white throw blanket
4 years ago
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Changing once again.
Ok...well I've made it possible for those who don't have "open id" to comment again. I thought by changing it, anonymous would come off and no one could use it...but I didn't realize that it wouldn't let just anyone post and put their name in. I miss hearing from those of you who didn't have an account to post, so please return to me and talk. Please try very hard not to make yourself anonymous! And if your going to be rude, don't hide behind the name anonymous...let me know who I should be irked at. :)
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Our first family pets.
The Johnsons got fish today!!! We set up the tank 2 days ago, but had to let everything warm up and cycle before adding the fish. Those are live plants you see there and a real drift wood.
Here you see 3 fish....some may see 6...but you really are only seeing 3 :) The whitish one is me! I think the one hiding behind the plant (you can see his reflection in the glass) is Ari.
Here you are looking at the father and daughter. I really don't know which ones are boys and which ones are girls...but the one with the solid black tail is Nate If you look closely (the one with orange on its tail) the black makes a mickey mouse face. That one is Ivy.
You can't really see in this picture...but there are 2 TINY snails on this plant. They were on the plant when we got home from the store...and we weren't charged for them...lol They are just the size of the little ball on the top of a pin.
We are going to make our own background to put in the back of the tank so you don't see the wires....we just haven't painted that yet....I'll try to post pics after we do that.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Look what Wii've been up to.
I finally got my Christmas present!! All those who gave me money...Thank you!
I know I look awful... but I wanted you to see how happy I am!
I beat him!!! My age was 32!
Sexy!
For Valentine's Day (but he just did it today) Nathanael bought me a second Wii remote with Wii Play.
And...he also got him a little shooting game. I'm not sure what it is like cause I only went out to take his picture....
Woo Hoo
I found the charger for the batteries....I've been so frustrated not having any batteries for the camera. Now I can take pictures again!!!
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Arts and Crafts.
Today I started a new craft. I'm in the process of melting down plastic grocery bags and I plan to make durable/reusable grocery bags/cute totes. I may even try to do some crocheting with the bags if the melt down and sewing doesn't go do well for me....but so far so good...my iron is still clean.
Well I can't figure out how to post the video...so I will have to do that later.
I'm going to bed now.
Well I can't figure out how to post the video...so I will have to do that later.
I'm going to bed now.
Right size.
We got our shipment of the cloth diapers that would fit the kids...so now we are using our OWN unbleached cloth diapers!!!
Thanks Heather for loaning us some while we waited.
In our order of diapers we got a free sticker...
"If it's not cloth, it's trash (1,500 lbs per baby)
Use modern cloth diapers from sunshinediapers.com"
Thanks Heather for loaning us some while we waited.
In our order of diapers we got a free sticker...
"If it's not cloth, it's trash (1,500 lbs per baby)
Use modern cloth diapers from sunshinediapers.com"
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Going fishing.
Well since we are staying here in TN...our brains have been thinking...
Nathanael wants to eventually transfer to Chattanooga State to finish his degree. We aren't necessarily looking to move right this moment, but are keeping our eyes open for a house a little closer to Chattanooga. We have a wonderful deal where we are now, but once Nathanael transfers, he will be spending about 100 in gas just to go back and forth...so, either we use that 100 usefully and upgrade to a bigger house for all of our future children, or we find a house same price range and save $100...
Keep your eyes open for us.
Nathanael wants to eventually transfer to Chattanooga State to finish his degree. We aren't necessarily looking to move right this moment, but are keeping our eyes open for a house a little closer to Chattanooga. We have a wonderful deal where we are now, but once Nathanael transfers, he will be spending about 100 in gas just to go back and forth...so, either we use that 100 usefully and upgrade to a bigger house for all of our future children, or we find a house same price range and save $100...
Keep your eyes open for us.
Pancakes
Nathanael and Ivy are out in the kitchen working hard together to make the family breakfast....
oh just got called...mine are ready!!!
oh just got called...mine are ready!!!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
THEY CAME!!!
Ok...our diapers are here....only one draw back...we ordered the wrong size...I'm not sure if it was a computer glitch when we ordered or if it was the person ordering, but we got 7-15lbs...which our kids are much better fed than that. We have a wonderful friend, Heather who is going to allow us to barrow some of her stock of diapers stuff until we get our next shipment of diapers. I think we have decided to keep the 7-15lb ones for the future Johnson's instead of paying shipping again when they arrive.
