Andy's Idea Factory

Ever since the first time I saw one of these systems, I thought, "yes, one day you will have one of those."  The day has arrived. That first time was three years ago, when the Juice Plus Company first released The Tower Garden ® as their newest product of their short list of healthy living items, and a friend came in to the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council 's monthly meeting to show it off.  It wasn't just me. Everyone in the room went, "oooooh," "ahhhhh." Granted, this was a warm audience - a room packed with gardeners, local-foodies, and health nuts - but we oooh'd none the less. For lack of space in our previous quaint home, we held off even though the Tower Garden takes up a total of maybe six square feet.  But as soon as we moved into our new home in December I knew, come fall, we'd be putting together our first Tower Garden®.  And we just did. Let me backtrack a little; we love  to garden.  As soon as the snow melted thi...

Great recipe from Lauren Toyota, from Clean Eating !

(Continued from Part 1) Henna Gods, I am truly impressed. Granted, my mantra has been, "the Indian women have such beautiful hair..." so the results had to be good.  But even so, my hair looks awesome. A more natural shade of red than the chem dye- slightly lighter than my natural brown tone (is that possible? is that from the chamomile?)- than I've ever had in the four years that my stylist and I have been tampering with tubes of colors like Michelangelo. Not wine red, not Redskins red, not Mahogany-Obsidian red.  I had been shooting for my mother's red. Scottish/Irish red, a dark Ginger. I think I'm finally there, or damn close. So how'd we get there? Here's the last 48 hours: 10pm Monday Large ceramic bowl Mixed 300g of fresh organic Rajasthani Indian Henna powder with 3.5c of warm chamomile tea from distilled water, steeped for 20 minutes and cooled with 6 cubes of ice Covered with plastic wrap, left on counter 9am Tuesday No "red...

I can't take credit for these, going around in a mass email, but they're sure worth sharing!! (Thanks Mom!) H ull strawberries easily using a straw.   Rubbing a walnut over scratches in your furniture will disguise dings and scrapes.  Rubbing a walnut over scratches in your furniture will disguise dings and scrapes. Remove crayon masterpieces from your TV or computer screen with WD40. Stop cut apples browning in your child’s lunch box by securing with a rubber band. Overhaul your linen cupboard, store bed linen sets inside one of their own pillowcases and there will be no more hunting through piles for a match. Pump up the volume by placing your iPhone & iPod in a bowl.  The concave shape amplifies the music. Re-use a wet-wipes container to store plastic bags. Add this item to your beach bag.  Baby powder gets sand off your skin easily, who knew?! Attach a Velcro strip to the wall to store soft toys. Use wire to make a space...

Since I took an internship at a sustainable learning center in Oregon in 1995, I have been aware that what I put in or on my body reflects the overall health of my physical as well as mental being. So often around me I see people ignoring this fact. This life is our own, and we can make of it what we choose, yet more often than not I hear people say they feel helpless against their health or emotional issues, and don't realize it might just take some minor changes to feel good again. In this series I will address the four topics that I feel are most important to my personal physical health and illness prevention, and hope they align with your needs as well. Part 1 - Read all labels - Be proactive The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has found that 884 chemicals available for use in bath and body products have been reported to the U.S. government as toxic substances , yet the FDA allows many of these chemicals to be used as ingredients because of their lo...

Chocolate Lavender Bathtub Cookies This year one of my new gifts is a chocolate bath cookie that my dear friend Heather at Aroma Pharmica posted last year, and was reposted on one of my BlogHer peers, Mom Most Traveled . Talk about making the bathtub a heaven on earth, this cookies are almost good enough to eat! Chocolate Lavender Bathtub Cookies 2 oz. Cocoa Butter 2 oz. Extra Virgin Olive Oil 1 cup Oatmeal, Fine 1/4 cup Whole Milk Powder 1/4 cup Hot Chocolate Mix 3/4 cup Epsom Salt 1 cup Cornstarch 1 cup Baking Soda 1/2 cup Citric Acid 1 tsp. Lavender Essential Oil Directions Warm the cocoa butter and olive oil in a hot water bath until completely melted. Remove the Cocoa Butter and Oil from the heat, allowing it to cool slightly, but not to harden. Next, line a small baking sheet with waxed paper and set it to the side. In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the Oatmeal, Whole Milk Powder, Hot Chocolate Mix, Cornstarch, and Epsom Salt. Stir the ingredients well, making...

Last week I shared last year's salsa recipe, but we're still getting tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and you can't just make salsa! Last year was our first year in the CSA, and every time we got a new bounty, I went online and searched recipes by ingredients. But we had extra single ingredients too... and made pickles out of the extra long italian cukes, parboiled and froze okra, green beans, and diced potatoes, and made pesto out of all that arugula. But next to salsa, our second favorite recipe that uses everything is the Gazpacho. It brings me back to summers in Chicago growing up. I can't take claim for the recipe (although as always, a little altered!), but the fresh CSA vegetables, uncooked and melded in flavor, speak for themselves! So much so that a local chef tasted our first batch with yellow tomatoes and said it was the best he'd ever had. Palisaide Colorado, Grown With Love, baby! Thanks Cameron Place! Joy of Cooking's Gazpacho with Colorado...

