Earth Day Every Day

 

Happy Earth Day!

 

Sorry I've been MIA for the past little while, the move to Chicago has had me crazy busy and living in limbo has been really hard on both me and mother nature. I find that Chicago is not as well accustomed to being environmentally friendly as the city of Toronto is and even finding simple recycling bins around town is proving difficult. 

In Chicago, I find that the clerks at shopping centers and grocery stores look at me like I have two heads when I tell them that I have my own reusable shopping bags... something that pretty much everyone in Toronto was accustomed to. I am also really sad to see so many plastic bottles of water all over the place, including on the ground. For that I am super happy that I have my own trusty reusable bottle that I can carry everywhere I go.

Making small changes to your day can go a long way to helping the environment all year long. For instance, refusing plastic straws, carrying your own cloth bags and reusable bottles, using more energy efficient light bulbs around the house and being mindful of reducing waste are just simple things we can all do to help the Earth.

Make today the day you started carrying your own bags, or the day you gave up plastic water bottles, and every year add on another feel good, do good, environmentally friendly habit. If not for yourself, think of the fact that we all want to a healthy and clean future for our children and grand children.

Baby Shower Ideas: Keeping it Classy with Green

Recently, my older sister and I threw a baby shower for our younger sister. She's already had a little one before, but due to a hectic schedule, she never had a shower for the first one. Since she already had a ton of baby stuff, we asked a small group of her favorite people to only bring diapers as we wanted her to be surrounded by her good friends and the one truly useful gift.

I was in charge of favors and decor and so I opted to incorporate a bit of vintage elegance to the whole event. I also wanted to use my vintage depression-era glassware, and am lucky that they are a lovely shade of moss green to go with the theme. I kept everything pretty simple as I don't like anything too cutesy and am sick of seeing pastel pinks and blues along with baby animals all over a grown up event.  Sticking to a set color allowed for cohesion and made it easy to mix and match.

Here are the 10 simple supplies I used to decorate for this baby shower:

• Green glassware (serving trays, goblets and cake stands)
• 20 Green and silver balloons, filled with helium
• 3 Bunches of white tulips
• 4 Green candles
• A bunch of doilies
• 6 Green Place mats
• 3 Green baskets holding prizes prizes
• Herb Infused Sea Salt as take-away favors
• 2 Simple grocery store cakes decorated with toy baby bottles and cocktail umbrellas
• Finger foods and fruit all prepared by my older sister 

Overall, the party was a huge success. Guests ate, played 3 games and showered mom-to-be with lots of love and diapers. They also commented on how classy and elegant everything looked, not cutesy and with that I couldn't help but give myself a pat on the back. :)

 Mugs, Hot Chocolate mix and Chocolate as Prizes for the 3 baby shower games we played.