Alice in Wonderland

Back when there was a major earthquake in China, a Chinese project manager at Steve's work gathered all her kid's books that they don't read them anymore, brought them to the company and sell them for donation.

Another great idea for raising funds for charity and reuse the stuffs you no longer need!

Steve came home with the box full of books for Erin. One of them is a pop-up Alice in Wonderland book. This becomes Erin's favorite book.

Although she did not truely understand the story, she loves the part of Alice's tea-time with the rabbit. I guess she loves the glamorous pop-up tea set. Before I know it, she started trying to sit down with Alice at the tea table! She almost destroyed the pop-up. I had to take her out and trying to explain to her that this is not a real tea table.

Inside Recycling Process

It is interesting to see how the recycle bin go from my house to recycle plant.
Take away ideas:

1) I might as well keep reusing my recycle bin bag. It takes time for them to tear the bag and throw away since the bag can not go to recycle process.

2) Foams and plastic bags are not recyclable :(

Thai New Year

Can't wait for the Thai's New Year (Songkran) that is coming up this weekend.
I plan to dress Erin up in traditional thai dress. But we must make sure to take a photo of her
before she gets wet. (Traditionally, we throw jasmine water to each other as a way to celebrate New Year in a hot summer day)

There is going to be a lot of food. Yum Yum.

Here is more information about the temple.

Temple location: 36054 Niles Blvd, Fremont, CA

Time: Apr 11-12, 2009.

Tip:

1) Bring mat for picnic. Mostly all tables will be taken
2) Wear hat, sunglasses and sunscreen
3) Prepare cloths to change, if you want to participate in water throwing.
4) Save the earth by bringing your own bags and containers to buy food home.
5) Please do not park in the neighborhood. Some neighbors dont like to have people parking in front of their houses. (eventhough it is perfectly legal. but to keep peace with neighbor, folllow instruction of how to park when you arrive.) Temple provides free parking at Quarry Lake and shuttle buses to transport people back and forth.

Erin hangs cloths

It is hot and nice out there. Time to hang our cloths outside. We save a lot of
money hanging cloths outside instead of using dryer. Erin learns to do her laundry.

Mummy has a high hope that she can do her laundry soon!

Spring is here (V.1)

Spring is here and it is time to plant! I started planting some seed in the containers. (Green onion and poppy flowers)

Here I want to blog about how creative and green my friend-Teresa is. She is living in New Mexico where I imagine the temperature is probably much colder than California.

She started planting seeds earlier in-house. I asked her to post pictures of her plants. She uses food plastic containers (yogurt tubs and etc) for her seed planting. I think it is ingenious and it is a great way to reuse these food containers.

2 thumbs up for green living! Planting vegetable is fun. You get to see and eat the products of your love, saving money on grocery and eating healthy!

Another great yogurt place

Boy, how can I not love this fro-yo fad? I went to another yogurt bar in Palo Alto today called "Culture Yogurt" Not only they are focusing on the healthy aspect of yogurt, they are so eco-friendly. all the cups and utensils are natural, recycled and decomposable (is that a word?) Basically, they can be dumped directly to the compost pile.

I start to become yogurt connoisseur. I would rate this one in the same level as Yo-swirl.

But I love Culture's eco-friendly style more. This yogurt bar is selling $3.99 reusable cup and if you bring back the cup to reuse next time, they will give you 0.20 cents discount. A little steep for a price of the cup but the idea is great!

Cheap & Cheery Eating Out - Indian Buffet

Indian Buffet is the best cheap and cheery eating out. All you can eat curries at fix price. This is the best one I found. Bombay Garden in Fremont.

Yoswirl

Our whole family loves... frozen yogurt. My co-worker introduced me to Yogurt bar last year and I become an addict. I found one yogurt bar in Fremont called Yoswirl and become frequent buyer ever since. Erin thought it is an ice-cream and I am happy to let her enjoy it.

Here how yoswirl works: You pick up the cup and fill with any flavors of fro-yo that you like. They have several varieties like original (tart), lychee, thai tea, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla and etc.