I'll keep you posted on how the experience is going.
I'll keep you posted on how the experience is going.
Monday, February 18, 2008
This is going to be a long one...
I originally posted this on a different website, and it didn't seem to go over too well with the locals...I ended up deleting it from that website, but I'm still excited about so I thought I'd share here where I know the people that read this will be excited for us as well.
So...the Johnson family has been recycling, composting, buying organic, and trying to buy glass instead of plastic for sometime now. Just trying to do our part to better/take care of the environment.
Yesterday we made the decision to change our diaper situation. The Johnson family is going cloth. We purchased our cloth diapers, flannel wipes, and covers. The initial cost is a pretty penny, but will save us money in the long run. We spend about 60$ just in diapers a month since we have 2 kids in diapers, and thats not including wipes. If it were just the diapers we were replacing, it would pay itself off in 4 months, but we are even phasing out our disposable wipes, therefore the cost will make up for itself sooner.
Here are a few calculations that I came up with as well...
5 diapers per day for one week = 35 diapers
(more diapers a day when newborn)
52 weeks in a year = 1820 diapers
2 years = 3640 diapers
(not all children potty train at 2 (Ivy hasn't))
So take that number (3640) multiplied by however many children (5 in my case) = 18200 diapers
Thats a lot of diapers. And at $20 a box with only 92 in each = $3956.52 just in diapers, not including wipes! I think I'll go with the $250 we spent on diapers, covers and wipes...and do a little extra work. :)
I found a website from March of 2004...
"Over 20 billion disposable diapers are sent to landfills each year. (1) This is enough diapers to cover a football field 3 miles deep."
And that was in 2004!!
These were taken from a different website
"No one knows how long it takes for a disposable diaper to decompose, but it is estimated to be about 250-500 years, long after your children, grandchildren and great, great, great grandchildren will be gone.
Disposable diapers contain traces of Dioxin, an extremely toxic by-product of the paper-bleaching process. It is a carcinogenic chemical, listed by the EPA as the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals. It is banned in most countries, but not theU.S.
Disposable diapers contain Tributyl-tin (TBT) - a toxic pollutant known to cause hormonal problems in humans and animals.
Disposable diapers contain sodium polyacrylate, a type of super absorbent polymer (SAP), which becomes a gel-like substance when wet. A similar substance had been used in super-absorbency tampons until the early 1980s when it was revealed that the material increased the risk of toxic shock syndrome.
MORE INFO
My mother's, mothers, sister's, daughter's husband (hee hee I love long genealogy descriptions. Basically my 1st cousin once removed's husband) posted information that I also found very interesting. Some of it I already knew, but there was a lot of interesting new stuff I learned. Here's the info...
PAPER:
· We can save more space in our landfills by recycling paper products than any other materials and each piece of paper can be recycled up to five times before the fibers become too weak .
· 44 million newspapers are thrown away every day in theUnited States
· Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil and 7000 gallons of water!
· If each person were to reuse a paper shopping bag for just one trip to the store, we would save 60 000 trees. Imagine how many trees would be saved if we all used reusable cloth grocery bags instead!
ALUMINUM:
· It takes about 95% less energy to make aluminum from recycled aluminum than to make it from raw materials.
· Recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to power your television for three hours or to run a 100-watt light bulb for almost four hours. Imagine how much energy you alone could save if you recycled every aluminum can you used in a year!
· Aluminium dumped into our landfills today will remain there for over 200 years.
PLASTICS:
· Plastic bags made from recycled polythene rather than virgin materials save two thirds of the energy required for production and reduce the water used by almost 90%.
· It is still difficult to recycle plastic containers and make them into new containers for food and beverages because the separation process for the various different types and colors of plastics is labor intensive and not cost efficient. The best option is to reduce plastic wastes by purchasing items that have less packaging.
· Recycling is still important however, because there are many items that can be made from recycled plastics. These items include garbage cans, picnic tables, fiber-fill for vests and jackets, traffic cones and many others. Purchasing items such as these that are made from recycled materials will help to further support this industry.
GLASS:
· Glass is 100% recyclable and can go from the recycling bin to a store shelf in as little as 30 days!
