Last month I made a few skirts using a fun book called, “Sew What! Skirts“. The premise of the book is to show you how to make your own patterns to create simple skirts. I made two wrap-around skirts that I wear frequently.

New cushion cover and old cat

Last weekend, I made new covers for the pillows on the sofa. We have a lovely Room & Board sofa that is covered with a blanket most of the time. We keep it covered so the cats don’t get hair all over it since it’s really their sofa and we get to borrow it on occasion. The blanket is easily removed when we have company and the sofa looks like new. We never bothered to cover the pillows and they are starting to show wear in little drool spots, mysterious stains and bits of feather poking through. I had some mid-century style modern fabric in my stock. I had purchased it in the hopes of making place mats or an apron, but the pattern was too big. It was perfect for the pillows, however. With the addition of vintage buttons from my mom’s stash, I had two nifty looking pillows that make the sofa pop — even with the cover on.

I think my ratio of brown to green compostable materials was too brown and not enough green. Some items like paper towels, coffee filters and branches were still whole after the three months. I threw them back up in the top for another round.

The interesting thing is that this month I had another type of fly infestation. I have been dealing with fruit flies off an on throughout the spring and summer. I noticed a few weeks ago a wasp like fly buzzing around the composter. My husband looked them up on WhatsThatBug.com and found out they were Black Soldier Flies. The name sounds a bit intimidating, but it turns out that they are a beneficial insect. The adults have no working mouth and only live a few days spent on finding a mate and reproducing. They lay their eggs in decomposing material and are thus drawn to the compost pile. This is where the beneficial part begins. The fly larvae are voracious eaters and hasten the composting process the same way worms do. Suddenly my compost is teeming with life and the process has sped up considerably.

Stanza eBook Reader for iPhone & iPod Touch

I come from a family of avid readers. Money was tight growing up, so the local library was an oasis of free entertainment. I remember spending hours in the children’s section of the main library in Anaheim curled up with a good book getting lost in fantastic new worlds like Narnia and Oz. My second grade teacher, Miss Keene, read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to us in class. I grew impatient with the slow progress and raced to the school library to check it out and finish it myself.

There is nothing I’d rather do when I have a little spare time than read a good book. Waiting rooms are an ideal opportunity to sneak in a few pages. However, I don’t always have a book with me and waiting room magazines are often a meager menu of People, Parents Magazine or Sports Illustrated. I have nothing against celebrities, kids or sports, but they don’t hold my interest long.

eBooks offer the convenience and portability of having a library in your pocket. I have an iPhone and I find that eBook apps are my favorite. I currently have three.

Pros and Cons of eBooks

Pros

• Portability – I have an extensive library at my fingertips. I recently read Neal Stephenson’s Anathem on my iPhone. The hardcover book has 960 pages. That is not something I’d like to carry around in my bag.
• Search – I can search for text, which is not possible in a printed version.
• Annotations – I can annotate the book with notes or observations. This would be a great tool for academia.
• Adjustable fonts – I can choose the font I prefer and up the size as my eyes age.
• Vast library of free books – Many books are available in the public domain and some authors publish their books at no charge.

Cons

• Expensive – While there are many free options, current books still under copyright cost money. The cost is often comparable or even more than a printed version. This doesn’t make much sense to me as the costs for production and distribution are considerably less. Prices do seem to be coming down as competition increases.
• No sharing - Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection does not allow you to share your library with others. A real book can be loaned, given or sold to someone else.
• Proprietary Software – I mentioned above that I have 3 eBook readers on my iPhone. I have Stanza, a free app that is ideal for public domain books including the Project Gutenburg library as well as options to buy books. I also have an eReader app for books I’ve purchased through eReader.com. eReader was the first to offer books for sale for the iPhone that I could find. I also have the Kindle app so I can purchase books from Amazon. Barnes and Noble is starting their eBook sales and will also have another app.
• Longevity of eBook formats – Since there are so many formats, will I always be able to access my purchased libraries? What if eReader goes under, what happens to all the books I purchased from them?

Looking at the pros and cons, it seems that the cons outweigh the pros. So why do I continue to buy and read eBooks. I’m willing to pay the premium for the convenience. I hope as the world of eBooks continues to evolve some of the cons will get resolved and there will be legal ways to get beyond DRM to loan books to others.

We have been composting now for three weeks. I’ve noticed during that time that the amount of trash we are throwing out has diminished by at least half. The amount of recyclable material is also down a little as some of the paper goods are compostable.

We have a 13 gallon waste bin in the kitchen. We used to fill this up between 2 and 3 times per week. We now are down to one! Another benefit is that the trash can doesn’t smell because no food waste is going inside. We also have a few small bags of cat litter waste but we can’t compost that. It’s gratifying to see less waste is going to the landfill based on our new composting project.

Fruit Fly by Max Westby

Unfortunately, I also see a swarm of fruit flies each time I open the lid. That part is not as exciting. It’s probably the banana and orange peels that I didn’t bury well enough. I’m now careful to lift the top layer and put the fruit scraps well below the surface. I still have fruit flies, but they don’t seem to be getting any worse.

