Goal 37. Design a pretty, relaxing bedroom

I am happy to finally be able to say that I love our bedroom and like relaxing in here. Everything in it works well for us, and is something we have chosen, not simply what was available. I love the current colour palette of white, soft blues and brown, but we will see what happens in the future.

Decorating slowly, one piece or area at a time really helps me relax and continue to feel excited about being at home. I would define our decorating style as cozy minimalist, and I try to choose functional pieces that look nice together. We really don't have a lot of extra "stuff" everywhere, but what we do have gets used well.

Since we have only been married for a short amount of time, a lot of our furniture is still hand-me-down's or things we bought in college. Not a lot of it matches, but I think we make it work pretty well.

However, when we moved to Edmonton, we decided to simply dump our nightstands and dresser at the Value Village and buy new stuff when we arrived. Our nightstands were moulding on the back, and the dresser was second-hand from Adam's younger brother! It was in seriously rough shape; even paint couldn't fix it.

So we splurged on furniture at our favourite store (can you guess?) and got our Malm dresser and nightstand. And we even sprung for the glass tops, so that they will last longer without getting scratched. Over the past few months we have added curtains and accessories. The bedding has been with us since we got married, and my lamp is from college! I still love this lamp.

I also love this photo gallery I made, based on this inspiration from Always Chasing Life. Since its our bedroom it's the story of our relationship and has pictures from different events we've shared together. I used mis-matched all-white ikea frames, and tried to make the arrangement organic, but collected. I even bit the bullet and wrote out our wedding song on this matte. I would like to add some more non-photographic elements, but I think I need a bigger wall for that to work. Hopefully, over time I'll keep updating it.

One of the earliest DIY projects I ever did (back in college! before pinterest!) was this jewellry board. It is simply an old bulletin board, covered with cheap fabric and then I spaced out clear push pins. I just hang my jewellry on these push pins. Ridiculously easy, and makes the room sparkle.

Yeah, I know. What is with all that stuff? Well, a husband needs a place to keep his stuff, and the top of his desk makes perfect sense to me. Makes this spot just his, and limited space, well, limits what he can keep. I don't try to get rid of his stuff anymore, and it doesn't clutter up (in my opinion) our living room. Peace.

There is still a lot of work that could be done with this room. You know, like, getting a bed. But right now its working for us, and looks good enough for me.

What do you love about your bedroom?

Goal 69. Healthy Homemaker - Part 2

Hello internet! A few weeks ago we focused on Healthy Homemaking 1-10 so this week we continue with 11-20.

I heard a great idea from Emily Freeman on Simple Mom's podcast recently, and I really need to take it to heart when I think about my attempts to be more environmentally friendly AND budget-friendly.

"I can't pay attention to everything at the same time..... you can't let guilt become one of the balls you juggle, because inevitably they become the heaviest one." 

So when I am writing this I am resolved not to feel guilty about it, and I hope you don't feel guilty about your life, or just how bad I am at this! Onward!

11. Evaluate healthy fat & oils. In our house we have 4 kinds of fat/oil. Extra-virgin olive oil, canola oil, unsalted butter and margarine. Here is the deal: I fully agree that margarine isn't that good for you, but here is my reasoning for keeping spreadable margarine = when we had butter it always seemed to taste like blue cheese, leading us to believe it was spoiling. This was despite using a "butter bell" which supposedly seals the butter in water so it can't spoil. So for our toast we use Becel. 

       Actually as I am writing this post I am realizing my use of hard margarine (because it comes in convenient 1/2 cup blocks) is kinda dumb. So you know what? I am going to stop buying that. We will adapt. 

       We use canola oil because it is a good ol' Canadian product, which we choose to support. And we are not convinced that GMO's are an issue. The entire reason they are bred is so that they are resistant to pest and disease and need much less pesticide and herbicide. So.... that makes sense to us. 

12. Homemade condiments. This is one that has to be evaluated based on time commitments. Right now I am actually on a big push to just to reduce the number of condiments we have. So far I have really only gotten into homemade barbecue sauce. Except for salad dressing. We have gone completely homemade on this one. So far we have found a great vinaigrette, ranch dressing, french dressing and caesar dressing. And a poppyseed sweet dressing for spinach salad. We simply stopped buying salad dressing one day. I have found that making larger quantities and saving them in tall containers helps me continue, otherwise if I had to make dressing every night I would probably give up. 

