No-Fight Friday was a complete washout—put two competitive dancers on the verge of their first competitve weekend in 10 months (Tessa and her teammate and friend, Jodi), umpteen gear bags, costume cases, water bottles and makeup cases, a 14-year-old brother with a laptop intent on pestering the girls, and a 7-year-old who’ll mimic anything that looks like fun, and before the fights were taking place at 100km/h, I set Graydon up at a friend’s house instead. Riot averted, but No-Fight Friday was a flop. Better luck in a week?
Dance weekend
Tessa danced to two golds and two high silvers, in a modern solo, tap duet, jazz duet and small group jazz. She is a bit of an achiever, so the mood (more…)
After reading this post, don’t forget to enter our contest – you could win a new dishwasher. Plus, do you have your own story to tell? Send it to greenchallenge@canadianliving.com (no more than 300 words, please), and you could win one of 30 daily prizes.
For me, eating locally and with the seasons comes fairly easily – fruits and vegetables that are local and in season taste so much better than the imports that I’m willing to wait it out. The challenge comes when I consider giving up those imports that never come into season in this northern climate: tropical fruits are the big one for me. A life without mangoes, pineapple, bananas and kiwifruit seems a sad one indeed. But if you had to ask most Canadians what imported crop they’d be least likely to give up, it would have to be one of the world’s favourite caffeinated treats: tea, coffee or chocolate.
So how can you make your consumption of these goods easier on the environment to balance out all those food miles? Here are some suggestions. (more…)
After reading this post, don’t forget to enter our contest – you could win a new dishwasher. Plus, do you have your own story to tell? Send it to greenchallenge@canadianliving.com (no more than 300 words, please), and you could win one of 30 daily prizes.
Today’s post is by web editor Colleen Tully.
I hate being dependent on plastic, but especially those disposable plastic wraps and baggies designed for food storage and food waste. Every time I throw away some plastic wrap or a grocery bag I feel terrible. So this month I chose to exorcise the following demons from my life forever: plastic wrap, baggies, grocery bags, and garbage bags.
My husband and I are apartment-dwellers. He tends to be wrap-happy with food, having grown up in the country, where mice or insects would otherwise raid their pantry. I copied his habits and developed an addiction to Ziploc. I expected this experiment to be grossly difficult for us both, but I couldn’t have been more wrong! Here’s what we did: (more…)
No-fight Friday
Yes, we’re trying again. Keep the dream alive! There can be a Friday with no fighting. We had one once, we can have one again. Listening to Tessa and Graydon at this moment though, I’m not sure.
T.O. Kids’ Show
I know this is a question of geography, in that it applies only to people within driving or transit distance of the Toronto Congress Centre, but if you are, the T.O. Kids’ Show promises to be much more than a trade show. The idea behind the show, run by four mums, is one-stop family fun, where kids will be entertained instead of dragged from booth to booth. I’ll be trying to get there too.
Dance, dance, dance
The competition dance season makes its assault on our family this weekend. Hairspray hangs heavy (or light, if you believe the label) in the air as Tessa applies rhinestones to her eyes, listens to her music, texts and moves her feet to the beat. She’ll be dancing jazz, tap and contemporary. There will be a full report on Monday (and pictures, maybe).
The fish are looking tired
When do fish sleep? Ours are looking very, very tired.
Have a great weekend!
After reading this post, don’t forget to enter our contest – you could win a new dishwasher. Plus, do you have your own story to tell? Send it to greenchallenge@canadianliving.com (no more than 300 words, please), and you could win one of 30 daily prizes.
Today’s post is by executive editor Doug O’Neill.
I had an epiphany not long ago, and it goes something like this: “It’s a right pain in the back when you DON’T go green.” Just as global warming weighs heavily upon my brow each morning as I read the newspapers on the subway ride to work, I’ve become equally aware of the burden of excess paper weighing heavily upon my lower back as I schlep extra kilograms of paper products and documents in my briefcase and crammed into my backpack as I traipse about the city.
Take one recent Thursday, for instance. Not only did I have to bring back to work a pile of manuscripts that I had taken home the night before but I was also loaded up with mountains of handouts for the students in my journalism class at Ryerson. Ouch, my lower-back issues flared up something fierce. And that got me thinking: how do I lighten my load? The answer is simple: print on double-sides. Excellent. That actually (A) lightened my load but also, and more importantly on the global scale, (B) reduced my paper usage by half. A no-brainer. So that got me thinking: How else can I cut down on paper use at home and at work?
