Shop Local – Evergreen Valley Christmas Tree Farm

This is one of my favorite times of year. Today we had our first few flurries, and yesterday Matt and I cut down our very first Christmas tree as a family! We chose a farm a little over an hour from where we live called the Evergreen Valley Christmas Tree Farm, in Washington New Jersey.

A great way to start a fun family tradition and support local farmers is to cut down your own tree. Places like Evergreen are family run and highly sustainable. This past spring alone they planted over 6,000 seedlings!

Check out this link about Real Christmas Tree Myths. If you’re unsure about the sustainability of this tradition check out this link from the National Christmas Tree Association.

Find a Christmas Tree Farm near you!

Gorgeous Landscape

The One!

Farmers with a Sense of Humor

Baking – Cinnamon Buttermilk Muffins with Boysenberry Jam Filling

What I love most about the weekends is they inspire me to make yummy breakfasts. All week it’s generally the standard hot cereal or cold cereal dilemma. But on the weekend it’s pancakes, waffles or muffins! Two weekends ago it was Cinnamon Buttermilk Muffins with Boysenberry Jam, my best muffin to date. So here is the yummy recipe  which is half from the Williams Sonoma Baking Book and half from my own imagination.

Before you start anything take out the butter and let it sit for a while until it reaches room temperature. Usually only 15 minutes or so. I usually forget to think ahead, and end up microwaving the butter for a few seconds, because I have no patience. : ) Also don’t forget to preheat the oven to 350.

Here is the recipe for a basic buttermilk Muffin:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

I added a teaspoon of cinnamon just because I LOVE it. I also added the boysenberry jam filling because it just makes it that much faster and easier to enjoy your muffin when you can eliminate the pesky step of spreading jelly on its crumbly unstable surface : ) and honestly is their anything better than a warm jelly filling, I think not!

This batch will make six really big muffins or twelve mini muffins.

Before you start mixing grease the muffin pan with a little butter. No need for those pesky papers, just grease the pan well. <–A little tip from my friend Tatiana!

Okay lets get started. First mix the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Next add the egg until the mixture becomes pale yellow and smooth. Next stir together the dry ingredients. Finally add the dry to the wet in three additions. Stir until the batter looks even, it's okay if it's a little lumpy.

When your batter is ready fill the muffin cup a little less than half way, then add a spoonful of jelly to middle and cover with another spoonful of batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes. When they are done let them cool for 5 minutes, and enjoy!

Eco-Party Planning – Favors

Party planning is one of my favorite things. Just one short month ago I got to experience the culmination of an entire years worth of party planning, my wedding! One aspect of planning the wedding that I had a tough time with was choosing a favor. Every favor out there under the traditional heading seemed really wasteful, and in all honesty how many mini frames, bottle stoppers, and candles do we all really need anyway. Thank goodness for Arbor Day! Random? Maybe. Arbor day is what inspired our wedding favors, and apparently many other people to do the same as they have an entire section on their website for gift trees. It’s a perfect parting gift not only symbolic, but also a fantastic way to do something good for the earth and offset carbon emissions.

We decorated our favors with the help of a fantastic Etsy vendor Kendra Zvonik of Green Post. Her handmade seed paper is beautiful and 100% recycled!

I chose the red heart shaped seed tags...

and the sheets of seed paper...

It was simple we just rolled each tree in a sheet of paper, tied with a green length of twine and attached the seed tags with our personal message written on them. Our guests loved them. All my worrying that I would get a lot of ‘what the heck is this, where’s my bottle stopper’ looks, turned out to be completely unwarranted. Lesson learned – don’t be afraid to show your green side in front of all your friends and family. : )

 

Walmart Supports Small Business?

Listening to WNYC yesterday morning, Brian Lehrer was on discussing the prospect of Walmart selling organic produce acquired from small and medium sized local farms who practice sustainable farming.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. Walmart is definitely on the top of my least favorite big box stores list. For a variety of reasons. Over the years we’ve all heard about their not so fabulous business practices from treatment of employees, to outsourcing to China to keep prices down. Lets face it Walmart put small businesses out of business. So hearing the Walmart and support small business in the same sentence is shocking, and quite frankly immediately sets off a few red flashing lights in my mind.  The good news here, in my opinion, is that the whole concept off supporting small local farms has gotten mainstream enough that Walmart wants a piece of the sustainability pie! Great news right!?!

