Garbage and Recycling

So, while I was writing on the weekends, Diego spent a lot of time with the kids outside. They have been swimming, weeding, eating homemade Popsicles, reading and going for long walks. Here, Diego is reading to the kids on our back deck. They are reading Where Does Garbage Go? An easy to understand book that describes what happens to garbage and how recycling can help reduce waste. My oldest couldn’t believe that we have landfills, “where we just store garbage under the ground!” She is totally right – it is absurd. The book also discusses how paper, aluminum, glass and plastic are recycled.

Out in the sticks where we live, we don’t even have city/county garbage pick up. A private, small company picks up our garbage. We are allowed a 25-gallon (I think, maybe it is 30) container. Ours is rarely full – usually about halfway. Mariposa County has a transfer station in the area that takes cardboard, glass, paper and plastic for recycling. Although, it doesn’t accept as much as my mom’s curbside recycling in San Jose, at least it is something. Every Monday, on our drive to the bookmobile, we drop off recycling at the transfer station. When we get to the Lake Don Pedro market and gas station, we recycle our beverage bottles (glass and plastic) for a few bucks at the new CRV recycling station there. Then, we hit the bookmobile, check out a few books, hear a story and bring home our books in our cloth bags.



I just heard about EnviroMom’s One Can a Month Challenge. The goal is to reduce your garbage to just one can per month. EnviroMom will be offering lots of tips on their blogs for reducing your garbage.

We already do a lot to reduce our waste and recycle everything we can. Recycling, using cloth diapers and pads, cloth grocery bags, using homemade cleaners and using cloth rags rather than paper towels to name a few. I even wash and re-use foil and Ziploc bags! Composting could be the answer to reducing our waste further. I need to look into worm composting more. I am worried that it may be too hot here (100 degrees during the summer) for the worms. I also worry about the heat and the smell of the compost. Oh, and the other thing – I don’t have the dough for a fancy compost bin. I’d love to hear some tips and suggestions to start composting.

Welcome Spring!

Well, if has felt like Spring around here for the past couple weeks, but now it is official! Here are a few pictures of what Spring looks like in the California foothills where we live. Recently, the wildflowers have really started blooming. Everyday, the children and I go on a morning walk to pick flowers and listen to the birds. It is amazing to notice the growth, changes and new appearances of the wildflowers each day. The oak trees are sprouting new leaves and the hillsides are a beautiful green.



During the weekends, we have been spending a lot of time working to reduce our pallets of landscape materials. Last Sunday, Diego built this beautiful shade and privacy structure outside our bedroom window. We planted some jasmine in the planter that he also built. I can’t wait for the jasmine to climb, bloom and fill our room with its beautiful fragrance.



Diego also built another planter for tall grassy plants to hide the underneath of the deck. We have two more planters to fill with dirt and plants– one near a deck corner. The other is underneath the laundry room next to our stone patio, which Diego also built with my Dad’s help. Diego will also build another jasmine shade structure for the planter underneath the laundry room. I never would have imagined when I married Diego that I would use his name and the word “built” so many times in one paragraph!

Friday Find: Five Finger Shoes

My husband, Diego, insisted that I use his new shoes as this week’s Friday Find. He saws these shoes in a store window on Las Olas in Fort Lauderdale a couple weeks ago and he had to have them. When he returned, he was so excited about these “shoes with spaces for each toe” that he quickly ordered a pair over the Internet.


Diego's Shoe Model

Vibram creates “Five Fingers” for “barefooting” to give you the “joy of going barefoot without leaving yourself exposed.” Vibram traditionally makes high quality soles for shoes and has now taken their sole technology and created a breakthrough minimalist shoe. The sole of “Five Fingers” is a thin rubber sole designed to protect your foot. The unique “Five Fingers” design with spaces for each individual toe allow your foot to be in its natural state therefore giving you more grip over terrain.



