The GREEN post

Green... weird how one word can take on so many different meanings... color, young, jealous, earth friendly, money...

Green Breakfast

Spinach for breakfast? Sounds inviting right?  Ya didn't think so. I had a hard time just pulling the bag of spinach out of the fridge before 8am until I tried this super yummy but extremely healthy drink.  Even those who don't like spinach will like this because well, you can't taste the spinach but you will reap the benefits of eating it! Sounds like a win win to me.

 Gather your ingredients

Combine in blender until smooth

Enjoy

Green Smoothie Recipe
1 banana (previously peeled, sliced and frozen)
1 spoonful of peanut butter
1 cup of almond milk (you could use regular milk but why not up the health benefits with the almond milk?)
1 single serving container of vanilla Greek yogurt (once again you could use regular yogurt but why not make it more healthy?)
2 handfuls of spinach

Put all ingredients in blender in order they are listed and blend until smooth.

Original recipe found at:Iowa Girl Eats

Green Nail Polish

Seeing as mint nail polish seems to be one of the in colors this season I figured I'd give it a try.  Since I wasn't quite sure I was going to like it I just picked one of the cheap-os up at Target.  I got the Sally Hansen Extreme Wear in Mint Sorbet. I painted my fingers and toes.... While I'm not an overall fan of this particular brand of nail polish (it's thick and clumpy) the end result isn't too bad. 

While I didn't love it when I first applied it, I must say after a day or so. It's starting to grow on me.  It definitely won't be my go to color but I think it will make it into the rotation of a fun spring/summer color.

Green Cleaning

As I mentioned in a previous post about vinegar, I would like to start cleaning my house with more earth friendly products.  I have since then started to switch over to homemade 'green' cleaners and I must say the switch has been a lot easier then I thought it would be.  As a matter of fact over the weekend I cleaned with my store bought 'chemical' cleaners and I didn't realize how much I prefer the homemade ones.  Here's the recipe for the glass cleaner that I'm loving!

Glass Cleaner

¼-1/2 teaspoon liquid detergent (I use Mrs Meyer's dish soap in the basil scent seriously this must be the best smell on earth as far as clean goes)

3 tablespoons vinegar

2 cups water

Spray bottle

Put all the ingredients into a spray bottle, shake it up a bit, and use as you would a commercial brand. The soap in this recipe is important. It cuts the wax residue from the commercial brands you might have used in the past.

At first I found this recipe to be too "wet" and I thought oh no that's going to streak my mirrors right up. In fact it does the opposite.

Also, try using newspaper instead of a paper towel to clean windows and mirrors... Much better results! No matter what cleaner you are using.

Green with Envy

My brother and sister in law moved into their new house this past week and I must I am green with envy of how much space they now have... Mostly all the closet space! Congratulations on the new house!! It's beee u tiful!

The Condiment Kid

Now that the 2 year old  lovely darling of mine has discovered you can add "stuff" to your food he's all over it.  It started out innocent enough as most things do when you're 2. A little syrup with your pancakes, Parmesan on your pizza, ranchup (my daughter's famous ketchup and ranch dressing mixture) on your fries. All normal things. 

Well now the child can't sit down to eat without putting something on his food. And apparently it really doesn't matter what. The other day he insisted on having Parmesan on his scrambled eggs (which wasn't exactly awful) and last night he wanted to put ketchup on his pizza (we convinced him Paremesan would be the better option here).  I can only wonder what he'll wanna try for today. But, I guess when you have some picky eaters in the house as long as the kid's eating who really cares right??

Homemade Finger Paint

What's more fun than finger painting? Not much if you're 2. I mean how awesome to color with your hands and make a mess at the same time. And...... it's super easy to make your own and if your little one tries to eat this, it won't hurt them.  Not that I would encourage the eating of finger paint but if they try and taste it no need to freak! I found this in an old cookbook of mine.

Gather your supplies (you probably already have all of these in your kitchen)

3 Tablespoons Sugar

1/2 Teaspoon Salt

1/2 Cup of Cornstarch

2 Cups of Water

Food Coloring (not shown...oops)

Mix together in small saucepan over a low heat until thickened.

