SMOOTHIES! + Day Two

Following on from yesterdays smoothie post, here is today's!

Day Two -

 

Recipe - In this one I put:

• 2 Handfuls of strawberries
• 2 Bananas
• 1 Handful of red grapes
• 1 Handful of white grapes
• A splash of concentrate summer fruits

Now... zuzz it up and enjoy! :)

SMOOTHIES! + Day One

We all love a good smoothie... right?

They are healthy, delicious, versatile, easy, relatively cheap, and so filling.

I'm going to try and make a different smoothie everyday, I'll post the ingredients of what I put in them and photos just in case you wanted to make them yourself.

For my smootie making I use NutriBullet but you don't have to, you can use any smoothie maker, juicer, or manual food processor you have handy.

So...

Day One -

In these I put:

• 2 Bananas
• 2 Negtrines
• 2 Handfuls of white grapes
• A slurp of concentrate summer fruits squash

And then zuzz it up! That's it! Easy Peasy.

Enjoy Smoothying :)

Food Dehydration

Make Your Own Dried Food

We all love dried food, whether it be fruit, veg, to eat or just for decorations. And making your own is always more satisfying than just buying from a shop. Plus you know where it has come from and what has been on your food.

Personally, I love to make my own raisins. My mum purchased a dehydrator a few months ago and I can honestly say I love it!

Dehydrators are usually about £30-£40 but they do range in price considerably. I will post some links at the bottom to ones that I think are good prices.

So, without further ado, here is how to on homemade raisins:

What are the advantages of drying your own?

Well, for a start, it is always more satisfying when you make your own things, but there are also advantages to the environment as well; such as:

1. your food/decorations have not been sprayed with extra pesticides, preservatives or cleaning materials
2. you know where your food/decorations have come from
3. they do not come in single-use plastic packages, which would no doubt be thrown into the bin and never seen again
4. your food/decorations have travelled less miles, yes you picked up your ingredients from the super market, but your end product didn't have to travel miles and miles to reach its final destination, which is of course, better for the planet.
5. you can make as much or as little as you like, and only you have control over how it turns out at the end.
6. you are using up things that might have been thrown away and wasted (using up fruit/veg that has slightly past its edible point to make decorations or drying out grapes that have gone a bit too squishy to consume)

What you will need:

• Dehydrator
• Fruit/Veg you want to dry out
• Some way of preparing you fruit/veg (cutting board, knife etc)

Step By Step - dehydrator

1. Make sure your food is clean
2. Prepare your food/decorations
3. Place them in your dehydrator and set for a minimum of 6 hours (different materials will take longer time to dry out but 6 hours is a good starting point)
4. Sit back and relax

You Can Also Dehydrate Things In An Oven, Here's How:

1. use the same preparation method you would have used if you were using a dehydrator
2. set the oven to 70°C (do not go any higher because then your produce would be baked rather than dried)
3. make sure there is good ventilation in your oven (put on the fan setting or keep the oven door slightly open)
4. keep checking your produce every couple of hours

If you want your produce to be crispy then you will need to leave them to dry out more than if you wanted them slightly chewy

Some Useful Sites:

The Kitchen

WikiHow To Dry Foods

Places to get Dehydrators:

Lakeland

UK Juicers

Amazon

Excalibur

Ebay

All About Ecosia

Ecosia - What It's All About

So, on my list of Other Eco Blogs/Websites I mention Ecosia, when that link is clicked it will take you to a search engine. A bit like Google or Bing, but Ecosia is different. They donate 80% of their profit to planting trees. So far over 4,300,000 trees have been planted all over the world and there are over 2,000,000 users.

Just like any other search engine, Ecosia makes it's profits from adverts, they get paid for every time someone clicks on an advert, just like any other search engine. 80% of this goes to planting trees, and by 2020 the Ecosia team are hoping to be able to plant 1,000,000,000 trees!

Most of the trees being planted are across the equator and the Ecosia team are helping to rebuild 'the great green wall'. To find out more about 'the great green wall' click here and here

A link to their website is here

How to make Ecosia your default search engine:

1. Open up a new window/tab in your current default search engine
2. Search 'Ecosia' and click on the top result in your search
3. There should be a '...' in the top right hand corner, however the place of this may vary for each person
4. Click on the '...'
5. Click on 'settings'
6. Scroll down to 'advanced settings'
7. Scroll down until you find your current default browser
8. There should be an arrow pointing down next to your current browser
9. Click on the arrow
10. Scroll down until you can find 'Ecosia'
11. Click on it
12. Save your settings

Happy Planting!