13. The story of stuff. Basically this step is about closely evaluating your consumer choices, and determining if your values are lining up with what you are buying. We have embraced a quasi-minimalist lifestyle in our life, mainly because we have a small budget. We find it much easier just to avoid shopping as much as possible, and then if we need to do some shopping, we just do the best we can.

14. Creative Repurposing. Just keep using your stuff until it is completely un-useable, using it in different ways as it becomes unsuitable for its previous job. Two ways we do this really stand out. 

         1. We do our best to reuse our furniture and not simply buy new things to decorate our apartment, even if it takes us a little while to figure out their use. For instance when I moved out to my first apartment I had to buy a closet organizer for my strange walk-through closet (it was advertised as a bedroom, ha!). That was 6 years ago. Once we were married and moved, that closet organizer became pantry shelves. Then it became an office bookshelf. Now it is unassembled into boards, but it is ready for whatever life it will live in our next house. 

        2. Our clothes take two paths - goodwill, or the rag bag. Or they are worn until they are literally torn in half and no one, would ever want to wear them. Then sometimes the fabric is kept for future projects. Or mended, even if poorly. 

15. Properly prepared oatmeal. Ok, so we get to one of the big real food ideals.... soaking your grains to reduce phytates. Here is my issue - what the heck is a phytate? It makes no sense biologically or chemically. And all research we have done simply leads back to Nourishing Traditions, the bible of the real food movement. But how can this be such an important nutritional consideration and there be no other scientific research regarding it. Also the registered dieticians I work with have never heard of phytates. So... we don't beleive science without scientific evidence. And therefore don't worry about soaking anything. But we do eat oatmeal! I made up big batches of both flavoured oatmeal (cinnamon & brown sugar) and homemade granola flavoured with honey and cinnamon. And we don't buy cereal. So that's pretty great in my estimation. 

16. Homemade yogurt. I tried this once. And then my husband begged me never to do it again.

17. Naturally female. Have you stopped to consider the impact that feminine products have on the environment? Me neither. Mostly because I don't even want to think about this, much less blog about it.  (Sorry!)

18. Plastics are bad! They really are. My sister (the chemical engineer) tells me that even "biodegradable plastic" will never actually degrade. The best we can do is recycle. Or try to avoid plastic. But truly, that seems an impossible task. Plastic is ubiquitous. So we just follow the reduce (especially packaging, and containers), reuse (any typperware, ziploc bags) and recycle (all of it). Things that are designed to be kept for a long time I don't really worry about. But packaging? This is something to really try to avoid and reduce.

19. Produce quality. You know, you really should be buying organic. Which bugs me a bit. Why can't we just get it so that organic is just standard? I mean, if the food is harmful, shouldn't it not be eaten by anyone? Poor people just have to suffer and continue to eat poison? Or it not poison and rich people need to calm down. This whole argument seems a little bit frustrating. So... we are poor people. In a first world kind of way. And we would end up just eating a lot less produce if we went organic. Which I think is worse for my health than a bit of pesticide residue. My ideal - getting a fruit & veggie box delivered weekly, being a part of a CSA, and supplementing with my own garden. Hopefully we will get there.

20. Stop drinking juice. Fail! I am just so bad at this. Not in the, "didn't realize this was an issue", or "I just have bad habits." I fail at this in the "if I stopped drinking juice or pop I would die of dehydration," kind of way. For serious. I have had headaches and stomach issues many, many times because I just didn't drink enough water. We have found that we go in cycles. For a little while we will be good with drinking water, flavoured sometimes with lime or lemon. And then we just can't do it anymore. And we stop drinking anything. So instead of fighting this, we just give into the juice for a while. And then when my mouth is tired of constantly feeling fuzzy because of all the sugar, we go back to water. Which really does make me feel about a million times better, even if I still eat poorly and don't exercise. It's all about choices and what works currently.

How do you prioritize your attempts to be more environmentally-friendly?

Goal 34. Make a high efficiency, bright kitchen

Ok I'm back this week and ready to show you my kitchen!

