Trying to turn my thumb green!

This year I decided to venture into gardening. Now that my kids love being outside, it is easier to maintain a garden while supervising them. YAH! Plus, they love watching it grow and helping maintain it.

We have strawberries (which have produced tons), tomatoes, lettuce, brussels sprouts, potatoes, carrots and basil growing. I didn't dabble too much with flowers because I want to eat what I grow. We all know I LOVE to eat.

I, however, became inspired to make a living wreath for my front door.

I was very excited to hang it since I had to leave it flat for 6 weeks while the roots set.

Isn't it lovely?

It obviously still has filling in to do in some places, but I am quite pleased. I plan on watering it about once a week since I used succulents. I went to water it after the first week...and... I dropped it!!!! All the 'chicks and hens' plants fell out :( So I have to wait again for them to root. I may let the other plants fill in the missing spots though, ugh!

Paper-Free Kitchen

Yep, you read that right, for about a week now the Orthner kitchen has no paper products.

I read about a friend doing this on Facebook and at first I thought it was crazy and not worth it. But the more I thought about it the more I like the notion. I took all my saved up coupons to Bed Bath and Beyond and  created an easy system for all my family to follow.

Black=napkins
White=floor messes or super messy table messes...aka spilled yogurt like we had this morning
Colorful=hand towel/dish towel

I currently have the basket on the counter top so that we get used to grabbing for these clothes like we did paper towels  Hopefully I can move it one day into a cabinet!

Why did I choose the categories above?

Napkins are obvious, we need a small hand size cloth to clean our hands while we eat. But I needed to differentiate between hand/dish towel and floor messes. I want to know when I pick up a colorful cloth to dry my dishes that it has not cleaned up the floor.

So my family knows, the black napkins go straight to the washing machine after a meal, the white floor clothes go directly to the washing machine after use and the colorful dish towel gets changed every other day.

I just throw the clothes on the bottom of my washing machine and they sit there until a load of wash is done. A few clothes doesn't effect the size of your load, so I will just have a few to fold with each load, so there isn't much extra work with the laundry.

It feels good to do my part to save money in the long run while helping the environment. You may think there is no way your family can do this, but really if we can, so can you!