Mid-January Update

I'm already falling behind on my blog and its only 18 days into the new year, ahhhh!!!! So here are some updates. I celebrated my 25th birthday on Januay 9th with a big group of friends...........I am so blessed to have soooo many wonderful friends, it was an amazing birthday and I had a ton of fun. Michelle surprised me with a makeover at Blush Beauty Bar on NW 23rd, so I was able to look fab on my special day. Johnny took care of getting the cake, driving me around and making the dinner reservations. We ate at Voleur in downtown Portland, the food and service was kinda bad, but I had fun seeing all of my best friends. Here are a few pics from the party.

***** On January 13th, Johnny and I celebrated our 5 year 3 month *dating* anniversary, we had a nice dinner at home - yummy pasta and one of my famous salads! And we used the fancy plates of course! *****

Lastly, I finished off mid-January by getting to hold my new baby niece for the first time. She's already 3 months old, but this was the first time I got to see her since my brother lives in Ohio. She is sooo sweet and curious with big dark eyes and the cutest lips I've ever seen. She'll probably be crawling around the next time I get to see her.

Well that's about it, next weekend is my jewelry party, let me know if you want to come. I'm going to make some dinner and start getting ready for the week! Chao!

Resolution Time!

Its a new year, time for a fresh start, kick the bad habits, try to make improvements, everyone has the best of intentions. For 2009 my resolution is STOP USING PLASTIC BAGS.

How can I possibly do that you ask, our world revolves around plastic? Well I'm starting in my kitchen --- how many plastic trash bags do you use each year? month? week? Well sad news, they will never go away! This year I'm going to try to use as few (to none) if possible --- sounds pretty dirty, I know! So I have 1 plastic liner in there now, but I started putting ALL "wet" items in an old coffee tin, these are the things that stink up the garbage can and make the plastic sack messy and not reusable. So anything wet goes in the can (mostly food scraps), I take the can to the dumpster every couple of days to dump out the contents and bring the can back. I will do more composting in the spring when I can manage everything better. Then I'll rinse the tin can and dump the murky water into my flower pots outside. What goes in the "trash can" are mostly plastic (grrrr!) packaging/wrapping that aren't easy to recycle. Since these are all "dry items" I can dump the trash and reuse the liner bag, or won't even need a liner at all!!!

Also, I finally bought some biobags for myself - they are trash bags made out of corn, 100% compostable/biodegradable! Go biobags!!! They aren't cheap, so I'll use them wisely!

I'm also on an "green" cleaning product kick.........so I'm using up all of my old cleaners and replacing with earth-friendly versions. Who would of thought cleaning could be sooo fun!

Well stay GREEN this year and I hope you too are inspired to make a change this year!