The Washed Ashore Project

The Washed Ashore Project - Website

  


"The Washed Ashore Project is a non-profit, community-based organization with a mission of educating and creating awareness about marine debris and plastic pollution through art. Washed Ashore is a project of The Artula Insitute for Arts & Environmental Education, whose mission is to provide opportunities to express and teach environmental issues through the arts.

Under the leadership of Angela Haseltine Pozzi, community members of all ages work together to clean up out beaches and process the debris into art supplies to construct giant sculptures of the sea life most affected by plastic pollution. This has resulted in thousands of pounds of debris removed from local beaches and turned into works of art. These unique art pieces are part of a traveling exhibition that includes educational signage and programs that encourage reducing, refusing and reusing, repurposing and recycling.

As lead artist, Angela Haseltine Pozzi orchestrates the construction of these towering, aesthetically striking sculptures of marine life with the assistance of many volunteers and a dedicated staff. Angela has been an exhibiting artist and educator for more than 30 years and now chooses to use at as a powerful tool to encourage community and environmental action about her true passing...cleaning up the world's oceans.

90% of the debris we collect is petroleum-based: plastic items, nylon ropes and net. We are able to use 98% of this trash to create sculptures, including a walk-through replica of an ocean gyre, a Styrofoam coral reef, Henry the fish, a plastic bottle sea jelly, an oil-spill replica , and a musical sea star (tuned to an e-flat scale!). An interdisciplinary environmental arts curriculum and feature-lengeth documentary are in progress to accompany this work."

Since Washed Ashore's launch in 2010:

• 12,000+ volunteers participated
• 10,000+ school students involved
• Over 65 sculptures have been built
• Over 17 tons of debris processed
• 300+ miles of coastline beach debris used
• Over 15 million people will see their exhibits
• 95% of debris is petroleum-based
• They're still using 98% of debris collected

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT WASHED ASHORE - click here

DID YOU KNOW?

About 300 million lbs of plastic is produced each year globally - less than 10% of this is recycled!

The most common things to be found in the sea are:

Single-use plastic bags

Toothbrushes

Fishing equipment

Single-use water bottles

Toys

Knowing all this and having projects like Washed Ashore out there, for everyone to learn from and be involved in, how can we sit here and tell ourselves that we will not make a difference? How can we continue with our lives knowing that we are destroying our planet? And why is it okay for us to cast huge issue aside and dismiss it as an over exaggeration?

It is estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. And we are going to let this happen?

This is not acceptable.

This is not okay.

This must be changed.

Refuse single-use plastic. Reuse as much as you possibly can. Recycle everything you can think of and in any way you can imagine.

Help your planet. Protect your world.

                                      

My Bucket List

Here is a list of all the things I want to do in my lifetime! Once I have done them I will highlight them...

• Walk the American Discovery Trail
• Travel to Germany
• Volunteer in Africa
• Complete my Pinterest boards
• Write a travel journal
• Buy a polaroid camera
• Go on a banana boat
• Sponsor a snow leopard
• Take my mum on a luxury spa day
• Raise more than £10,000 for charities
• Make honeycomb and mint ice cream
• Write an article for a newspaper
• Fall in love
• Overcome my illnesses
• Climb a mountain
• Read 'Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy'
• Own my own house
• Go to India
• Swim with sharks
• Get a job I love
• Drum in a band

As I find things I will add them.

Other Eco Blogs/Websites

It's always good to have more than one place to source information, opinions and similar posts from, and of course, I don't cover everything there is to know about the environment or similar topics.

 Here are some other websites/blogs which I highly recommend...

• The Environmental Blog
• Eco Street
• TheOilDrum
• Planet VIPs
• The Washed Ashore Project
• Ecosia
• Free Rice

I will be adding to this list as I find more blogs and websites to put on, please feel free to comment any that you think would make a good contribution and I'll make sure to check them out.

Bug Hotel - Step By Step

In need of a new way to spice up your garden? Have kids that are bored out of their brains this holidays? Looking for some way to help the environment easily, quickly and cheaply? Well then building your very own Bug Hotel could be perfect for you.

Here is a guide on how to build this fun construction in 3 easy steps:

Step 1 -

Okay, first of all you need your materials...

Bug hotels are usually built out of old bricks, builders pallets, stones, planks of wood, tiles and any other derelict building materials. These things are often broken or not fit for any other purpose. So, building a bug hotel is the perfect way to recycle these things that would usually be thrown away.

