I am on this kick with fall.

Yesterday, I went to a fashion show that was put on to support local businesses.  It was a really neat event and there were people from all walks of life – plus the clothes were pretty.

The weather was just so that I could wear tights with my skirt & my new boots I got for our upcoming trip to NYC – mind you, this is a rare occassion in Florida, but it did get me thinking about one of my other favorite fall things: Sweaters. 

Sweaters are one of my comfort feel goods;  I have two big oversized sweaters that I take the opportunity to cuddle up on my couch with the couple times of year I can…and it just makes me happy.  Please take note, I said I have 2 oversized sweaters. 2 is almost an over abundance in a climate that doesn’t get to freezing on a regular basis and I just can’t justify buying more sweaters for our upcoming trip to the tundra – so what do I do?!

I do not make haste to make more waste, instead, I borrow!  Borrowing your friends clothes is a great way to widen your variety of clothing, avoid the expense, and miss the excess.  There are rules to borrowing clothes however, (1) you must wash (properly) before you return them to your friend (2) you must return them in a timely fashion (3) you cannot let anything happen to the article of clothing – i.e. pets, wine, coffee, or scissors & if you do, be prepared to reimburse.

If borrowing isn’t an option – consider a swap!  A group of about 6 girls & I did this a while back  and had a blast!  We got our bottle of wine and everyone toted over things that they liked but just didn’t want at their house anymore.  We chose numbers as to what order to follow & everyone picked something until it was gone.  If there were items that the collective didn’t want, they were donated. I got some great stuff, and someone got my great stuff!  It might just be time for another one…

Borrowing & swapping for a dog-sweater could be a little different though, hopefully it won’t get so cold that Rigby will need a sweater, but just in case, I will be looking for an organic wool option to keep her warm!

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I started to get a little nostalgic today; the temperature dropped to real fall weather! I am wearing socks & a sweatshirt and I am loving it!  The crisp scent in the air always reminds me a few of my favorite things from growing up in Michigan – and today,  the memory of apple orchards is one of the events that spiked my love & appreciation of the world around us:

Picking your own Apples!

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to locate an apple orchard in Orlando (or Florida for that matter) so I have to pick ‘em from the Farmer’s Market – but almost every other state can partake in this awesome activity!  Imagine, rows & rows of apple trees, your own straw basket, a hot mug of apple cider, & maybe a cinnamon donut for a treat (as if fresh grown apples weren’t enough) You might even get lucky enough to take a hay ride on a horse-drawn wagon!  *sigh of jealousy*

 If you do have the chance to go to the orchard this season – send me pictures!  and ask the folks there what kind of environmental practices do they keep in order to make their crops tasty and not take away from the earth. 

Some things to consider when choosing your afternoon of apples:   

• How are you getting there?  Carpool if you can & pack it in with as many people as there are seatbelts to lower your impact.
• Where are you going?  Consider an Organic Apple Orchard if you can – and a local one at that to support your own growing community!
• How does the farm promote soil health?  Perhaps they create their own special organic compost blend.  
• How does the farm conduct tree disease management?  Organic farmers will use a natural approach to their tree farms by creating a forest like haven that apples trees would naturally grown in.

What are you going to do with all those delicious apples?

Here is one of my fave recipes for your bushel of delish:

Butternut Squash Ravioli w. Apple/Walnut dressing 

Cook your ravioli as normal – stovetop water boil style. I like using Butternut Squash ravioli because it tastes like cheese, but minus the extra calories – however, cheese ravioli is tasty as well - so do what you like! 

In the meantime, heat up a little olive oil in a saute pan & toast up your walnuts (or mixed nuts, whatever you have on hand) approximately one handful.

Just before they are done fully toasting, add some thinly sliced, hard variety of apple.  One apple will usually do it, but this is a great recipe to make for a large group as well, so figure as needed.  I like to use Red Delicious for this recipe, but any will work as long as they stay firm.  Also add a half of a handful of finely choppeed Italian parsely leaves.

Stir this all around just enough until the oil coats it all and it has had a chance to blend the flavors -approximately 2 minutes.

