September Resolution

Doesn't it seem like everyone in the world is talking about New Year's resolutions? The neighborhood brunch the family attended yesterday was ripe with talk of resolutions. It got me thinking. Why haven't I ever made a New Year's resolution?

When I was little the year seemed to begin with September when school started. When I went off to college, school began in September. As an adult, and a teacher myself , school began in September. Now that I am home with the kids, September still feels like the start of the year as they climb aboard the school bus.

Even my date book begins in September.

September just feels like a new beginning. Anything is possible. That is when I make my resolutions. Not after Christmas in cold, dark December like the rest of the world.

As for my resolution answer at yesterday's brunch. Not an exciting one when it comes to small talk. Cut-down on sugar.

Living Simply

Everywhere I turn people are talking about living simply. How to get by with less. How to love what you already have. How to save money by spending less. Anyway you slice it, it is a tough proposition for most.

My family tries to live simply. We really do. I don't want to want a few new sweaters every winter. I don't want to want to go out to dinner. I don't want to want to drop by the scrapbooking store. I really don't.

Still, the idea of having a simple life is a relative idea.

Recently, Little Guy had another little guy come over to play. The mom was shocked by the few toys in our family room and wanted to know where all of the toys were. She even cracked a joke about the kids only having sticks and dust bunnies to play with. "No" to the sticks and "hell ya" to the dust bunnies.

In my eyes the kids are majorly spoiled. In this mummy's eyes I was raising my kids like it was 1860's Ireland.

Many other families that I read about online would look at that same family room and be overwhelmed by all of the toys. Relativity baby.

So how do we get to a more simple place? How do we save more money and clear away the clutter?

My first step started on Friday. Hubby and I are both writing down every penny that we spend.

I originally included the list of what the family has spent in the last three days, but I deleted it out of utter embarrassment. Wowsers!

Today's Hartford Courant included a link to a great site that I thought that I would pass on. http://www.storyofstuff.com/ follows an environmentalist, Annie Leonard, who spent 10 years traveling to find out exactly where our stuff goes when we are done with it. She has a great short film, links to her blog and other resources. Watching the film really made me think twice about all of my wants and how what I buy effects all of us.

So what is a gruppie to do? Will writing down our spending educate us enough to find the problems and fix them? Maybe we should go into a total spending freeze and it will become a habit? Is there another way?

What To Blog About

Over Christmas my mummy asked if she could read my blog. Not that she knew exactly what a blog was. Still, this is a very big step for a woman who just traded in her manual type writer and carbon paper.


Sitting with Mummy while she read Gruppie Girl was a huge ego boost. Every blogger should sit down with their mummy and read their blog together. Did you know that I am "hysterically funny", "my writing has a great pace" and "I really open eyes about environmental issues without being too pushy"? And yes, I am "beautiful." Thanks Mummy!


Maybe I could rent my mummy out to other bloggers to boost their self-esteem. Do I smell a cottage industry?


Now that Mummy knows that I blog and what a blog actually is, she has started to give me suggestions about what to blog.




The first suggestion was to blog about the cute red shoes that I wore of Christmas. Perhaps. I do wear them a lot and therefore I am not being wasteful. Could that be my green slant?



The second suggestion was to blog about Christmas day at my in-law's house. My sister-in-law took an hour and quickly sewed a bunch of fabric gift bags. Hubby's aunt wrapped our gift in the cloth bag that we wrapped her gift in last year. Everyone seemed to be really concerned about the amount of trash that we were creating. Very different from Christmas' past.


Get your thinking cap on kids; My mummy gave me a gift in a cloth angel bag. I gave my mummy-in-law a gift in that same angel bag. She gave a gift to my sister-in-law in the angel bag. And finally, I got the angel bag back this year with a nice gift card tucked inside. If that isn't recycling, then I don't know what is!


I'm looking forward to more blog ideas from my mummy. Be aware that they may be about how wonderful my mummy thinks I am. But isn't that a mummy's job to tell her kids the great stuff?

Gift Wrapping

My Girlie has a social life that I can only dream of. Parties and playdates galore. Oh to be 7 again.

The funniest thing happened at one of those endless birthday parties. All of the birthday presents were heaped in a pile. The sister of the birthday girl grabbed Girlie's gift and said "open Girlie's present next." I was stunned. How did she know that this particular gift was Girlie's? So I of course asked. The girl looked at me like I had two heads and replied that "the present is wrapped in a cloth bag. Of course it was from Girlie."

Duh.


Cloth gift bags can be used again and again. I give a bag to Sally. She wraps up another gift in the SAME bag for Tim. He wraps up another gift in the SAME bag for Amy. Amy wraps up another gift and puts it in the SAME bag for Bill. That bag can live on and on....No trash, no trees cut down, no harmful dyes and no extra money spent.


Over the years I have purchased various cloth bags online and from little old ladies at craft fairs. This year I was going to dust off Grandma Dot's old sewing machine and clear away the cobwebs from my memories of seventh grade home economics. I was going to sew my own bags.

I took a field trip to the local fabric store for their huge sale. Found cute fabric that wasn't too Chrismasy. Some thread, ribbon and jingle bells. It sure looked easy enough to make my own bags.

Here is the carnage;




In my desperation I called over my soon-to-be 90 year old neighbor who has been sewing for 80+ years to help. No luck. That stupid bobbin thing just wouldn't cooperate.

Off to dig the Sunday comics out of the paper recycling. Maybe next year the kids won't have newsprint on their hands on Christnas morning....A girl can dream!

Merry Christmas to all!

These Boots Are Made For Walking

My family is lucky enough to live near a small village center. Elementary school, health food store, dentist, dance studio, pharmacy....you get the idea.

