Uh oh! Looks like my time outside yesterday left me sunburnt — entirely my fault, of course, as I didn’t update my sunscreen application as the day went on. So now here I am with hideous white stripes on my back where my tank top was and bright red patches everywhere else the sun hit. I partially blame the unusually nice weather in mid September for my screw up. Shouldn’t it be Fall right now? I haven’t even broken out my sweaters yet.

Don’t have an aloe plant? Here are some other around-the-house tips for treating a sunburn without having to invest in nasty chemicals or lotions. They worked very well for me, try them out yourself!

• Use honey as a salve — put a healthy smear of it onto the burnt areas. It apparently helps ease the pain and helps to encourage the healing process.
• Liquify some potatoes. I know, sounds weird, right? But potato paste can be applied to the sunburn and when it dries, it sucks all the excess moisture (what’s keeping it hot and burning) out of your skin.

These more eco-friendly ways to treat a sunburn have the added benefit of having great odds of being in your home just when you need them. I don’t always have pain killers or burn spray in my medicine cabinet, but 99% of the time I have potatoes!

Remember way back in April when I wrote about the city of Ottawa’s TREE Program? Well, my delivery day is fast approaching!

I received a letter today explaining to me that my tree would be delivered to me sometime between September 22nd and October 2nd and will include everything I need to plant this tree right away: a sapling, some soil, a pot, some soil nutrients and compost.

I wonder what kind of tree it will be? They make no promises that you’ll get a tree of your choosing (you choose 3 options on your application) but they do say that they try their very best to get you one of your choices. I chose, in order:

1. Japanese lilac
2. Hackberry
3. Crabapple

I’ll be taking the tree up to my parent’s house to plant on their farm. My mom is very excited to see what we get and has a place picked out for it already. What a better way to show my commitment to going green than to plant a tree! I’ll be sure to post some pictures/video when the tree comes. I’m so excited!

What are you waiting for, Ottawa residents? The next tree delivery season is May/June so be sure to fill out your application now! Don’t have anywhere to put a tree? You can also fill in a form recommending a spot for the city to plant a tree for you.

I don’t eat much of this stuff. I’m not actually a big fan of vinegar based coleslaw. Maybe I’m not selling the recipe well… so, why post a coleslaw recipe? Because everyone in my family loves this recipe – it’s in high demand at my house. It’s rare when there isn’t some made up in a container somewhere in the fridge.

And I’m told you’ll like it too, readers. I will guarantee it’s like to coleslaw you’ve had before. Are you brave enough to try after that ’sales pitch’?

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Organic Virgin Olive Oil
• 1/3 cup Organic Apple Cider vinegar
• Parsley
• Herbamare
• Pepper
• 1/4 large white cabbage
• 1/4 large red cabbage
• 1 shredded carrot
• 1/4 large onion chopped
• 1/4 cup sliced black olives (optional)
• 1 inch feta cheese crumpled (optional)

Method:

1. Thinly slice the white cabbage. Then chop to pieces of one to two inches. Put in mixing bowl.
2. Do the same with the red cabbage.
3. Add the shredded carrot and chopped onion to the red and white cabbage.
4. Pour the Olive Oil over the contents of the bowl. Then add the Apple Cider Vinegar. (The oil is added first or the vinegar just pools on the bottom.)
5. Season to taste. Add the optional black olives and feta cheese.
6. Mix. Let sit 10 minutes before serving for enhanced flavor — let the vinegar soak in a bit or else you’ll have vinegar cabbage soup!

My house is actually full of candles in beautiful glass jars. I’ve always loved candlelight. But after reading about how toxic some candles can be (here and here and here), I’ve decided to switch to soy, non-toxic, clean burning candles.

There are a variety of candles that fit the bill out there, but the ones I’ve ordered are called Pure Malie Candles. Out of all the reviews online, these candles seemed to have the most positive feedback. And they come in delightful scents, too: Pikake, Plumeria, Coconut Vanilla, Koke’e, Organic Mango Nectar.

The candles are made from clean-burning waxes and are petroleum-free with 100% cotton wicks.

I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of my new Coconut Vanilla candle and will definitely let you know how it works out!

I wish you could smell things through the internet. Their website is quite pretty though and I can almost taste/smell the fruit in the banner!

