Domestic Dharma: water conservation and Marley & I take a drive

Happy Monday all! and Happy Spring too!
Does everyone have their future garden plans zooming around in their heads?
I know I do, but first we have to address the issue of keeping the neighborhood cats out of our little garden. I think we're just going to have to do a fence and then it's on to dreaming about red peppers and basil...kale...

Last week I finally made it into The Energy Outlet in Depot Town during business hours. They're run by the Clean Energy Coalition and have a cute store front to educate and sell energy conserving tools.

Their Mission:

'The Clean Energy Coalition is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting clean energy technologies as a way to create healthier, energy independent communitites.'

I went in to see if they sold low flow faucet aerators for our house, they did and I was able to get them for both of our older bathrooms and our kitchen sink.

The ones I replaced in the bathrooms were double the flow rate as these new ones (2.0 gal/min to 1.0 gal/min) and the kitchen was 2.2 gal/min to 1.5 gal/min. I love the kitchen aerator, it swivels around to reach all of the sink and has two different sprays.

I was looking for info on buying a new toilet (we're finishing our added half bath right now), Deb was full of good info and they have a line of toilets that they deem to be the best there to order. It's the Caroma line dual flushers, we're still chatting about our options. I also picked up tank banks for our two existing toilets to displace and reduce the amount of water used in each flush.

All of these items were easy to install by me and totalled $10.07.

Another cool find last week were Kleen Kanteens for $10/pretty much half price, at REI. I couldn't pass this up, so now we have two extra ones for back up ( I had already picked one up a couple months ago, but since they were still there...). I believe they're on sale because there's a new line of them out with a bunch of new colors, so the sale one here was just this color in the original style.

So Marley and I took a ride to see a veterinarian who practices alternative kitty medicine. We liked her and her other healer there too. We will be going back in a few days to have a titer done and hopefully more healing. The doc thinks that Marley has had a stroke, but should not continue to get any worse. He has some balance and strength issues with his hind legs. He is such a trooper and doesn't let it hinder him even though he takes some falls unfortunately. Here's my handsome Marley cat on the carride =)

He's such a good traveler, he has MI-NV and NV-MI trips under his belt.

We stopped at a rest area on the way home for lunch, it was a gorgeous sunny day. I packed a mandarin and leftover salad and Spaghetti with Almond Sauce and Vegetable Confetti from Delicious Living. Recipe is here and was in the February 10 magazine. This pasta was really good and I enjoyed the idea of shredded carrots in it and of course peas, I love them! We had this for dinner when my SIL stopped to visit after work and stayed for dinner with us, it was great to visit and catch up. We enjoyed cookies that she brough for dessert, I'll share in a future post.

Marley relaxing and enjoying the adventure

Recently on a cold morning I used leftover cooked brown rice to make a porridge for breakfast. The rice was leftover from dinner and was only cooked in water. I warmed it up on the stove in unsweetened almond milk while trying to mush it up some with the spoon. While it was warming I let some frozen raspberries thaw out on the counter and added them with a scoop of Naturally Nutty sunflower butter and a drizzle of honey. Delish!

Yes, I do use some raw honey in our diet. I enjoy it as a sweetener occasionally and choose to purchase from local responsible keepers who raise their bees organically. We get ours recently from Risks Apiary.

It's also great atop Ezekiel sprouted grain English muffins with homemade raw almond butter.

Here's the next jar in our stash shared from a kind guy that David works with whose family raises bees close to us and assures me that they are well cared for.