EcoGreen Hotel

For those of you in the hospitality industry, there is a fantastic site out there with green resources, ideas and tips to "green" up your business.

EcoGreen Hotel

The site contains surveys to determine your hotel's environmental impact, checklists and educational info to learn more about green terms and the environment.

I like that the site has a source for green hotel body products. Wouldn't that be a treat, rather than always bringing your own "safer" bodycare from home, so you can avoid using the regular, nasty hotel variety?!

Thanks to Parisiscott for supplying this link through a comment.

Buff'd Cosmetics - BEAUTIFUL!

Being off on maternity leave for a year, I did tend to let myself go a bit (ok, maybe a lot). I would dress myself in the nearest clothes (usually from the floor), rarely look in a mirror or brush my hair, and as for makeup? Definitely the least of my concerns when I was up all night long with my babes.

Well, now that I am back to work it actually feels good to get a bit dressed up, and yes, even put on some makeup.

When you make the rest of your life as green as possible, you certainly don't want to cheat on things that actually come into contact with your body - and that means no nasty chemicals on your face (do you really want poisonous things that close to your brain?).

Buff'd Cosmetics are the perfect "green" answer. Canadian (yay!), a huge variety of shades for all, and personalized help from owner Jennifer Gerwing if you are colour-dumb like I am and need some assistance in choosing the right shades for you. This mineral makeup is fab-u-lous!

I am fair-skinned with dirty blonde hair, blue eyes and zero ability to pick out colours. I was sent Bisque, Fair and Lace foundations to take for a test run. I did work up the nerve to mix some of the colours together and I even added a touch of honey bronzer because I am a bit tanned from a summer of paddling and and playing out of doors. The colours mixed up so easily in a small jar and I applied them with a Kabuki brush. You do need to apply moisturizer first so it doesn't settle in fine lines (not that I have any - haha). It provides great coverage to cover any minor imperfections (not that I have any of those either - tee hee), and yet is sheer enough that you don't look like you are wearing makeup. NICE!

These sifter jars from Buff'd are perfect for dispensing small amounts of makeup to use with your makeup brushes - no waste and portion control! (think Mimi Bobeck from the Drew Carey Show - no one wants that look!)

They have an incredible selection of eye shadows. I used some brown, earthy shades to complement my blue eyes. The colours actually lasted all day, which is great, since in the past so many eyeshadows seem to just fade away my during my busy days.

And, at Jennifer's suggestion, I tried out a pigment. These pigments are pure pops of colour, and they really add some zing. I had a flashy green shade called Devine, which is a gorgeous green shade. NOT something I would ever pick on my own. I wore it as an eyeshadow and got so so many compliments. Gee, compliments are NICE! Hmmm, I may have to walk on the wild side a bit more often.

Is this an awesome colour or what? I love this Devine shade!

One thing I did experiment with was taking the eye colours and mixing them (not all together of course, I'm not that colour-dumb) on the back of my hand with a drop of water to make a paste. I then applied these as eyeshadows and even a liner and absolutely LOVED the effect. Brilliant colours, and they went on so smoothly.

I haven't had time to try out all the goodies from Buff'd, but I can't wait to get at them. When you only have 2 1/2 minutes in the morning to get yourself ready for work, it's hard to get in too much experimentation at one time. Well, not without looking like a relative of Bozo's, that is.

So be sure and head on over to Buff'd and check them out. I totally suggest the sample sizes - they are enough to last for many applications, since with mineral makeup you don't need very much to make an impact. Plus, you can try out a variety of items to find what you truly love best.

Another bonus? When my little 3 year old princess wants to put on makeup "just like mommy", I don't mind giving her a quick swipe since I know this makeup doesn't contain all the harsh chemicals of most makeup out there on the market. This company ain't trying to hide anything, as they list their ingredients right on their website. How is that for inspiring some confidence in a product, eh?

Did I mention that they are Canadian too, eh?

Reusable snack bags

Check out this great idea from a crafty friend of mine.

Jackie's Snack Bags

She is sewing her own snack bags for her boys to use at school. What a great idea! I want to make some up for myself, so I need to find that PUL (waterproof barrier fabric) that I stashed away somewhere.....hmmmmmmm...........

By the way, stay tuned for a review of some fantastic mineral makeup. Yup, I finally did myself up, and I am LOVING it! Coming soon.................

School Supplies

Here is a fantastic post by the Canadian blog site, Ethical Consumer. It contains a list of the most ethical/green choices for school supplies.