Toss this delish dressing with your raviolis & ENJOY!!! mmmm.

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One day after Halloween, this Carnival of Green Thinking is sharing blog posts from those who left a very little imprint from their spooky evening!  Keep these tips handy for next year, or maybe even if you aren’t done celebrating yet.

Have an interesting blog post you want to share?  Send it to us!

LEAD BASED FACE PAINT is SCARY!!!

Green Halloween shares how to make your own safe face paint for all your little goblins & witches!

…Last year, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics released a report stating that 10 of 10 face paints tested contained lead (a powerful neurotoxin) and other heavy metals. These findings fuel mounting concerns over the safety of numerous chemical fragrances, artificial colors, preservatives and other ingredients in body products (for children and adults).

But kids wear face paint, they don’t eat it, right?

Wrong. What’s applied to the skin is absorbed into the body. Think of body products (face paint, included) as “skin food”…

GREEN YOUR GRAVESITE

OrganicMania.com took a bite out of Halloween by sharing about how to green a vampire’s lair, or your very own grave!

…To spice things up a bit this year, Deanna of Crunchy Chicken – the one who puts the “mental” in EnvironMental – suggested we blog about death. Green death, green burials, the green hereafter: whatever…

 WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GREEN YOUR HALLOWEEN?

Squidoo.com educates us what it means to actually make our Halloween fun eco-friendly too.

…Green Halloween is a growing trend being encouraged by people trying to Live Green to apply the ‘green’ concepts to Halloween. The main focus is of Greening Your Halloween is to be making eco-friendly, earth-friendly and healthier choices when it comes to the food, the costumes, the decorations and the activities people are choosing to celebrate the Halloween Holiday…

Trick or TREAT!!!!

What would Halloween be without the treats?   GreenGrapes Blog shares with us all about the good-stuff.  Candy.  But also what to do to make sure your Halloween doesn’t fully end in tummy aches & cavities.

…Halloween also happens to be the only time of year where eating obscene quantities of chocolate and candy is acceptable. Approximately 5% of all candy consumed for the year occurs on Halloween! That’s a lot of candy!

So—how to manage all that candy?…

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Hi Green Thinkers!  Remember our friends at Rapanui? Check out the press release below on their recently  received RSPCA Good Business Award.  For the American readers out there the RSPCA is comparable to our ASPCA to help prevent cruelty to animals, they are just located over the pond in England & Wales.

Rapanui Win Highly Commended Award at the RSPCA Good Business Awards

Rapanui has won a highly commended prize at the annual RSPCA good business awards for their contribution to sustainability, animal welfare policy and for fulfilling their ethos of ‘doing business the right way’.

 The brand, founded by brothers Mart and Rob Drake-Knight in early 2008 aims to make eco fashion cool and to inspire people to make changes to their wider lifestyle by being open and honest about their supply chain. In response to the current state of the clothing industry they say that “It’s not that people don’t care, it’s just that they don’t know” and have designed an innovative Traceability tool and Eco-labelling initiative, aiming to inform and inspire people to go green by making it easy to find out where their clothing comes from and how it is made, “helping people shop quickly, with a conscience.”

The RSPCA chooses expert judges for their awards ceremony, including Wayne Hemmingway, co-founder of Red or Dead.

“…there is a real commitment within the industry to improve animal welfare, and it’s reassuring to see big brands at the forefront of this change.”  Mr. Hemmingway said.

The brothers have already won the 2010 Sustainable Business Awards, a finals place at Enterprise UK’s Enterprising Young Brits and a nomination for next year’s ISPO Brand New Award. They hope their recognition at the RSPCA Good Business Awards will inspire other young people to consider entrepreneurship. Now 25 and 23 respectively, Rob and Martin Drake-Knight founded their company with £200 of savings and are now listed on the Future 100 list of top young entrepreneurs.

