My husband and I have a great relationship but like all spouses we pick on each others weaknesses when we get frustrated. This weekend he picked on my green weaknesses so I decided to turn it into a blog post. (Love you huney!)

Whether you are green-minded or not you will appreciate knowing that I’m not perfect and I don’t claim to be. While I am The Eco Chic that doesn’t mean that I am always living the perfect green life. I am human and there is no way that I will ever be 100% green. Our current lifestyle just does not allow for me to do everything to the greenest level possible. Like most parents out there I have real life responsibilities such as a career, a family, kids, house work, church, extra curricular activities, and so much more to juggle each day…being green is just one aspect of my life.

Five Things I Don’t Want You to Know About Me:

1. I’m a lazy recycler and I don’t recycle everything. We pay to have our recyclables picked up once a week where we live. I am guilty of letting the recycling gather in the garage until it’s overflowing. I usually wait until my husband decides to take it out to the road. Unfortunately they will only pick up plastic and aluminum. I really let the cardboard accumulate in the garage…for over a month! And hubby will usually get sick of looking at it and take it across the road to the drop off center. Glass…gets tossed because there is no place local to recycle it (easily).

2. I don’t compost. I’ve tried…I made a redneck compost bin from chicken wire 2 summers ago with all the intentions of composting our kitchen scraps. This failed because I never turned the compost bin…so essentially it has become a leaf bin and is overgrown with weeds.

3. I don’t have a green thumb when it comes to gardening. I’ve tried that too…and failed. I expect the garden to be self sufficient and it’s not.

4. I’m not a vegan and I don’t eat organic (all the time). I tried the vegan lifestyle in college for a few years and did ok with it. Then I married a meat and potatoe man. Just adding green beans to a meal is a chore! I do try to buy organic when the prices are competitive and I usually buy apples organic. Hubby doesn’t understand the whole organic craze, nor does he believe the claims. Don’t tell him…but I sneak in several meat-free meals all of the time and he never complains!

5. I use plastic. Even with my understanding of BPA and plastics I still use plastic food storage containers and I allow my children to play with plastic toys.

Why am I telling you all of these things? Because I don’t want you to think I’m a hypocrite. I’m just a human being trying her hardest to be green. While my life may be greener than most it’s certainly not as green as it could be. My goal is not to shame or guilt anyone into changing their lifestyle…my goal is to educate you of your options and provide you with small steps you can take to change your life.

What is your green weakness that you don’t want me to know about you?

Now that Halloween is over you may be wondering what to do with your Halloween stuff.  Some things are easy…you eat the candy!  LOL! 

DECORATIONS:  We reuse our decorations year after year so that’s any easy thing to do.  We have a nice orange bin in the garage that houses all the decorations until it’s time to use them again.  If you don’t want to do that you can always donate them.  We have a Salvation Army truck at our local Wal-Mart and he takes EVERYTHING we don’t need.  

COSTUMES:  There are many reuses for those cute costumes.  1) Let your kid wear them again and again until they no longer fit.  We have a dress up box where we store a few key items and he loves to dress up like his favorite hero’s (Superman, Batman, Capt. Jack…ect).  2) Donate them to your kids school.  Kids really love to dress up.  Most day cares have a dress up area and will gladly take your gently used costumes.  3) Donate them to libraries or Goodwill.  Our library has a borrow a costume section that’s actually quite cute.  As long as someone gets to wear them until they can no longer be worn than your job has been done.

PUMPKINS:  Real pumpkins can be composted instead of trashed.  If it hasn’t been carved you can even cook it and get a second use out of it.  Either way try to resist throwing it away…the landfills are already full enough.  Compost instead.

What other Halloween items do you have?  Can you think of a unique use for those once a year items?

Work trips really wear me out!  Today has been pretty boring but I have some updates for you.

1) Curbside recycling!  I’m going on three weeks of solid pick ups!  It looks like the driver now knows that I’m on his route!  YIPPIE!

2) The garden’s a growing!  Well I’ve had some good and bad in the garden.  I’ll have to share pics later but I have my first cherry tomatoe turning red and about 50 more green ones.  I also have a few cucumbers starting to take shape too.  We served out first helping of romaine from the garden last week for taco salad and it was pretty good.  Smaller than store bought and a little stronger in taste; but really good.  On the bad side…the zucchini is just not going to make it.  Not sure what I did wrong but it’s turning yellow and wilting. 