· Approximately 80% of recycled glass containers are made into new glass bottles and glass can be reused an infinite number of times.
· Recycling one ton of glass saves the equivalent of nine gallons of fuel oil and one sixth of a ton of carbon dioxide!
· Making a glass container from a recycled container creates about 20% less air pollution, 50% less water pollution and uses only about half the energy of making it from virgin materials. Recycling a single glass bottle can save enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours!
FOOD:
· Yard trimmings and food wastes make up approximately 23% of municipal solid waste in theUnited States
· This type of waste is biodegradable but often these food items sit in landfills for long periods of time unable to be broken down through the plastic garbage bags they are stored in. We could keep many of these items out of our landfills and allow them to be broken down naturally by composting.
· Composting enriches and regenerates poor soils which can also provide many other environmental benefits such as helping to suppress plant diseases, reducing or eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers, promoting higher crop yields, and facilitating the restoration of forests, wetlands and other important habitats.
BATTERIES:
· Batteries contain heavy metals such as mercury, nickel, lead and cadmium, which can leak into the ground and contaminate the environment if improperly disposed of.
· Cadmium can be toxic to aquatic invertebrates and can bioaccumulate in fish. This will in turn build up in animals which feed on fish such as humans and terrestrial or marine mammals.
· Contact the battery manufacturer, the appliance manufacturer or your local council to find out how to properly dispose of batteries in your area or better yet use appliances that derive power from other sources such as the sun whenever possible.
· Another good option for appliances that require batteries is to use rechargeable ones. Each rechargeable battery may substitute for hundreds of single use batteries. Imagine the heavy metals we could keep out of our landfills if we all switched to rechargeable.
Although many of the materials that we use on a daily basis are recyclable, there are some products that cannot be recycled or that the process is too inefficient to make it worthwhile. By avoiding the use of these products whenever possible, we can help promote the use of more environmentally responsible products in their place.
STYROFOAM:
· Recycling of Styrofoam is difficult and the technology for it is not nearly as advanced as for many other products such as paper.
· Each year Americans throw away 25 trillion Styrofoam cups. This is enough to circle the earth 436 times. Imagine how much Styrofoam we could keep out of our environment if we all carried travel mugs to use when purchasing hot beverages.
· Harmful chemicals are released into the atmosphere during the production of Styrofoam. These chemicals have been shown to degrade the Earth’s ozone layer.
· Styrofoam is also a popular product for packaging up leftover food in restaurants so that customers can take it home. Next time you go out for dinner remember to bring your own Tupperware so you can bring your leftovers home without adding to the Styrofoam in our landfills.
WAXED CARDBOARD: (I'm not sure what waxed cardboard is)
· Waxed cardboard cannot be recycled. It can only be recycled as mixed paper and many recycling plants will not even accept it meaning that it will end up in the trash.
· Waxed cardboard can however be reused so if you cannot avoid using it altogether try to think of alternative uses when you are finished with it.
http://www3.telus.net/public/a6h4z2/recycling.htm
I hope this has been interesting as well as informative for you as it was for me.
We are still waiting on our cloth diapers....sat by the window today (Monday) waiting for the mailman to come, thinking today would be the day....then we realized it was President's Day...lol So hopefully they will come tomorrow.
So...the Johnson family has been recycling, composting, buying organic, and trying to buy glass instead of plastic for sometime now. Just trying to do our part to better/take care of the environment.
Yesterday we made the decision to change our diaper situation. The Johnson family is going cloth. We purchased our cloth diapers, flannel wipes, and covers. The initial cost is a pretty penny, but will save us money in the long run. We spend about 60$ just in diapers a month since we have 2 kids in diapers, and thats not including wipes. If it were just the diapers we were replacing, it would pay itself off in 4 months, but we are even phasing out our disposable wipes, therefore the cost will make up for itself sooner.
Here are a few calculations that I came up with as well...
5 diapers per day for one week = 35 diapers
(more diapers a day when newborn)
52 weeks in a year = 1820 diapers
2 years = 3640 diapers
(not all children potty train at 2 (Ivy hasn't))
So take that number (3640) multiplied by however many children (5 in my case) = 18200 diapers
Thats a lot of diapers. And at $20 a box with only 92 in each = $3956.52 just in diapers, not including wipes! I think I'll go with the $250 we spent on diapers, covers and wipes...and do a little extra work. :)
I found a website from March of 2004...
