Natural glass cleaner; earth friendly recipes

Leaf

Those looking to ditch chemical based window cleaners might want to consider an environmentally friendly glass cleaner.

The current economy has caused many people to scale back the amount that they spend on items. Within that group, I imagine there’s some that will be looking for affordable natural recipes to replace normal items they purchase from stores. The items used in this all natural glass cleaner, are cheap and does a great job getting your windows cleaned.

What’s great about this homemade glass cleaner? Since the items used are common, you might already have them at home. The essential oil is optional, but since I use it in my natural skin care products I always have plenty available.

I use this glass cleaner at home. I like it since it does leaves our windows streak free.  The added benefit is that it does it naturally without any harmful ingredients.

Natural Glass Cleaner

  1. Spray Bottle
  2. 1 quart of warm water
  3. 1/4 cup white vinegar
  4. 10 drops of lemon essential oil (optional)

Directions

  1. Add all the ingredients into the spray bottle.
  2. Shake well before using.

Photo Source: Luigi Diamani

 

Cholesterol: Natural ways to lower LDL cholesterol

Pasta

Over 106 million American, above the age of twenty, have high cholesterol, according to the American Heart Association. Finding time to include healthy food choices into a daily routine can be challenging for some.

Lack of time can cause people to make unhealthy food choices.  It can be difficult to change old habits, however, the rewards received by cleaning up an unhealthy diet makes it worthwhile.

Healthy foods do not have to be boring, explore new cuisines, and adopt healthy alternatives to reduce the cholesterol in meals. Give high fat recipes a healthy make-over, replace high calorie, high-cholesterol ingredients with healthy substitutes.

Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables should be consumed daily. It is necessary to eat several servings of fruit and vegetables daily since it is impossible to obtain all the nutrients needed from one fruit or vegetable.

The recommended daily servings are 3 to 5 servings of vegetables and 2 to 4 servings of fruit daily, according to the USDA. Get creative, make delicious salads, add vegetables to a spicy stir fry, include them in hearty soups. Prepare a delicious fruit salad, or create a stimulating smoothie. Making healthy food choices is useful in melting fat and lowering cholesterol.

Beans

There are many ways to cook beans. They are an excellent source of soluble fiber, soluble fiber assists in lowering LDL cholesterol. Therefore, they make a needed staple for people looking to reduce the amount of cholesterol and fat consumed through diet.

Beans are flavorful and come in many different varieties. Because of their texture they can be used as a meat substitute. Replace meat recipes with beans, added to soups, salads, stir fries, or turned into a delicious bean burger, letting beans play the starring role can assist in lowering the amount of fat and cholesterol consumed.

Fiber

Increasing the amount of dietary fiber consumed daily normalizes bowel movements and helps maintain colon health. Adding fiber to the diet can also help lower cholesterol levels.  This occurs when dietary fiber binds with fatty acids, bile, and blood cholesterol. This procedure creates a significant amount of waste. Fiber promotes easier bowel movements by making the stool bulkier; this process helps move cholesterol out of the body. Fiber rich foods are; Apples, black beans, bran, barley, oatmeal, split peas, and spaghetti.

Fish

Most fish are low in fat which makes them an perfect option for a low fat diet. Cold-water fish like salmon, tuna, mackerel, salmon, tuna, and trout are high in fat content, but they are also an excellent source of two forms of Omega 3 fatty acids; EPA and DHA. Omega 3 fatty acids can help boost your HDL (the good cholesterol.), which may prevent heart disease. Omega 3’s is especially useful since they reduce triglycerides. Frying fish cancels its healthful benefits. Bake, broil, or poach fish.

Reduce High Cholesterol Foods

Eggs, dairy, fat meats, organ meats, are all high in cholesterol. Decreasing fattening foods in the diet helps successfully cut the harmful cholesterol.  Trim the fat off of meat before preparing it. A tasty alternative to dairy milk is soy milk or rice milk. These nondairy milks come in a variety of flavors.

Check out the recommended books and references for more information on natural ways to lower your LDL cholesterol.