We enjoy leaving the car in the garage and walking downtown when we can. Free exercise, uninterrupted family time and no carbon footprint. In the warmer weather we even walk to and from school on most days. It is rare, with the exception of the parades, festival and fireworks, that we ever see anyone else walking. Strange.

Today was my day to be the library helper at the school library. I also needed a few things at the health food store. So I walked.

Now comes the rant.

First, if you live on main Street and have a sidewalk in front of your house, shovel it! I do not want to take my life in my hands by walking on the main road. I don't want to arrive at school with cold and wet pant legs.

I am now the cranky old lady in the village and called the police on the two offending home owners. They promised citations. I just want the sidewalks cleared.

Next, if you see someone standing in a crosswalk stop! I can count on one hand how many people have stopped for myself and my family over the past two years when we have been standing in the crosswalks. A police officer once blew by my family as we were walking to school. Now that s sad.

I had the town install a sidewalk coming out of my neighborhood across the main road. The first of only three cars to stop at this crosswalk had a North Carolina plate. That made me laugh.

Does the state of Connecticut not include the "must stop for pedestrians in sidewalks" lesson in drivers ed? Even when my son was in the stroller I couldn't get anyone to stop. I have taken to screaming at passing cars and jumping out in front of them to give them a scare. Girlie absolutely freaks when I leap out into the road.

The entire family, including the grandparents from both sides, will be walking downtown again for the carol sing and tour of the museum. It will be dark. Wish me luck.

Rant over.

Brushing With Poison

Very few licensed characters get through the front door of my house. I don't appreciate companies using my kids for free advertising. Here is the story of one that got by.

Each and every morning and evening I have to remind my kids to brush their teeth. I would do anything to make them want to brush their teeth more often and for longer periods of time. So one day I was at the store with Little Guy. He spied a Power Ranger toothbrush and asked for the "hero" toothbrush. Luckily he still has no idea who the Power Rangers are. I bought the toothbrush for him hoping that he would want to use it more than his boring plain toothbrush.

Fast forward to last night. I opened my email box only to receive an update from http://www.healthytoys.org/. Healthy Toys is an independent toy testing website that I have blogged about before here. You can search for toys you already own, vote for the toys that will be tested next and suggest a toy to be tested. HT tests for lead, mercury, PVC/chlorine, cadmium and arsenic. Yummy!




Little Guy's toothbrush was listed as containing lead and chlorine/PVC in the face. The face? That part was getting wet, being touched by his little hands and possibly even put into his mouth. My head is still spinning!

How could any company not know exactly what they are making a child's toothbrush out of? Do their own children use this toothbrush?





Being one for solutions, off to Whole Foods Little Guy and I went. We found a brand called Preserve by Recycline. http://www.recycline.com/

Recycline's handles are made of 100% recycled plastic. The company has partnered with Stoneyfield Yogurt and use many of their old yogurt cups to create the handles. The brush comes in a vented traveling case. Even the paper insert is made of 100% recycled materials. Best of all, Recycline gives you a postage-paid mailer to return the used brushes and cases. The company will recycle them into new brushes. Very cool!

I am going to suggest that Healthy Toys tests these toothbrushes too, but I feel fairly certain that they will be a safer option than that scary character toothbrush.



UPDATE: I just got an email from the friendly people at Recycline. They are sending out 10 of their toothbrushes for me to give away to readers. I'll keep you posted when they come in.

Lost That Lovin' Feeling

My home's roof is south facing and my front yard is free from trees. Perfect conditions for a solar system to heat my home and run my TV. The problem is that I don't have the $20,000+ needed to pay for the solar system hiding under the mattress.

So, I have been trying to integrate smaller solar, electric lights into my house.





First, it was a solar nightlight for Little Guy's room. I found it at LL Bean and it was affordable. Simply place the nightlight's suction cups on the window and voila you are done. Turn the light on at night and off during the day. Couldn't be easier.

Next, I bought a solar LED strand of lights for my little outside tree. I bought "clear" Christmas lights. They look blue. A super-tacky blue. I have read that LED lights can give off different tones of light. How was I to know? When shopping online you can't try the lights before buying.

On top of the strange color, the lights don't have an on/off switch. Just a sensor. So if the moon is out, a streetlight is on or the neighbor's front light is on they will not come on. I have to flip the solar panel each night to "trick" the lights into thinking it is dark. Then in the morning I have to remember to flip it back over to charge in the sun.



My latest solar purchase was a solar spotlight. I placed it in the yard and aimed it at the front door. It doesn't work. The company gave me a hard time when I called to tell them that it didn't work. They were very defensive. Had they heard more calls like mine? Eventually I sent it back. Now number two doesn't work. Even if it did work it doesn't have an on/off switch. Just a light sensor on top of the unit that cannot be flipped over to avoid other light. What a waste of money.





In my solar quest I have seen solar cell phone chargers, laptop chargers and iPod chargers for sale online. They are seriously expensive. For example the cell phone charger cost $99 before shipping. By the time I save $99 in energy costs I would probably need a new cell phone and the plugs probably won't fit by then. And then I wonder how well it will work.

Why is this technology so expensive while still being so flawed? Yes, there are government rebates on whole-house systems, but they barely take a chunk out of the cost.

What about small business who use a ton more energy than I do? A friend owns a chain fastish food restaurant. His electric bill runs around $9,000 a month. There are no solar rebates for him. Trust me, he has hired people to look. That fact absolutely blows my mind.

Please tell me that solar technology will be like DVD players. Every year they get better and the price goes down. I paid hundred of dollars for my first DVD player. After that one went to that special DVD place in the sky, I plunked down $40 for my most recent DVD player.