#15

We have made a few green changes in our household.


1. Recycling - We have started recycling more. Before we would sorta use the recycling bin when it was convenient. But now we're really using it. I realized that when this past weekend we were up at the lake house and I saved all the beer cans/bottles from the weekend to bring back to the house and the recycle bin. Plus our bin is full almost every week!

2. Reusable Bags - We got some reusable bags as a gift (the ones shown here). They aren't the prettiest bags, but man can they hold a lot! Today I used my reusable grocery bags for the first time. I take that back, I used them for the first time in the grocery store. In the past I've used them to move and to take on trips, but I always forget them when I walk into the grocery store. Lately its been driving me nuts when I check out at the grocery store and they put like two items in each plastic bag. I end up with sooooo many plastic bags at my house. So that is my motivation to keep bringing the bags into the grocery store with me.

3. GreenChoice - We just signed up for green energy through Austin Energy. When you sign up for it, it doesn't mean that the energy that you use necessarily only comes from green sources (like wind) - it could be coming from the coal plant - but it does give the energy company an opportunity to buy more green energy and not have to buy as much as that nasty coal energy. It is going to cost us a little more money right now than our normal energy, but it is a fixed rate for like 20 years, so hopefully it will even out one of these days (or years...). To curb the cost, we cut back a little on our cable bill, so it all works out and is better for our community.

#18 almost done!

We are finally getting our patio expanded! We've wanted to do this since we moved into our house last year, but have held out because I hate spending big bucks on things like this. But we got our tax refund in and I agreed to let Chris move forward with this project.

Since we live in a new neighborhood that is still building new houses, we contracted the concrete guys to come and expand the patio. They showed up this morning and Chris was there to get some of the action. He said it was a storm force of workers coming through and they did it at lightening speed. They are pouring the concrete later today and I hope to post pictures of the final project later this weekend.

Here are some progress photos - make sure to notice how small our current concrete patio is compared to the new gigantic size.

Today's the day!

I originally heard about the 101 in 1001 project months and months ago and have been procrastinating on starting my own list. But I found myself wanting to do projects and kept thinking "that would be great for my 101 list" so here I am finally getting this thing started. While I don't have my list completed yet, I wanted to get started on blogging because some of these projects I've been thinking about for months are starting to come to shape.

So here is to 1001 days from now (November 24, 2010) and all the new insight I'll have after this experience!