Sustainable Haps... and an Etsy discount!

One thing Shane didn’t mention in yesterday’s post was that all of our “local haps” were accessible by foot, bus, and/or train! Especially with all of the snow dumped on us Friday night, city driving would have been worse than usual, but in general, we try not to drive at all. We’re a one car family, which is wonderful when we leave the city or take large-item shopping trips. For the most part, however, we prefer to walk (healthier) or take public transit (we have monthly passes through work that are deducted from our paychecks, pre-tax, saving us about 30%). And in months of better, warmer weather, we love taking advantage of our bikes.

On Sunday, we made a stop to B3 on our way home from Trader Joe’s. Oma (my grandma) redeemed the rewards from her credit card for gift card and sent it to us! She asked first whether we’d prefer Olive Garden or Bed Bath and Beyond, and although OG is TASTY(!!), it’s likely not going to help us with the healthy eating habits we’ve been practicing lately, but I honestly don’t know where the nearest one is. B3, on the other hand, is 4 blocks away. And we already knew what we’d use it on: a new drying rack for laundry. The kitties helped us decide what else to use it on :)



This vinyl table cloth was NOT meant to be anything fancy, but it was cute and protected the glass... until now. The new one we picked out is made from recycled bottles (along with matching napkins)! 

Look! We re-purposed 31 bottles!

We also bought a new vinyl pad to put under it to protect the glass in the table. And as I was typing (and thinking how it wasn’t very sustainable to buy a white vinyl sheet that’s meant to be cut up anyway) I realized how unnecessary it was... we’re going to re-purpose the one the cats chewed up instead! For the most part only the edges were demolished. 



The small nail marks and fading found all over won’t really matter once it’s covered up by the new, pretty cloth! Our spray bottle now goes with us everywhere (do they make holsters for this type of thing?) to let the cats know not to go near the table.

As for the drying rack, we weren’t looking for anything in particular except sturdiness, plenty of drying space, and a low price. We prefer to hang dry the majority of our clothes. It saves on laundry money (we have coin-op machines on the first floor), the clothes last longer, and it saves energy by not using a machine. We’ll keep the old one, despite its lack of support. It works for lightweight clothes and the cats enjoy climbing it (if they weren’t so quick, I’d include a photo). But this new one is metal rather than wood so we’re hoping that it holds up a bit better. On a  related note, we “sustainably declined” a second, larger shopping bag to carry the rack with because it seemed unnecessary. Then I thought, great for the environment, but an awkward walk home... this thing should come with a handle. So I made one! I’m probably more proud of this innovative, quick thinking than I need to be :)

In resolution-related news, I finally opened my Etsy shop last Monday! (Take note of my fancy, self-promoting banner over there --->) I decided to turn this into a side project after creating our holiday cards this year. It was a lot of fun to design them, so I started on a few samples for other card themes. I’m currently searching for photos of families, babies, kids, couples etc to feature in samples in order to expand my “inventory.” As much as I’m sure prospective buyers LOVE seeing me featured in each item (har har har!) I’m feeling the need for a little variety. I already have a couple birth announcement templates, but no babies to display! If you have photos (or know someone who does) that I can use for a new sample, please let me know - I’m happy to work out some sort of a deal on a future order. 

Source: etsy.com via Natalie on Pinterest

And for YOU, our dedicated readers, I have a special offer good through Feb 29!

Discount code: LGC25 for 25% off any design and FREE customization if I’m not currently featuring a theme you’re interested in.

What old items have you re-purposed? What are some small ways that you try to be “greener” in your every day routine? We love knowing that every person doing something small makes a BIG impact :)

Weekend Operation: Shop Local

According to our calendar, Saturday was... yesterday. Oops! So we’ve already revisited our blogging resolution: we’re dedicating Saturday mornings weekends to posting!

The last two weekends we’ve focused on shopping locally. There is a really neat little shoe store a block or two away that is having a store closing sale. Luckily, they’re not going out of business; just consolidating their inventory, moving in with the store next door, and continuing to run their online store. Last Sunday we stopped in and bought 3 pairs of shoes (two for me, one for Natalie) at a discount of about  60%. Needless to say, we’re quite excited!