I read that you can make a funnel trap by cutting a plastic soda bottle in half, placing a little cider vinegar in the bottom and then inverting the top half inside making the funnel. The flies are supposed to be drawn to the vinegar and drown. I’ll give this a try and see if it works.

Now in the Age of Enlightenment (a.k.a. the Obama Era), people seem to more engaged in doing something about protecting the only home we have. I’m glad to see that reusable bags are becoming the norm at most stores and that recycling is common place.

Here are a few of the things I do to help lower my carbon footprint. (Or as Dave would say, my cabron footprint.)

• Carpool
  Dave and I have two vehicles. We mostly drive our Mazda 3 hatchback and we carpool 99% of the time. We work at the same place, so that makes it easy.
• Compost
  Okay, we just started composting this week, but I’m thrilled that we’ll be creating less waste and methane.
• Recycle
  We sort our trash into compost, recycle and trash
• Cloth napkins
  We have a stack of cloth napkins that we use instead of paper.
• Energy Saving Appliances
  We always buy Energy Saving Appliances. We’ve had a front load washer for more than a decade.
• Vegetarian Diet
  We’ve been vegetarians for almost 20 years. Not eating meat has a huge environmental impact. It benefits the planet, the animals and your health. It’s win-win-win! 
• Reusable grocery bags
  I have a collection of bags including some ultra-thin bags from Envirosax and Flip and Tumble which are easy to carry around. 
• Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs
   We use these wherever possible. I replaced our first one a few months ago. It lasted 6 years!

There is an elegant Carbon Footprint Calculator that can help you determine how you are doing and gives you tip on what you can do better. Can I do better? You betcha! My Carbon Footprint is 19 and the national average is 53. However, I’m still a bit off from the World Average of 11. (This is based on a two person household.)

We are so fortunate to live on such a beautiful planet. We need to remember that we are just visiting and we need to leave it in the same or better state for future generations.

Earthmaker Composter

My Earthmaker arrived a day early! I am so excited because this means I can start composting right away instead of having to wait until next weekend. 

I was able to carry the box by myself into the back patio to set it up. It arrived shortly before dinner, so I patiently awaited until after dinner to try to put it together. My poor, dear husband had to work today and came home with a bad sinus headache. This gave me the opportunity to try to build the thing myself as he went to bed early.

It was actually fairly easy. An extra pair of hands might come in handy to thread the connector strips to the sides, but other than that it was straightforward. The only tool I needed was the box cutter to open the box.

I worked hard this morning clearing a space in the patio and gathering dead leaves for composting. My bamboo bucket of food scraps was full and I had another bowl ready to go, as well.

Now I will just keep adding organic waste and will hopefully be on my way to compost within a few months. We’ve had record breaking heat, so hopefully I have the right mix of ‘browns’ and ‘greens’ so that the odor is manageable. Wish me luck!

Bamboo Compost Pail

I don’t have my outdoor composter yet, but I did get my indoor compost pail. While you don’t need any fancy equipment to compost, a few devices can make composting a simpler and more pleasant experience.

There are a few different pails designed specifically to hold kitchen waste for composting. They all have a carbon filter to cut down on odor. The one that I coveted most was a lovely one made of bamboo. I opted for the bamboo one due in part to aesthetics and also that it is a green product that won’t break like the less expensive ceramic ones. I already have a few bamboo (a green, renewable resource) kitchen containers. I have two storage containers I use for sugar that were a gift for my birthday a year ago and a salt crock.  

I started my compost project today by throwing banana peels and coffee grounds inside the pail instead of the trash. Yay! Hopefully my composter will be here and set up before I fill this up too much. I may have to store the food scraps in the freezer if I compost more than the pail can handle. That wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Composting caught my eye again this month in an article in Cooking Light. They showed a variety of new approaches even for small spaces. Initially, I was drawn to the NatureMill kitchen composter which is about the size of a paper shredder. It uses a small amount of electricity to heat and rotate your kitchen scraps to create compost out of food you would normally throw away. 

According to the EPA: 

Yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 24 percent of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream. That’s a lot of waste to send to landfills when it could become useful and environmentally beneficial compost instead!

Dave was wary of using a plug in device and wondered about how “green” this type of approach would be. Further research brought me to another outdoor solution that would fit into our space, yet also allow us to compost yard waste, paper and even vacuum dust. With 3 cats we have a lot of vacuum dust. 

Earthmaker Composter

Costco.com is selling an innovative composter from New Zealand called the Earthmaker Aerobic Composter that uses gravity to keep the composting active. It has three chambers for the different stages of decomposition: mixing, digesting and maturing. Basically, you throw your kitchen scraps and yard waste in the top chamber. After about 30 days you  remove the divider that lets the waste drop to the middle chamber where it continues to decompose. You can continue to add waste to the top chamber. After 30 more days you push the compost from the middle chamber down to the bottom chamber where you now have compost. It may be ideal for a lazy gardener like myself. 

I ordered it on the Costco website and hope that it meets our needs. I would love to be able to turn our organic rubbish into something useful and help the planet at the same time.