Reusable Produce & Bulk Bags and the Beauty of Upcycling

Time is slipping away from me.  Things are happening fast and I am finding it harder to sit and blog.  That means it is time to re-adjust my daily rhythm.  Which makes life fun!

I am finally finding some time to blog about the reusable produce & bulk bags I made last month with my mama.  I was so intimidated by my sewing machine but found it a lot easier than I anticipated and it gave me some much needed practice on my machine.  I am ready to start making some more fun things!

Needed materials:

• Organic Muslin fabric (We used some that my mom already had and we bought a couple yards at a fabric store.  I strongly believe since it will be used for food, that I shouldn't use any dyed fabric.  I don't want any color dyes to get onto my food that I will be consuming.)
• Cording or thick string (We upcycled gift bag handles.  We took off all the handles of any gifts bags that were no longer reusable at my mom's house)
• Sewing Machine
• Hooking tool
• Wood Kebab Skewer

Steps:

I cut the fabric using a cutter and a cutting mat.  I first wanted to make a smaller bag, to make sure I knew what I was doing.  So I fabric measurements that I cut were 26 inches long and 9 inches wide.  The smaller bags are perfect bulk bags for flour, sugar, oats, almonds, any grain, etc.

 

I then took the cut piece of fabric and folded it in half.  I then sewed the sides at an 1/2 inch.  On one of my sides I left about 3/4 inch unsewn at the top.  This is provide an opening for the cording/string to fit in. 

Then I took the top of the fabric and folded about 3/4 inch.

Next was to sew the top fold.  Make sure to leave an 1/2 opening for the cording/string.

 Turn the fabric inside out.  

Take cording/string and push it into the top opening with a wooden skewer.  Once you get the string/cording half way in, put the hooking tool in the other side and pull the cording/string out.

 Tie and enjoy your finished project!

You can of course, change the measurements for the size of bag you want or personalize it however you want.  You can also upcycle in fabric or cording from you house to make these bag.  What better way to make an green impact on this earth but to upcycle for a reusable bag.  Get away from those nasty plastic bags!  Put your creative hat on and have fun with it!

I really enjoyed this project and plan to keep making bags, all different sizes and for all different uses!  It has motivated me to keep on creating, especially items that promote an ecofriendly environment.  My sister gave me a book called "Rubbish!  Reuse Your Refuse!"  by Kate Shoup.  This book shows you how to give everyday household items a new life.  With more than 30 creative projects upcycling and reducing trash, I will be one happy "green" mama!  Keep a look out for some fun eco-friendly upcycling projects posted on here.

Happy Creating,
Alyson

"Every day is Earth Day." ~Author Unknown

Menus and Sending Hope to Japan

As I sat yesterday to write my menu for the week, I felt some guilt come over me.  I am sitting here worried about what I am going to make for the week and the people in Japan and many others in this world are worried if there are going to eat at all this week.  My small issues are so trivial compared everything going on through out this world especially Japan's devastation.

The day of Japan's earthquake I awoke at 5:30am and couldn't sleep.   I decided to get out of bed and get online to check my normal things, coming to find out about the devastation that was occurring in Japan.  I sat watching the footage with tears rolling down my face.  It is hard to even grasp or truly understand the severity of it all.  My heart and love goes out to all of our brothers and sisters in Japan.  I know that we are so far away from the devastation in Japan but we are connected.  Our planet is our home, we are all a family and we are all affected.  This is so big!  It is time we start listening to our planet.  She is tired and trying to tell us to be kinder to her and to one another.  To tread lighter on her.  As I watched the events unfold in Japan this weekend, I was wishing that I could do more than just watch from overseas.  So, when a friend shared a link with me, it motivated me to help a little.  Even though we can't do much, I know that even a little bit will help someone in Japan who has lost everything.  The link my friend shared is from Mother Nature Network (a great website), who lists all the different ways you can help Japan!  Click here....How to help Japan now!  We have chosen an organization on this list and donated to it.  If you are in the Portland area, you can also go to the Japanese Gardens to view the Wish Arbor as a Memorial for the victims in Japan.  Click here for more information on the memorial.  One planet, one family, one love!

I am posting my menu this week, wishing I could prepare each meal for all the victims in Japan.

MENU:

MONDAY:  Vegetable egg stir fry with brown rice

TUESDAY:  Homemade veggie pizza and fresh garden salad

WEDNESDAY:  Slow Cooker Vegetable Barley Soup and leftover pizza

THURSDAY:  Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Veggie sausage, Red Potato Irish Colcannon, and roasted aspargus

FRIDAY-  Leftovers and a green salad

SATURDAY-  Cappellini with shrimp, lemon, and basil (*recipe posted next week)

SUNDAY-  Almond Crusted Salmon, steamed broccoli, and whole wheat couscous

For more meal planning inspirations, visit I'm an Organizing Junkie every Monday.

