Green Baby- Part 2

We bought our car seat yesterday! Toys R Us was having a fabulous sale on some baby products so we picked up our Graco Snugride for a great price. How is all that plastic and vinyl green, you may ask? Excellent question...

In researching car seats, I came across the site HealthyCar.org This site ranks cars and car seats on how much of certain harmful chemicals they contain. Turns out that our car seat is ranked as best in its class for toxic chemical levels!

Here's our seat
In keeping with the theme of the blog...here's the bear modeling a fabulous WAHM cloth dipe

Green Baby- Part 1

Chris & I decided quite a while ago (before Baby Dail was even on the way) that we would be using cloth diapers. We like not being a "disposable" household, so we've done things like stop using paper towel and paper napkins. It seemed only natural to us that we wouldn't use disposable diapers or wipes either. Not to mention all the nasty chemicals that are present in disposable diapers.

So I thought I'd show you all our cloth diaper stash:D

These are our Newborn size diapers. Most of these diapers and covers are used (another way that we're saving money) and all were purchased from DiaperSwappers

Muttaqin Baby


Loveybums


Kissaluvs


Drybees


Various Covers


Hand-knit Wool Longies (these function as a diaper cover)

Baby Dail

We got to pick up our ultrasound pictures the week before Christmas. Here's our little guy or girl...

And here he/she is all dressed up for Christmas (Daddy was having some fun at work...:)

Poor neglected blog....

Long time, no blogging:( Between morning sickness and going back to work full-time in the Fall, my new blog's been pretty neglected lately. I'm going to try to do better, I promise.

A few things to catch up on....

The Baby...yes, it's true! There's going to be a little Dail running around very soon (well, maybe not running for a while). Our first baby is due in April. Here's some fun belly pictures for your viewing pleasure.

14 weeks


19 weeks



We're now 20 weeks and just had our ultrasound yesterday. I will post pictures when I get them back (takes about 2 weeks).

Since the topic of this blog is "greenness", I'm planning to share over the next few weeks/months how we're hoping to raise a "green" baby. Stay tuned!

Are you a localvore?

This article talks about one of the biggest changes I'm trying to make to the way my family eats. I think it's important to think about where your food is grown and produced and how far it has to travel to get to your table. Food transport requires a great deal of oil, storage space, and sometimes chemical ripening in order for the food to be the proper ripeness when it gets where it's going.

Check it out

Endangered Produce Rescue Operation

I "rescued" some doomed produce from the reject rack at the grocery store last week and spent a day canning tomatoes for the winter.

I dropped them into boiling water first in order to loosen the skins.....

And then into ice water they go. This is a nifty trick...you can then just slip the skins off the tomatoes. Much better than trying to peel them with a vegetable peeler!

Naked tomatoes... :)

The crushing process... These tomatoes will be used in place of canned crushed tomatoes in things like pasta sauce, chili, pizza sauce, etc.

Just boil the crushed tomatoes for about 5 minutes and then into the jars they go. I don't have a picture of filling the jars or the jars in the canner because this part needs to be done quite quickly and it's a little hard to deal with boiling hot tomato goo and snap pictures at the same time (especially when you're trying very hard to avoid dropping the camera in the tomato goo).Finished product ready for the shelves in the basement! I got 9 jars (500mL each) from $6 worth of tomatoes!

Organic=Wrapped in Plastic???

I was shopping for groceries tonight at Sobeys and was looking for produce since I was away for the weekend and wasn't able to get to the Farmer's Market. I try to buy as much organic food as our budget will allow so I checked out the organic produce section. Much to my dismay, I discovered that it's all wrapped in plastic! The organic celery was even nicely cleaned and slices into sticks...in a plastic bag. Now this may sound convenient, but part of the reason that I buy organic is that it's grown in a way that is healthier for the environment. So having my environmentally-friendly produce wrapped in plastic is accomplishing what exactly? Sigh...