"Over 20 billion disposable diapers are sent to landfills each year. (1) This is enough diapers to cover a football field 3 miles deep."
And that was in 2004!!
These were taken from a different website
"No one knows how long it takes for a disposable diaper to decompose, but it is estimated to be about 250-500 years, long after your children, grandchildren and great, great, great grandchildren will be gone.
Disposable diapers contain traces of Dioxin, an extremely toxic by-product of the paper-bleaching process. It is a carcinogenic chemical, listed by the EPA as the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals. It is banned in most countries, but not the
Disposable diapers contain Tributyl-tin (TBT) - a toxic pollutant known to cause hormonal problems in humans and animals.
Disposable diapers contain sodium polyacrylate, a type of super absorbent polymer (SAP), which becomes a gel-like substance when wet. A similar substance had been used in super-absorbency tampons until the early 1980s when it was revealed that the material increased the risk of toxic shock syndrome.
MORE INFO
My mother's, mothers, sister's, daughter's husband (hee hee I love long genealogy descriptions. Basically my 1st cousin once removed's husband) posted information that I also found very interesting. Some of it I already knew, but there was a lot of interesting new stuff I learned. Here's the info...
PAPER:
· We can save more space in our landfills by recycling paper products than any other materials and each piece of paper can be recycled up to five times before the fibers become too weak .
· 44 million newspapers are thrown away every day in the
· Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil and 7000 gallons of water!
· If each person were to reuse a paper shopping bag for just one trip to the store, we would save 60 000 trees. Imagine how many trees would be saved if we all used reusable cloth grocery bags instead!
ALUMINUM:
· It takes about 95% less energy to make aluminum from recycled aluminum than to make it from raw materials.
· Recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to power your television for three hours or to run a 100-watt light bulb for almost four hours. Imagine how much energy you alone could save if you recycled every aluminum can you used in a year!
· Aluminium dumped into our landfills today will remain there for over 200 years.
PLASTICS:
· Plastic bags made from recycled polythene rather than virgin materials save two thirds of the energy required for production and reduce the water used by almost 90%.
· It is still difficult to recycle plastic containers and make them into new containers for food and beverages because the separation process for the various different types and colors of plastics is labor intensive and not cost efficient. The best option is to reduce plastic wastes by purchasing items that have less packaging.
· Recycling is still important however, because there are many items that can be made from recycled plastics. These items include garbage cans, picnic tables, fiber-fill for vests and jackets, traffic cones and many others. Purchasing items such as these that are made from recycled materials will help to further support this industry.
GLASS:
· Glass is 100% recyclable and can go from the recycling bin to a store shelf in as little as 30 days!
· Approximately 80% of recycled glass containers are made into new glass bottles and glass can be reused an infinite number of times.
· Recycling one ton of glass saves the equivalent of nine gallons of fuel oil and one sixth of a ton of carbon dioxide!
· Making a glass container from a recycled container creates about 20% less air pollution, 50% less water pollution and uses only about half the energy of making it from virgin materials. Recycling a single glass bottle can save enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours!
FOOD:
· Yard trimmings and food wastes make up approximately 23% of municipal solid waste in the
· This type of waste is biodegradable but often these food items sit in landfills for long periods of time unable to be broken down through the plastic garbage bags they are stored in. We could keep many of these items out of our landfills and allow them to be broken down naturally by composting.
· Composting enriches and regenerates poor soils which can also provide many other environmental benefits such as helping to suppress plant diseases, reducing or eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers, promoting higher crop yields, and facilitating the restoration of forests, wetlands and other important habitats.
BATTERIES:
· Batteries contain heavy metals such as mercury, nickel, lead and cadmium, which can leak into the ground and contaminate the environment if improperly disposed of.
· Cadmium can be toxic to aquatic invertebrates and can bioaccumulate in fish. This will in turn build up in animals which feed on fish such as humans and terrestrial or marine mammals.
· Contact the battery manufacturer, the appliance manufacturer or your local council to find out how to properly dispose of batteries in your area or better yet use appliances that derive power from other sources such as the sun whenever possible.