Recommended Books

  1. Eating for Lower Cholesterol by Catherine Jones
  2. Vegan Planet by Robin Roberson

References

  1. American Heart Association: Cholesterol Statistics
  2. United States Department of Agriculture: My Pyramid
  3. University of Maryland Medical System: Omega-3 Fatty Acids

 

Proud member of A Crafting Start

Celebration by mallett

For those who are new to paper crafts, or are simply looking for card making inspiration, check out A Crafting Start.

The site is only a week old, but quite a few of the contributors have been busy adding video tutorials on coloring digi stamps, a language library for terms related to paper crafts, you’ll even learn how to use a paper trimmer.

I’m a member and admin at A Crafting Start. Thus far, I haven’t added any articles — but I have done some behind the scenes work. Which is mainly focused on making our visitors visit a friendlier experience, based on my feelings about online communities it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m one of the official greeters.  it seems to be the right job for me, right? I do enjoy making visitors feel welcome.

Check to see who else is on board by popping by A Crafting Start Design Team and Contributors page.

A Crafting Start is the brain child of talented blogger Jennifer Bliss, she’s extremely talented and creates a lot of paper crafts. Stop by her personal home, or visit her, along with many other talented card maker, on our group site. We hope you enjoy your experience as we create, share, and interact with our online community. Hopefully some of the ideas will assist and inspire you with your own crafting creations.

Although its main focus is for those new to paper crafts, I’m sure you’ll find something that will interest you.

 

Celebrate Life; WordPress plugins

Top Commentators

Note: This post isn’t directed at anyone, outside of the Top Commentators section which was added this morning, this was a scheduled post that I’d written several weeks ago. These are just some random observations, from someone that hasn’t done too much personal blogging in over a year.

Adding a blogroll to my main page, is a good indication that I’m happy with my virtual home, and I intend to hang out at that virtual spot for quite a while.

Around a year ago, when I created Celebrate Life, I didn’t have a blogroll on my main page. Sure, I had a links page that has a variety of links that covers numerous topics, but although I recognized several within my blog posts, none of them ever made it to my main page.  That was because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with this website.

I’m happy to say that I’ve stopped dragging my virtual feet, and have added small blogroll to my main page. Not all of the bloggers update their site on a weekly or monthly basis, however, I’ve found them to be friendly folks, and I’m always been inspired by what they do.

I’ve been making money online for several years now, and a big part of how I make money is through some of my sites. While those sites might be a bit more structured to get Google’s blessings, in the past my personal blogs, like Vegan Momma, did fairly well too. making hundreds monthly. That wasn’t bad for a personal blog. I have no plans on monetizing this site for some time, however when I do it won’t be tastefully done.

Since I enjoy giving back to my visitors, I’ve also included a Top commentators widget on the right hand side of this blog. The top weekly commentators get a link bank to their site. At the moment, that’s not too spectacular since I’m still recreating this site, but in time I’m hoping it sends traffic to my online pals. Currently, the widget is set to rotate on a weekly basis. I’ve set it for the top ten commentators. I recently started becoming active with this site, so my traffic is still small. Therefore, I could get away with setting the widget to a monthly basis.

Dofollow is included on this site, along with my others. I don’t require you to comment X amount of time before your links are followed. I’ve always thought to be a bit silly. I feel the same way about way regarding some  of the CommentLuv features, where some bloggers force me to promote their post in order to link to anything besides my current post. You’ve got to be kidding me? I won’t be doing that here, I never liked forcing my readers to promote my sites. If you like what you’ve read, definitely promote my work through Twitter, Google +, Facebook, etc., but I won’t force you to do that. With my business, and personal blogs I still was able to promote my work without dangling a carrot.

Although it’s been a while since I’ve done any personal blogging, I believe I’ll be able to accomplish that on this site too. Sure, I’ll eventually purchase CommentLuv premium. It’s a great addon, but you won’t have to worry about the dangling carrot to link to another one of your posts. It doesn’t bother me if you link to a business site either, as long your comment isn’t spam. Regarding spam, I get hundreds of those daily. You’ll never see them on my site, since those comments get tossed into my virtual trash.

Of course it’s not always necessary to leave a comment for every person, or every post. However, it’s always nice to see a blogger interacting with their visitors, by dropping by their comment section and leaving a response to questions asked. For a person just popping by their site, it always gave the impression that they weren’t even reading their comments, but that’s just my personal opinion.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be adding a few other WordPress Plugins to recognize those who leave comments, so please stop by again and join in on the conversation.