Since I love cooking and kitchens and general kitchen-y "stuff" my kitchen is a constant work in progress. But one of the things that that is absolutely required is that it works much harder than me, and is relatively easy to clean up once I have finished destroying it with my latest culinary adventure. I cook like a tornado, and generally cook multiple things at one time. I also cook a lot. So here are my top 5 favourite things about my current kitchen.

1. DISHWASHER! - Absolutely no joke, I think this thing saved our marriage. And because its portable it has lived with us in several dingy apartments, allowing us to pay less on rent. Now Prince Charming doesn't spend 2-3 hours every night doing dishes, and can focus on more important things like hanging out with me, or you know, his homework. I actually also think it saved his academic career. And I love that our dish-drainer can be folded up and tucked away, to give me even more counter space when needed!

2. Act like a TV chef - have you ever really looked at a TV chef's kitchen? I guarantee you will see that they have a large (generally wooden) cutting board, and a selection of oil, salt and pepper, right in front of them, in the center of the set. Some have a ton of other stuff too. But they always have these basics. So I just stole this idea and made my own little chef station. Makes dinner prep go a lot faster and makes me look legit. Since my "set" hits a wall instead of a camera I took advantage of that space too and hung up my knives and my most used spices so that they're ready for action too.

3. Today's special - I love this little menu board I made for Prince Charming so he knows what he is supposed to be eating for breakfast and lunch. It's just a piece of scrapbook paper hung in a cheap frame, that I write one with a Dry-erase pen. We have weird schedules that often don't work well together, so he is on his own in the morning, and this lets him know what I have planned for him to put in his lunch and have for breakfast. Now he doesn't worry about accidentally eating something I was saving for a certain recipe, and I know that we have all the food he needs for lunch. These just get updated weekly and we eat the same thing for these meals each day.

4. Labels and bins - Ok, maybe I am slow but for a long time I didn't really embrace using smaller bins in the kitchen to corral little things. I mean yeah, I had a cutlery rack, but that was about it. Well once I got my first bin, I was absolutely sold. I use these bins all over the place, even in the fridge. And then I started to use mason jars as dry storage and quickly realized that lots of white powders look the same. So I just added a label using a sharpie on a bit of paper, which I cut down to size and tape on with scotch tape. Looks good enough to me, and really doesn't fall off.

5. Organized sink - This under the sink organizer might be the entire reason I love pinterest. For years I hated having a bunch of scubbing pads, dish brush and various cleaning utensils sitting in the bottom of the sink, but I couldn't think of a solution. I tried some organizers from discount stores, but they generally didn't fit well or didn't hold the things well, so eventually got tossed. But this idea is super genius. It is actually a piece of a shoe organizer that I just cut off and then hung on the door with command hooks (love these!). I cut a little "button-hole" in the top, and if you are fancy you could probably use your sewing machine to make it super strong, but for me I haven't had any issues yet. Currently I am using a vinegar & oil set from Ikea to store my hand soap and dishwashing soap, so I don't have ugly bottles everywhere. I am still working on a better solution for this, so if you have any good ideas send them my way!

What is your favourite thing about your kitchen?

Goal 69. Complete Healthy Homemaker E-book

Ok... so this goal is basically about finishing another list of goals. And these aren't fun goals that you might have pictures of... but they are useful goals.

Source.

Healthy Homemaking is an e-book written by Stephanie Langford and has 26 steps to greening up your life. None of them are outrageous and she has lots of tips and clues on how to incorporate them. So here is my run-down of ways that I have found to implement these greener ideas in my life, on my miniscule budget.

1. Reduce waste. A whole post on this one topic here.

2. Use vinegar. If in doubt I try vinegar. I make my own window cleaner with vinegar, clean jewellery and appliances with vinegar, use it in laundry, make a paste with baking soda to remove tough stains.
        Oh yeah, and I wash my hair with apple cider vinegar (I mix half vinegar & half warm water in an old shampoo bottle, then I use it as a rinse/conditioner by spraying it on, letting sit a bit and rinsing out. Makes my hair less frizzy and restores a nice colour tone, I find).
         Plus we use it in cooking all the time. It really is a good first step when dealing with a household crisis.

