NC Trip

Last weekend Matthew and I made a quick trip to North Carolina so that Matthew could ski before the weather started to warm up.  We stayed Friday night with Emily and Miran in Charlotte, then all four of us drove to Blowing Rock on Saturday where we enjoyed an outdoor dinner at a little restaurant with a wonderful view.  Next, we continued on to Grandfather Mountain State Park.  It was late in the day so we only had to time to drive to the top of a the mountain for a quick walk.  The winds were gusting at over 40 mph, brrr!

 

 

But the view was still beautiful.

 

After an evening of board games and a little sleep, I took Matthew to the slopes Sunday morning.  He skied all day on what snow remained.

 

While Matthew was enjoying himself, Emily, Miran, and I went gem mining.  We each got a bucket of dirt to sift through in search of various treasures.

 

After sifting through all of the dirt, we took our finds over to a counter where someone sorted through and told us what everything was (since most of them, to us, looked like a lump of rock!).

 

The most exciting part of mining, at least for me, was talking with the gem cutter about what our rocks might look like if they were cut.  Here is one that I decided to have cut and then shipped to me when it was finished.  The top rock is uncut and below is the cut garnet (about 8x10mm in size).  I would like to make a necklace out of it since it is my birthstone.

 

After mining and lunch we still had an hour or so until picking Matthew up.  We decided to check out a little hiking trail at the base of Grandfather Mountain.

 

Since gems were fresh on our minds, we spent most of the time looking for a ruby or sapphire among the rocks! (without any luck)

Reducing Waste

My New Year's Resolution for 2015 is to reduce the waste that we send to a landfill, especially plastic.  I was inspired by a story that I heard on NPR about people who are adopting a "zero waste" lifestyle.  They expanded the original Three R's to five, so now I will be trying to Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and finally Rot as much as I can in order to move towards producing zero waste.  Here are a few of the changes so far.

 

 

Instead of buying plastic-packaged horse treats, I dehydrated lightly salted carrot slices instead.  The horses love them, and so do I!

 

 

Another easy change was to build a compost (Rot) bin by the garden.  We had been piling our compost in the woods but with an actual bin we can now compost things like paper towels and horse feed bags (without a bin these blow around and are annoying).  This was a very easy project - we just had to screw together a few pallets!  It is definitely not pretty, but it will work.

 

I don't plan on putting this compost on the vegetable garden so we can rot things like meat and cardboard food containers.

 

The easiest thing so far has been buying produce without bags.  I have been doing this with many things for several years now (avocados, bananas, etc.) but I was still buying things like lettuce, potatoes, and apples in a plastic bag.  I guess it was just habit, because I don't know why I was buying the bags!  I also bought some cloth bags for buying supplies in bulk.  I have been visiting lots of local stores looking for various things like rice, rolled oats, flour, etc. in bulk without packaging.

 

I bought several glass storage jars for all of the items that I can find package-free.  They are labeled with re-usable chalk board stickers so that I can change/move them as necessary.  I love the way they look in the cupboards too!

 

 

At the end of last year I quit buying cereal and started making granola for breakfast instead.  It is a lot healthier and cheaper than cereal, plus I can find all of the ingredients package free.  I already make yogurt and it is great with the granola!

 

Another very easy switch - making my own salad dressing.

 

 

And finally, I found a couple of shops downtown that sell natural products.  I bought an all natural loofa (instead of the plastic ones usually in the grocery store) that can be composted when it is worn out.  Next time I may just buy the fabric to make one, but I wanted to see how this works first.  The Savannah bee company also makes Bee's Wrap that can be used in place of saran wrap (and its reusable) plus I bought some bee's wax that I will be using to refill lip balm tubes. 

 

I haven't been able to eliminate all waste yet (and probably won't be able to 100%), but we have definitely reduced it and I will continue to work at it!