter called for in the recipe (1 cup) was NOT recommended. Most people complained of it being too buttery, too greasy, too liquid-like, etc. Some people claimed that using 1/2 cup butter worked better. Others claimed 3/4 cup. I wasn’t sure which to go with. Ultimately, I decided to give it a go with the 1/2 cup butter.
The thing is, I made this pie in advance. I baked it on Friday night, and it looked absolutely delicious right out of the oven. But we didn’t cut into it after dinner on Saturday night, and by then, it was pretty hard. Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely good. Just not the ooey and gooey dessert that I had been hoping for. When Michael and I ate a leftover piece a few nights later, we warmed it up in the oven first before eating it. It helped, but it still wasn’t what I had anticipated.
Next time: I will definitely not bake this in advance. I can make the batter, pour it into the pie crust to prepare, but I won’t do any baking until right before we’re planning to eat it. Secondly, I’m going to give it a try with the 3/4 cup butter instead of the 1/2 cup. I think the extra butter will help to give it more of the ooey gooey consistency I was looking for.
Also worth noting: I used a pre-made/pre-baked crust. I decided to go with a chocolate crust, and it was good! I read in the comments on Allrecipes that some people used the graham cracker crust with good results as well.
Toll House Pie
(Source: Allrecipes.com)
Ingredients:
– 2 eggs
– 1/2 cup white sugar
– 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
– 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
– 3/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
– 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
– 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
– 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie (you can use any crust you like, or even a store-bought one, like a graham cracker or chocolate crust)
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until foamy. Add the flour, white sugar and brown sugar; beat until well blended. Blend in the melted butter.
3. Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts. Pour batter into one unbaked 9 inch pie shell.
4. Bake for 1 hour. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream, if desired.
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