Then you can select toppings from nuts, chocolate chip, yogurt chip, oreo, gram crackers and etc. Then, you move over to select fruit toppings like lychee, coconut, kiwi and etc.

Once, you are done, you weigh the whole cup on scale. My favorite are tart yogurt, lychee and mango. I think this is a great alternative to ice-cream shop like Cold Stone or Baskin Robin.... Much healthier.

I like the paper cup containers as well. I wash them and reuse them as crayon holders.

Alma's vase

Here is another great tip for saving water. I had lunch at my friend's house the other day. (Her name is Alma.) I saw this vase next to her sink and wondering what is it for. (no flower??)

She said when she or her husband can not finish the glass of water, instead of pouring down the drain, they pour into this vase. When it is full, she uses it to water her plant. Nice tip!

I am doing similar thing with my house plant. I pour left over water into my plant. However, I found that sometimes, my house plant can not hold all the water that I am wasting. I am thinking of doing the same thing as Alma. Or may be I should add more house plants?

Garden Vegetables

I can not wait till the weather gets better to start planting vegetable. Last Summer, I had great success with squashs and tomatoes. I hope this year will turn out great too. Here are my two vegetables waiting to be planted; kafir lime and lemon grass. These two are staples in Thai cooking. Nothing beats the freshness and convenience of having fresh herbs and vegetables at hand. I can pick fresh ones out of the ground to the cooking pot!

Good find (2)

Here is the pressed glass I got with pot holders. I use one of them to hold Erin's pony bands.

Good Find - Estate Sales

Want to show these cute stuffs I found at the estate sales. For those who dont know, estate sales is like someone open their house and sell every contents in the house. (This concept does not exist in Thailand-- We dont have a concept of garage sales either) Anyhow, commonly are the old people who either pass away or moving to the nursing home.

I stumbled into this estate sales near my house one weekend. It is a great fun shopping there, I found several antiques and unique stuffs like this one. The seller (actually not the owner but the company the owner hired to manage this) told me that the owner is moving into the retirement home so the money will go to support her expense there. -- Make me feel a little better about this. My first time when I went to estate sales, I was surprise that people just put their personal stuffs on sales. But it is kind of make sense if you are downsizing from big house to just one bedroom in the retirement home.

My last visit, I found these pot holders. I think they are so cute and unique. All of them are hand-made. And the best part, I dont even know how much did it cost since it comes with six pressed crystal - like wine glasses for $3 :) It is truly cheap and cheery! I even subscribed to the seller's newsletter. I think they are very specialized in my area (Fremont) As a matter of fact, I only see them doing this stuff around fremont. If you are interested, you can email him at curtiswdenisar@comcast.net, he will send you a schedule of his next sales)

I think garage sales and estate sales are good for environment and good for everyone's pocket. I hope we have something like this in Thailand

Take Out Containers

I found indefinte use of this stuff. I heard that there is a new SF law that all take out containers have to be either 'reuseable' or bio-degradable. No more foam!

I dont think that law is being issued in Fremont yet as I still see some restaurants use foam containers. Anyhow, i wash all these take out containers that I got and reuse them in so many ways.

In these pictures, I used them to freeze soup when I made a big pot of vegetable soup. One Thai girl I met told me that it freezes pretty well. Another time, I used them to store dry stuff like shredded coconut. I labeled the containers with item and expiration date so I know what it is and when the item will be expired.

Now, when I go to the place that I know I will order take out or (having a left over), I even bring my own containers so they don't have to give me a new one. Restaurants in Bangkok start giving out 5% discount for people who bring their own containers and bags for take out. Why don't we do it here in the US? Will reduce remarkable amount of trash!!

Library book-Jamie at Home

For many things that went wrong in this country (like health care system and etc), one thing that the US got it right is public library system. You can almost always find great selections of books in any city's public library. Librarians are always very helpful and if you can not find the book you need, you can request them to buy or borrow from other libraries.