You can use these shoes to go “barefooting” just about everywhere – in your backyard, hiking, running (check out ChiRunning – another recent book purchase of ours) and watersports. The shoes are perfect for protecting your feet when you really want to be barefoot – like walking on a rocky beach.

According to Vibram, wearing “Five Fingers” shoes “deepens your connection to the earth and your natural environment.” The shoes help improve your balance and agility by making you more aware of your body. Wearing “Five Fingers” gives you the health benefits of walking barefoot while protecting your feet. Doctors tell new parents that it is important for children to be barefoot as much as possible. Children should wear flexible shoes to allow their foot to be close to a natural state. (Look for an upcoming Friday Find on a great shoe that does just that!) If “barefooting” is recommended for children, why shouldn’t adults?

Diego loves to be barefoot and would be barefoot all day if he could. “Five Fingers” are a perfect shoe for him. Cheers to “barefooting!”

From an Acorn

While gardening with the children today, we discovered these wonderful acorns sprouting into a tree! Malena was so excited to find this beauty of nature. In the foothills, we live surrounded by oak trees. I am slowly starting to learn about these amazing trees.

Oak trees can start producing acorns when they are twenty years old. (I wish people who want to cut down oaks to improve their view knew this!) The trees produce acorns in the fall, although not the same amount of production each year. Heavy acorn production may only occur every four to ten years. I heard that this year seemed to be a heavy acorn production. I believe it. The ground below all the oak trees around our house is completely covered in acorns. I have also heard that few very acorns actually become trees. I wish I could find the statistic somewhere, because it is pretty amazing. Probably hungry rodents and deer eat a lot of the acorns and seedlings.

Weekend Work

Last week, we had 12 pallets of landscaping material delivered from Rolleri Landscaping in Angels Camp, California. They have an amazing selection of rock from all over the country. The staff is excellent and extremely knowledgeable.





My wonderful parents drove from the Bay Area on Saturday to help us make a dent in our landscaping work. My Mom watched the kids all day while Diego, my Dad and I slaved in the yard. We finished our rock path that connects our back and front yard, added rock to the front ditch we have between our front yard and the road, added rock in-between stepping stones on back patio and added mulch to some of the flower beds. Fortunately, the weather was in-between storms, so we had a clear but cold day. On Sunday, we had quite a bit of hail.



This coming weekend, we will work on the other side of the house to finish it also. We still need to plant in our back yard once the weather warms.

Face Cupcakes

I just had to share the lovely sand cupcakes that Malena baked outside this past weekend. Our hillside backyard is scattered with oak trees, which provided the necessary cupcake embellishments!

Thankful for the Beach

As luck would have it, our Thanksgiving tradition is for my entire family to meet in Cayucos, California to celebrate for a few days. Cayucos is on the central coast, near San Luis Obispo and an easy meeting point for our families scattered across Northern and Southern California.

Here are a few photos of how we spent our Thanksgiving Vacation… flying kites with Papa (Grandpa), collecting shells with Vava (Grandma), drawing in the sand, building fairy houses out of beach treasures and best of all, going for long walks along the ocean with Papi (Diego).  

A Walk in Fall

On Sunday, we went hiking and mountain biking at New Melones Reservoir. This is Diego’s favorite local mountain biking spot. He drives there every weekend for his weekly mountain bike ride. Occasionally, the kids and I will accompany him and take a little walk/hike on a quiet trail near the lake. It was a beautiful California Fall day – sunny, a little crisp, a few leaves changing color, tons of acorns on the ground and a sparkly lake (extremely low – we need rain!).


We started out with Lautaro in the jogging stroller, “bici stroller” as the Malena calls it, and Malena walking in front. At the end, after meeting Diego, I was holding Lautaro while he nursed resting on the handle bar of bici stroller. Malena was on Diego’s back as he slowly rode his mountain bike. OK, not the safest modes of transportation, but you do what you have to when the kids start whining and you’re a mile away from the parking lot.