Where to get your materials:

If you don't have anything you deem suitable lying around your house or garden then the best place to look is your local DIY shop, junk yard, or builders yard around where you live, often they have things they cannot sell because they are damaged or left over from big shipments that they were just about to trash also check if anyone in your neighbourhood is doing a building project because they might have some bits and pieces you could use or ask on your local freecycle. Waste not want not and all that.

Here are the things that I used to build my Bug Hotel.

You've got the shell of your Bug Hotel, now time to fill it...

To fill your bug hotel you could use:

• sticks
• stones
• small pieces of wood
• pinecones
• leaves
• straw
• pebbles
• branches
• small flowers
• hollow stems
• roof tiles
• bricks with hole in
• compost/soil
• cardboard
• string

You can also use old plastic bottles - cut off the top and bottom so that it becomes and hollow plastic sleeve and stuff with the above materials then insert into your bug hotel. This gives your bug hotel a different look and can also give the your insect guests more shelter.

Step 2 -

Making your frame...

Flatten the ground where your are going to build your bug hotel. Then, from what your have collected, decide which parts would make the best frame. Bug hotels come in all shapes and sizes so it really doesn't matter how big you build it. Go with whatever you want. Your frame should be strong enough to hold the weight of a few bricks and have lots of space in between it to stuff with all your goodies.

When you have made your frame, you need to secure it. You don't want it to blow over in a gust of wind. You can secure your frame with cable ties, string, rope, nails, screws, basically anything that will hold your frame in place.

I secured my frame work with cable ties because I had them lying around and they were perfect for holding the thinner sticks together. (I hammered the thinner slats of wood into the ground so they would be stronger)

My slats of wood are held up and apart from each other with bricks so they are sturdy and hold the slats in place, there is also lots of space between the slats for the 'filling' of my bug hotel.

Step 3 -

Filling your bug hotel...

Now for the fun part! You can stuff your bug hotel with as much or as little as you like and arrange it in any order. Remember to leave lots of tiny holes, nooks and crannies for you creepy-crawlies to snuggle into. Add in any plastic bottle sleeves you have made and any other bits and pieces you have collected. This is when the bricks with holes in come in handy too and you can stuff these holes with things as well.

It is important - to make sure that you do not cram your bug hotel too tight because the insects do need space to move around and it is also essential to make sure your but hotel is well covered and protected. Your bugs need lots and lots of shelter. Whether that being putting a plank of wood or tile slab on the top to keep rain water our or covering the sides with planks of wood and other things.

Your bug hotel should now be taking shape. I put a wooden pallet on the front of mine to make the overall look tidier and to make sure the insides didn't fall out.

If any of the things you have filled your bug hotel with are too long to fit then make sure to trim them down to size to make your bug hotel look better and to make it safer if anyone walks past.

The finishing touches...

Your bug hotel is nearly complete but here are a couple more things to do to make it even better:

• make sure to top up your bug hotel as birds take twigs and things fall out, you want to keep it full of stuff for your bugs to enjoy
• it is a good idea to keep your 'fillings' in sections so the overall look is better, i.e. keep all pinecones in one section, all twigs in another etc
• you can make a sign out of any left over materials to give your bug hotel some pazzazz!

Some online inspiration...

  You can use old birdboxes, deep photo frames and even tires if you wanted to be really creative with your bug hotel building!

20 Bathrooms That Don't Give A F*ck About What's Between Your Legs

The LGBT+ community has been a top story for as long as I can remember, from legalised gay marriages to the first transgender kid coming out at my school. It's a growing part of society and people's everyday lives. We are becoming more aware, more accepting, more open minded.

The latest stab at the LGBT+ community is bathrooms and gender identity, with transgender and other gender identity groups being called 'mentally retarded' and 'abominations' for simple things like wanting to use the bathroom.

Here are 20 Bathrooms That Don't Give A F*ck About What's Between Your Legs.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/skarlan/20-bathrooms-that-dont-give-a-fuck-about-whats-between-your?utm_term=.hsZPw8al1#.qhDzmdo3K

A Small Introduction...

Hello,

My name is Tobias Jefferson, and I am on a mission to save the world, or help as much of it as I can with my limited time.

I made this blog to post useful tips, tricks, life hacks and my views on a wide range of topics. This is place for everyone, of any age, and interested in any thing. I'll try and cover as much as possible, and please, if you come up with an idea that you would like me to post about, then feel free to email me at tobiastalks@outlook.com. Enjoy!