from Cangles

Tips for Composting

1. Aerate. Your compost needs oxygen if it is going to break down the materials you add. If it is a tumbler, turn it. If it is static then get a stick/pole/shovel and get in there and move it around.

2. Save the worms. If you find a worm while you're gardening carefully relocate it to your compost bin. And it will happily work on breaking down your wastes. The more help you have the better!

3. Go Big. Container wise that is. Bigger is better when composting but smaller is better than nothing at all.

4. Get cracking! Rinse and break up your egg shells before adding them to your compost pile. This gives them a head start and you will be less likely to find undigested shell later when you go to use your compost.

5. Add fluid to your compost. You don't want it too wet but you do not want it too dry either. Water-downed leftover fruit juices are a great treat for your compost instead of pouring them down the drain.

6. Sunshine is best! Composters work quicker in sunny locations but if you have to, partial sun will work too (it will just take longer).

7. Cover it up. Keep a clear bag of leaves next to the composter so you always have brown material to cover new waste additions. This will also help keep the fly population down in the summer.

8. Double duty. If you have the room, two composters are better than one. While you are busy filling one composter the second one can be busy working in the sun. When it's time to empty one they can switch positions and start all over again.

9. Cupboard list. Keep a list posted on the inside of one of your cupboard doors so you can see at a glance what can and cannot be composted so there is no confusion.

10. Kitchen Aid. You're more likely to compost if you don't have to run out to the composter a few times a day. Keep a lidded container in your kitchen for convenience and empty a few times a week.

thanks to Squidoo

Going Green with Easter Dinner

Going green with Easter dinner can be as simple as picking up your vegetables from a local farmers market, versus a national food chain. If you can get organic locally grown produce, that's even better. And, if your area has local butchers who raise their animals without using growth hormones, try to buy that meat for your dinner. If you don't have those options, look for organic produce in the store. Try to buy items without as much packaging, so you aren't throwing as much trash away after you take the food home.

Natural dyes for Easter eggs

If you're planning on coloring regular eggs for Easter, choose natural dyes.  Natural dyes, in fact, give you more color possibilities: every shade from greenish-yellow and lavender to brown, blue and orange. Just boil your eggs in water with a bit of vinegar and one of these ingredients below, then let simmer for at least 15 minutes:

• Purple grape juice (for lavender)
• Red cabbage (for blue)
• Spinach (for green)
• Carrot tops, orange peels or lemon peels (for yellow)
• Coffee or black walnut shells (for brown)
• Yellow onion skins (for orange)
• Beets or cranberries (for pink)
• Red onion skins (for red)

from A Bit of Green-plastic cup lamp

  

Disclaimer: There have been some concerns about the safety of this construction (see the comment of user “when” below for example). We only use this lamp when we’re at home, so we have it under surveillance. It doesn’t get hot or smelly. However, in case you like the idea and you decide to do it yourself, you do so at your own risk. It’s just a DIY project that we wanted to share, we can obviously not provide any safety guarantees.
I only needed a couple of things:

• 200-250 large plastic cups (recyclable, at least )
• 600-700 staples
• a stapler
• a lamp socket, lamp cord and plug – mine came from a broken IKEA lamp!

That’s all you will need.

Start stapling the cups together as shown.

Staple again and again and again…

Until your lamp goes from this…

…to this!

Staple carefully the last cups to form the top of the sphere (if it’s a sphere, because it’s likely that it won’t be that round if some cups aren’t perfectly aligned). Leave the bottom part open so that the light bulb goes in the sphere and attach it any way you like to the lamp socket! My IKEA socket had a kind of base and some very convenient holes on it (as you can see at the first picture), so I just stapled green ribbons at the last row of cups and tied them on the base.

The alien lamp is ready!