Fridays I'm In Love... With Non-Toxic Halloween Nails

Image courtesy of
Tina Phillips
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We all love getting dressed up from head to toe for Halloween, don't we. Costumes are so much more fun when we can pull it all together no matter what our age. Whats a Witch without ghoulish nails after all? Problem for me is regular nail polish is filled with icky stuff I don't like on my kids nails, or mine!

Luckily there's a fab alternative to traditional polish. Piggy Paints is a orderless, non-toxic natural polish is wicked colours including Halloween favorites like black, orange, toxic green, and even a glow-in-the-dark clear topcoat to make any colour or bare nails extra spooky!

I love this stuff. I love that it comes in fun seasonal colours and is gentle on our nails and the planet to boot.

 Have you tried Piggy Paints yet?

Midweek At My Place

these guys were very chatty this morning.

Going Solar - Part 1

We are going solar. Back in the spring we started to look into the viability of adding panels to our roof. I always thought that we would  be shaded by an adjacent roof turned out we were looking pretty good. We looked around, asked for a few proposals and settled on a company that was comprehensive in its service, conservative in its numbers and recommended a reliable and locally made panel system.

I really liked that our panels would come from a local manufacturer. Great thing about local sourcing, you don't have to keep large stock to achieve shorter turnarounds - no long boat-ride for product - you just need a flexible local manufacturing centre and you can make to order. (yippee local!) And once our our funding program application was approved we had a couple of guys on our roof installing rails  - didn't even take a day. Manufactured in no time our bespoke local panels arrived yesterday, made to our size requirements,  the guys started at 10am and were done by 3pm.

Our awesome solar babies look like this when they arrived...

and by the afternoon our roof looked like this!

In case your wondering the bubble where the missing panel is is our suntube, brings a wicked amount of passive light to an area inside.

Sadly, we now wait. We have to have the local power co. disconnect us so can power up then reconnect us again so we can start supplying power. This will take a couple weeks at the most to schedule in I hear. Once thats done we figure we will be able to produce enough power to cover Little Footprints electrical use and half our homes power use too. We have a handy online system that will helpus monitor our system and the energy we produce.

Stay tuned and I'll let you know how it is going!

barb

October is Fair Trade Month

Did you know October is Fair Trade Month? Yes, indeedy it is! So like all other "Months"  it's a time to raise awareness - in this case for the reasons why fair trade is important.

You might be wondering why it's important to get behind fairly traded principles and goods. To invest in fair trade and ethically sourced goods is to buy and use socially and commercially sustainable, fair trade products in place of things which may harm the environment, the economy, communities and individuals. We can raise the quality of life, employment, manufacturing and ethical standards around the world - doing our own part to eliminate sweat shops, child labour and to ethically manage our worlds resources - if more often we were to say 'no' to cheap badly sourced stuff. 

For me it starts with considering the impact bad manufacturing has on the individual then imagining the bitter end. I would rather invest in something worth it's cost - 'course I'd like it to last but I would also like to know that the people who made it are living a decent life, that the resources used to make it are worth their investment in the goods, that they are properly derived and when it's all said an done - broke, mended and broke again - I'd like to know that it isn't going to last forever a toxic reminder of what was. That's something I'm happy to have in my life.

Fair Trade can make you happy to! Just give it a try. Look for Fair Trade labels and whenever possible do some research on the things you buy or shop with a retailer who does the homework for you and you can trust.


barb

Renewal

It has been a very long time since my last post. For the past year I have been very focused on family. My aunt - my role-model, my mentor - was diagnosed with terminal stage 4 bone cancer three years ago and told she had about two years to live. She was an awesome woman. Smart, independent and loved by many. She spoke her mind, never worried if people liked it or not. She taught me to work hard, have convictions and most importantly, to act on them. She helped me through school, when my father had a massive stroke she helped me cope and adapt to caring for him, she helped me in all my endeavors and businesses. She was there when my daughter was born and she took care of my daughter when my son was born.

And she died this summer.

She surpassed doctors expectations, even without the chemo they said she would need to extend her life which she refused because she didn't want to dye plagued with the effects of the treatments. Our family was able to come together during her last week. My mother and uncle traveling from Europe to be here. We shared hugs and tears before the cancer which progressed to her brain and liver took her words, then her vitality, then herself.

Now we are beginning to heal. My mother has gone back home. My daughter has made the most lovely shrine to my aunt in her room and my son has finally begun to stop talking about how everything 'goes dead' when it is a bit sick or broken. The journey of mourning for my children has amazed me for their resilience as much as it has pulled at my heartstrings. My aunt was very much my daughters grand-ma. Never having had children herself she was my favorite relative to stay with when I was a kid and I always felt so very lucky to be able to see her be and do the same with my daughter. It kills me inside to know that this is over. She will never get another chance to hang with my aunt eating ice-cream in bed while watching a movie or listening to great music eating pizza. She will never get to see my little girl grow up.

But.

I have all her albums and CDs now and have already begun to dole out her music for my daughter to discover.

We have our memories, our photos and videos to keep her alive in our hearts.  I'm thankful that I have this to share with my kids as they get older and begin to forget her as I know they will. It's inevitable, they are so young.

As for me. I am in a process of renewal. I dropped out of day to day for a while. In part because I didn't have it in me, in part because my aunt was a very private woman and I didn't feel right sharing my thoughts on her illness. Now that I am no longer focused on my aunt and the time we have with her I am coming back into my own. Healing my soul, renewing my focus in places like the shop and this blog. I'm ready to share again and I thank you for being here to listen.

It wont be so long till the next time I post. Promise

barb