What are you cooking this week?

Peace, love, and understanding,
Alyson
  
"When things are at there worst, people rise to be their best " -Santana

Music for the Soul AKA Song of the Week

I have SO much to write about this week and SO little time.  Is it against the blogging "rules" to blog more than once a day?  But then again, do I even have time to blog more than once a day!   I was traveling this past week and have a lot of blogging "catching up" to do.  I am back with lots to write about! 

I use to do Song of the Week, where I would post a song I love weekly but began slacking on it the past few months.  After many comments and requests from friends who loved the Song of the Week, I am bringing it back but with some changes.  I will be posting it on Sundays and renaming it to "Music for the Soul."  As I said in my first Song of the Week post, I am in love with music and I have been since the day I was born.  My mother and father brought me up in a household where music was always playing and it taught me to appreciate music.  I truly believe that music is the international language that will unite all humans and bring peace to this world.  It is important to us as a family and we listen to music almost all day long.  My taste in music is in a very broad spectrum...from bluegrass to underground hip-hop.  I like it all!  Check out my first Song of the Week post for more about why I am in love with music and why I want to share with you all some of my favorite songs!

Tonight I am sharing two songs!  This musician/activist is just too good to pick only one song.  Xavier Rudd is one of my family's favorite musicians.  We first heard Xavier about 6 years ago and instantly fell in love with his amazing lyrics embraced by his acoustic, tribal, reggae style music.  From Australia, his music brings us socially conscious lyrics focusing on environmental and human right issues.  The first time I heard Xavier I felt my soul and spirit awaken and become refreshed.  His music sends a message of unity and global awareness that we all need to hear.  My husband and I feel blessed to be able to see a lot of musicians play but have yet to be able to see Xavier.  I was beyond ecstatic to find out he was playing the week of my birthday here in my hometown.  I told my husband, the only thing I wanted for my birthday was for him and I to be able to go see Xavier Rudd play.  I can not wait to hear him play and especially hear his amazing talent on the didgeridoo!

This first song is called Better People.  Everything about this song is beautiful.  It is one of our favorite songs and we play it constantly at home.  You could say it might be our "theme" song.  Please take a few minutes to really listen to the lyrics and his message.

The second song I choose to share with you all is called Messages.  This was the first song we ever heard from Xavier back in 2005.  It is one of the most powerful songs I have ever heard.  We are so blessed to be living on our beautiful and incredible planet!  It is changing....we are changing!  We need to nurture it and protect it so that our grandchildren can see the beauty it holds!  The message of this song also speaks about us as humans changing and following our own path....something I hold dear to me as I have listened to my heart and started a journey that was true to myself and who I truly am inside.  Enjoy and embrace!

Happy Listening,

Alyson

Three!

My little baby Ayden boo is turning three today!  He truly is an amazing, magical, imaginative, hilarious, kissable, caring, love of a little boy.  He is my bundle of joy and brings his dad and I sunshine to each day.  I feel honored and blessed to have the privilege to be his mama. 

He loves me.  And I love him.  He has the greatest giggle and it spreads like wildfire in our home.  The instant joy and love he brings to our home is pure and amazing.  My life truly didn't start till he entered this world.  

Thank you, my lovely, for being you and for showing your dad and I what life is truly about.  Happy Birthday my sweet sweet, silly, lovey, little man!  I am so glad you are here!

Just hours old!

My 3 year old!

One Small Change- March

My February One Small Change(s) went amazing, as usual.  It has felt so good, to be doing all of these changes for our planet and for us.  People ask me if it is too much work but it is mostly pretty simple.  Simplicity is the solution to most of these changes.  We did have two hiccups this past month when trying to achieve a couple of our goals.  The first one was having to reschedule our SOLV's neighborhood clean-up.  Life happens and sometimes we can't do everything we hope to do!  We rescheduled to do the neighborhood clean-up in the beginning of April.  I will make sure to tell you all about it.  Our other hiccup (and the saddest) was our point and shoot memory card was lost with all of our pictures of our tree planting on it.  Major sad face!  I hope it shows up soon so I am able to share the pictures of the awesome time we had planting.