3. Use brown rice. A while ago I just stopped buying white rice. Now we have minute brown rice and regular brown basmati rice. The minute rice takes... minutes, in the microwave. The regular rice takes 45 min in the rice cooker at a mix of 2 parts rice to 5 parts water. This helps get a nice soft, but nutty rice. I find the best way to improve my diet is just to stop buying whatever the offending food is and make do. Eventually you get used to it.

4 & 5. Lighten up your pantry (get rid of junk foods, high salt and fat foods, processed foods). So.... we do ok in this area. But just barely ok. Right now we have a case of Kraft dinner (which Prince Charming has been LOVING), but this is probably the first time we have had this, other than while camping, since moving to Edmonton. We do keep really fast, easy foods around for lunches or rushed dinners, and vary up the items between canned soup, baked beans, perogies, ramen noodles and pasta.
        On the other hand I also hand-baked 4 loaves of bread for us this month and we haven't had store-bought cookies or other "kids snacks" in years. So, we approach this one with a varying attitude, mostly depending on my current commitments.

6. Use reuseable grocery bags. This one is really easy to do if you shop at a grocery store that charges you for bags, and requires you to bag your own groceries anyways. Since we aren't shopping for a huge family we generally don't use all our bags, so we just leave most in the car all the time. We also got some bags that have flat cardboard in the bottom so they fold out into a box. These we love. And once you start saying "we don't need a bag" in most stores, you just get used to carrying stuff. We have a lot less plastic bags around our house now.

7. Buy higher quality eggs. This one is something I am currently ignoring, in favour of; use lots of eggs.   Organic eggs from a grocery store are about double regular eggs, and when you go through as many eggs as we do, its just not an option. So instead we get the cheap eggs and eat them a lot.
        I believe that my body can actually handle a lot, and we don't have issues with our gut, skin or generally anything that isn't something I haven't brought home from work. So for now this is reality.    
       My dream of course would be to have chickens. Prince Charming does not share this dream.

8. Meal plan. Yeah. I don't understand that this is a goal for people. I honestly can not make food without a planner. I can't grocery shop without a full list. I tried once and literally had to just go home because I had no idea what I was doing. Don't see this as "oh wow, she's so organized" but rather, wow, look at the poor girl who has to geek out at the grocery store with a computer printed, organized my aisle list. Oh yeah, and I regularly forget stuff even though its on the list! Honestly.
          I use this site called Plan to Eat, and I really like it. It saves me a lot of time, simply by organizing my shopping list for me. And I love that I can easily switch things around on their planner tab. Now that I have gotten the hang of it, entering my recipes into their system takes about 30 seconds, so that part doesn't bother me, even though I am someone who uses a lot of physical recipe books. If you use mostly recipes from the internet, then you will love this site!

9. What goes on, goes in. (Use safe personal hygiene products). Ok, I am sorry, but after about a year of trying many "natural recipes" with very unsatisfactory results, not to mention expensive ingredients that can only be acquired in large amounts, I am over this one. My sister (who is a chemical engineer) and I joke that there is a reason chemical engineering is a thing, and most toiletry companies use them. So yeah, I totally don't follow this. I just use what works, and only buy what I will actually use. And then I use very little of it. Like I spend most of my time not wearing makeup, and only wash my hair every 2 days. And almost never use styling products. One area I do spend money on is sunscreen (for my pale-skinned husband) and I use Ombrelle, since I have heard from several friends who've experienced skin cancer, that this is what their oncologists recommend.

10. Cleaning au naturel. A whole post about this one here.

I do believe that this is enough reading for this week!

 What steps do you take to go greener/healthier at home?

Goal 9. Eat Indian Food

This week we finally tried Indian food!

(Please ignore the awful photography as we were having camera issues.) 

I know, I know, it seems crazy that we have never done this before. I agree with you! We tried to go on my birthday (right before Christmas) but Snow-pocalypse got in the way and we ended up in a small café in Wetaskiwin. So this week I decided to go for Birthday Round 2 and we went ice skating and out for Indian food. 

It was a super fun, ridiculously hilarious good night with my friends. The food was great, and I LOVE indian spices. They are so good, and nothing was too hot for me. It was an adventure into a previously unknown food culture, and hopefully one we will keep making! 

Have you explored a new-to-you food recently?