Here’s my problem, big box stores are by nature completely and utterly unsustainable! Stores like Walmart have put entire towns out of business, moved sources for goods from our own towns and surrounding cities to countries on the other side of the world. They thrive off the concept of buying cheap, throwing out, and buying cheap again. Thus filling our landfills with unnecessary waste.

It’s all a bit frustrating. If it takes a superstore like Walmart to revive small farms, to get more farms to practice sustainable farming, then that would truly be fantastic. However I can’t help but be wary of what’s going on. You can read about Walmart’s Sustainable Agriculture Goals here.

I’d love to hear your opinions on this topic.

The Flower Girl and Her Oma

I thought everyone would like to see another photo of Sandy and Vivi.  I think they are so cute.  We were all a little nervous about Vivi being happy all through a very long wedding day, after a late “no rehearsal rehearsal dinner” the night before.  Being the good Oma (grandma) that I am, and having raised 4 kids of my own, I know the secret to a happy child is an Oma’s purse full of surprises.  I kept a keen eye on “the Viv” and whenever it looked like a frown was making an appearance Oma showed up with-a tiny Olivia doll , a book, some bracelets, a magnetic doll with clothes to stick on…about this time a frown was beginning to appear on Sarah’s face (mom of Vivi).  “I think that is just about enough gifts!” she said.  So Oma backed away and stored the rest of the loot for Christmas and Vivi went on to be a perfectly happy flower girl.

I also wanted to send out a thank you to all the customers who came in last week and were patient and kind, and one who actually helped me bring up the invoice on the computer when EVERYTHING disappeared.  I had a great week and really enjoyed talking to everyone and of course, showing photos of the wedding.  Also a big thanks to those of you who actually care about organic, fair trade clothing and like learning the background stories of some of our clothing lines.  It is very nice to meet people who understand what Sandy is trying to do by providing clothing that is not soaked in chemicals and then put next to a baby’s tender skin.  I know Sandy gets discouraged when people don’t seem to get why organic cotton, or vegetable dyed shirts are more expensive to produce. Some folks would rather buy items made in a sweatshop rather than in a factory that provides fair wages and good working conditions because these items are much cheaper.  I like to think that many of these people just don’t think about these things and with a little encouragement they will begin to make the right choices.

I was very happy when Sandy came back to the store on Tuesday, but also a little sad that my adventure was over. (Although Sandy said she will happily turn the store over to me anytime!)  She and Matt had a perfect honeymoon and I’m sure some pictures will be on her blog soon.  Talk to you soon!

Sandy and Matt Get Married and Mom Goes to Work

Wedding Day

October 2nd Matt and Sandy got married at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York.  It was a beautiful day, sandwiched in between torrential downpours.  It rained all last week, through Friday.  Saturday dawned bright and clear and it stayed that way through Sunday afternoon and then the rain started again.  It was a perfect day for two very special people.  Vivi was the flower girl and she did a terrific job.  She sat and got her hair done and then endured several hours of photos with mostly a happy smile.  She then proceeded to dance the night away with her new cousin Michelle and didn’t give in until around 9:30 pm.

Monday morning Mom, that’s me, was unable to get herself together sufficiently enough to open the Vivi store.  Every time I sat down, I fell asleep.  Today was a little better.  I braved the rain and was only 5 minutes late (don’t tell Sandy) and proceeded to do the best I could.  I want to thank everyone who came in today for being so patient and not walking out while I tried to figure out gift receipts.

Sandy and Matt are in Costa Rica for their honeymoon and have sent several e-mails about how beautiful it is there.  I am sure there will be pictures up on the website as soon as they get home.

I will put up more photos of the wedding as I get them and chronicle the day by day trials and tribulations of Mom at work.  Hopefully, some of it will be funny.

Sustainable Business – Custom Bamboo Furniture

The process of opening the store was a painstaking process full of dozens of dead ends, poorly formed ideas and LOTS of researching and planning . I knew I wanted all aspects of the store to be eco-friendly, including the furniture and fixtures. One of the biggest obstacles during this process was finding furniture that not only looked beautiful and was functional but also sustainable and produced as little waste as possible. I spent a long time searching the internet looking at the same products on dozens of different websites. By same I mean particle board and plastic, slat wall, grid wall, gondola, all disposable and all manufactured half way across the world.

Enter Matthew, my awesome fiance (boyfriend at the time) to save the day! WARNING: Cheesy photo ahead.