This weekend has been chock full of local shopping. On Friday we ate dinner at a local Thai place (thanks to “Groupon Now!”), Guys and Wok, and finished the night off at our local watering hole, Friar Tuck. A couple friends were in town visiting from Arizona just in time for the 6 inches of snow we received that day. Welcome back to the Midwest!

Saturday morning brought the return of the Green City Market following the Holiday break. Oh how we missed thee! The market runs until 1pm and we couldn’t get our butts out of bed weren’t able to get there until after noon so a lot of the vendors were packing up. Despite this, we picked up some sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, eggs, and apples. A very successful trip!

For lunch we decided on a nice little place called Mista. They serve pizza and wraps using organic ingredients and they are quite veggie and gluten-free friendly. If you are ever in the neighborhood, you should definitely check them out!

Ice cream is probably our favorite dessert. We are very fortunate to have Bobtail Ice Cream within walking distance. Great homemade ice cream. We bought a pint of cookies and cream and paired it with some hot fudge we made on Christmas Day. Words cannot describe the deliciousness.



I believe Benjamin Franklin said it best: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” We found that happiness on Friday when we walked to our local beverage emporium, Binny’s (thanks for the gift card, Aaron and Alyssa!). The Left Hand Brewing Co. was sampling some of their Nitro milk stout in celebration of bringing the beer to the Chicago market. This beer is a much tastier version of Guinness. While the brewery isn’t local, they are an excellent microbrewery in Colorado making great beer while implementing a comprehensive green plan in all they do. (We enjoyed Nitro while watching Beer Wars) Next time we visit the Denver area, we will definitely make a stop at Left Hand.

 
Today we visited a new church, Luther Memorial Church of Chicago, recommended to us by our pre-marriage counseling pastor. We have been searching for a church in the area where we feel comfortable and have the ability to get involved in a supportive community. We were both very impressed with this church and they have many volunteer opportunities that we plan to get involved with. Youth groups, food pantry, supporting sustainable agriculture are a few of the things we are interested in. Stay tuned for updates on these as we fully explore all that Luther Memorial has to offer.

Before we go, an update on where we stand with our $300 a month food budget:
Weekend Grocery Spending: $57.22 [Green City Market: 16.50] + [Trader Joe’s: 40.72]
Total January Food Spending: $294.43 [leaving us with 5.57... this could get interesting!]

How often do you shop local? We’d love to hear about your favorite stores!

Update: Food Budget Challenge

We're waiting to check out at Trader Joe's during our usual Sunday Shopping Adventure (with a pit stop at World Market after being lured in by the "Free Tastings" sign!) and we're under $50 again this week. Go us :)





Take a look at how packed this place is btw...





For reference, as of today, we've spent a total of $191 on food this month. The food we bought today should last us through the end of this week, so I'd say we're right on track! That's a little over $100 to get us through the last third of this month. I don't want to get too proud, but it's exciting to see how well we've been able to stick to our goal :)

The Grocery Routine

Many of our resolutions go hand in hand, so we want to establish a routine early on. I'd like to share how we're starting out by detailing a few resolutions:

1. Blogging - we're busy. Sometimes I get home late 2+ nights a week, and so does Shane. Other times, we're both home by 5:45. Most weeks are somewhere in the middle. In order to maintain some consistency and restore balance, we're dedicating Saturday mornings to posting! Even if it's to share a photo of what ever exciting things we might be doing instead :) When we don't have much time on our hands, we'll work on our post throughout the week and publish our final draft on the weekend. And on weeks we feel particularly "unchallenged" at work, you may hear from us more than once.

2. Budgeting - Sometimes, living on a budget sucks. But I would MUCH prefer living on a budget than continuing student loan payments for the next 10-20 years. And that is precisely why we've created a budget to manage/track our spending. Our budget has helped us get on track to be student loan free by summer 2014 enabling us to begin saving up for big, future investments (ie house, retirement, future college students, etc). We have a few main budget categories (each with a number of sub-categories): Income, Monthly Payments, Food, Entertainment, Misc. We started out with basic charts to track our spending, and they've evolved into complicated spreadsheets that probably wouldn't make sense to anyone but us. But that's all that matters!