· Another good option for appliances that require batteries is to use rechargeable ones. Each rechargeable battery may substitute for hundreds of single use batteries. Imagine the heavy metals we could keep out of our landfills if we all switched to rechargeable.
Although many of the materials that we use on a daily basis are recyclable, there are some products that cannot be recycled or that the process is too inefficient to make it worthwhile. By avoiding the use of these products whenever possible, we can help promote the use of more environmentally responsible products in their place.
STYROFOAM:
· Recycling of Styrofoam is difficult and the technology for it is not nearly as advanced as for many other products such as paper.
· Each year Americans throw away 25 trillion Styrofoam cups. This is enough to circle the earth 436 times. Imagine how much Styrofoam we could keep out of our environment if we all carried travel mugs to use when purchasing hot beverages.
· Harmful chemicals are released into the atmosphere during the production of Styrofoam. These chemicals have been shown to degrade the Earth’s ozone layer.
· Styrofoam is also a popular product for packaging up leftover food in restaurants so that customers can take it home. Next time you go out for dinner remember to bring your own Tupperware so you can bring your leftovers home without adding to the Styrofoam in our landfills.
WAXED CARDBOARD: (I'm not sure what waxed cardboard is)
· Waxed cardboard cannot be recycled. It can only be recycled as mixed paper and many recycling plants will not even accept it meaning that it will end up in the trash.
· Waxed cardboard can however be reused so if you cannot avoid using it altogether try to think of alternative uses when you are finished with it.
http://www3.telus.net/public/a6h4z2/recycling.htm
I hope this has been interesting as well as informative for you as it was for me.
We are still waiting on our cloth diapers....sat by the window today (Monday) waiting for the mailman to come, thinking today would be the day....then we realized it was President's Day...lol So hopefully they will come tomorrow.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Reading!?!
I don't like doing it. Reading that is. I don' t know why, but I can remember even in grade school really not liking it one bit...I think the longest I stuck with a book was when I read Uncle Tom's Cabin, and I really only did it because my crush/boyfriend (or whatever he was at that time) was part of a book club, and his mom said that I had to actually read the book if I wanted to come and be apart of the club...I couldn't just come and sit with him...so I read the book.
I had a New Year's resolution to read the bible all the way through. This has been my New Year's resolution many different years...and I don't think I've ever made my way out of Genesis...
With everything that happened last year with my Aunt's passing, and my struggle with God (you can read my previous post "My Choice", I lost sight of my goal. I didn't start until a week ago when I remember what I truly wanted to do.
I am playing catch up right now. By the plan that I'm using, being that it is Feb 15, I should be in the middle of Deuteronomy, but since I only started a few days ago, I'm still in Genesis. However I've read double/triple what the plan requires, so I think at this rate I will be able to catch up easily.
So if you are ever bored and don't have anything to do, please remember me and lift me up in your prayers for devotion to my reading.
I had a New Year's resolution to read the bible all the way through. This has been my New Year's resolution many different years...and I don't think I've ever made my way out of Genesis...
With everything that happened last year with my Aunt's passing, and my struggle with God (you can read my previous post "My Choice", I lost sight of my goal. I didn't start until a week ago when I remember what I truly wanted to do.
I am playing catch up right now. By the plan that I'm using, being that it is Feb 15, I should be in the middle of Deuteronomy, but since I only started a few days ago, I'm still in Genesis. However I've read double/triple what the plan requires, so I think at this rate I will be able to catch up easily.
So if you are ever bored and don't have anything to do, please remember me and lift me up in your prayers for devotion to my reading.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Saturday, February 9, 2008
I made this.
It is just the size of a portable DVD player. Thats what I made it for actually. It's my grandmothers. This is my first time ever creating a purse...it turned out ok.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Morgan Freeman
I had to call At&t for our phone service and the man who took the call sounded EXACTLY like Morgan Freeman. I had to mention it at the end of the phone call and he said that he was told that often. It was CRAZY how much he sounded like him. I couldn't really focus on the questions that I had for him..lol
Monday, February 4, 2008
My Choice
Last weekend the kids and I went to
As the songs played in my car, I thought either my past was a waste, or it wasn’t. Either the God I worshiped was real, or He wasn’t. And then I decided that I couldn’t be on the fence any longer…I needed to make a choice and go with it. At this point I have made the choice to continue the walk down the narrow path…to see where it will take me.
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