Bravo to this! I love reading. My father is a book collector and force me and my sisters to love reading. (Thanks Dad!) My father probably spends countless of dollars on books. This is great for us. My country is doing a poor job on public library system. It is really non existent. I dont recall visiting one when we grew up. (I have no idea where they are, if they do exist--how terrible!) Good thing we have library at home (from my dad's collections).

Anyhow, I dont have to do that for Erin. Public library here is FREE!!!!. I dont have to spend a lot of money on books. We just have to visit the library. I think this is considered great for environment. We can all share great books without everyone has to keep buying books and killing more trees unnecessary.

My New Year's resolution is to read more books. I have been lagging since Erin was born. (Too busy with baby, no time sitting down and read) Since she is a little bigger now, she starts reading to herself (rather than mummy reading to her) I can sit next to her in bed and read my book while she reads hers out loud.

Ok, back to the recommended book - Jamie Oliver at home. It is quite an interesting cookbook.

He talked about how we should grow our own vegetables for cooking. One very interesting point is that how he campaigns readers to stop buying "factory" eggs. (Non -organic eggs) I've never thought about this. He shows how the hens are cooped up in cage, never let to walk and never seen Sun's light, forcing to produce eggs. It is basically a sweatshop for chickens. He made the point that if we stop buying factory eggs, farmers will turn to raise more organic eggs instead. (Reduce demand on factory eggs, increase demand on organic eggs- Law of demand and supply)

Very fun and easy to read, I am half way through and I love this book :)

Dish Towel at work

My work provides plastic utensils, cups and etc in the kitchen. when i bring lunch to work, I try to use my own set of eating utensils ,wash and reuse them. (In stead of using disposable ones)

I used to use paper kitchen towel to dry it. In an effort to help company reducing cost (not to have to keep reordering paper towel) and being green, I brought my own dish towel from home.

I sew the ribbon (got it from Gap Kid shopping bag) with the towel to hang it dry. (I didn't really do a good job on this- Need to acquire sewing skill :))

Condiment jar and peanut can transformed

I cook with lots of Asian ingredients that come in glass jars. I feel quite wasteful to toss the nice containers away. I reuse them for pencil holders. These two are Erin's pencil holder and paint brush holder. I used picture from Erin's B-day card and Pottery Barn catalog.

Oh my juice!

My mum has been telling me about the benefit of juicing but I have never bothered to try it.

Until recently, my aunt visited me here in the US. She saw that I have an orange tree full of oranges. She recommended me to juicing instead of buying juices from the grocery store.

I agree to this. I love drinking orange juice but orange juice from the store here is full with added sugar. I tried using the frozen one and diluted it with lot of water to cut down some sugar.

I used to think that juicing machine costs a fortune (seeing from ads in TV that costs like $100)

It turned out that I could get one for $30 at Wal-Mart. My aunt went and helped me pick one up.

I have been juicing ever since and loving it. My favorite recipe is carrot apple ginger juice. I found out that I can use any vegetables and fruits in juicing. I love fresh great taste without any added sugar!

I read from one of Thai blog

that I can use the fiber from carot to make scramble egg. So here I try it with the help of my DD. (she will be eating this for her lunch tomorrow)

Close-up for Green Wrapping

Green Wrapping

Got this idea from Danny Seo,Simple Green Living book.

Materials:

* Potato Chip bags. (Crisp for British people)

* Grocery paper bag
* Gretting cards. (I used Erin's b-day cards)

Ta--da--- Nice looking X'mas wrapping. Feeling great about not buying and ending up throwing away gift wrapping papers on X'mas day.

It was fun working on this project with my kid too.

Cheap and Cheery Green Living

I create this blog to share how you can live cheap and cheery green life style...
I came from Thailand where people make do with what they have. (and you will be amazed how creative they are.-- I will blog about this later)

When my mother visited me in the US, she was very irritated that people keep using disposable containers. (everyting from paper/plastic cups, plastic utensils, food packagings and etc.)
she said that you know how much does it cost to produce all these plastics and papers. What a waste!

When I grew up, I used to be embarrased by her stinginess. Later on in life, when I become more aware of the environmental issues, I start to think that her stinginess actually could save the world. If we all are willing to change our habbits and start living a green life style!