It's summer, you're cooking up all the home-grown goodies, and your kitchen isn't functioning to it's highest organizational capacity? Take the time to clean things out, get organized, and set little projects for yourself while you have the energy, daylight, and motivation!! Here are just a few of our ideas around the kitchen that have made our life a little easier and our budget a lot smaller. 1. Spice drawer. Spices take up room, it's as simple as that. And we didn't' have a lot of drawer space, but we had a low shelf and packed all the spices in a large, short-walled box when we moved into this house. I hate to say it, but they're still in that box. Ideally, I'll build a drawer for that cabinet, but for now, the box slides in and out nicely and all our spices fit in neatly, standing up. However, standing up, I couldn't' see what spices we had, nor did we have a system of where they were. In some cases I thought we'd been out of, s...

Our recent home renovations have reminded me of some wonderful ideas we've had around the house, not only for our every day living, but a couple even made the renovations go easier! We're doing quite the interior job-floors, paint, doors, molding, and blinds- but don't have an exterior space like a garage or storage shed to get furniture and belongings out of the way while we work. So we're working several rooms at a time, and using one main one for storage. When we finished the living room hardwood and started bringing out the chairs, table, and TV stand, we immediately put "sliders" on the bottom and WOW, what a difference... for BOTH of us. 1. Sliders: Sliders are little felt tabs with sticky backs that you adhere to the feet of your furniture so they don't scratch the hardwood. But what we found was not only were they protecting our floors, they were a form of accessibility! Now sliding the furniture around (even the 150 lb tv stand) were a breeze f...

Re-Gift: something that you've gotten as a gift but either don't like, doesn't fit, or you won't ever use and you either put it in the Salvation Army pile or you (gasp!) throw it out. This touchy subject brings up several notions of "white elephant" and "gag" presents and Etiquette 101 from grandma. But you either regift or you don't, and if you do, here are some helpful tips to making sure you're not faux-pas-ing yourself into the BadGirl corner where you may never receive any gifts ever again! (Perish the thought!) I learned about regifting when I was a very small girl. As an only child, my gifts piled up after each holiday, and my "oh-so-thoughtful" mother started a wonderful ritual for me that I always assumed everyone did... after a big loot-earning holiday we'd assess my toy box. At about 2'x4'x2', there wasn't much room in this storage bench for all the toys. So before putting the new toys in there,...

A few weeks back I added two posts for making your own face products. Along that same home-factory-idea line is the typical bath salt. I laugh when I see them in the store for $15, when it's often only $1 of Epsom or Sea Salt and a few drops of essential oil, plus $10 of preservatives you DON'T want on your body! I making salt baths more regularly after a car accident several years ago that left my back in a pretty poor state of health. I was taking a pain-bath about 3-4x a week and it helped immensely. Now I take them for all sorts of reasons: relaxation, menstral cramps, headaches, chest colds, aching muscles, and psoriasis flare-ups. The salt is the base to this so let's start there! SALT First, all salts are sea salts either mined as rock or evaporated from the saline solution. Sea salt is sodium chloride, and is used in cooking and cosmetics. "Dead Sea Salt" is proven to have the highest content of body-healing minerals it it, from the Dead Sea. Table s...

If you haven't been following along, please refer to our previous post for Part 1 of Make Your Own Face Products for making a facial toner. Today we're going to make the facial scrub to go along with it! This is another product we made on "Girls Night," and I've been using this for a year and absolutely love it so much that it became last year's Mothers Day present as well as a few Christmas Presents and I even gave some to a friend to try out. I haven't heard a bad report yet! My face always feels super clean but not stripped like products with sulfates can make you feel! This also comes from Healing Herbs , mentioned in the last post. Unlike the toner, this can be made and used instantly, so get to it! INGREDIENTS: 1 cup oatmeal (not instant) 2 cups cosmetic clay 1/4 cup almonds 1/8 cup dried herbs (see previous post, any facial helping herbs will do) Grind the oatmeal and almonds into a very fine powder and mix with cosmetic clay. Grind herbs if...

Since living on a "sustainable community" in Oregon I have had a very strict rule on body products and their usual "fillers" and preservatives; I use organic and natural products, from toothpaste to shampoo, and I don't budge on it. Thankfully now those products easier to find and even makeup can be found au - naturale , but it wasn't always so. Even still, those products are usually more expensive than non-natural products depending on brand name, and now is the time to consider shrinking your budget while you can. A great way to do this is to make your own face scrub and toner. I had this idea last February and hosted a "Girls Night" where we actually made it together, making it even more fun, and I still have "leftovers!" I'm going to break this Idea into two posts, so first, while that Valentines bouquet is just starting to wither, let's make the toner. I got this recipe from The Woman's Book of Healing Herbs ( Harra...

IDEA: This summer I made a temporary vegetable storage "device" in my master bathroom window. The premise is that we joined a vegetable co-op last spring that brought fresh organic veg up from Palisade, CO every week from June until December, and while we got just enough of some items, potatoes, squash, peppers, and others were so plentiful we had to start thinking about storage. We have a small ranch style house with a carport and minimal storage. No basement, attic, garage, etc. We have plenty of closet space, but after further research with thermometer and humidity gauge, the closets weren't optimal for storage. Temperature and humidity are the key to storing home grown vegetables. The three combinations for long-term storage are cool and dry (50-60˚F / 10-15˚C, 60% relative humidity), cold and dry (32-40˚F / 0-4˚C, 65% relative humidity), and cold and moist (32-40˚F / 0-4˚C, 95% relative humidity). In ideal circumstances, vegetables can store up to 4 to ...