You can get reusable shopping bags at many stores for a dollar or so these days. They aren’t bad, but not all of them last well. If you’re looking at the long term, do consider spending a little extra for a quality bag. Then you’ll also have your choice of materials and style, rather than a store logo or something.

More and more stores are giving nickel discounts for bringing your own bags. Target and CVS are starting programs; it’s not longer just the little guys.

The challenge is in remembering to bring your own bags, of course. Figure out if keeping them by the door, in the car, in your purse, with the shopping list or something else works to help you to remember your bags.

Changing your burnt out bulbs to CFLs or other high efficiency, long lasting bulbs is one of the simplest things you can do. In many areas you can find CFLs that are quite inexpensive due to support from the local power company, or you may be able to get them directly from your power company. These will generally just be the basic ones; if you need some that work with a dimmer switch or for other special situations you may still need to pay full price.

Even so, a good CFL saves more on your power bill per year than it costs. It’s a difference that’s hard to see but is definitely there.

Eventually, LED bulbs are expected to be a better choice, but there aren’t many good ones on the market. There can still be issues with brightness and color of light. Hopefully eventually they’ll be worthwhile.

This is a bigger home than I’ve had to deal with in years past, but it’s also better insulated. That’s a big help. There are still things that should be done to homes to get ready for winter.

Check for Drafts

If you can feel air coming in, or see an opening, you have a place for the cold to come in. At our old home, there were visible openings as well as windows that just weren’t tight enough to keep the cold out. This home is much newer, so there’s less of a problem.

If you find an opening, caulk or weatherstripping may help, depending on the kind of opening you’re dealing with.

Have Your Heater Checked

Having a professional check your heating system is a very good idea. They can confirm everything is working correctly. You may also want to check filters and replace as necessary. This will help keep air flowing efficiently.

Clean the Gutters

Gutters along the roof are much prone to becoming filled with leaves and other dirt. Clean them out so that water flows through them easily. This gives you more control over how water flows off your house.

Have Your Chimney Inspected

This is very important, doubly so if you enjoy having a fire in the fireplace.

Check Detector Batteries

You should have several smoke detectors in your home, and check the batteries regularly. Many of you have hopefully done this with the time change over the weekend, but if not do so now.

A carbon monoxide detector can also be a good idea. Have one on each level of the house at least, and near or in bedrooms is also a good idea. Some plug into your regular power outlets and do not need batteries.

Both smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors have test buttons. Use it to make sure their alarms really do work.

Install Storm Windows or Insulate Windows

If you have storm windows, this is the time of year to put them up. If you don’t and you need more insulation on your windows you have a few options.

In our house last year we put bubble wrap up in one window that was not well sealed. This kept the room significantly cooler in summer and helped in winter as well. It creates a layer of air, so that it’s harder for the cold outside to come in.

Blankets or heavy curtains can also help some.

Insulate Water Pipes

If you’re likely to get freezing weather, know which pipes need extra insulation at this time of year. I had frozen pipes one year at the old house, highly unusual for the area, and I am quite grateful that nothing burst. But waiting for the ice to melt so that toilets could be flushed and showers taken was kind of a pain.

Dress Warm Rather Than Heat the House

Just remember that heating the house is not the only way to stay warm in cold weather. Within reason, you can just put on a sweater, thick socks and warm shoes to keep warm. It’s much cheaper over time to heat your body than to heat your home, so long as you aren’t risking overdoing it.

Find the right balance for your family and you can really cut your heating bills.

I’ve been working on introducing meats to Selene. Making baby food cubes is a bit harder with meat than with fruits and vegetables. Not only do you have to be very thorough with your cooking, it’s harder on the blender.

Even when it’s just ground beef. Amazing how hard that stuff is to puree.

My first round with it the blender caused it to quit. Now this is a really good blender, a 15 year old (or thereabouts, my husband has had it since well before we married) VitaMix. That thing blends just about anything. But if you make it work too hard it will quit rather than burn out the motor.

I tried it again in the morning. It took some work to get the beef out, as it had become a rather firm, kind of gelatinous mass. Blender couldn’t do a thing with it.

But a bit of heating in the microwave on the stuff I pulled out, plus a good bit of water, and it blended up nicely.

I’m quite relieved to have not killed my blender. It’s a good machine. My husband campaigns for a newer VitaMix here and there, but while this one works I’m not spending the money. It still does everything we need it to do quite well.

My son likes to snack on the frozen cubes of fruit. Can’t complain about that. But I was pretty surprised when my husband started throwing cubes of baby food into smoothies.

But it made sense really quickly. They’re kind of the same thing.

Homemade baby food is a really easy way to add some vegetables into a smoothie. Green beans hardly change the taste of the smoothie at all. We’ve always tended to throw a carrot into smoothies. We’re thinking squash should work well too.