Stirring frequently. Mine took about 15 minutes.

Let the mixture cool and pour into desired containers.

I used old baby food jars.

Add food coloring to each jar.  I used the Neon ones because neon makes things much more fun right?  I actually screwed up 2 of the colors though. The purple and pink caps looked fairly similar to me and this is why I have 2 purples and the brown color was supposed to be apricot, but I figured they are going to need a brown to make trees.

Let your little ones go to town!

This finger paint I felt was a little bit thick, but it actually seemed to work better for a 2 year old then the traditional finger paint.  But I would imagine if you add a little more water you could thin it out if you wanted.

An alternative to the refridgerator door

My daughter loves to color pictures. She fills up our refrigerator door and then some. And when you have a 2 year old in the house the refrigerator door isn't always the best place to hang artwork.  He sees something colorful and he yanks it down, crumbles it up, kicks it around.  Enter 7 year old MELTDOWN.  Sometimes I think he does it cuz he knows he's making her mad, yea he's rowdy like that :)

I was trying to come up with another way we could display her masterpieces when I noticed a classroom at her school had a "clothesline" running across the room and all the students' artwork was hung on it to dry...... LIGHT BULB!!

I hung some fishing line on her wall and we painted clothespins to display her work.

Now all of we can hang many more pictures, it's outta her little brother's reach and it decorates her wall a little.  We're also able to hang more of the bigger pictures she makes that wouldn't necessarily fit on the fridge.

Behold the power of Vinegar

I may be a little late to the whole green cleaning world, but I have been thinking of making the switch for awhile now and after all it's the thought that counts right?

I really like the idea of cleaning the house without all the harmful chemicals but in my mind it's those harmful chemicals that I feel get my house clean.  But after doing some research over the past few months I think I'm ready to take baby steps into the green world of cleaning.  Now, I can't quit all the traditional cleaning products cold turkey and I may not ever be able to give up certain ones... We'll see. However, I am going to try out some "natural" products and ways to clean and hopefully I can make my cleaning routine a little bit better for my family, the environment, and my pocketbook. 

I'm finding vinegar can be used to clean just about anything.  I recently started using it in place of my fabric softener.  When I first heard about this I was a bit, ah yea not gonna walk around smelling like a jar of pickles, but I was assured once my clothes were dry they would not smell like vinegar. I was intrigued, but not convinced. So I figured I would first try it out on my sheets and towels because if in fact they did smell I could just rewash them quick (cuz you know a load of clothes would be so much more difficult to rewash them some sheets or towels).

Anyways... I washed four beds worth of sheets and blankets, and a house full of towels and NONE I repeat NONE came out smelling like vinegar!!

I add  ½ cup to 1 cup of white vinegar to the fabric softener dispenser of my washing machine.  If you don't have one just add it to your rinse cycle or you could get a downy ball and put it in that.  The vinegar will deodorize, soften clothes, and prevent static cling.

Vinegar is a lot cheaper than traditional fabric softeners and you won't be using all those harmful chemicals.  My family also deals with sensitive skin issues, my daughter especially, so I can't really use any fabric softener on her clothes anyways so this works wonders for her stuff.

Now there are some other "recipes" for natural fabric softeners that I may try out, but for now I'm liking the plain vinegar.

*Make sure you do NOT use bleach and vinegar together as this is a very unsafe combination. You shouldn't really mix bleach with anything except water.

Do you do any "green" cleaning?

Chocolate Eclair Squares

My favorite type of dessert to make (and eat) is a trifle. They're so easy. And while this is not a trifle per se, it is layered dessert which makes it just as easy.  The hardest part is waiting the 4 hours for it to set up!

