Don't throw them away!

I've read in a couple of places online that you can melt your broken crayons into new shapes. This can be a good thing to do for little hands that tend to snap the regularly sized crayons into smaller pieces. Accidentally.

Just heat your oven to 350 degrees, place them in a muffin pan (we used a mini muffin pan), and bake until they're all liquid. It took about 7 minutes in our oven. Then place the pan in the freezer for 45 minutes. Pop the new crayons out onto your hands. They sometimes crack in half if you pop them onto a hard surface.

It totally worked and was actually kind of fun.

At dinnertime Gray always wipes his hands on his clothes. We tell him not to, but his hands are dirty from eating (forks are a hit and miss still), and he can't go wash his hands every five seconds, so what is he supposed to do?

I decided to go green on this problem.

Instead of paper napkins, I bought a few cloth napkins on Etsy.com.

I love them so much, I will be buying more in the future. They get tossed with our laundry, which I'm doing more of these days anyway, and they cheer up the dinner table. Everyone gets one, and they don't have to match.

I recently switched all of our cleaning products around the house to products that are more green.

Bringing a baby to the house makes me rethink how we live. With Gray, I started feeding the family organic food whenever possible. With Lena, it's been cleaning the house with more people friendly products (less fumes, fewer toxins). The thought of having Lena lick a floor that's been cleaned with toxic things just made me unhappy.

Recently I've been using dish soap that's better for the environment. One thing I learned from using a really good shampoo (Pureology) for the past few years, is that the better shampoos don't include sulfates. Most people believe that the more suds a cleaning product makes, the better it is. But this isn't true. The suds come from sulfates which are added so that the consumer feels good about their cleaning outcome.

I thought I had to sacrifice my suds for the greater good of the planet.

That is, until I tried this yesterday!



This product really cleans, smells great, and makes tons of suds.

Wow! I'm almost enjoying washing dishes.