During the month of February, I had a great time with my mama making our produce and bulk bags.  I will share how I made them on a separate blog this week!  The tree/bush planting was so much fun.  My son had a great time and I am so glad he was able to experience this at a young age.  The weather was quite bizarre this past month with some rain, sun, snow, and ice.  Every chance we could, we got outside.  I will continue being outside more this coming month.

Here are a couple "teaser" shots of when we made our own produce bags.  By the end of the week I will post a blog all about how I made them.  

My March One Small Change Plan: 

• We are joining SOLV with their Spring Beach Cleanup.  I have done this in the past with family and enjoy my memories from it.  We usually pick the Manzanita, Oregon area since it my absolute favorite beach from growing up there.  If you are in Oregon, please check out SOLV's website and join the clean-up.  Help keep our beautiful beaches and ocean clean!  
• My son's birthday is this week.  We are having a small party with some of his little friends and our family.  I am choosing to do eco-friendly party favors in place of a plastic or a sugar coated favor.  Since Spring is around the corner, we are going to be giving out little growing pots with a packet of seeds.  Pictures will be up of this! 
• I am starting my spring cleaning the "green" way.  I am only going to do the first three steps of my spring cleaning this month and will be at it full force next month in preparation of our new little one arriving in the summer.  My first step of spring cleaning this month is reducing our stuff.  I will be carefully going through every corner of my house and making a pile of stuff we don't need anymore.  My next step is reusing!  I won't be throwing away this pile of stuff we don't use anymore.  My goal is too keep most of it away from our landfills.  I will go through it and make sure there is not another use for it either at our house or our farm.  My last step for the month is donating.  All the stuff that I know we can't reuse will be donated.  I have a few plans of where I want to donate this stuff to and let you all know.  I will share the rest of my green spring cleaning steps (there are 10) next month.  

I will share how this went with pictures at the end of March.  Check out my first One Small Change to see why I am doing this challenge or if you are new to my blog.  Also, check out the One Small Change blog for more ideas about environmentally friendly changes you can make. 

What changes are you making to lessen your carbon footprint on this planet?

Happy March,

Alyson

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." -Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Menus and Seeds

Sorry for the lack of posts the past two weeks.  My husband did a lot of traveling the past two weeks which caused our scheduling and rhythm to be a little jumbled.  Then of course when he returned we needed a few days of straight family time.  So I chose to put my blog on the back burner while I focused on other things.  But I am back full force and with lots to write about!  Today it is all about seeds!   

I have been overly excited about Spring and find myself talking about it all the time.  It is driving my husband crazy since he is ALL about winter time.  His other love (besides me and his children) is snowboarding....oh and I guess photography too.  But come winter time, he is in love with that board of his.  So every time I talk about spring, he puts on his sad face.  Poor guy!  As he is tries to ignore the signs of Spring, we still will be ordering our seeds for the farm this coming week.  I am really excited and I think he is secretly excited!

We are buying our seeds through Abundant Life Seed Company because they are local and they have mostly organic seeds.  At our farm we are required to grow only organic seeds because the land we are growing on has been certified organic by the Oregon Tilth.  Anything that we can't find through Abundant Life, we will be getting at Naomi's Organic Farm Supply (which is an amazing store).  Today I just wanted to share with you all the different types of seeds we are growing this year at the farm.  

Vegetables:
Arugula
Beans- (4 different varieties)
Broccoli
Beets
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Corn
Carrots
Cucumber- (3 different varieties)
Eggplant
Kale
Lettuce- (3 different varieties)
Melon
Mustard Greens
Onion- Scallions
Peas-(2 different varieties)
Peppers- (1 sweet variety, 2 hot varieties)
Potatoes- (3 different varieties)
Pumpkins
Radish
Spinach- (2 different varieties)
Summer Squash/Zucchini- (2 different varieties)
Swiss Chard- Rainbow
Tomato- (7 different varieties)
Tomatilllos- Purple
Watermelon
Winter Squash- Acorn

Herbs-
Basil (2 different varieties)
Cilantro
Chamomile
Dill
Fennel
Oregano
Parsley
Thyme

Flowers
Bee's Friend
Marigolds
Nastutrium
Sunflowers
Zinnias

We already have garlic and strawberries in the ground and growing!  I can't wait to get my hands dirty and all the seeds planted.

What are you growing this year?

Tomato sprout from last season!

With all this seed talk, let's bring it into my menu for the week.  I am glad my husband is home this week and we can have our family dinners back.  It was really hard to plan and cook for just me and my son, basically cooking for one and a half.  So I cooked only quick easy dinners.  This week I am reconnecting with my food and the cooking process that I love.  I am still using one to two recipes a week from the cookbooks I have at home and will post a separate blog with the recipe within a week. 

