upcycling fun

Upcycling is defined by wikipedia as "a component of sustainability in which waste materials are used to provide new products. It is generally a reinvestment in the environment. "Upcycling is the practice of taking something that is disposable or downcycled and transforming it into something of greater use and value." This process allows for the reduction of waste and virgin material use."

I had a beautiful old OLD dress in my closet. It is older than my Mother who is 50.
Sorta this style ( I really should have taken a picture before hand)

So since its been in my possession forever now, and I really have no use for it at all... I did the unthinkable and took the siccors to it and made yet another baby carrier. I had beautiful orange satin sitting around for the past two years, I finally found its purpose. I had enough of both materials to make myself a podaegi, my daughter for her dolls

and ofcourse Cinderella needed one too!

Teaching them to love Mother Nature, young!

So yesterday we took a biiiiiiiig long walk down the macnamara trail. http://www.ontarionature.org/network/groups_detail.php?ID=101ps_detail.php?ID=101 We found a lot of beautiful things, like mushrooms, chipmunks, acorns, streams. The kids had an absolute blast! When I was a wee little kid myself I remember my Mom doing the same. From the second I found out I was pregnant with my first, I knew that I would be teaching my children about the beauty in nature and how to respect it. Teaching them to get down low and seeing whats below there feet. They were amazed at all the amazing mushrooms and critters we came across!

So we do try to get out into local conservation parks as often as possible, but some days the weather doesnt nessesarily want to co operate. so I have taken extra effort to bring nature indoors as much as possible with the kids. this mostly comes in with indoor gardening. They love watching things grow. We have done the traditional beans in paper towel, but last year we had a lot of fun planting a pomegranate seed. We didnt really know if it would actually grow, but after a long germanation period it did! What a surprise to us to see it sprout up!

(Taken May 2008)

so as the days went by our little experiement began to grow and grow, the kids love coming to check on how BIG the pomegranate bush is getting. Ofcourse due to our climate, the bush cant be planted outside so its found a nice little home in our kitchen. We are treating it sorta like a bonsai, I gave it a trim today, it was starting to get reallly crazy. My daughter keeps asking if it will ever grow pomegranates, unfortunatly I dont think it will, but I tell her to be paitient and see if it wants to someday grow them and if not, we will enjoy the ones we buy at the market.

There is one particular branch that has always made me smile, knowing that it needed a swing on it. So tonight that is what we did, found an old broken truck of my sons, took off one of its wheels and made a tire swing with some old hemp twine and then made a little wire dude to sit on it. I can just see now how my childrens minds are going to go off into this little wire dudes world, does he swing when we are not in the kitchen? I can picture it now.

While out on our nature walk yesterday we came across a LOT of acorns that squirrels knocked out of the oaks above our heads. The kids had pockets full of them when we got home. I sudjested we put them outside for our local squirrels but keep one and see if we could get it to sprout as well.

So we have planted this little acorn in a shallow dish in hopes it will grow into a mighty oak, just in tiny size!

barefoot buttercup is moving!

Well the family and I are packin up and moving to southern ontario in October. We are very excited to move back to London after being away for 6 years. There is a lot of things we will ofcourse miss but I will definatly enjoy the perks of a bigger city, PLUS meeting lots of new babywearing crunchy moms like myself! There are lots there! So barefootbuttercup wont be taking orders till the end of October.

Zayden is getting so big, and lovin to be worn. We have been using the pods a lot latley, he really loves to be carried on my back, so he can see the world. He is a very curteous passenger too, only pulls my hair every once and a while! LOL

He just keeps growing and growing!

My little Turnip man. He's getting so big! Just shy of five months and already 19 lbs!!!!!!!
Its getting so hot outside too, so we have been doing rucksack carries and I have even started him in a pod. We had some left over unbleached cotton from my cloth diapering days (oh those days are over, so many diapers already in my home ) and we dyed it up! Like I needed another baby carrier in my house!

(hehehe) He seems to enjoy being on my back a lot now. So thats how we do things these days!!!

Earth Day festival 2009

What a blast my daughter and I had at the Earth Day festival today! Tons of people, lots of new things learned!!!!
(seen some really cute piggies too! :) That was the highlight of my day!) A terrific first time vendor experince! Cant wait to do it again!

Will be a vendor at the Earth Day celebration!

Just wanted to let everyone know Barefoot Buttercup will be a vendor at this years Earth Day Celebration downtown Arnprior Ontario, being held Saturday April 25th 2009, from 10-3pm on John Street! There will be a lot of other vendors, music and food so be sure to come on down!! Its going to be a wonderful earthy time!!!

Barefoot Buttercup has an official site!

Im so super pleased to announce Barefoot Buttercup has its own official spot on the web

http://www.barefootbuttercup.com/

Please feel free to check it out! It feels so nice to have a spot that everyone can see the slings and wraps Barefoot Buttercup makes! Its been a long time coming! :)