Paper Crafts: Sketch Diva

Sketch Diva

A few weeks ago I was hunting for some digital images aka digital stamps that I could incorporate into a card.

I wanted them to be girly, and more specific, I wanted them to be ethnic. It took a lot of hunting but I finally found a nice selection that I enjoy. The original hair on this lovely young lady was a loose wave. Since I wanted it to mimic the curl pattern in my daughter’s hair, I tightened up the curls by making coils and spirals throughout the hair. I was pleased with the result.

Because I liked the how this card turned out, I decided to turn it into a sketch pad. My daughter is artistic, besides making sculptures she also enjoys drawing too. My idea is to use a three hole punch,  that I can attach with binder rings. Once the paper has been used, it can be easily swapped out and updated with new paper.

This will be the front cover. I glued the design to a thin piece of cardboard, so it will make the perfect cover since it’s hard. This works perfectly for my daughter since she needs the durability with her art books.

The letters were made with clear rubber stamps. I used an embossing ink. Embossing ink remains wet longer than your normal inks. Because of this, I was able to sprinkle the inked words with embossing powder. I used my heat gun to melt the powder. Lace trim was added to the design, and I incorporated heart brads into the trim. I used colored pencils for the gorgeous lady.

This started out as a card, but it’s quickly turned into something else. I still need to add the pages and a back cover for my daughters sketch pad.

 

Edited to add:

Use your Stash Challenge Week 3: Use your scraps

Since I used a ton of scraps with this card, I’ve added it to the Scraps of Color: Use your scraps challenge

  • Lace trim (I made the ‘trim’ from an old lace shirt that I’d designed when I was 17).
  • Daisy (snipped from a daisy chain trim)
  • Yellow and orange construction paper (leftover from other projects).

Where oh where is my battery charger; Nikon D80

It seems as if my Nikon D80’s battery charger has gone missing.

Nikon D80

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my Nikons battery was running low, when I went to its usual spot (that I keep the charger) it was gone.

Countless searches have been done, and I still haven’t found my Nikon D80 battery charger.

Autumn is my favorite season, and there’s tons of outdoor photos that I’m itching to shoot, but with a near dead battery I’ve been holding off.

I’ve ordered a charger from Amazon. You know what’s going to happen? By the time the new battery charger arrives to my house, my old charger will miraculously appear, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll know where it’ll be found… in my daughter’s room. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of looking in her room earlier. I just thought about this a few moments ago.

You have to understand something…

My eight-year old daughter is very talented. She’s won awards for her artwork, and has already had some of it featured in local shows — so it’s not just mommy bias. I love art so naturally I’m thrilled. This girl churns out art pieces several times weekly —  like it’s not a big deal. She has lots of talent, and therefore I encourage her. It’s ‘her thing’.

So yeah… she’ll  take anything that’s not nailed down and incorporate it into one of her art projects. I have mixed feelings about this; I applaud her creativity but at the same time… this mom gets tired of looking for misplaced items. <sighs> It looks as though I’ll have to have another conversation with her about asking, before using items in her artistic creations.

I’m betting if I look in her room, the Nikon D80 battery charger will be gracing one of her art sculptures.

Nikon D80 battery charger

Nikon D80 battery charger

Updated to add…

Thus far, my mommy’s intuition hasn’t failed. I looked in my daughters room and found the Nikon D80 battery charger buried under her pipe cleaners and colored papers.

Three day weekend

Because of a teachers in-service, my daughter is out of school today. Naturally, I’m planning on squeezing tons of activities into her three-day weekend.

Books

Yesterday, we made a quick stop at the library. About a week ago, I’d requested books for my daughter, and they arrived at the library. When I checked yesterday, I noticed that was the last day to pick them up. Whoops, so off we went to pick up her books. My daughter is a big R. L. Stine fan, and that’s the books were available. She had her nose buried in one of those books as soon as we hopped into the SUV.

This day has been spent making crafts, reading, and hanging out together. Tonights menu will be my normal theme; simple, nutritious, and delicious. My daughter has requested finger foods for dinner, and so I’ll be preparing Vegan wontons, black bean hummus, and I’m making pineapple kiwi  smoothies. Quick meal, fast clean up, which is just how I like it.