It just nice being able to throw the fruit and some veggies into the blender and come up with something healthy to drink or make into popsicles. Using the baby food means that vegetables are just that much easier to add, since they don’t need more preparation.

The focus is on the Smart Choice label, which is supposed to be on nutritious food choices. While they may be fortified with however many vitamins, Froot Loops and other such cereals that focus on appealing to the sweet tooth scarcely qualify as healthy last time I checked.

Must be some new definition of healthy I’m not familiar with.

Admittedly, many healthier cereals may not be so good for you either once you’re done preparing them. I don’t know if the habit is common anymore, but I remember always having a spoonful of sugar spread over my cereal as a kid any time it wasn’t one of the sugary sorts. Wouldn’t eat them any other way back then. Thank goodness my kids haven’t heard of that habit.

My mother told me a while back that when a study was done comparing different kinds of cereals and the way they were really eaten, sometimes the sugary ones would come out ahead in nutritional value just due to how much sugar people would add at home to less sweet cereals. Now this may well have been done when different sweeteners were used, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting tidbit to consider if you still add sugar to your own cereal.

Better yet and potentially cheaper can be to buy oatmeal and have that for breakfast. No worry about artificial colors. You may have the sugar issue going again, depending on your sweet tooth, but you can easily add naturally sweet things such as raisins to make it a bit better. My kids love oatmeal, although they do want more brown sugar or honey in it than I really like to give.

There’s a good side to this kind of labeling, however. It’s a great teaching point for parents about advertising and how you really can’t trust everything you see on a box or on television. It’s a way to teach kids to be more cautious consumers.

Reduce

Just don’t buy so much stuff. If you have Halloween decorations, use them of course! If you’re bored with yours, see about trading around with other family members or friends.

Think more carefully about how many treats you need for trick or treaters. How much overage do you really need anyhow? If you’re really into it, look into fair trade or organic candy.

You also don’t need to buy special buckets for trick or treating. Pillow cases have worked well in that area for many years. Any reusable shopping bags you have may also work well.

Reuse

I said it before: reuse the decorations you already have. But if you really need new ones, think about making them. Some construction paper, glue, markers, paint, or other art supplies you may have around the house can combine well to make creative Halloween crafts to decorate your home inside and out.

You can also find Halloween costumes or parts to create your own at thrift stores or your own closets. A homemade costume will stand out far more than one of the many store bought ones. But if you do buy one from the store, try to be sure that you either send it to the thrift store after or get one good enough that the kids can play dress up in it after Halloween. Why buy a costume to be worn only once?

Recycle

Start with your pumpkin. Make sure its remains make it into the compost bin rather than the trash.

Halloween only creates so much recyclable trash, but keep your eyes open for possibilities. If you aren’t going to reuse those costumes, send them off to the thrift store and maybe someone else will. If you made your own decorations with paper, make sure that any that aren’t in good enough condition to be reused next year hit the recycle bin.

Dead leaves can make for great Halloween decorations, then be composted as well.

What other ideas do you have for a green Halloween?

On Saturday, October 24, 2009 there will be events around the world aimed at building awareness of the need for an international climate treaty to try to bring CO2 levels in our atmosphere down to 350, which is believed to be the highest safe level. Yes, we’re beyond it now.

You can find events in your area with this map. It’s just one more way for you to learn what you can do and show politicians that there is support for fighting climate change.

One of the employees told us that they grow the majority of what they sell there, but a few varieties came from other local growers. The variety of pumpkins, other winter squash and gourds was pretty amazing. So much more than your classic plain orange pumpkin, or even the white ones.

My daughter picked a yellow one. My son was just too tired as the day was a touch warm, so we’ll probably be back this weekend for his. Prices weren’t too bad either – a bit higher than grocery stores, but you just don’t get that kind of selection at the store.

They have a lot of fun stuff for the kids too. There’s a petting zoo, which we didn’t go into but my kids did get quite a kick out of the goat who had made his way to the top of some equipment they had. There’s a corn maze, some bounce houses and things like that. A bit pricey overall, but a bit pricey is typical for these kinds of places in my experience. We just used it as a chance for the kids to learn to budget their tickets to pick the things they wanted to do most of all.

Overall, it was fun. As I said, we’re going back for another pumpkin soon.

For those who can’t read it, it reads “Save the Earth. Save water.”

She’s pretty much obsessed with saving water. That we’ve moved from an area with strict water restrictions to one with none at all drives her nuts.

It’s drawn on some padding from our move. It was put between plates to protect them. We’re saving it for the most part as we anticipate within the next year or two moving back to the San Diego area, depending on when my husband gets transferred, so it would be a waste to throw it out.

Nice thing is, this piece could still be used that way if my daughter gets bored with it.

Some’s also going to my mom, who needs it to pad out a car seat that’s not well enough padded. Yes mom, we remember!

It’s good to remember that trash to you can be art supplies to children. They don’t need much to be creative.