Eco Challange Weekend Update - The Good, The Just OK, and The Ugly

It has been harder than I thought to really follow through with all of my grand ideas when I have two little ones (both fighting colds all weekend). Here are some of the good/ok/ugly ways we spent our first weekend of the challenge:

Good:

• Lots of local food (or from our garden) and ate at home all weekend (see my meatless monday post from yesterday)!
• A trip to the used baby store for second hand Halloween costumes
• An afternoon at the public pool one day and a afternoon in the yard getting the ground ready for bulb planting, watering the fall garden, swinging, and making dandelion chains :)

We have lots of weeds and no "daisies" but we managed to make a chain and pretend to be fairies anyway... everyone had grass stains...some on their pants, some on their face :)

Just OK

• Eco Cleaners (post coming soon - this one is probably borderline but I'm putting it in good for my book anyway)
• Taking food for lunch is still a struggle for me - I tried to eat local at a food cart. The good news is that I learned a lot of places are becoming bring your own container friendly so I have plan to bring a wide-mouth mason jar next week. I also will be signing up for Soup Cycle for next week with a co-worker and will have soup either for lunch or a yummy evening side dish (I'll have to blog about that later too)!

Ugly

• Driving. Unfortunately we did about our normal amount of driving this weekend. While it wasn't one of the things on my list of reductions for this challenge - I still had some grand idea that maybe somehow we we do less. I tried to consolidate trips - but I still feel bad about this one Boo!
• Target - EEK... I will admit now that I made a trip. It included much needed socks for my daughter which we could not find at the used consignment shop near home. Not so hot on my plan for us to reduce waste/garbage :(

I'm really proud though of all the things we already do every day, like cloth diaper, bring our own bags to every store (yes even Target), make our weekly (or bi-weekly) trip to the library to pick up and read lots of books, reduce TV time, and just focus on family time in general, and lots more. All in all it was a great weekend and even with some runny noses we had lots of fun and laughs (especially at the pool - I so wish I had a waterproof camera so I could have pictures of that trip).

We are still slowly working on an attic instillation project, our fall garden (just a couple of things), and keep talking and cooking as a family. We'll see what the week brings, with colds, cold weather, and more eco challenge efforts. Stay tuned!

If you want to support NWEI and our family during the challenge go here!