February is Heart Health Month.  The number one cause of death for women is cardiovascular disease in the United States.  It is recommended by most health experts that individuals should take at least 10,000 steps per day to remain healthy.  New studies have shown that even this may not be enough to ward off heart disease.  

In addition to training for my second half marathon, my goal is to complete my first sprint triathlon by the end of this year.  Training, working full time and caring for kids sometimes (if not always) make meal planning a challenge.  So far, we have managed to cook most of our meals during the week. We simply plan at least two days ahead what our meal options are.  Initially, it was rather funny for my family to start thinking of meals ahead of time, but it reduces a great amount of stress when you know what your kids will eat in a few hours as oppose to scrambling to cook a meal with cranky hungry kids hovering over you as you cook.    As part of this months' heart healthy theme, we are celebrating Valentine's Day by making our own organic pink lemonade (with strawberries, grapes, lemon and water).  We are also planning to make our own valentine's day cards.  We use recycled red construction paper and cut/glue images from print advertisements onto our homemade cards.  Here is an example of one of our homemade valentines (using an image from a print ad).  

You can use print advertisements (Sunday editions tend to contain the most print ads) for many other holiday celebrations as well (Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.).

As part of my overall eco-friendly healthy living goal, I've decided to reduce our family consumption of meat by 25%.  Going completely vegetarian was not an option (meeting a lot of resistance), so we figure we will compromise.  I am able to achieve my goal by active meat reduction.  For example, instead of cooking everything from the pre-packaged container, I make a conscious decision to only cook 3/4th of the chicken breasts and placing the rest in another storage container.  That way, we are consuming less meat and I compensate by adding fresh organic tomatoes (since we love tomatoes) to almost every dish.  So far, it's been a successful month.  The kids don't even notice having less meat portions (thank goodness).  I have officially stopped eating beef for almost nine years!  It's been so long.  I don't miss eating steak (the first 3 months were tough) at all.  Maybe by year end, we can reduce our meat consumption in half!  I noticed we are saving more money on our grocery bills as well.  Fresh vegetables and seasonal fruits are usually priced less than meat.

So instead of considering being a vegetarian vs. not, you have other options and might want to consider overall meat consumption reduction.  Bon appetite.

It is the end of another year and time for new year resolutions.  I am looking forward to 2012.  Here is a list of some of my eco-friendly new year resolutions for the upcoming year:
- 100% donations and/or giveaways of outgrown clothes and toys
- Learn how to make jewelry using recycled materials
- Learn more about recycled metal art (I came across a website  happyscraps.net that highlights metal art made from recycled metal and look forward to seeing their gallery of work at a local spring festival in 2012).
- Expand gardening goals to produce 20% of more of my meals from my own garden (very ambitious given the size of my garden)
- set up a rain barrel (finally, I have been wanting to do this for years!!)
- learn how to quilt so that I can recycle some worn clothes (that have sentimental value)
- participate in a family park replanting event (with my family)

Here are some of my other new year resolutions:
- complete second half marathon (with a new Personal Record)
- complete my first triathlon 

Looking forward to another year!

We love cooking, especially during the holidays.  Homemade pumpkin pies are easy to bake and provide a lot of antioxidants and nutrients.  We simply follow the baking recipe that is on the pumpkin can (yes, I use the pumpkin from the can as opposed to carving up my own, although I hope to try preparing a pumpkin pie from scratch next year).

We enjoyed spending thanksgiving with our extended family.  Instead of stuffing ourselves with all of the extra food, we ate reasonable portions and my sister in law showed me how to freeze the leftovers (which I have never done before).  When you freeze food, it usually lasts two weeks longer than just refrigerating leftovers.  To prepare/defrost frozen food, you need to place the food in a microwave safe container, add some water (you need to add some moisture) and then heat it up.  


We are getting our Christmas tree ready for Christmas.  We've used the same plastic tree for over ten years and plan to use it for many more.  We also save the Sunday newspaper so that we can use them as wrapping paper.  In keeping with an eco-friendly tradition that we started a few years ago, we will not be lighting the Christmas tree (to save energy, electricity and money).  Although most probably we will light it up on Christmas Eve for a while.

