More Green Crafts

So enough about depressing stuff back to the happiness of the holidays. Here are more photos of some of my green crafts. Of course mom and hubby, Robert, helped out.

I have snowmen made from scrap pieces of wood and Popsicle sticks and Christmas stockings made from fabric samples from a furniture store.

Several years ago I worked at La-Z-Boy and they would just throw out boxes of the old fabric swatches. So one time I grabbed a huge box and brought them home determined to do something with them. Since I can't sew I had my mom help and we made a bunch of Christmas stockings, bags, and I put together enough pieces to make a quilt but so far that has never been sewed together. In fact it disappeared. But I still have fabric left so we'll see what I can do. I really need to learn how to sew. But hey I saved stuff from ending up in a landfill.

How Did I Become Green

How did I become green? How did I get into the green thing? This was asked of me yesterday. I kinda drew a blank then everything flashed through my head trying to narrow it down to one specific thing.

At first I just decided that's just me. I've always been green at heart if not always in action. But later I thought about it some more. It's much more than that though it is part of who I am.

Having Native American ancestry (really, don't look at the pale skin and freckles that's my Irish side, look at the bone structure and hair) really gave me a deeper connection to nature and that combined with a creatively crafty mom who hated to throw anything away, loved to garden and taught me how to treasure hunt at thrift stores really made me a greenie right from the start.

Something else buzzed in the back of my mind for awhile though. Being it was the 28th anniversary of my father's death I started thinking about him and drew a connection between his death and some of my green ways.

See he died of leukemia and his doctors blamed his job for it. They thought his exposure to toxic chemicals caused his leukemia. He worked at Mead Containers at the time, a precursor to Mead- the company that now makes notebooks and school supplies. My dad was the clean up guy, the only one. He dealt with cleaning up and disposing of all the manufacturing waste including the chemicals.

It was never proven that's what made him sick, you know big corporations with their lawyers and highly paid doctors made sure my father received nothing, not even medical compensation. He died in debt and my mother was still paying his medical bills a decade after his death.

Anyway...you are probably thinking how does this contribute to me being green? Well from an early age I realized that chemicals kill. They killed my dad. So I opted for more natural and kinder solutions than toxic filled products.

It is just one more thing that makes me the eco-friendly person that I am.

Dealing with Sadness and Loss During the Holidays

This time of year is full of happiness and hope for many. While others suffer in sadness. Sometimes it is a mix of both as we celebrate what we have now and what we have to look forward to while remembering those we have lost.

28 years ago today I lost my father to leukemia. I was only 4. I never had the chance to really know him. What I remember are nothing more than snapshot like memories freeze framed in my mind. From what I have heard he was a good man. A man that loved me and my mother greatly.

Today I mourn the loss of him, the loss of knowing a great man, the loss of never really having a father, never having the chance to be daddy's girl because even though my mother remarried two other times and I loved those men, they never replaced what I lost.

What I really feel today is sadness for my mom. After 28 years she still misses the love of her life. They were married for over 26 years, 22 before I came along. I was one of those much wanted miracle babies that came late in life, my mother was almost 40 and my father was in his mid 50s.

Last night she told me she was feeling sad. Sad about my dad and sad about the loss of her third husband who passed away in January of this year. It'll be her first Christmas without him. They were together for around 18 years.

I am terrible with grief and emotional stuff. I never know what to say or do. After losing so many people at such a young age I took my grief and placed it on a shelf. Eventually I'll have to dust it off and deal with it but so far I've never learned how. So it sits there. And others around me grieve. I want to help my mom, the only way I know how is to just be there for her and distract her from the sadness that threatens to take over.

Green Goes with Everything: Simple Steps to a Healthier Life and Cleaner Planet

Green Goes With Everything: Simple Steps to a Healthier Life and a Cleaner Planet by Sloan Barnett is a great book and will make a wonderful stocking stuffer for anyone who needs a little more green awareness in their life.



I think this may be one of the books I give to my mom for Christmas. While she may be green in so many ways she could use a little info about the technical stuff like cleaning products, chemicals and toxins. I think she would love it.



Green Goes With Everything is one of those books written with passion, written from the heart. Sloan Barnett is a mom, a mom that's had to deal with her children being sick, dangerously sick, for no apparent reason. The hows and whys were not given. I can relate to that.



For all of our modern technology and medical advances doctors don't know why everyone, especially children, get sick so much more now. Bull. Toxins. Chemicals. I believe it because it rings all too true for me and my family. Allergies, asthma, possible ADD. Yeah, we're dealing and trying to detox.



Barnett covers how to clean everything green and make it safer: the home, body, baby, food, water, air, have cleaner energy and more. There's also a HUGE web resource section that will help you find just about anything green you need.