MENU:

MONDAY:  Vegetable stir fry with brown rice

TUESDAY-  Whole wheat spaghetti with homemade tomato/veggie sauce and steamed broccoli

WEDNESDAY-  Egg salad sandwiches and Warm Red Quinoa Salad

THURSDAY-  Fish tacos* and homemade Spanish rice *recipes coming up next week

FRIDAY-  Spring Asparagus & Broccoli Soup and Baked Lemon-Herb Salmon

SATURDAY-  A family dinner in celebration of my son's 3rd BIRTHDAY!  Homemade pizzas and a big fresh green salad!

SUNDAY-  Baked potatoes and leftover soup (for hubby and son).
                   Work party/dinner for mama!

For more meal planning inspirations, visit I'm an Organizing Junkie every Monday.

Happy growing & cooking,
Alyson

“Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle…a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl.  And the anticipation nurtures our dream.” – Barbara Winkler

Awards? ¿Para poco mí?

After making the decision to take my blog to a more "professional" level and at a faster pace, I wasn't really sure where it would really take me.  I am so happy and pleasantly surprised at all the positive responses I have been getting.  I have been connecting to other bloggers and moms from all over the world, sharing ideas and visions.  Emails and messages have been coming in from all different areas of the world with questions, praises, thanks-you's, and ideas.  It has blown me away.  I am truly excited for what is to come of this!  It has been very therapeutic for me to be able to write about my musings and thoughts.  Thank you all for the ongoing support and for reading what I write.  I feel a little shy and humble about all the wonderful responses that are coming my way but I seriously can't thank you all enough for giving me so much love.  My husband and I have been doing some serious brainstorming on what other steps and ideas we want to bring to my blog.  I am excited to try some new things out!

In the past two weeks my blog has received two awards!!!!  WOW!  I am overjoyed and honored to receive them.  One was The Versatile Blogger award.  The other was The Stylish Blogger Award.  Both from two different awesome bloggers!

The Versatile Blogger award was from Christine at Our Family of Four.  In a very lovely poetic way, she writes about being a mama,  a photographer, and loving crafts.  I have enjoyed reading her musings about the love for her family and her love for taking photos.  She has the cutest little family and I look forward to reading more about them.  Check out her wonderful blog, Our Family Four.

The Stylish Blogger Award was given to me by Crystal at These Happy Michie's blog, which she likes to call her journal.  She writes hilarious stories about being a mama and all the joys that come along with it.  She also owns a dayhome where she cares for 6 other children.  She writes to keep memories stored and savored for years to come.  I have enjoyed reading her musings, check her out.

Thank you both Christine and Crystal for sending these awards my way.  I feel incredibly honored.  I am going to combine the rules of these awards since they are SO similar.  The only difference is the Versatile Blogger Award asks you to pick 15 bloggers to send this award to and the Stylish Blogger awards ask you to send it to 1 blogger.  I am going to choose 2 bloggers...one for each award.  I know....I am changing it up a little!  

The Rules:

1.) Thank and link back to the blog that gave you your award
2.) Share seven things about yourself.
3.) Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers. (I am doing only 2 bloggers)
4.) Contact the bloggers to let them know you've given them an award.

Seven little things about little me:

•  I work better under pressure and with a close deadline.  My husband thinks it is crazy!
•  I am pretty strict about where everything goes in my kitchen.  Everything must have a spot in my kitchen.  The rest of the house...not so much!
• I am obsessed with writing lists.  I have several notebooks with several lists inside of them.
• I have a goal of making my children clothes, soon!
• I love it when my husband plays with my hair.
•  I day dream way too often about my future dream family farm house!  I might need a day dream intervention.  
•  My power to love keeps growing as I get older.  

Two incredible blogs to follow:

A Banana Medley, written by Anna

She writes a very fresh feeling blog abut life.  Her love for photography, thrift shopping fashion, and yummy recipes keeps me intrigued.  She writes a weekly gratitude post, thanking four people or things that have brought her a smile that week.  I love it.  Check her out!

Living our Own Lives, written by Julie

I started reading Julie's blog about 3 or 4 months ago and we started communicating through comment love.  I seriously feel like we would be great friends outside of the blog world.  She writes about unschooling, her family, gardening, peace, and urban homesteading.  Just my style!  I love reading her blog and feel like I learn something new all the time from Julie.  

Check these ladies out, you won't regret it.

Thank you all for sending me so much love through my blog.  It is very much appreciated and keeps me going!

Happy blogging,

Alyson

"Gratitude is the best attitude."  ~Author Unknown