I just read an article that major companies such as Levi's, are re-thinking and changing their manufacturing process because they realize that water is becoming a scarce resource.  For your own personal living, there are many simple ways to conserve water and heat.  The following are inexpensive and effective water and heat conservation tips:
- have family members take showers right after each other (the bathroom is already  warmed up and if you have a tank for a water heater, you already have used the energy to warm up the water of the entire tank)
- do only cold cycle washes in your washing machine
- check and replace all leaky faucets and water hoses
- check and repair all leaky toilets
- wear clothes two to four times before you wash (unless they are workout clothes which needs to be washed after each use)
- instead of getting rid of existing soup or chicken stock, use it to cook your rice
- use less detergents (whether it is for dishes or clothes or scrubbing your kitchen counters) so you will need to use less water to rinse off
- replace your lawn with native plants and/or stones so that you do not need to water the lawn
- invest in a rain barrel and use the collected water to water your garden and plants

Part of my weekly purchases include a loaf of bread, organic milk, organic yogurt and organic eggs.  In addition to recycling the milk carton, organic yogurt container and egg carton, I have recently begun to reuse the bread bag.  When I come to the end of the loaf of bread, I store the bread bag away and use it for (surprise, surprise) holding lunch sandwiches and/or snacks on the go.  It seems so silly to me to use a ziploc bag, when the bread bag that was just previously holding the bread will do the job. 

If you really want to be adventuresome, trying baking your own bread.  It only takes milk, eggs, flour and yeast.  I buy yeast packages in bulk so when the baking mode strikes me I am prepared (most people already stock the milk, eggs and flour). 

It is very tempting to join discount wholesalers' clubs such as Sam's Club, etc.  Most of the bulk items are cheaper and more eco-friendly because of the bulk packaging.  However, unless you are feeding an army of people at home.  You wind up wasting alot of the food.  So a great simple solution is to join a friend and decide in advance which bulk items can be split and shared between families.  The following are great items that can easily be shared (and divided into smaller portions).  Just remember to keep and reuse your regular sized bottles/containers so that you can transfer the bulk items into them.

- ketchup
- mayonnaise
- other condiments
- cheese
- fruit (e.g. bananas, strawberries, grapes, oranges, lemons, apples and other fruits are usually sold in bulk packages)
- vegetables (frozen or fresh)
- meat (e.g. easy to split packages of chicken dumpsticks, porkchops, steaks and chicken breasts)
- fruit juices (e.g. easy to split the double gallons of juice that are packaged together or to pour them to smaller individually sized containers)

The following are less common items that are shared/split but you can still do so:

- packs of batteries (the price is cheaper in large packages but who really needs all those batteries)
- packs of socks (kids grow out of their shoes sizes quickly so split the package with friends who have similar aged kids)
- packs of toilet paper/tissue paper

I've been really diligent recycling as much as possible. While cleaning the house, I always run across items that I want to donate but if I don't set it aside immediately, the items wind up collecting dust in a pile somewhere.  So I have three bins set up next to each other in my kitchen: a traditional garbage container, a recycling container and a large donation bin.  Ever since I've set aside the donation bin, I have accumulated and identified a lot more items to donate and give away.  Once the donation bin is close to being filled, I bring it to the local preschool that uses the gently used clothes as emergency clothes for kids and appreciate the gently used functional toys.  I have also found that items that wind up in the donation bin get additional mileage out of them as well.  My kids rediscover the joy of playing with these items and some items wind up back into circulation in my house, which I am okay with, as long as the items are being used.

My child won third place in the Unique category at the Rain Gutter Regatta (cub scout competition in which the scouts design sailboats and race it down a rain gutter using their own breath as a source of wind).  We used a recycled nail polish container as the boat, a straw as the mast and two plastic cups as the sail.  We were very excited to see the interest level in using recycled materials and hope that future cub scout events will leverage and recycle materials as well.  Our cub scout pack already supports eco-friendly efforts by collecting gently used uniforms and books from previous cub scouts and distributing them to the  next group of scouts.  It is exciting to see my children embrace recycling efforts.