cultivating a sustainable life
My husband and I started our family shortly after graduating from university, so there was never really a time when we had extra money for things like interior decorating. Our apartments were furnished with hand-me-downs gathered from generous family and friends, and we were totally …
Excuse my colourful choice of words, I’m nothing if not a bit crass. Cheap too, if you ask my kids. My son swears I won’t buy anything that costs more than $15, and to be fair, that’s not much of an exaggeration. But you can’t …
I guess that should come as no real surprise following last week’s post, but this time I actually have gutters on my mind, not deformed produce. Ever since we built the coop, we’ve been planning to install gutters on it in order to harvest rainwater for …
This morning, my daughter and I have been experimenting with making homemade lip balm. She had to come up with a chemistry-based project for an upcoming science fair, so she decided to study emulsifiers and how they stabilize liquids. Since I have some experience with whipping up my …
I was driving through the alley behind my mom’s house yesterday and spotted this adorable little side table sitting out waiting for garbage pick-up (gasp!). Of course, I screeched to an immediate halt and threw it in the trunk. It could use a …
I was in the city last week delivering eggs to a friend, when I spotted some weathered but otherwise decent wicker chairs sitting out by the dumpster. I’ve been looking for something like this to put on our bedroom deck, so I nabbed them. In …
It’s a little embarassing to admit that we’ve been living here for almost two years and still have a mostly gravel front yard. We have grass growing over most of the back yard and the septic field, but the front is what suffered the most during …
Okay, I realize we’ve got a million other projects on the go (the chicken coop being priority number one at the moment), but I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this: We seriously need to hurry up and build a laundry …
I’ve been living for the past year and a half with a dresser that only has two functioning drawers. The gliders for the other four have lost all of the little ball bearings that are supposed to make them slide smoothly in and out, and …
Things are still cruising along at a pretty slow pace around here, but I just had to share my big splurge! I’m not a woman with the stereotypical shoe fetish – I’m pretty monogamous when it comes to footwear. I have one favorite pair of …