Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Whats on my mind? Ehhh a few things.....



Hello people! Welcome to this lovely Tuesday morning! Well if lovely is rain and wind than yeah its lovely. Oregon rain!!!! (fist in the air).
This week is crazy and hopefully we survive the whole thing. Were leaving on a 10 day trip soon and somehow have to pack for it this week. I have to finaggle (yes its my made up word) my packing around 4 nights of soccer practice and a tournament this weekend. Thankfully Friday is my girls last day of school.  I am not a organized person so all this stuff is really cluttering my brain. OOuuyyy Veeyy! (not sure where the old Jewish voice came from..)

Remember I completely over hauled my garden and showed you all those lovely pictures? Well Oregon has had some crazy weather and everything but 2 types of plants decided they would rot. My lovely garden has turned on me and apparently the only plants that will grow are beets and pea's. About 2 weeks ago it rained over an inch in one day. Usually this is not a problem for us, were Oregonians remember! But my not so nice back neighbor has his gutter hooked up to a tube just draining into his back yard. Its just laying on the ground.  Well we have built a retaining wall because our neighbors property is about 5-6 ft taller than ours. Long story short, my garden and my next door neighbors property was flooded out because of all the rain water coming from you know whose drain pipe....uurrrr. Which may be the reason why all my seeds rotted. So I replanted with what seeds I had left over and yesterday I bought some beautiful plants. A 6 pack of celery, 2 heirloom tomato plants, and a zucchini plant. I will keep you posted on my on going gardening issues.

Ooh I also wanted to give you a update of my clothe wipe challenge I signed up for. Well its still up and running. Only a few diving trips to the toilet for them and I can actually say I have saved a bunch of money. Usually I would buy a pack of 12 toilet paper rolls every 2 weeks for $3.99 at Trader Joe's. Now i'm buying them once a month. You might think its not worth it to save $3.99 a month but I think its worth saving $47.88 a year. I see the bigger picture and its worth it to me. So this challenge will be turned into normal living for us. My girls have stuck to it and feel good about using less paper which means less trees cut down.

I announced on Facebook about a week ago that I would be reviewing Glass Dharma straws. Well within 2 days I had three of them in my hands. I will be taking these with me on vacation and test them out. These things are beautiful and really could be a piece of art in their own rights. My favorite is the child size one with 3 green glass dots(Thanks Cheryl!). My kids will be fighting over this one. Next is their regular sized straw just plain and pretty. The last one is a slightly curved normal size straw which would replace your plastic bendy straw.  I'm excited to take these on and will be putting my review up as soon as I get back from Vacation.

Last but not least I found some great reads and thought I would share them with you. Who needs books when you have Google Reader!

Johnathon Bloom aka Wasted Food talks about school's gardening and cafeteria composting. I think this is great and could potentially make any school some money. With budget cuts just about everywhere, this would help any school.

Brilliant frugal living's blog has a Frugalista Diet that has been intriguing me. One woman's challenge to live off a $25 a month food budget. Not anything I would ever do but still im fascinated by it.

Margaret and Helen are the two funniest old ladies ever. These two write letters to each other discussing politics. Although they write only a few times a month, each blog post will keep you busy laughing your butt off. I love these two.

Hippychick's Adventure to Sustainable Happiness lives her life how I would love to live mine. She inspires me.

Ecorazzi is my green version of tmz. I can't get enough of this site. Love it!

As always check my Facebook for all the current freebies. Stop in and say hi or even chat in our discussion tab. Have a question? Ask away or email me at www.survivingandthrivingonpennies@yahoo.com.

Have a great day everyone!

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