“We hope our business can inspire other young people, even if they have no job and no money, that they can be a success too – whether you wear a suit or flip flops”

Find out more about traceability and Rapanui at: http://www.rapanuiclothing.com/eco

About Rapanui:

Rapanui is about making cool eco-fashion for young people; that means clothing that is eco-friendly, ethical and sustainable: Made from natural organic fabrics in a Fairwear Foundation audited, wind powered factory. Through surfing the brothers saw and experienced the changing environment and climate at their local beach and as inspired, unemployed graduates in a recession, they took a different path; if you can’t find a job, make one.

Rapanui has held Seminars and Lectures at UK and EU universities and multinational companies such as Centrica PLC on Sustainable Business and sit on the Panel at Plymouth University’s All our Future Conference.

Rapanui has made bespoke versions of its clothing for multinationals and charities including Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream and the Marine Conservation Society.

Rapanui was set up by brothers Mart and Rob Drake-Knight in early 2008 with £200 of savings and was listed in the Top 100 Startups of 2008. Rob and Martin are listed on the Future 100 List of Top young Entrepreneurs and were recently finalists in Enterprise UK’s Young Brits awards. Rapanui was the youngest company to win the Sustainable Business Awards in May 2010 and has recently been nominated for the internationally-recognised ISPO Brand New Award.

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Handle: @greenthinking

Stay tuned! Facebook page is coming soon!

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Hey there Green Thinkers!  Thanks for your patience in our brief interuption.  I took a few days off to spend some time with my mom face to face vs. virtual and during her visit we took the opportunity to spend some quality times in a very handy-fashion.

Remember when I posted previously about giving some of our older furniture some new life in order to give our new place a breath of fresh life?  Well, Mom, the man, & I undertook the  task of giving a face lift to our tea cart.  Check out the steps below:

1.  Find an old characteristic piece to give a great make-over.

The original version.

2.  Empty contents & sand it down to remove all the old shiny stuff, aka finish.

3.  Add primer.  The primer will allow your paint to show its true cover & hide any blemishes your old piece may have had and sanding couldn’t take care of.

Primed to make it prime!

4.  Wait until it dries.  Add paint, your color is your choice!  Consider using a low voc environmental version.

The makeover, a little lipstick goes a long way!

5.   Add a clear coat for the shine!

6. Pick out some cool vintage looking hardware (depending on your piece).

The jewelry

7.  Reload & enjoy!

from Ug...to AHHH

We are so pleased with our ‘new’ furniture! I had some other projects at hand, but I think we are going to enjoy our new things for a little longer before undertaking anything more for awhile.

Some other things to make your DIY projects even more eco-friendly:

• Remember to get your environmental, water based paints & clear coats. 
• Don’t forget that your tools.  We used a roller with a reusable brush. Since we used all water-based coverings, we were able to rinse it out before each coat & not have to create a lot of waste.
• Consider looking at old antique shops or thrift stores to look for your furnitures bling aka hardware.  Maybe you even have something lying around that you could convert.  If you are re-doing a dining buffet, consider using old silverware as handles, looking for some cupboard knobs – take a tip from my Aunt & collect unique stones from your garden to glue to a screw & install.

DIY projects are so fun, inexpensive & a great way to avoid excessive purchasing & waste. 

Have you repurposed anything lately? Share it with us!  We would love to share how you’ve turned something drab to fab, ug to ah, a big blurb to something to superb…you get the drift.  Shoot us a little background & pic to greenthinkinggtb@gmail.com, or submit to our blog carnival!

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As you know, we just moved into a new place & we are super gung-ho about kicking our old messy habits to ensure we keep our new house in pristine condition.

That is where these eight tips come into play from Delish.com!

What about using hydrogen peroxide to clean your countertops?  Ever consider using baking soda to mop your floors? – and then make them shine by a dose of white vinegar!  Au naturale & super clean.

Check out the article to find out more tips & even how to clean out the neck of your pesky vase necks.

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A big thank you goes to April at DragonAshes.com for this great guest post on the publishing business and a way it has turned green.  April does a lot of reads on books about to be released, and believe me, she knows her stuff!   Her blog also shares her daily adventures with her pet (Big & Little & the kitties), cooking, her family, and all around interesting stuff. 