It is based on this list from Frogfile - which is a Canadian business supplies distributor of green office products. Pretty neat, huh?

The one that interests me most is the water-based white-out. In elementary school we have basically banned the stuff due to the potential for sniffing and the toxicity of this product ( not to mention the mess) so I am hoping that this stuff has no nasty chemical (read headache-inducing) odour to it.

Back to school...in green!

Well, it's that time of year again...when parents have a tear of joy in their eyes and teachers just have tears........



After a year off on maternity leave, I am returning to the grind.



This year, I'm trying to go back and be green (well, not literally green, although I am teaching kindergarten, so I could turn myself green for a "green" day while learning our colours.....hmmmm, maybe not).



For several months I have been collecting empy coffee and baby formula cans. Those will become our pencil cases - no plastic junky things from the $ store that the lids break off, or cheap plastic zippy things that disintegrate after day 2.



I have enlisted the help of a parent to help sew book bags for our homework reading program.



And I am working on several other things as well. Oh, and I just bought out a Value Village of all their puzzles and toys for my classroom activity centres too! That was fun - though the cashier looked at me like I was a bit nuts, as she said "well, all your kids will be excited with ALL THOSE THINGS!! (she probably thinks I have 8 kids of my own or something).



Here is a good article from the Toronto Star about Going Green for Back to School.



And if you have lots of money to blow, here is the Daily Green's Back to School suggestions.

Guerilla Bagging

Okay, there are so many possible connotations to that title - I will stop you right now and explain what it is.

This is a social movement, that has been started by morsbags.com.

It all began when the founder of the movement heard of a young minke whale which washed up on the beach in France on her birthday. The contents of the whale's stomach were as follows:

-15 assorted plastic bags and 1 chip bag

Eeewww!

There are amazingly simple instructions on the site to sew up your own morsbags here.

Use an old sheet, recycled fabric of any sort, and sew one up.

THEN - and here comes the sociable guerilla part.......

You hand them out for free to the unsuspecting public - such as in a grocery story and they are reaching for the disposable plastic bags (or just randomly to people, if you want to avoid any sort of potential conflict).

There is a lot of info on the site - so go check it out now! http://www.morsbags.com/

For pictures of morsbags that have been made by others, click here.

Here is a letter copied from the site, to help spread the word about their movement (which, to date, has recorded nearly 50 000 bags made!)

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ++ +

let’s do something positive to reduce the hideous number of plastic bags being used - 1 million are consumed per minute globally - of which hundreds of thousands end up in the oceans.

the idea is to get together with people in your local community, drink POP and make reusable cloth bags (from old duvet covers, curtains from charity shops etc) and hand them out to the unsuspecting public for free on specified dates outside different supermarkets.

meet new people, do something marvellous for the planet and beat other pods (groups) of baggers with your morsbag tally.

go to www.morsbags.com to be a part of a wonderful thing!

p.s. non-commercial/ non-profitable - just full of beneficial things for everyone, especially whales!

Odds and Ends

Aaah, summer....or some strange semblance of it anyway! Lowered uses of air conditioners, the economy causing the cancelling of travellling an vacations...hmmm, perhaps this is a "greener" than average summer.....(plus the lawns are growing like crazy due to the rain and cooler weather - so that takes care of the literal sense of the word).

What have I been up to that is green? Well, other than the everyday attempts at green-ness, nothing drastic, I will admit.

We compost.

We seldom cut our lawn (ok, perhaps not due to being green, but rather, business and laziness, but the outcome is the same!).

We buy as much local produce as possible.

I have hit some good yard sales for re-using other people's unwanteds.

The normal, everyday kinda stuff.

With back-to-school looming on the horizon (ick, back to work for me after a year off with my "babies") I have been collected large coffee and baby formula cans to use in my kindergarten class as pencil containers.

And a fabulous parent volunteer and I will be sewing up some book bags and lunch money/notes to teacher bags so that all those little tidbits will make it to school in one piece. We will be using old upholstery samples for this project. No more ziploc bags!

So, little by little, I am trying to do my part.

I did get a fabulous green birthday present from a good friend too - Plain Jane Soap. This soap has the yummiest flavours too. I actually just sat down to place an order for some more - and decided that I should shake off the laziness and make a post.

By the way, Plain Jane Soap has a new website:

http://www.wix.com/plainjanesoap/PLain-Jane-Soap

Enjoy!