No more dinner posts, but how about some plastic?

The other morning when I got on my blog as usual, scrolling down the blogs listed on my sidebar to see who had a new posting for me to read with my breakast, I noticed I had THREE new "followers." Huh, I thought. Wonder where they came from? Then I saw the post over at Moderate Means, and had my answer. : )

So, you newbies, welcome!

And I have bad news.

This is not an amazing food blog, if that is what you were expecting from Stacy's send-up. In fact, I WAS chronicling my dinners for a while there, to keep myself accountable to actually cook them. But just this past week I realized a) the plan had accomplished its goal, and I WAS cooking every night, and b) blogging my dinners was taking all my blogging time! So, I am not going to blog about food for at least a while. But I will write about it if a) I lapse back into bad dinner habits, or b) I come up with something post-worthy.

And last night the "no eating out" challenge was officially over, as I suggested to DH we order pizza, when I had been planning on making pizza from scratch and then completely forgot to start the dough in time, and had nothing I could whip up in a hurry. Whoops!

And it was really yummy. And, hey, at least we used a coupon, so we got one medium mushroom pizza for free with our decadent, full-price extra-large ricotta, pesto, tomato and artichoke heart pizza. Mmmmmmm. And we were supporting local business, so there!

Boy, I am good at the rationalization!

OK, enough about food. There are, as always, WAY too many things I would like to write about--including the full, amazing story of our new faucet!--and too little blogging time. I know, I know, you are hanging onto the edges of your seats. But I have not been able to write much in this blog this week because I have another, more pressing writing gig at the moment (imagine fanfare): Plastic in Our World

You see, we have been studying plastic as a homeschool project, and the more we learn, the more I really want to share it with others. I am NOT anti-plastic. The guy who made the documentary "Addicted to Plastic" said it well; let's not demonize plastic, but instead treat it as the amazingly versatile, valuable product that it is. It comes down to being wise in our understanding and use of it. We should not be making it just to throw away (as in all single-use applications, like disposable dinnerware). Some plastics are not as safe as we would like to think, and should not be used in some of the ways we routinely use them. And if everybody just made one small change in how we use plastic unwisely, it would add up big time.

So I am inviting anyone who is interested to join us in our learning! I set up the lessons for a two-week unit, and am adding a new lesson every day, but anyone interested can start it whenever they want, and do it as quickly or slowly as they want. The lessons are short, and they do not require any special materials. They can be done with kids of all ages, or you can just read them yourself for the sake of the information.

In fact, I would appreciate it if you, my faithful readers, did at least skim the pages to glean what you can. It seriously only takes a few minutes for each one--but you will be amazed at what you can learn in a few minutes, stuff that is fascinating and really important. What I have learned so far is already having a huge positive impact on our family! And applying what I am learning makes me feel like a better mom, and a better steward of the earth. And it may sound silly, but by creating these little lessons, I feel like I am doing my part to Make the World A Better Place for Us All!

So, there you go!

To my nieces Emily and Sarah: there might even be an award-winning science fair experiment for next year hiding in those pages and links. Not that you two need any help winning science project awards! : )

And to everyone: please feel free to pass this info around to anyone you see fit! I am thinking some elementary teachers might enjoy using some of it in their classrooms, as a starting point for building their own unit. I am NOT saying this is the best unit on plastic ever--I am learning as I go! But it is a case of a little bit of knowledge is better than none. : )

So, thanks for coming around, all of you readers. I appreciate you being part of my world.