Advent wreath naturally

Christmas wreaths smell good and bring nature back into the home. They don’t have to be expensive either. I picked up some cut branches from a Christmas tree lot for free, placed some sea shells and pine cones on the branches and a candle in the middle. The only expense I had was the candle and the floral foam for fresh flower arrangements. You can get the floral foam from any craft store in your area. Happy 1st Advent!

Christmas gift-wrapping paper

Green Tip for Christmas:

During the Christmas season we pack up those beautiful presents and lay them under the tree. It is just a big waste to use gift-wrapping paper and filling up the landfill. Try using recycled paper. If recycled gift wrapping paper is too expensive, buy regular 100% box-wrapping paper. You can find it at Wal-Mart for less than $3 and it will go a long way.

Have the children color the paper with their own designs and instead of bows and ribbons, place a hand-made ornament on the package. The gift can also be decorated with fresh flowers and palm leaves, pine cones and small twigs.

Here is how you can make salt dough and make ornaments out of them.

Step1

Mix flour with salt and water in a deep bowl.

Step2

Knead it until it’s doughy.

Step3

Add food coloring or glitter.

Step4

Make shapes by hand or with cookie cutters.

Step5

Dry the objects in the oven at 200 degrees F for about 10 minutes. They can then be painted.

Ocean Thoughts Yoga Podcast Yoga Nidra

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Ocean Thoughts Yoga Podcast

I am very happy to tell you that the Podcast is coming soon!

Uses for Fall Leaves

Uses for Fall Leaves

"I am surprised to see how clean the lawns look during the fall. Fallen leaves carry 50 to 80 percent of the nutrients a tree extracts from the soil and air, including carbon, potassium, and phosphorus. So why waste them? The leaves keep the roots warm during the winter and make a wonderful natural mulch."

By Heike McDoniel

Fall leaves are routinely bagged and left at the curb. This is a tragic waste of a valuable resource. Below are a few methods of utilizing this treasure to better advantage.

Shread in Place for Lawn Feeding or Stockpiling

If the amount of leaves on the grass is not too deep you can just run them over with a mulching mower. Make a few passes over the area in different directions and set the deck high. Going slowly and keeping the blade very sharp also helps.

This reduces them to small chips that will readily decompose into the lawn and act as an organic fertilizer.

If there are huge volumes of of leaf you can collect some of the total to use in other ways detailed below.

Leaf Mold

Leaf Mold is the result of cold composting of leaves by a fungal process. The resultant material is a very rich soil additive that can not be beat.

• Rake the leaves onto a large tarp. You can move a surprisingly large pile of leaves in this way.
• Drag this to some out of the way corner and set up as large a wire mesh bin as you have room for. Just get some sturdy utility fencing mesh and wrap it into a circular bin and secure the ends with a couple of snap links.
• Fill the bin with the leaves wetting them down as you go.
• To retain moist conditions you can wrap the inside of the bin in 6 mil plastic sheeting and fashion a cover cut from a piece of old carpeting or just use a tarp.
• Next fall unclasp the bin and move it one side and cover over the now somewhat reduced original pile.
• Re-clasp the bin and reload it with this years crop of leaves.
• Do this one more time in year three.

You now can harvest and use the very well decomposed material from the original batch and will have created an ongoing system.        

Chip and Stockpile

If you have access to a chipper/shredder you can run them thru it and stockpile the now greatly reduced volume in lawn bags.

If you haven’t got a chipper you can collect them with the bag on your mower. Depending on the effectiveness or your mower this may need two or three passes to reduce the volume sufficiently. This works best if the leaves are very dry and crispy.

• Rake the leaves into long rows the width of your mower deck.
• Make a pass over the row.
• When the bag is full empty it out, again in a long, narrow row and run down the line again.

A couple of passes will reduce most leaves to the size of corn flakes.

These are an ideal "brown" or carbon ingredient for the compost pile. You can also just mulch your beds with this material as it is.  

Entered by Monte

www.faq.gardenweb.com

Most Important Foundation Food to the Human Health and Diet

Salt Lamps

A salt lamp is simply a chunk of mined salt that has been hollowed out to allow room for a light bulb or tiny candle. The light glows through the medium of the salt crystal, which can range in color from a dark salmon pink to a pale orange. Salt crystals for salt lamps are mined in Russia and central Europe as well as in the Himalayas. Salt lamps make attractive accent lights. Their main attraction, however, is that the heating of the salt causes the crystal to release negative ions (often called simply ‘ions’).

Negative ions have long been considered healthy; the sea air, mountain air and the air around swiftly running water is high in negative ions. Indoor air, recirculated air, and air around electronic equipment is very low in negative ions. Many office workers who suffer health complaints around fluorescent lighting and computer monitors report considerably less fatigue and headaches if the concentration of negative ions in the air is increased. Why negative ions may be beneficial is only partially understood.

It has been shown that negative ions in the air bind with airborne pollutants, making them heavier so that they fall to the ground, and therefore are unavailable to be inhaled. Many modern air purifiers – the so-called ‘ionic air cleaners’ – use this technique to provide cleaner indoor air for allergy sufferers. Some studies seem to indicate that an increase in negative ions in the air increases bloodflow to the brain, which would have the effect of improved concentration. The saltlamp is an attractive alternative to the utilitarian look of an air purifier.

Written by Jane Harmon