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Well, the kitchen is coming along — slowly. Half the ceiling is primed, and the whole room has one coat of primer over nice, smoothly spackled walls. I had to go on a major supply run — we were out of Eco-Spec and paint stirrers! And I bought some new knobs for the cabinets, as my experiment of spray-painting the old ceramic and brass country-styled knobs with ‘hammered silver’ was a diasater…

I also placed orders for some exciting new items! First and foremost, the old dishwasher (circa 1988) will be replaced on Monday with an Energy Star Kenmore model from Sears — a Consumer Reports Best Buy. Not only will it use less energy and water, but it won’t sound like a monster truck driving through the house when it runs!

Next, replacement doors for the side entry and garage. Both doors will be Energy Star-rated fiberglass, and the outer door will have a new storm door to further insulate the house. Finally, an FSC-certified French door for the mudroom/kitchen intersection to replace the odious blue slab and let more light into the kitchen. The doors will take 4-6 weeks to get here, and we can’t wait!

 Hidden under the hideous blue toile and plaid kitchen wallpaper was a hand-painted blue border of flowers weeds. Which means that they will need to be primed multiple times to ensure they don’t show through our new yellow paint as green ghostly smudges of paint… nothing is easy when tackling our odious 80’s blue kitchen!

• Step #1: Tape off cabinets and window trim.
• Step #2: Prime and prime again.
• Step #3: Spackle holes and gouges in walls —  remember, wallpaper removal often took off the drywall paper and the wall itself…
• Step #4: Sand, spackle, and repeat steps #3 and #4.
• Step #5: See Step #2 and repeat.
• Step #6: Curse previous homeowners copiously for their blue-fixation.
• Step #7: Attempt to imagine house without horribleness of blue everything… delude self into thinking this might occur within next 5 years…

View the kitchen gallery at this stage: blue weed stage gallery

My outdoor plants have moved indoors for the winter, which means that the ones with drainage holes are leaking water and the ones with roots creeping out the bottom simply can’t be ignored. Every spring I swear I will separate the snake-in-baskets (or mother-in-law-tongues) and then am too busy trimming hedges and such to actually get around to repotting. . .

I’ve been searching for the perfect pot for my small fig tree recently, but to no avail. Most stores and garden supply shops are short on recycled pots and seasonal merchandise, and it seems silly to go on a quest when a planter is such an easy item to get creative with.

When we traveled this weekend to one of the uber-cool salvage/old stuff stores in Frederick, however, I kept an eye out for pots and found them! Under a paper sign reading ‘Chinese Cooking Pots’ sat stacks and stacks of these interesting containers. I love the coloring, even though it sort of blends into the brick chimney where my fig now lives… But at $15 for a small, I limited myself to only one special pot — I could easily bankrupt myself with plants and pots!

I’ve linked this post to some other creative plant containers I’ve put to use in the garden over the past year — just about everything from shoes to soup cans can be used to hold dirt and a bit of green!

Well, yesterday’s storm delivered at least six inches of snow to the green amoeba home site, thus turning it white. Lucky for us, we’re snug and warm inside, thanks in part to our recent weatherization activities.

We had our five basement windows and French doors (20-year old, original vinyls) replaced with high-performance Energy Star Jeld-Wen windows and doors. These low-e replacements should reduce our energy usage, by keeping things cooler in summer and warmer in winter. The low-e 366 glass coating reflects heat to the interior in winter, and reflects the sun’s heat to the exterior in summer. And while vinyl-clad windows were a rough choice for me (vinyl manufacturing produces some of THE worse pollutants for any factory goods), their low maintenance and longevity offset the negatives for me. Plus, they have awesome built-in miniblinds — no hazards, no dust.

Our original doors and windows had, it seems, been poorly installed in the first place, with wide gaps around the framing and interior lumber used instead of exterior — so the door frame was rotted and water pooled into the basement.

The contractor left the windows and doors so we can haul them to the salvage yard. I’ve posted a lot of pics from around the snowy yard in the gallery.

Jeld-Wen has a nice page with links to energy efficienty websites here.

I can’t remember the last time I shopped for jeans…stuffing myself into stretch denim under the flattering flicker of fluorescent lights at a chain store has never been a fun exercise. Was it 2003? I’m down to one pair of wearable denim — and with the new work policy of jeans everyday, I’m getting desperate.

My new rules for green clothing are as follow: 1) item must be organic materials and sweat-shop free, or 2) item must be recycled. I started with a quest for new jeans, but my favorite organic vendors have NONE. Patagonia currently only has women’s chinos and ‘pants’, but no jeans. Levi’s launched an organic line lat year, but they currently only have insane clearance sizes (like 0 and 16T) on their website, and Target only carries the men’s line. Great. While there are a number of designer organics, I simply cannot bring myself to purchase a pair of jeans for more than $35, let alone close to $200.

Rawganique.com has some organic cotton and hemp jeans, but with prices around $90, how will I know the fit is what I want? FairIndigo.com has some interesting organics at about $70 (thought most sizes are out of stock until spring!), but as I’m a stickler for fit, and hate returning clothes via trips to the post office…

I decided to search ebay for the exact same pair of jeans I already have, since I will NOT spend hours in the thrift-store trying on jeans (I’ve done it, and they are largely high-waisted, color-striped relics from the early 80’s).  I matched the label on my jeans to an ebay listing, and bought a gently used pair for about $10 including shipping. Perfect! Plus there’s dozens more listed for when they wear out, as long as faded, low-rise boot-cut jeans stay in style for another five years…

I spent a lot of time in October and November tearing off the backs of catalogs and requesting removal from mailing lists — of course, they all said that it’d be at least 10 weeks (post-holiday catalog tsunami) to be removed. Thus we received a few pounds of catalogs each day for the recycling bin.

Most companies let you send an email or click something online to be removed from the list. The worst had lengthy processes — Victoria’s Secret, for example, required a phone call and a 10+ minute wait, for me to inform an actual customer service agent of my desire to cancel.

When I learned about http://catalogchoice.org I was thrilled — their free service allows you to request removal from individual catalogs in a few easy steps. I took my torn catalog bits, sat down, entered names and customer numbers for each catalog (for umpteen prior residents of the house), and voila! In less than 20 minutes I’d opted out of a few dozen catalogs

DirectMail.com offers an easy way to opt-out of direct mailings (more than just catalogs). You simply entered your name and address and click the button that says you aren’t interested in receiving ANY mailings — it seems that if you select categories you will get ADDED to lists , so beware.

Well, the New Year started off with fireworks (really, at the Harbor), then quickly switched to the sound of scraping… The blue wallpaper in the kitchen wasn’t destined to last another year. We started steaming and scraping with putty knives and within a few days it was gone. Unfortunately, the old vinyl toile and plaid wasn’t a candidate for recycling, though we considered shredding it into tiny pieces and setting it free in the woods to compost,  in the end it went out with the trash.  The room already looks twice the size, and a 100% better.

The walls are now pretty horrible - gouged drywall where the paper peeled off with the glue while we scrubbed. We used sponges and hot water and elbow grease. Now we’re busy spackling and sanding before we tape and prime…

The supplies are already in — 2 gallons of Benjamin Moore’s eco-spec primer and 2 gallons of eco-spec eggshell in ‘Provence Creme’ — a pale yellow.

We’ve found the eco-spec paints to be a little watery, but two coats will do you, and you don’t get a headache from the fumes while you are painting! Long-term bonus — we’ll all breathe easier!

Check out Benjamin Moore’s environmentally friendly products – they have primers and interior paints in low odor, low VOC, 100% acrylic latex: http://benjaminmoore.com/