Matt is an architect and an amazing designer. He designed and built all the furniture and fixtures at Vivi without using a single nail! The material we chose is bamboo plywood, which not only looks beautiful but according to Matt is a great material to work with. He used Formby’s Tung Oil, to stain the wood, an all natural oil that brings out the natural color of the wood. It is water-resistant and provides a durable protective finish. The furniture requires very little maintenance, just a little lemon oil now and then to clean and shine.

Matt spent many days and night gluing and clamping (with Jasmine the family dog).

My Favorite the Wrapping Table

Lots of Clamps and the Nearly Finished Unstained Product

At Work in the Vivi Store!

We used real black bamboo poles and hemp rope for the clothing racks.

I love the finished product, it’s everything the store needed, functional, sustainable, and really beautiful. : )

If you are highly motivated you can take a woodworking class, or would like to get in touch with talented local word workers check out Peter’s Valley in Layton New Jersey.

Making a Tough Anti-green Choice

I’ll admit, I’ve always been one of those crunchy granola type people. I like jeans and a flannel, hikes in the Adirondacks, growing my own herbs, composting our biodegradables. I carry a Kleen Kanteen or a CamelBak, breastfed my daughter and made all of her baby food, you get the idea.

So a year ago, when I started to notice spiders in our basement and soon after the egg sacks spiders lay, I got a little freaked out. Suffice it to say, I killed some spiders, my husband–the pacifist–caught and released and we forgot about it for a while…

Two weeks ago I was cleaning, after a semi-long stint of not cleaning, and noticed a lot of cob webs. On closer inspection, these weren’t cob webs and they were everywhere, seriously everywhere. Every dark corner, little nook, doorway. The livingroom we never use was spider central, huge webs, lots of spiders, egg sacks (one with teeny, tiny scurrying little spiders in it!!). I swept and squished and then called the exterminator.

Two days later a lovely woman from Ace Walco came to our house and flashlight in hand looked everywhere. And the spiders were mostly everywhere. She pointed out that if you have spiders you need to have lots of other bugs too, to feed them. She showed me a chart of the little buggers and I squirmed. I asked her about green options since I’m currently pregnant and our daugher is only two and a half but the question was half hearted. I wanted the creepy crawlies dead, my skin was crawling and my dreams were filled with spider legs and hatching egg sacks.

They do have green options and they are peppermint based. She said they are effective and I said let’s start with the hard stuff and after that we’ll use the green product as the preventative measure. What she told me was that even if a small animal, something as small as a mouse were sprayed with the bug chemicals it wouldn’t die; they are so diluted. It was all I had to hear. We arranged for them to come back two days later. Vivi and I vacated the house and they sprayed.

Honestly, I don’t feel great about the decision but the spiders are dead. And we’ll move forward with the green alternative at the next appointment in four months. I’m curious if anyone else has had to make a hard choice that wasn’t so “green” when you are trying to live an eco-friendly life and the environment is a priority in your everyday decisions? Have you ever had to spray your house for bugs and do you know of other options?

Cloth Diapering Class

Mom Gets An Education

Yesterday in New Jersey it was 90 degrees and today we are reminded that summer is coming to an end.  Crisp morning, blue skies and for me, nostalgia.  I have four adult children, Sandy is the youngest and yesterday was her birthday.  I was reminded of the many years she had to go back to school on or near the exact date of her birthday.  Getting four kids ready for the first day of school and not forgetting their lunches, new notebooks, pencils, pens, plus the cupcakes, plates, napkins and also trying to find out how many kids were in Sandy’ class took more brain power than I have now.  I am really sad those days are over.  I miss them.

But-these days I am involved in the Vivi store and learning so many new things about organic clothing, fair trade and how important it is to support your local merchants.

I was always the type of person who avoided the giant malls New Jersey is covered with and tried to shop in smaller, neighborhood stores.  This was mostly for my own benefit.  The shop owners got to know you and I loved the interaction and personalized attention.  Now that I help Sandy in our own shop I am truly amazed at how many people avoid the local stores and head for the malls.  Even people that we are very close to seem to forget how important their support is for us.

Sandy has a dream.  That dream is to provide clothing for infants and children that is free of harmful chemicals and dyes and made in a responsible manner, i.e. not using underage children or poorly paid adults.  The hardest part of making this dream come true is educating people.  She has done a terrific job with her mother and now it is my responsibility to speak out.  Hopefully, this blog will help me do that.  I will try to provide facts and figures that may help change peoples attitudes about organic clothing.  So if you, dear blog readers, will stick with me on this path I am sure we will all learn some important things.