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Of course my mom and dad think I should dump a few gallons of Round Up out there and call it a day (I think my mom’s exact words were “poison is good”).  I can’t bring myself to do that since there are fish, salamanders, turtles, snakes, and more importantly my kids, that live in the water all summer long.  The lake is about 50 feet from our weed patch and I might as well pour the Round Up directly into it.  I did some research on-line and the only answers I found weren’t too  helpful.  There are two things that come up time and time again when you Google “natural weed killers”, the first is boiling water from a tea kettle.  Really?  Don’t you think if the patch was so small I could cover it with a tea kettle’s worth of water I would just yank the things out myself?  The second option, which I have actually tried at home with limited success, was vinegar.  Again, my area is just too big, even for the Costco sized vinegar bottle. 

So here is what did work – a blow torch, or flame thrower if you prefer.  I was talking to  a friend whose neighbor chooses this type of weed control and so I took a chance and bought “The Inferno” at Lowes.  I hooked this wand up to the propane tank from our gas grill and I was off.  I must admit I felt a bit like Rambo out there burning all of the weeds up but it worked like a charm!  A couple of caveats though:  It is great for a big gravel parking lot, but not sure I’d use it around my home or anything else flammable.  Also, choose your footwear wisely.  In hindsight I guess Crocs probably weren’t the best choice.  The soles now look like a piece of pizza covered with melted cheese.  Nonetheless, I highly recommend this method – it was fairly inexpensive (about the same price as a big bottle of weedkiller), it was quick, it was easy, and it makes you feel really tough when you’re using your flame thrower:).  Best of all though, was knowing that I wasn’t using any toxic products on the ground where my kids run barefoot or near the lake where we all play in the water. 

OK, maybe a slight exaggeration....

Living Ethos

I met Josie Gaillard, from Living Ethos, in the booth across from me.  Josie is from the Bay Area and makes some of the most beautiful, reusable gift bags.  Of course we like to encourage our customers to use ReUsies as their gift wrap for smaller items, but her bags are tough to beat.  It’s funny because it was my husband’s birthday this weekend and I used the same shabby, paper gift bags that I’ve used a hundred times (I think I saw just about every family member’s name written and crossed out on one of them).  I could have really used some of the Living Ethos bags, I encourage you to check out her site!   It was also great to share information with another textile based company that manufactures in the USA…sadly, there aren’t many of us around anymore. 

Crown S Ranch

To my right was a woman named Jennifer Argraves who owns Crown S Ranch in Winthrop, WA. She was there (with her cute and well-behaved kids!) educating people about her family’s farm.  It is a CSA and you can order different cuts of beef, pork, chicken and even eggs to be delivered to Seattle 7 times a year.  Her animals are all treated humanely, raised without antibiotics on pastures that are pesticide/herbicide free and the cattle are all 100% grass fed.  I learned a lot about sustainable  farming just by the eavesdropping I did between she and her customers!  Their tagline says it all:  Better for the animals, Better for the environment, Better for you! 

Mamma K's Aromatic Play Clay

Finally, I had the pleasure of meeting (in person finally), Kari Erickson-Valenzuela, aka Mamma-K.  She owns Mamma K’s Aromatic Play Clay.  Mamma K’s makes gluten-free, 100% natural play clay.  It comes in yummy scents like lavender, sweet orange, cardamom and lemongrass.  I like to keep my nervous hands busy and so was playing with a little ball of cardamom as I stood at our booth.  I know typically when you play with other doughs and clays your hands feel so dried out from all of the salt used, but after playing with Mamma K’s I think my hands felt better! 

We’ve been at this venture (ReUsies) for over a year now and it has been so fun to see how the knowledge about reusable snack and sandwich bags has grown.  Initially when we would go to shows I would say it was about 25% “oh yes, I’ve heard about these” and 75% “wow, what a great new idea”, now I’d say those numbers are reversed (granted we were at the Green Festival so that attracted a certain type of clientel).  It’s just nice to know that people are becoming more and more aware of this option as a way to reduce their impact on the planet!

One thing I came across that really resonated with me was from the Story of  Stuff Project called “The Story of Bottled Water”.  To sum it up,  it talks about how, when we buy bottled water, we might as well be paying for jarred air.  It goes on to detail all of the ills associated with this industry, the packaging, etc.  I showed this little video to my daughter earlier in the week and apparently it had a big impact on her.  We did a 5K run with this past weekend and she chose to forgo the bottled water they were passing out for the water we’d packed in a reusable water bottle in our bag.  I’m telling you, this next generation is really going to make a difference for us!  