Check out what she has to share with us Green Thinkers:

While the dismal economy here and abroad has had big effects on many businesses, one that took a big hit has been the publishing industry.  Publishing is costly and selling books is labor intensive.  So, when the need to cut back spending hit the publishers, did they cut back on books?  Of course, but they did a lot less cutting back than they expected.  They just turned their focus to digital books.  Digital publishing is all the rage now.  Every bookseller and publishing house (it seems) has their own e-reader and a list of books available digitally.  Search Barnes and Noble or Amazon websites and each book will be listed at least twice – in paper and digital versions.  What is so great about these digital versions?  Depending on your reader you can highlight sections, bookmark pages, search for certain text and many other things.  Plus, going on a trip?  You can carry an entire library worth of books in your carry-on bag.  Bored while standing in line at the theater/grocery store/retail store?  Read a book.  Need to take the bus to work as your car is in the shop?  Read a book.  Convenient, inexpensive and lots of fun.

 So why is this an important issue when it comes to sustainability?  Because there are fewer trees being sacrificed for your love of bodice rippers of course!  Less ink, less energy expended in printing – less everything.  And this is a good thing for all sorts of people – People who enjoy reading can get books quickly and cheaply without having to pay shipping or drive to a store.  People who love to write but have never been ‘discovered’ by the big publishing houses can publish their works on their own with minimal fuss.*  Booksellers can sell more books more quickly without even needing a brick and mortar store.  Libraries even have digital books available to lend.  Of course every rainbow has its end – with fewer paper books being printed and fewer brick and mortar stores being needed, jobs for people are fewer. 

 There are some websites that are dedicated to digital books like Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/) which is dedicated to mostly self published authors.  I hear you say to yourself “But self-published authors are no good, that is why a big publishing house won’t publish them.”  You couldn’t be further from the truth.  I know of one author who is now published by Simon and Schuster that started out selling his own, self-published books by himself.  These authors are not publishing’s rejects – they are the authors that have yet to be discovered.  You can get ebooks at both Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  Some publishers will sell them directly from their website (macmillan.com or randomhouse.com).  And there are some publishers now that only publish digital books (Ellora’s Cave, Samhain books, Boston Books for example) Added bonus, they are inexpensive!  This can be very important when you are on a scant budget like I am!  Take a look at this self published author’s works: http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=maria+e.+schneider

 *They have to create their own book covers though, which can be hit or miss.  I’ve seen some terrible ones and some great ones.  But authors aren’t usually artists too so give them some slack!

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Remember when Green Thinking Blog went to Bonnaroo in June?

Well, the stats just came in on how much of an environmental impact attendees made through their recycling efforts & Bonnaroo made overall with their full-on committment. Clean Vibes was on the campus to do the dirty work & tally it up!  The results were so great that Bonnaroo even won an award: The A Greener Festival Award, which rates festivals eco-friendliness all over the world!

Check out what was diverted from the landfills at this year’s Bonnaroo (stats provided by Bonnaroo follow up email to GreenThinkingGTB@gmail.com :

101 tons of commingled recycling
23 tons of cardboard
21 tons of scrap metal
45 tons compostable material
5 tons of cooking oil

All together 60% of all waste by volume was diverted from landfills!

This is so impressive, I wonder how Bonnaroo & Clean Vibes will top it next year?!

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Taking a little break from the Carnival of Green Thinking this week – we will pick it up again next week, so feel free to submit your favorite blog articles by the end of next Friday to share with the world!

I love musicals, I love singing & dancing, I love happy things that could be true, but are a little too quirky to believe fully. 

That being said, I do enjoy watching the fun television show, Glee, and since it is a new-ish television phenemenon, you probably know someone else who enjoys it too.

Since growing in popularity, everyone wants to jump on the Glee bandwagon & they are promoting a lot right now in some cute little snip-its…Britney S. Pierce is my favorite.

Right now they are working with American Express to do a promotion with the Members Project and are giving us an opportunity to do good with the actual characters of Glee!  Check out the quiz here and see if you are Sue or a Shue!

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