Loving My Wool Dryer Ball

Last week I bought my very first wool dryer ball and I'm LOVING it :) I stopped purchasing dryer sheets a while ago but I'm not to fond of static cling and frizzy hair *grin* so I knew I was going to have to replace them with something! I had heard about a nearby shop that was selling them so I thought that I would check them out and see what all the buzz is about.

There were two choices to pick from. There were ones that were made of tightly wound wool yarn that had been washed to felt it and there were the fancier ones like mine above that had a wound yarn inner core and then had a solid needle felted cover with different motifs on them. Longevity wise the needle felted one like the one I purchased is thought to last longer over the years and I do a ton of laundry so I opted for it, plus I'm a sucker for owls *grin*.



They work by bouncing around in your dryer and helping to move your clothing more and incorporate the warm air throughout the wet clothing thus cutting your drying time considerably. It is suggested that you use anywhere from 3 - 6 dryer balls in your load to increase their efficiency. With all of that bouncing around in there it also helps to soften your clothing taking out wrinkles and any stiffness thus taking the place of your dryer sheet!

So far I only have 1 and I'm going to pick up another 2 or 3 of them in the next couple of weeks but so far I've noticed that the static electricity is not as bad. So with more of them I should be static free and using less electricity. That's a big plus in my books *grin*. Most of them come unscented and you can drop a few drops of your favorite essential oils onto them and they will infuse your laundry with lovely floral scents without all of the harsh chemicals. I've scented mine with lavender essential oil right now and when the scent disappears I can either put more lavender or switch it up :)

1. ElasIdea 2. BuddhaBunz 3. BuddhaBunz
4. FiberOptions 5. LittleFriendsbySarah
6. DomesticallyGreen


You've got to love Etsy! Here are some of my favorites that I came across while searching for the dryer balls. They come in a varying range of sizes, prices and materials that they are made with and I thought this would give you a start on finding some that you love to :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Flickr Favorites ~ Green Wedding Favors

1. Essence of Summer, 2. Trio of Trees in Burlap, 3. DIY Green Wedding Centerpiece Favors, 4. Bird Seed Heart Favors With Custom Tags

With Earth Day having just passed and the fact that the wedding season is kicking it into high gear I thought it would be fun to share some ideas for earth friendly wedding favors :)

If I had my wedding to do over I would have loved to have given away tree saplings for guests to take home and plant in their backyard! And check out those place settings above... a potted herb would be fabulous as they could be taken home and be used as cooking spice later. Or how about making homemade jam? A delicious treat and extra special because you made it with love :)

The possibilities are endless! Seed packets with your names & wedding dates filled with flowers or vegetables to be planted or how about cloth market bags to replace one plastic bag each time a guest goes shopping the next time :) Think edible, plant-able or re-usable when picking a favor this year and the earth will thank you!

Want to join in the fun and share your flickr favorites? Head over to Misty's blog and join in!

~ Rosina

Annual Earth Day Sale on Now!

I can't believe it's been over a year since I opened up my Etsy shop with all of my reusable cloth lunch bags, snack and sandwich bags and more! Plus this is my second Earth Day Sale so I guess it's now officially an 'annual' sale *grin*.

So in celebration of Earth Day today I'm offering 10% Off (before shipping) on all of my reusable cloth 'snack' and 'sandwich' bags!! Discount will be refunded back to you via Paypal after the sale is complete. Let's help save the Earth together :)



~ Rosina

Because Not All Sandwiches Are Created Equal

Somewhere between Tuesday and now nearly Friday I lost a day *grin*. I can't believe how fast this week has gone by and that we're in April already!! I've been a busy little bee sewing up my secret Easter gifts for the kids and filling orders for my reusable cloth lunch items.

We've been using my snack and sandwich bags for a couple of years now and absolutely love them. Especially that we're no longer storing our food inside plastic. No plastic, PVC or nylon liners for us. Just unbleached cotton and recently I've started adding certified organic bags to our stash to but once in a while we've got a sandwich or a 'man'wich as I like to call them that just won't fit comfortably inside!

My husband is a big culprit of this and maybe your husband is the same. He LOVES to stack like half a roast between two slices of bread and call it a sandwich *grin*. Myself on the other hand, I love to load up on more of the veggies like sprouts, tomatoes, onion and such and by the time we're done quite often they're fairly large sandwiches. They'll go into the cloth bags and then put up a fuss on the way out so you end up squishing your sammy!



So I've come up with a solution... a sandwich wrap! It works beautifully :) You just place your man sized sandwich on it and fold up the cloth around it. Plus when it's time to eat it you can use it as your place mat to eat over and a napkin to wipe up your hands and perhaps your face with after *grin*.

My goal.... to save the world one cloth sandwich wrap at a time!

~ Rosina

Give Life To Outgrown Clothes ~ Make Your Own Cloth Napkins

I'm slowly phasing out all of the paper towels and napkins out of our home, replacing them with cloth napkins and the stash of flannel in my sewing cupboard is finally getting put to good use making lovely soft napkins that the kids love to use :)

But I started thinking about what else I could find around the house to reuse and give new life to in the form of napkins. With three kids growing like weeds there's never a shortage of to tight pajamas or ones that accidentally got snagged on something and blew out a knee *grin*. So instead of throwing them in the rag bag I dug them out, washed them all up and headed to the cutting table.

By snipping off the waistbands and cuffs and cutting out all of the seams I was left with 4 panels. Slightly odd in shape but very usable!

With my rotary cutter & ruler I trimmed them up so that they had nice straight edges. A few of them had ripped knees so I had to trim them a little shorter but out of my 4 year olds pj's I was able to get a good sized 6 x 13 inch rectangle out of most of the flannel panels.

I don't get to use my serger very often so I was excited to be able to stitch, trim & hem all of the sides in seconds *grin*. Boy does that thing zip along! And it just happened that Sew Mama Sew blogged about making napkins using a rolled hem stitch with a serger so I got to brush up on my technique with her handy tutorial :)

The only drawback to using my serger is those darn thread tails that it leaves behind. A quick fix is to either trim off those tails and dab fray stop or another liquid sewing glue on the corners to hold the threads together permanently or sew them in like I did in the above photo.

I thought that since they are going to get a lot washing with all of the dirty hand wiping that I'd make sure they were never going to come undone. So I took an embroidery thread with a large eye and threaded the tail through the end and then ran it back through about an inch of stitches :)

I love it! New life to old pajamas keeping them out of the landfill and those favorite pj's that your kid insisted on wearing every night to bed because he loved them sooo much are back *grin*.

Have fun reusing something out of your outgrown stash of clothes :)

~ Rosina