Here’s what I’ve come up with: (more…)
On Friday April 11th, Green Enterprise Toronto, Slow Food Toronto and Local Food Plus will host the first annual Brewers Plate Toronto at Berkeley Church - a gala dinner event that pairs locally made beers with gourmet dishes, all made from local ingredients. Brewers Plate intends to promote local independent brewers, chefs, food artisans and local growers.
The tickets for this event are worth $150.00 each. Proceed for this event benefit Green Enterprise Toronto (GET) a non-profit initiative founded in 2006 working to promote “a future in which diverse, self-reliant local living economies prosper in a sustainable manner to meet the needs of people, planet and profit”.
One lucky reader of the Foodie-file will win two tickets to Brewers Plate Toronto. After this long, harsh winter it might seem impossible to eat a gourmet meal that was prepared with local ingredients however the six participating restaurants and breweries intend to do just that. To win the two tickets (more…)
After reading this post, don’t forget to enter our contest – you could win a new dishwasher. Plus, do you have your own story to tell? Send it to greenchallenge@canadianliving.com (no more than 300 words, please), and you could win one of 30 daily prizes.
Looking for something fun to do this weekend? Consider taking time out from 8 to 9 pm on Saturday (local time) to celebrate Earth Hour by switching off your lights.
Earth Hour, if you haven’t heard of it before, started last year as an initiative in Sydney, Australia, and this year has spread around the globe, with Canadians being among its primary supporters. The concept is simple: turn off your lights for an hour to protest climate change. To show your support for Earth Hour, visit earthhour.org and sign up as a participant. (Be patient: their site is really slow due to heavy traffic.)
In Toronto, Nelly Furtado will be giving a free concert in Nathan Phillips Square, and many Canadian cities and businesses have pledged to turn the lights off during Earth Hour. (Please share any events in your community in the comments.) But if you don’t have an event to attend, here are a few suggestions on fun ways to celebrate. (more…)
In my little neighbourhood, there are no sidewalks and only single car driveways, which leads to sporadic street parking. We’re not really close to anything parking-worthy (theatres, restaurants, offices, even a corner store) so you pretty well know whose car is on the street. We met our original across-the-street neighbours 15 years ago when the man of the house plowed right into the car of a friend attending a party at our house.
Things have been very, very hectic/tense here of late (and it’s not just fish funerals), so when a serious knock came to the door yesterday, I figured Big Stuff was happening. It was Sara, our relatively new neighbour across the street. We’ve waved, but not actually visited. She’s very pretty, always chicly dressed and smiles a lot, but no smile today. And no cherry pie or casserole.
“I hit your car.” I thought, That’s OK, I’d love to hit something myself but there’s too much junk in the garage to get to the body bag. (more…)
After reading this post, don’t forget to enter our contest – you could win a new dishwasher. Plus, do you have your own story to tell? Send it to greenchallenge@canadianliving.com (no more than 300 words, please), and you could win one of 30 daily prizes.
As I mentioned a couple of days ago in my post about toothbrushes, most of my actual garbage is plastic packaging, and quite a bit of it comes from the bathroom. Sadly, I often end up throwing out bottles from lotions, cleansers, shampoos and other beauty products because the packaging isn’t recyclable. To be frank, a lot of the products we use in our bathrooms are an environmental disaster from start to finish. Here are some of the things I’m doing at home to clean up my act that you might want to try, too: (more…)
My sixteen-year-old daughter Tessa and I had one of those Mum-daughter ESP things last week. It happened when we were sitting in a local Thai restaurant and realized we would not be finishing the pad thai and shrimp chips (we went there specifically because we can’t finish the portions). We asked for containers, and piled the food into white styrofoam boxes. She looked up at me, I looked at her, and before I could say it, she said, “Couldn’t we just bring our own Rubbermaid container next time?”
You bet. We don’t go to restaurants nearly as much as I’d like to, and we never leave edible food behind, so it’s Rubbermaid all the way, no more styrofoam, or plastic boxes and lids to throw out. Good for the environment, and It Works for Me!
Skip on over to Shannon’s site for tons of tips, and if you want enviro tips in particular, check out Kat’s time-limited Green Living Blog entries right here on Canadian Living’s website! Enter the contest to win a dishwasher!