3) Compost!  The compost is a learning experience.  I forget to add the kitchen waste and food scraps most of the time but I do put all my yard waste in the bins.  The soil at the bottom is really nice and when I remember to turn the pile I’m quite impressed with it.  The main problem to overcome is the last of rain lately.  So when I water my garden I also water the compost a little too.

That’s all I have for now.  This weekend is going to be pretty busy with family, pre-K graduation, friends and lots of good times by the pool.  I hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day! 

Well for my first product giveaway I was a little disappointed I didn’t have more entries but I’m happy that I have a few new readers out of it.  The winners of the WysiWipe samples are:

Mel (Of course my product whore BFF!)

Hilary of www.modernlime.com who I just realized is in Tampa.  (Hello neighbor!)

Lesha of www.fashionfling.com.

I will be sending you each emails requesting your mailing addresses so I can get your samples sent out this weekend.  I hope you enjoy the product.

As for me, I have found a new use for my WysiWipes!  Some of you know that I am an artist as well.  I have actually pulled my paints out of the garage and picked up the paint brush again.  WysiWipes are a great substitute for paper towels in the studio.  I use them when drying my brush in-between color changes.  The great thing is I can use them over and over again; wash them out between uses; and compost them when I’m done.  Since I can rinse them out I get all the paint residue out of them before I put them into the compost bin.  They WysiClothes are actually much stronger than the WysiWipes so if you want to use it many times I would recommend the Clothes over the wipes. 

I hope you all enjoy your samples!  AND…to any additional readers…I still have some samples left!  Just leave me a comment on my blog about how you would use WysiWipes and I’ll send out samples until they are all gone! 

It’s the weekend, I’m suppose to be relaxing and spending time with my family doing fun things.  Well I have spent all day with my family but I can’t say it was fun.  We’ve been laying sod, trimming trees, trimming bushes and all that fun spring yardwork that has to be done.  We’re still new to all this tropical stuff so we’re learning as we go.  Our old sod was dead and damaged so that was my husbands project over the past few weeks.  We have gone through 2 pallets of sod already and will need about one more to finish the side lot.  It looks fantastic though!  Now if I can get my husband to be conservative with the watering…we don’t want it to die but we also don’t want to over water it. 

I wish I knew what some of the plants were in the yard so I could research different ways to care for them.  I have this one palm that I need to research because it has been a trouble maker since we moved in 2 years ago.  The problem is that it has these roots that continue to sprawl…above ground!  It looks like snakes wrapping around the base of the tree.  I need to find a plant that I can put around the border that will withstand the shade and the invasion of these roots as they sprawl. 

So what does all of this have to do with the environment?  I have SO much waste from these past few weeks of yard work.  We’ve trimmed small trees, bushes and shrubs as well as all the old dead grass.  So what do you do with this stuff.  This weekend alone I have 7 thirty gallon bags of yard debris.  Our city doesn’t have a convenient location to drop off the debris for composting.  To do that you have to drive over 30 minutes.  And my tiny compost bin in the back just won’t keep up if I were to put all this waste in there too.  So I will be setting these bags out for the trashmen on Monday and I’ll feel horrible!  All of this natural material inside plastic bags going to the landfill or incinerator.  It just seems like such a waste. 

We’ve done it…we’ve got the stuff to make our garden in the backyard so I don’t have to buy veggies at the grocery store this summer.  About 3 weeks ago my son and I planted our seeds in the seed cups and they have sprouted and are in need of some growing space.  I also got some supplies to make a simple compost bin out of chicken wire.  My husband is actually supportive of the garden however, he’s not quite sure about this compost bin.  We have a pool and are always throwing away the leaves that we clean out of the filter…along with all of our food scraps and yard clippings.  Why not actually compost that material and use it in our garden later this year?  Do we really need to send yard clippings and leaves to the landfill in plastic bags…they really aren’t going to decompose inside those bags.  So I’m fullfilling one of my New Year’s Resolutions and going green in the yard.  The veggies at the grocery store look so hideous lately and the prices keep going up.  I’m excited that in a few months time we will have more than enough veggies for our family and a few friends.  So far the effort has been very minimal and the cost….way less than what the veggies cost at the store.  I’ll keep you posted on the results and let you know how this all works out.