plastic bottle trash

Peaceful & Serene Woods

I just love this picture, it is a couple of years old now, but still one of my favorites.  I distinctly remember yelling at my kids “hold each other’s hands and pretend that you like each other just long enough for me to take this picture!”   Nonetheless, it just soothes my soul to look at it.  This is a piece of property that, as soon as the weather warms up, we head to almost every weekend in the summer.  The first few trips down are always a lot of work to repair and clean up what has happened to our spot over the winter.  There is always a lot of dusting, vacuuming spider webs, re-stocking what we are low on, yard work, firewood chopping, etc.  but one of the biggest, and most depressing jobs is garbage clean up. 
Typically in the summers on the weekends I go for long walks and always take a garbage bag with me to pick up trash on the road that leads into the cabins.  This first trip I am cleaning up about 9 months worth of trash that has accumulated during the off-season.  All I can figure is that this trash must be thrown from car windows, as there are very few residences along the road.  Are there really still people who do that?  And why do they eat so much fast food and drink strange drinks in cans?  I bet you didn’t know you could buy something called Chelada which is a mix of Budweiser Beer and Clamato in a can…..yummmm….all of the interesting things I pick up out there!  

I hope that if there is a place that is close to your heart that you do your part to keep it clean this summer.  Take your kids with you, I do, and maybe you will even snap one of your favorite photos in the process.  I know one thing for sure, my kids will never throw trash out a car window….and will never grow up to drink Chelada!

Disc-O

So yes, the good news is we have a lot of new styles, here are a few aren’t they cute?  We listened to the feedback we got from our customers and added the extra piece of velcro that is on the back of the snack sized ReUsie to the larger, sandwich size.  If you’ve never seen a snack sized ReUsie it has the unique feature of an extra strip of velcro on the back that allows you to tighten the bag up on itself.  This “tightening feature” holds your snacks securely and prevents them from accidentally spilling out. 

Limeade

OK, now for the bad news.  We have to raise our prices slightly as the aforementioned Mr. Hong is charging us more to add this extra feature.  We think the extra 20 cents is worth it (think about what you can buy for a couple of dimes??)  and if you don’t you still have the option of buying the older patterns for the same price they always were. 

Gray Whale

 Seeing this mammoth creature at the end of its life was terribly sad but the sadder story emerged last week when they did a whale necropsy to determine its cause of death.  The report was inconclusive but in doing the exam they looked at the contents of the whale’s stomach.   This poor whale had ingested:  Duct tape, sweat pants, golf balls, socks, towels, fishing line, Capri Sun juice pouches, surgical gloves, and approximately 37 plastic bags.  The researchers, who had done hundreds of these necropsies, had “never seen so much debris in the stomach of a gray whale” and while no one is pointing to this as the cause of the whale’s death, I have to assume it didn’t help things! 

I know that everyone is concerned about our oceans right now because of  the disastrous Louisiana oil spill but this event hit so close to our home, it was more than just another story on the news that seemed far away from me.  Yesterday I purchased some reusable produce bags so that I can try to limit the bags I grab at the grocery store to put my fruits and veggies in.  Let’s all please try to be conscious of what we are doing with our trash – these large, ocean mammals are canaries in the coal mine! 

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now….want to know the good news that my husband pointed out?  They didn’t find any ReUsies in that whale’s stomach:)

http://www.king5.com/on-tv/evening-magazine/Paper-or-Plastic-Seattle-moms-invented-their-own-answer-91868269.html

There is a little write-up on the West Seattle Blog about Lafayette Elementary’s composting program (that we helped fund) -

http://westseattleblog.com/2010/04/west-seattle-school-news-lafayettes-composting-success

We were also featured on KOMO news and in numerous other print and on-line publications for Earth Day but I’ll spare you…thanks for letting me brag.  I hope that your Earth Day was fun and that you pledged to make one small change to help our environment!

We hope we’re able to meet some of you at the Eco Chic Expo on Saturday and at Crave Green on May 11th!

Landfill Bags!

There are a couple of great events that we are partnering with for Earth Day that I wanted to bring your attention to…

The first is the Green My Lunchbox Campaign.  This is a national campaign asking 15,000 families to pledge to pack a waste-free lunch to eliminate 1 million pounds of waste going to landfills (based on the estimate that on average a school-age child using a disposable lunch generates 67 pounds of waste per school year – epa.gov). There are daily giveaways a special promotions so join the campaign on Facebook to take advantage of all of the great freebies!

Locally we will also be a part of the first annual Eco-Chic Expo at the Ravenna Community Center on May 1st.  This is a day full of  tips, tricks and products to live a little greener.   This great event is free to the public, and “will feature some of Seattle’s leading sustainable lifestyle companies in a variety of categories: design, home, food, baby, beauty, including brunch/lunch concessions and more”.  We’d love to meet some ReUsies fans there!!  We’ll also be selling product at a discount so it’s a great time to stock up…