What you will need:

2 pkg. (3.4 oz. each) Vanilla Flavor Instant Pudding (I use sugar free)

2 cups cold milk (I use skim)

1 tub (8 oz.) Whipped Topping, thawed (I use lite)

64 NILLA Wafers

2 squares Semi-Sweet Chocolate

What you will do:

Beat pudding mixes and milk in large bowl with whisk 2 min. Stir in whipped topping. Arrange 16 wafers on bottom of 8-inch square dish; cover with 1/3 of the pudding mixture. Repeat layers twice. Top with remaining wafers. Refrigerate 4 hours.
Microwave chocolate in microwaveable bowl on HIGH 1 min. or until melted when stirred. Drizzle over dessert. Store in refrigerator.

Source: Kraft Foods

On a side note I finished the first book of the Hunger Games over the weekend and am waiting very impatiently to start the second.  Christian forgot it at school. Ugh.  But on the upside my bff and I are going to see the movie tonight!! 

Stretch your beauty dollars a little farther

I am a product junkie, and most of the time I can not wait to finish a product so I can try another.   However, there are my holy grail products that when they get down to the end I panic if I don't have another one standing by. I would try so hard to get every little drop out of the bottle and then I discovered this trick and couldn't believe how much product was still in the tube. It's usually at least a few more days worth.  Now this won't work for all products, only those that come in tubes.

 This works for products in tubes like this. 

(This product is one of my favorite hair products by the way)

 Cut the tube in half.

You can now scoop out remaining product.



 To store push bottom half into the top half

This tube fit together nicely so I left it like this. If I have a tube where I feel air will

get in and dry out the product I will then put it in a Ziploc bag.



Let the Games Begin

Today I started The Hunger Games.  I have went back and forth on whether or not I wanted to read these books.  Don't get me wrong, I love a good-hyped-up-can't-put-it-down-book, but my hearts been broken one too many times by a good book series end (Twilight, Harry Potter,etc).  Anyone who reads knows what I'm talking about. That empty what the heck am I going to do now feeling you get when you finish the last word of the last sentence of the last page of the last book.

Well, when all the hype started I was intrigued, but the more hype it got, the more I was thinking meh, maybe it's not for me. Then the movie came out, and of course I like to read a book before seeing the movie. Anyone with me on this? Then I thought oh who cares, just go see the movie. I mean people see movies all the time without reading the book first. Then, my son Christian started reading the books. Christian is not a reader.  At all.  He still tries to reuse book reports on books he's read 3 or 4 years ago. Christian.loves.the.books. He asked me to buy him the 2nd and 3rd book because he can't put them down. That made my mind up. I have to read these books. So today my journey in the Hunger Games begins... If they are as good as everyone claims, sorry family but you'll be fending for yourself til I'm done reading. :)

Have you read The Hunger Games?

Things I'm Loving Right Now

First of all today is my oldest son's birthday... 14.. I can't believe it.. Where does the time go? Happy Birthday Christian!

And now on to some things I've been loving lately.

Fresh Sugar Lip Treatment in Rose

I'll admit it, I'm not a huge fan of lipstick.  I mean, I do like the way it looks, and I do tend to leave the house with it on, but after it wears off that's the last of it for the day.  I'm just to lazy busy to keep applying throughout the day. And honestly I really don't care for how it feels. I'm sure this drives my mom insane considering the fact, that I'm pretty sure she (and probably my grandma too) came out of the womb with freshly applied lipstick.

I do however love me some chapstick. I like the way it feels better than lipstick and I like the fact that you don't need a mirror to apply it.  However, sometimes a girl needs a little color on her lips... and I've tried the tinted lip balms before and they all leave me looking like I've had one too many cherry koolaids. 


Lately, I've been using the Fresh Sugar Lip Treatment in Rose. O.M.G. am I in love. This stuff is amazing! It feels just like a chapstick. Has a SPF of 15 AND adds the most perfect tint to your lips.

Tazo Zen Green Tea

I love green tea   I have been drinking it for years, because I like the taste.  Now throw in the research that is showing all the health benefits that come with drinking it. BONUS!  I like all green teas, but this is by far my favorite.

Pampered Chef Pizza Grill Pan

Pizza on the grill...Need I say more? 

Have you tried any of these products?

*Disclaimer: I have not been paid or compensated otherwise to write this. These are my honest thoughts and opinions about the products and wanted to share them with you because I enjoy them and think you would too.