Hello, Friends! How was your week? Can you believe it is already September? I have been sipping my yummy, warm chai tea all week and it definitely puts me in full fall mode! Since my family definitely craves autumn weather and since we are back into the school routine and already craving a little family time away from the hustle and bustle – I booked our fall family trip. This year we are heading back to our favorite spot in North Carolina, I can barely wait and am counting down the days! I love getting away with the boys, and look forward to soaking up as much autumn weather as possible. Are you in full fall mode too? While I heat up yet another cup of chai, here are a few green things I have been meaning to share with you:
NOTE: This post wasn’t written by me – thank you for supporting the companies that help keep Sweet Greens in business.
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These days we are all called upon to be as green as we can be when it comes to our everyday lives, so that means we recycle where possible and try to cut down on waste. However, we could also apply these green habits to our environment, designing our homes to be as eco-friendly as possible. There is one major advantage to going green in the home, and that is it can save you money too. In some cases, quite a lot of money. However, adopting a green way of living also provides an excellent example to our children, teaching them how to appreciate the planet they live on and to be aware of the value of money. Read on for 4 great eco-frendly ways to green your home for a better future!
1. Making a Green Start Windows are a great place to start with in the home. If your windows are looking a little worse for wear, consider having them replaced with energy efficient windows that have special coatings designed to reflect the heat of the sun and provide insulation. This way, the rooms in your home will keep cool in the summer and retain the heat in the winter, keeping cooling and heating costs down. Make sure seals are tight and work efficiently by installing window shutters as dressings rather than curtains or blinds. Consider replacing small windows with larger ones to take advantage of as much natural daylight as possible, obviating the need to have artificial lights on during the day.
2. Paint by Numbers
Make your home healthier by using paints on the walls that have no or low volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), or opt for wallpaper instead. You can also use other eco-friendly wall coverings such as ceramic or cork tiles, or even recycled wooden panels. These will also add texture and interest to your walls – giving your home an overall unique look and feel.
3. Friendly Furniture Turn your back on man-made, synthetic materials for your furniture and embrace natural materials instead. Wood is the prime resource for furniture, and solid wood, such as furniture made by Ercol, is not only extremely hard-wearing, making it suitable for most uses, especially those suffered by a big and busy family, but you can also find wood that is sustainably harvested. This is especially true if you ensure your wooden furniture is FSC-certified. This is a stamp that certifies the wood has been sourced from sustainable forests and is a great ethical as well as environmental choice.
4. Bring Nature Indoors This is a simple touch, but bringing foliage into the home can add beauty and interest to rooms and also help to improve the quality of the air. Plants will remove harmful chemicals from the air by performing a natural filtration. A great plant to use in this way is the Aloe Vera plant, as it also develops brown spots on its leaves when pollution levels get too high in the home.
Turning your home into a green haven will not only help to create a healthy and peaceful environment for you and your family but will also benefit the planet, and there are not many things you can say that about these days.
Contigo makes the only reusable bottles and mugs that you will need, period. We use ours every single day, starting with filling our Stainless Steel West Loop travel mugs with coffee, tea and cocoa in the morning to re-hydrating all day and at the gym with our Addison bottles.
I was excited to hear that Contigo just launched their newest collection of Stainless Steel West Loop Travel Mugs. They are available in 7 fantastic new colors (my fave is the grayed jade), and even boasts a lifetime guarantee.
The West Loop travel mugs keep iced drink cold and warm drinks hot! Just press the front button to sip, and when the button is released, the lid seals once again. When it comes to cleaning, the easy clean lid makes it a snap: just twist off the lid, press a button to expose the lid mechanism, and place it in the top rack of the dishwasher, or wash by hand.
Here’s a goody for all Sweet Greens readers, receive 20% off your order of your next Contigo mug with the code WESTLOOP20 – valid through October 31, 2014.
Want to try out a Contigo Westloop mug for yourself? How about four! Jump over to Contigo and leave a comment telling me what your favorite mug color is – and one lucky winner will win a 4-pack of Contigo Westloop Mugs!
I am a huge fan of The Faire Collection – I have several pieces of their jewelry and they are my go to when I want to wear a statement piece! I was super excited to hear that they, along with their community of global artisans have launched their newest collaboration for fall/winter 2014 – the Midnight Collection!
Here’s another little tidbit, the Founder and CEO of Faire, Amanda Judge, created Faire to provide consumers with the first fashion brand that created high fashion, fair trade jewelry designed from this region of the world.
Hello, Friends! I hope you are enjoying the long weekend. Hooray for bar-be-ques and outdoor parties! We plan to spend the day at the beach soaking in the 1st day of September.
Hello, Friends! How was your week? Can you believe it is already September? I have been sipping my yummy, warm chai tea all week and it definitely puts me in full fall mode! Since my family definitely craves autumn weather and since we are back into the school routine and already craving a little family time away from the hustle and bustle – I booked our fall family trip. This year we are heading back to our favorite spot in North Carolina, I can barely wait and am counting down the days! I love getting away with the boys, and look forward to soaking up as much autumn weather as possible. Are you in full fall mode too? While I heat up yet another cup of chai, here are a few green things I have been meaning to share with you:
