• I’ve worked at a two craftfairs with the charity I help out. We sell at two of the three well known BC craftfairs and now a lot of the Vendors, who do both of them know me. Just cause I keep getting new stuff from them yearly.

• Purchased a dress from my favourite store lilikoi clothing and I’m not a dress person at all.

• I fianlly met VancityAllie at her amazing two in one party (birthday/housewarming).

• After nine months of renos, trying to find a free weekend around Dragon Boat …. We finally had our housewarming (16 months after we moved in)

• My dragon boat club was having a fundraiser at a WHL Hockey game, for most of us that was our first time at a hockey game ever. I’ve been to games that my friends played in but never at this level.

Now for today’s post..

Since everyone has taken the new skytrain (like a subway) system but for me, I thought why not use it then when I head to the airport tomorrow morning as I use to jump onto transit and get the airport with no problem. Now that I live 45 minutes away (by car) taking transit would take over two hours to get to the airport which I was willing to do however, I was not willing to leave my place by 11pm Monday night to get there at 1am Tuesday Morning for an 8:30am flight. No thanks! Why should I be hanging around there when the restaurants or even customs are closed down for the night? I even looked at airport shuttles a nice door to door service but $40 bucks on top of $900 (after taxes) for a plane ticket(s) is, extra money I don’t have at this time of year.

Thankfully my mom offered me a ride in, I just owe her a coffee in the morning. Which also means I can sleep in my bed instead on a public seat (transit/airport) cause who knows when they were last cleaned/cleaned well.

My relaxful day planned turned into running around doing a few more things that I didn’t expect to do today. But I never got a chance to pick up travel insurance last week like I wanted to.

Guess I should do that now, so I have the rest of the day to relax and pack for snowy weather.

Maybe I do have a 1950 house wife mindset (or tree hugging hippie) when it comes to making my own cleaning chemicals like water and vinegar. From what we can purchase these days I find are they way to toxic and if I get headaches from store bought products, then I don’t want them in my house harming my family or pets.

With the weather has been amazing lately, I’ve been using our clothesline every chance I get when I’ve been doing laundry. There is something about the smell of air dried clothing in the summer months. If I didn’t live in a wet climate, I would be using my clothes line a lot more though out the year. I grew up with clothes lines and I think they are a great way to save money over the summer months. So let the wind can dry your clothes for free, so you can have extra spending $$ around the holidays.

Have you used vinegar and water as a cleaner?
Do you use a clothes line? (if your city by law allows it)
If you haven’t, would you?

I’m tried of hearing people perching about we gotta do something but none of those people will do anything. Example: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans STILL has not recovered or been rebuilt 100%, the place looks like it was just been hit a week ago not years. Where did all the money that poured in to help out get put? Guessing, someones back pocket .

Earth Hour and Earth Day to me isn’t a trend but away to make us humans to get a head check to remember we only do have one planet to live on (at this moment). Sure Mother Nature does like giving us curve balls with disasters but we humans aren’t helping out much either. The idea about going green and getting an electric car sounds great but where are we gonna get the electric.. err power from and are you willing to pay more electric per month for the use of a car?

The other day when I was walking around my area, I noticed some new houses being built all around 4000sqft with maybe 15 by 10 back yard and a 3 car garage. Do we really need that much space?
For me I’d worry about lack of yard to relax in, how many bathrooms are there to clean, how much longer would it take to clean the place or the cost on heating the place in the winter.

Today also marks Pixel’s (one of four my cats) birthday. It doesn’t seem like 8 years have gone by so fast. I still remember the day she came home. How small and pure black fluff that she was now she is the leader of the other two girl cats (its funny, when one gets into trouble the other two are near by also getting into trouble). You can tell she can’t wait to be alpha cat once my eldest cat passes on so she can boss my other two girl cats around some more. Being stuck at home this whole month has made me become the crazy cat lady, I swear!!!

How was your Earth Day?

For me: I have asked for this in the past and I still ask for it, is to become a adoptive parent to an wild animal say from wwf.org.

I was told in the store the company is local and everything was made here in Canada. It wasn’t until days later, when I using the packing the bedding came in for something else when I notice the fine print “Made in China”.

I was miffed . I hate having a sales clerks lie about product just so they can make a sale.  Don’t get me wrong, I would have still purchased the bedding if I wasn’t told it was made locally. Thought it would have been a bonus but I don’t think anything like that is made in North America anymore. hmmm.

Since this has happened, the first thing I look for is now the fine print. My friends think I’m nuts but I don’t like being fooled more then once by local companies.

For those of you who’ve worked in retail, have you had to tell a white lye just to make a sale?

I’m not a tree hugging, hippie, green lover, BUT I do try and cut down my waste, recycle what I can (errr what the city allows us to recycle) and return my pop cans/beer bottles to the bottle depot at least every two months as I get a bigger pay out. I wash most of my clothes in cold water, I purchase what I can thats been reused into something new. Half my closet has clothes that are made from bamboo. I have my own veggie garden, if I could grow pineapples and avocados in the west coast of Canada I’d be happy|rich lol. I try and use non perfume cleaners .. but for the most part simple vinger and water work wonders. I never water my grass, the rain does that for me.

I am guilty of not car pooling (no one lives near me and I got weird hours and the bus system here sucks), driven places when I could have easily have walked (but then again walking home with bags of food and or cat litter isn’t as easy as one hoped). I’ve done it before and I’d do it again if I had walk 2 and a half hours to work and back again (5 hours a day) god I’d be fit.

Earth Hour was here and left as quickly as it came for another year. Right around all the talks about the event, I started surfing around looking to see where about in my corner of the province would we recycle all the plastics 1-7 nope just 1,2,3 and 5 so I guess I have to make more homemade ketchup until my city gets their butts in gear and takes 7′s as I miss my Heniz ketchup.

So with all of this and Earth Day coming on the 22nd of this month.. I thought why not send a letter off to the mayor of my city and ask why we aren’t taking all the 7 plastics at the recycling depot. I wrote it up yesterday and hopefully I hear back soon as it would be interesting to find out.

On a side note….. Has anyone had any luck purchasing or selling anything off craig’s list? I’m thinking about selling some furniture.