Initially, I was scared about the thought of starting a budget. I thought it would have to be a very rigid plan and look exactly the same from month to month. But life is dynamic, so a budget should be too. We know which items will (usually) be consistent each month: rent, phone, electric etc, and paychecks. So we started there. At first, we kind of guessed how much we should budget for food (which to us means both groceries and restaurants) and it was trial and error. As we continued to track our spending in that category, it got easier. And we got better at spending within the monthly limits we were now tracking. We also opened a separate, interest-earning account to save up for big ticket items (eg travel and vehicle maintenance) and payments that only occur once/a few times per year (eg car and renter's insurance). Keeping these separate really helps us set better long term goals too.

3. Menu planning - Did I mention that we're busy? Well, it's true. And I really enjoy planning my day around the food I eat, so it's VERY important to me that we plan ahead. We used to be so-so about this, planning last minute or in the middle of the week after we'd finished off the last bits of our weekend leftovers. Not this year!

We decided that planning our menu two weeks at a time (factoring in left over nights) will help us stay on top of our shopping too. We prefer to shop on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes that's just not possible and it's okay! By planning meals in advance, we can look ahead to determine an alternate shopping day. We use our dry-erase calendar, custom made by a good friend as a wedding gift in support of our sustainability efforts, to record our meal plan.



Aside from saving time, our new routine will keep us on track with our budget and prevent wasting too much food that we occasionally forget about. This month, we are attempting to maintain a $300 food budget. I know that number seems small, but we are confident that it's entirely possible, as long as we plan ahead. We rarely eat at restaurants, and when we do we look for deals (groupon now, yelp, and restaurant(dot)com etc). We have some restaurant gift cards from Christmas and are excited to be able to stretch our budget that way too. Interested to know exactly HOW we plan to maintain that budget? Let's start with this past week...

The following were on our menu:

• Broke Bean Stew [Biggest Loser: 6 Weeks to a Healthier You]
• Prosciutto, Spinach, and Pasta Casserole [Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook]
• White Bean Burgers [NYTimes Recipes for Health Series]

We ran through each recipe for a quick inventory of what we already had at home, and made a grocery list of what we didn't. In order to manage our money better, we only brought $40 to Trader Joe's with us - we almost always start our shopping at TJ's when the farmers market isn't an option. To ensure that we didn't go over that total, I kept track of the price of each item we grabbed (rounding up to the nearest quarter) and forced us to decide whether or not we could "splurge" on things that weren't on the list originally (despite the fact that we knew they were things we would need for other meals/snacks). By the time we made it to the line, we were a little worried about having enough after tax (I wasn't sure what grocery tax was), and ended up putting the milk back because we still had some left in the fridge.



We achieved our goal, and only three items on our list were left uncrossed!



When we have things uncrossed, Shane usually does a price check at the Whole Foods near his office, and we usually go that route. Occasionally we'll head to another grocery store instead, or CVS which is a block away. We're excited for Jan 21, because when the farmers market re-opens, we'll start our shopping trip there. We can't wait to share with you! It's usually a highlight of my weekends :)

Do you have a shopping routine? What about a budget? We want to hear what you're doing!

It's Been a While

According to my records, it would appear we have not posted anything since June 11. After planning a wedding, getting married, adjusting to a new apartment/neighborhood, honeymooning and traveling around the country for work, adopting kittens, and making time for ourselves, we're returning to the blogosphere! It's been a whirlwind these past six months but we've been blessed and are extremely happy with our path in life. We'll be filling you in on all these details in this post and others in the upcoming weeks.

Where to even start... How about our New Year's Resolutions?!

1. Blog at least once a week
2. Start volunteering in our area
3. Proactively manage our budget each month
4. Open an Etsy store!
5. Consciously lead healthier lifestyles:
• Plan meals 2 weeks at a time
• Adjust meat consumption
• Eat more superfoods
• Drink more water, more often
• [added 1/10/11] Become regulars at the Green City Market
• Get out of bed WITHOUT hitting snooze (more than once!)
• Get moving!

We are excited about starting (and continuing!) our first calendar year as a married couple with some positive goals.

We also started a new tradition with Natalie's best friend:



Get a fortune cookie



Play those lucky numbers in that day's lottery!



Did we win this year?



Nope! But we're already looking forward to trying again on January 1, 2013 :)

Do you make resolutions? Which one(s) are you really hoping you'll stick to?