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Homemade Granola

Recently I tried making my own granola. It ended up being quite simple, and I recommend trying it yourself. Dakota and I both find most store-bought granolas way too sweet and full of "extra" flavors. So, my goal was to make granola that was simple, healthy and tasty.

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No Junk Please

Today Oprah had a whole episode on going green. I checked it out for a little bit at work, and it reminded me of this great thing I did a while back to get less junk mail.

You can actually put yourself of a "delete" list for junk mail senders through the Direct Marketing Association. It's worked pretty well for me since I signed up a couple of years ago. I don't get unsolicited credit card offers anymore, and, while I still get some random junk mail, I definitely don't get as much as I used to. Anyway, I'd recommend it.

You can go to the Mail Preference Service website and follow their directions to get yourself on the "delete" list.

For other junk mail that keeps on coming after your register with this service, you have to call the individual companies and ask them to remove you from their mailing list. You can also cut down on junk mail by carefully reading the privacy policies that various financial institutions send you. There are usually instructions in those policies on how to ask the company not to sell your name and address to other companies. It can be a bit of a pain in the butt, but so is getting junk mail.

I guess there's also a pay service, which Matt Damon was talking about on Oprah today, called Green Dimes. I'm not sure if they're better than just doing it yourself, but it's good that there are several options for stopping the flow of junk in your mailbox.

I wonder how much of an impact today's green Oprah will have on her viewers' daily lives. Of course, the main way to be truly green is to reduce how much you're consuming, and Oprah pretty much embodies the opposite of that. She appears to mean well, but she's the queen on conspicuous consumption. Overall, being green definitely appears to be going mainstream. I wonder if it's just a trend, or if people will really adopt their new green habits permanently.
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I'm back!

I've been gone from blogging for a while, mainly because I was working on planning a wedding (mine). But now that's all over with and I want to do some posts on all kind of fun topics. I have updates from as far back as Christmas, in fact.

But first I'll give a little rundown on the "green" stuff we tried to incorporate in the wedding.

The rings

Dakota and I both got our rings from greenKarat. It's an Earth-friendly jewelry company that uses recycled materials and lab-created stones to mostly make wedding and engagement rings, although other jewelry is available. We actually had them make us custom rings, although they weren't very elaborate. Dakota has a flat, shiny band made of recycled platinum and I have a similar, thinner band also made of recycled platinum, except that mine has a tiny flush-set lab created diamond in it. It came out really pretty, I think. Overall, our experience with greenKarat was excellent, and I'd recommend them to anyone.

The decorations & favors

The place where we got married didn't really need much decoration because the landscaping was so pretty, but we did need something to put on the tables. What we decided on was minimal flowers and tiny potted succulents. It took us quite a while, but eventually we collected around 100 mismatched Japanese cups in various shapes and colors. We bought assorted tiny succulents from California Cactus Center, and then we planted the succulents (and a few cacti) in the cups. It took us about three hours one Saturday morning to do all the planting. Then, we encouraged our guests to take the plants home with them. Overall, I think the little potted succulents looked great, and I know lots of people took them home. We brought the leftovers home, and I have some plans to place them in various locations, inside and out.



The candles

While it ended up being a bit too windy for candles on the tables, we did order some. We decided to go with soy candles, because they're not made from petroleum products and they burn cleaner than regular candles. I found some really nice, unscented soy pillar candles from Way Out Wax. Since soy candles also burn longer than regular candles, I saved money by ordering 3" pillars. If we had lit them, they would have lasted all night. I also ordered some scented soy travel candles from Way Out Wax to include in the gift bags I gave to the people who helped with the wedding. I got various scents from the Vermont Naturals aromatherapy collection, which has a nice modern design and natural scents like rosemary and orange.

Okay, I'm going to wrap up the wedding post for now. I'll call this Part 1, and write the rest in a Part 2 post tomorrow perhaps.
Read More 1 Comment | Posted by Audrey |
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