Open Space, Climate Vulnerabilities and Making

We haven’t been blogging much over the past year and I suspect some people wonder why – other than we both work full time and have three kids! There’s always a lot going on in our lives, but this year I think these three phrases encapsulate the big reasons we haven’t been blogging much: open space, […]

How to Easily Grill Corn on the Campfire

This year Ellie & Christor were old enough to actually help us plan for our annual camping trip, including participating in meal planning. They declared that they were going to make pancakes, and since I know that Ellie is perfectly capable of making pancakes at home by herself, that sounded great to me.  She also put in […]

Green Household Products Delivered – ePantry now Grove Collaborative

Updated: ePantry is now Grove Collaborative Here are the reasons we love Grove Collaborative: ✦ 100% carbon neutral shipments ✦ Sustainable materials ✦ Reduce plastic waste ✦ Cruelty-free products ✦ Ingredient transparency We get our regular Grove shipments with laundry detergent, recycled toilet paper without plastic packaging, tissues and dish soap.  We have switched to some of […]

Organic instant soup – Oxymoron or Life Saver?

Today I was thrilled to discover that I can buy ready-made, organic tortilla soup and chicken soup in a tetrapak box, off the shelf of my main stream grocery store. I am scared of putting chemicals into my body and my kids’ bodies.  I see people all around us with autoimmune problems, immune problems, cancer, neurologic […]

Snowflakes

Our area has had over 60″ of snow in the past 17 days.  That may not sound like a lot for some people, but on average we get 44″ of snow a year and it has been so cold here that it has not been melting between the storms.  This morning Ellie took my phone […]

Adapting To Climate Change

I spent two days in December meeting with Sustainability Directors from around New England. While we met, pounding rain drenched late arrivals, and rain and snow storms to our north waylaid some of our colleagues. Three to four inches of rain was threatening many of our cities and towns in the North East.    This group meets, with […]

Climate Change is Causing More Intense Storms

As we were re-scheduling projects and meetings because of the incoming blizzard, a co-worker from another department asked me: Are we seeing more frequent and more intense storms because of climate change? Yes, we are. Even my colleagues that are not focused on the environment are changing the way they plan for extreme weather.  I work for a […]

Not Running Against the Wind Anymore

When Jon and I first started writing Green Lifestyle Changes over 5 years ago, we felt that we had to write it. Very few people were talking about climate change or green living. We had become aware of the issue, and we were very concerned about increasing green house gas emissions, the rising temperature of […]

Is Your Body Wash Killing Fish?

Is your shampoo, body wash, or toothpaste killing fish? Not with some crazy new chemical, but something very simple: tiny microbeads of plastic. At some point the companies that make personal care products realized that they could put tiny microbeads of plastic in products like shampoo and body wash to exfoliate or lift dirt away. Previously […]

Review of Eco-Renovation Strategies Book

We were contacted by Self-Counsel Press and asked if we would review some or all of the books in their new Green Series. We are always interested in finding good books that we can refer people to, so we agreed to review them if they sent us copies of the books and a set of […]