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I am having a lot of fun planning how the dinner table will look this Thanksgiving. Especially since it will be super small which means less pressure and more relaxing!
First on my list of things to do to prepare is to decide on place cards for our tiny family. I really love, love, love these pear place cards from Sunset. I think a beautiful, delicious organic pear with a lovely recycled name tag would be perfect. I am also considering giant pomegranates with recycled name tags attached. (You know how I feel about pomegranates!)
What type of place cards will you be using on Thanksgiving?
Hello, Friends! I am pretty excited, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Thanksgiving is going to look a lot different this year. Most gatherings will be super small or social distanced.
Either way, it will still be a ton of fun and work! To get you started, there are many eco-friendly ways to green your Thanksgiving dinner – all of which are easier to implement if you plan ahead. Many of these ideas will save you money and time while cutting down on the amount of waste that can accumulate from a big family dinner. Read on to learn my 5 favorite eco-friendly ways to plan your Thanksgiving dinner and start planning today!
1. Decorating 101 You don’t have to spend any money when decorating for Thanksgiving, instead use items that you already have or consider bringing natural items indoors. We always have a handful of pumpkins leftover from Halloween that we use as Thanksgiving decorations. And Eben and I like to take a nature walk to collect natural elements (pine-cones, acorns, branches, and leaves) to display as our Thanksgiving table centerpiece.
2. How Much is Enough? It is really easy to go overboard when planning the Thanksgiving menu. Consider the dishes that you will be serving and ask yourself if you are making more than is necessary. Choose a few dishes that you are sure your guests will love and skip the rest. Also, consider which parts of Thanksgiving dinner you want to or can afford to purchase organic and whenever possible, avoid pre-packaged items.
3. Consider the Table Do you have enough dinnerware for everyone at your dinner party? If not, consider borrowing place settings from close friends or family members instead of purchasing new. If you aren’t a china and tablecloth kind of family and choose to go with disposable place settings, choose a great compostable version that is made from 100% recycled materials.
4. Think Seasonal When choosing fruits and vegetables for your Thanksgiving menu, think seasonal. You want to avoid purchasing produce that is imported from far away. You may consider joining a local CSA for the holiday season – not only will you have delicious, local foods to serve this Thanksgiving, but you will be supporting a local farm too.
5. Plan for Leftovers What do you plan to do with the Thanksgiving dinner leftovers? If you are planning on sending goodies home with your guests, have glass reusable storage containers ready to go. If you made more than your family can consume, you could donate some of the leftovers to a local food bank, freeze them for later or have a menu plan for the days after Thanksgiving so all of the leftovers will be used.
How do you green your Thanksgiving dinner? I would love to hear – please share your thoughts in the comments!
Did you know that Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL’s) can cut your electricity costs by 75%? CFL’s use 66% less energy and last 10x longer than incandescent bulbs? You don’t have to remove all of the bulbs throughout your home today, but once the bulbs go out, replace them with CFL’s. Want to see how much money you can save using CFL’s?
* Don’t forget to turn off the lights when you leave the room.
Fall is my favorite time of year, it seems like we start to slow-down as a family and spend more time reconnecting with each other. Since the days get shorter and it gets dark outside so much earlier, we really focus that time on family time. This is the time of year that our bowl on the dinner table gets filled with card games and brain teasers, and our nightly dinners get dragged out by long conversations and hot steamy beverages for dessert!
It is also the perfect opportunity to go green together as a family. To get you in the autumn mood, while getting your excited about sustainability, check out my 7 favorite eco-friendly ways to welcome fall.
1. Make it Family Dinner Night One of my favorite fall family traditions is to have make-your-own organic pizza night a few times a month. There is something fun about kneading the dough, cutting up vegetables, and pulling hot vegetarian pizzas from the oven. We like to make ours look like sweet, smiling faces and it always ends in a night of laughter and fun!
2. Green Your Overall Health Fall is the perfect time to amp up your healthy lifestyle before winter hits – because with winter comes sniffles, colds, and the flu. You can start by boosting your immunity, packing healthy, organic school lunches, adding some super-foods to your marketing list, and by doing a whole-body cleanse. You want to stay healthy through all of the fun fall and winter holidays, right?
3. With Fall comes Leaves, Lots of Them When it comes to the leaves that fall in your yard, the way that you dispose of them can have a huge impact on the environment. The best option would be to mulch them and use them as ground cover for your garden. The worse option would be to blow them around with a noisy, emission polluting leaf blower. If you want to have fun with leaves, consider making leaf prints for your family room or you can always jump in piles of them.
4. Enjoy Your Natural Environment One of my favorite ways to enjoy a lovely fall day with my family is by taking a bike ride. In fact, I think we should take our bicycles on our fall family trip this year. Another fun thing to do this time of year is to visit your local botanical garden – you could try one of these surprising ways to make it a day full of fall fun.
5. Prepare for Winter Before you know it, winter will be here – and fall is the perfect time to prepare. When we lived in Colorado, I liked to stock up on non-perishable organic goods so we didn’t have to go marketing as often. It is also a great time to weather-proof your doors, windows and prepare your garden for the cold, winter ahead. I also like to think of fun ways to cozy up our home – this usually means bringing out stacks of books, blankets, and pillows and sipping hot organic tea and cocoa.
6. Green Your Halloween Whether you are making plans to make your own Halloween costumes, decorations or you want to turn your home into the ultimate eco-friendly haunted house– now is the time to get started. We like to scour our local thrift stores and tag sales for fantastic Halloween decor well before the holiday. It always gets us in the mood for Halloween and when the holiday actually gets here, we are completely ready!
7. Go Local In Florida, our farmer’s market season starts at the beginning of October – which is the perfect time to stock up on those yummy fall vegetables. (I don’t think there will be a farmer’s market this year, but I will cross my fingers!) I love it when the mister whips up a batch of one of his fantastic soups during the fall months using local vegetables from the farmer’s market. And pumpkins from the farmer’s market, oh my, they are my favorite. If you live in a cooler climate that doesn’t offer a farmer’s market during fall, consider joining your local food co-op.
To get to the fabulous chicken home on the other side, of course.
I love chickens, always have – I love their plump bodies, beautiful colors, soft downy feathers, and the way they strut around, makes me smile. Someday I would love to have half a dozen of them clucking in my yard. Unfortunately, we don’t have the room (they’d fall in the pool!), so no chicks for me.
When I am able to have some cluck clucks of my own, I believe it would be quite grand if they lived in an eglu from Omlet. Not the kind that you eat silly, but the fabulous chicken house seen above, complete with free-range doors.
