Glacier

Here is a picture of Nat, Benjamin and Luc and Jacqueline in front of the receeding Glacier in Jasper National Park, Alberta.

Our boys/Nos garçons

For about a year and a half, Benjamin has been extremely passionate about marbles...  Here he is at the Vancouver Aquarium showing off one such treasure.  Depuis 1 an et demi Benjamin est passionné de billes...  Le voici en montrant un de ses trésors.

On est fier de Josué car il a été choisi pour participer dans 2 cérémonies de mariage cette année.  Il portait les bagues.  We are proud of our handsome Josué who was a ring bearer twice this summer!

Having Principles... a real cure to consumerism

Over the past few years as our family has been on this journey of becoming green, we have developed some serious principles....

And once these principles are in place and we stick to them, they are actually really good for our pocketbook- it is very hard to find things we can actually buy!

Here are some of the principles we've developed- a lot of them with the help of Adria Vasil's ecoholic- A fantastic read!!

1) Cotton is one of the plants that, if it's not grown organically, requires the most pesticides.  So for clothing we have a couple of choices:  organic cotton clothing or clothes made out of wool or recycled materials.

2) If we can't be certain the clothes being sold weren't made by children or people treated and paid poorly we don't buy them.

3) As much as possible we avoid plastic all together-  it has a limited capacity for being recycled, keeps putting the demand on the crazy oil and refining industry and eventually could end up taking 2000 years to biodegrade....  personally I would like my life not to leave a plastic legacy.

4) One can be proud of Canada for our lack of pollution, but if we are sourcing all our goods to China, then it is quite normal for them to have more air quality issues etc. than we do!  So as much as possible we try to buy products made in Canada, Europe where we hope the production, environmental standards are high ( you may or may not agree with me on this one- but in other words we tend to avoid made in China)

So all of these principles make walking through the mall relatively temptation free!!!  Here's an example:  H&M has some organic cotton clothing, but I won't buy from them because I can't be assured of good working conditions for the makers of their clothes!

Here are some stores we can buy from in good conscience:

Mountain Equipment Co-op (they have organic cotton and recycled polyester clothing and the labour conditions are verified by a 3rd party)
Hemp & Co  (on Vancouver Island) clothes made from organic cotton, hemp etc.  lots made in Canada.
American Apparel has some organic cotton clothing and everything is made in the USA

But the greenest store of all:  ANY thrift store!!!  So many things that aren't yet available in earth friendly materials we can buy from a thrift store and at least not be encouraging that industry - we are not in the supply and demand loop!

Hope you find this challenging and interesting!

Catherine

Green Kitchen Part 1

This past spring Nat and I got to the bottom of a leak in our kitchen.  It had been leaking for a long long time and so it rotted out our wall, floor and part of our cabinets...  Although no one jumps for joy at news of a leak (and the impending money that gets used fixing it!) we used the opportunity to do as green of a kitchen reno as we could.

The leak was coming from a plumbing vent cap that cracked, every time it rained water was trickling down along the pipe.

We did some good hard thinking and thought about the following things:

1) What will be good quality and look good (which will help with resale)?
2) What will return to nature (or biodegrade) when we are done with it (or when the next owners want to redo the kitchen again!)?
3) What will have low or no VOCs and give us good air quality in our home?

With these things in mind we decided to go as plastic-free as possible...

Here's what we decided on:

Floor:  Plain ceramic tile from Home Depot  (there was a recycled variety available a Rona but only in 2 colours, so we didn't go with it).  No VOC grout from a tile store.

Cabinets:  Solid wood and Plywood cabinets made from a local company:  Maple Ridge Woodcraft.  This meant no chipboard held together with glues that can offgas.

Countertop:  Ice stone- recycled glass and concrete surface.

Lighting:  6 potlights- LEDs with dimmers.  This thanks to our friend and Neighbour Peter- what a blessing!

Paint:  Benjamin Moore's Natura no Voc blue paint and Yolo Paints No voc cream paint.

Backsplash:  Hand-picked of the beach pebble sticks from Mosaic Stoneworks- where the owner assured us the workers were treated decently and paid decently too (we don't have 3rd party certification for this one- but the owner has been to see the conditions himself so we are trusting him on it!)

We were really blessed to have 2 of our neighbours help out: Peter & Ken.  Nat is really a lot handier after this experience!  We also redid our bathroom but I'll blog more about that later!

It was an expensive reno because we decided not to do a quick fix, but by January it will be mostly paid off!  So we have no regrets about the choices we made!    Here are some pictures!

Long time no blog...

It has been a really really long time (since March), but I forsee some time over the next few weeks to do some blogging especially about becoming Green!

Since March we have done a green kitchen reno (will post pictures) and we have equally lots more of regular life to post about like our trip to Ottawa and to the Rockies...

Not to mention I decided to homeschool Josué this year, so there is lots to say about that! 

And, once I am blogging from Nat's computer I can upload some pictures of the boys too.  Looking forward to getting back into this ;)

Catherine

Les garçons/The boys

 It has been an interesting winter!  We've been figuring out our future plans (no Switzerland for next year) working (and striking), leading the Young Adults (with highs and lows), and Nathanaël gone to France for a week and a half for his sister's wedding...

The best thing about this winter has been the boys.  More and more it is evident that time is short.  Josué turns 5 this summer, and yes will be heading to kindergarten (full-day) come september.  Benjamin is saying more and more and just this week turns 2!  He is starting to put two words together in mini sentences and his newest cutest word is "Viens!" (come) with an arm gesture to go along- wanting me to come.

 This picture is somehow "classic" of Benjamin.  He is our little monkey, who loves to throw things and get into "trouble".  He and Josué enjoy boy play:  rolling around on the ground, making forts and obstacle courses out of the couch cushions.

 Nous avons passé un hiver intéressant.  Nous avons avancé nos plans pour le futur (pas de Suisse pour l'année prochaine), nous avons travaillé et nous avons fait la grève, nous avons continué à diriger les jeunes adultes de notre église (avec des hauts et des bas) et Nathanaël est parti en France pour le mariage de sa soeur...

La meilleure chose de cet hiver c'était de passer du temps avec nos 2 garçons- nous comprenons comment le temps est court car Josué va bientôt commencer la maternelle.  Cette semaine Benjamin aura 2 ans et il commence à parler un peu plus- à mettre deux mots ensemble.  Tout neuf est 

 "Viens!" avec la geste du bras pour que je vienne.

We went to Mount Seymour for a session of night skiing.  It was a bit too tricky for Josué, so we'll try again next year, or the year after ;)
Nous sommes allés faire du ski- mais c'était un peu trop dur pour Josué.