This is definitely something I would have up in my home. In fact, I’m considering the possibility right now while staring distainfully at my current crappy-plastic/glass and wood 1970’s era chandelier.

What a genius idea for recycling old wine bottles! And believe it or not, this one right here is from Pottery Barn.

I think that personally I’d prefer one solid colour — ie. all green bottles — but I bet you could find some really cool coloured bottles out there. Though, you’d have to drink all the wine before you could hang up the bottles. But that’s nothing that a big wine and cheese party at your house couldn’t solve, right?

And what’s better for that wine and cheese party than cheese platers made out of flattened wine bottles? Brilliant.

Sure, I don’t know how practical it is to live in such a teeny tiny cramped space — but it’s awfully neat!

This man pulls his home behind his bicycle. Might I add that this home is not only portable, it’s powered by solar and wind energy and can stand winds of 60mph and temperatures as high as 100 degrees farenheit!

I personally love the nomadic lifestyle — and with your house attached to the back of your bicycle, you could live anywhere that your bicycle can take you! And all without emitting a single gram of carbon into the atmosphere. Fantastic.

Check out TinyHouseDesign for some cool pictures of this cool mobile home!

I never had a treehouse when I was a kid. I didn’t really have parents that were comfortable climbing trees and building structures stable enough to hold their kids safely.

But as an adult, I’ve definitely thought about it more than once. I love being outside, I love building, and most importantly, I love sky high panoramic views.

This tree house – featured here – definitely caught my eye.

It’s becoming a neat eco-trend to repurpose lookout towers into homes. That’s right, I could live here! (Though I’m assuming it’s safe to say that this is likely out of my budget.)

So, who wants to rent me a repurposed watchtower, shipping container, or lighthouse? I’m open to any and all.

I stumbled on to pictures of cob houses on TreeHugger this morning and now I can’t stop reading up on them!

I’ve decided now that someday I will have one of these. Imagine that — from not-so-green to wanting to live in a cob house in no time at all. Now that’s progress.

Cob houses, for those who don’t know, have nothing to do with corn. Sure, you might have known that, but when I first started reading about them I figured there had to be some corn cobs in there somewhere. Where else have you heard the word cob? Cob is actually a building material made from clay, sand, straw, water, and earth — very similar to adobe. It’s fireproof, resistant to seismic activity and – best of all – quite inexpensive. This one here, for example (see photo) was build for under $3000!

The houses I’ve found online are absolutely beautiful! (Check out my favourites here, here, and here.)

I’m definitely becoming a fan of sustainable, natural development. Not just because it looks beautiful, but because I really admire the hard work, time, and enthusiasm one needs to use the environment around them to build something so worthwhile!

I love looking at design blogs. Not house design or fashion, but more innovative, conceptual design — architecture, technology, gadgets, that sort of thing.

Today I happened across “The Source Project” by Oliver Craig.

Oliver has come up with a really innovative concept that aims at getting the public to give up commercial bottled water in favour of tap water. How does he plan on doing that? (Hey, even I don’t like tap water.) By offering people tap water… with cool, futuristic and esthetically pleasing style.

The way Oliver Craig envisions doing this is with reusable (and neato futurisicly designed) water bottles that you could purchase and then top up for free at water dispensers around the city. And what’s better? Each time you fill up you earn credits/points that are redeemable at participating stores. Cool concept, right? It looks so sci-fi to me, like something right out of Tank Girl (one of my all-time favourite movies, of course).

Kudos, Oliver!

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I’ll admit, a news story about cooking chicken poop caught my eye. Call me weird. Apparently charring fowl manure might not save the planet, but apparently when charred alongside beetle-killed pine trees, corn husks, and other organic matter it can help in the war on greenhouse gases.

According to researchers attending this years North American Biochar Conference, biochar (charcoal, more or less) is what remains when organic matter is burned in a low-oxygen environment. Biochar can last for thousands of years locking up globe-warming carbons in the meantime.

Humble biochar has uncharted potential for capturing and storing carbon dioxide, while simultaneously improving soil fertility and agricultural productivity,” Lakshman Guruswamy, head of CU’s Center for Energy and Environmental Security, said in a news release.

For more information, check out Laura Snider’s story on the first ever biochar conference.

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