Cleaner Indoor Air with Houseplants

My favorite "green" website, Jetson Green, posted an article on NASA's report called "Interior Landscape Plants for Indoor Air Pollution Abatement." NASA ran various experiments using houseplants to remove chemicals from the air. The report is very interesting and reinforces the need for green space, indoors and outdoors.

Three of the houseplants mentioned are powerful at removing harmful chemicals from the air such as formaldehyde.  Now you may not think you have a lot of formaldehyde in your home but it is widely used in many applications such particle board, laminate counter tops, certain sanitary paper products such as paper towels and facial tissue, and especially carpet.

The plants mentioned are Money Plant, Mother-In-Law's Tongue and Areca Palm.

These three power plants are beautiful and so easy to keep alive. I'll be visiting my local florist to pick up a few of these beauties.

For the full article from Jetson Green along with the NASA report, click here.

And thank you to Yahoo Images and the sites that posted these photos!

New Game Table...from the 1950s

A couple months ago I showed you the buried treasure I bought from my friend's mom.  After some major elbow grease - cleaning the Naugahyde seats and polishing the chrome - my 1950s dinette is finally in the house.  It is perfect in our basement as our game table!  We tried it out tonight with a puzzle, a penguin puzzle, of course!

Check out the before and after pics!

Before

After

One of (many) things I love about this dinette are the seats - what you can't see.  Underneath the seats, there are original instructions on how to remove the seats, clean them, or order new.  Love that!!

I am also waiting on the rug to arrive that I ordered tonight.

Buried Treasure

A couple days ago a good friend of mine asked if I would be interested in some old furniture her mother had.  Her mom is thinking about downsizing so she was going to get rid of some stuff.  I love looking through other people's old stuff!  So I said sure.  And these little lovelies were in her basement.

Finding old furniture that I love is like finding buried treasure.  Sitting in someone's basement just waiting to be discovered.  Here are the red metal porch chairs and table on my porch.  They are perfect for watching my daughter ride her bike or reading a magazine.

She also had a vintage dinette from the 50s or 60s.  The chairs have the prettiest gray-green color.

The vintage dinette will be our new kitchen table (I think!).  I'm going to repaint our living room and dining room this week.  I'm jumping on the bandwagon and going with a nice light flannel gray.  Gray is all the rage right now.  Plus House Beautiful had a spread on west-facing rooms and what colors to use.  So I have the exact paint I want to use in mind.  My light yellow paint we have now turns into a "hot dog stand" yellow when the sun starts to set.  So we are going with gray.  So....more to come on the dinette once it makes it's way into our house.

Upcycle, Reuse, Repurpose - It All Works!

I got an email last week that reminded me how great second-hand furniture and other home decor can be. 

Hi Jenny,

New little gem we found this morning! Furniture sale @ behind burger king storage!

You can see in the picture the former, big box, particle board cabinet in the foreground next to the "new" solid wood piece!!  What great character and design.  I love it.

There are so many places to find other "little gems" just waiting for a new home!

• Habitat for Humanity ReStore outlets
• Public storage unit sales (advertised in newspaper)
• Goodwill (online too!)
• Salvation Army
• garage sales
• estate sales
• city junk week
• Ebay
• Etsy vintage
• Craigslist
• Host an upcycle party with friends (everyone brings a certain number of items - no junk - and you trade)

Check them out this weekend.  I know I will...

Last of Summer's Gifts

I went out to our garden today to pick the carrots.  They're finally ready!!  They take so long to grow but they are worth it.  I love that our daughter can go out, pull them out of the ground, wash them off with the hose and eat them.  There's something very satisfying and grounding about that.

I picked the last of the cherry tomatoes.  They were so good and we grew so many!  There were cucumbers but we picked all of those last week.  The plant is now dying off.  The peppers are still going strong - jalapenos and green bells.  I think it will take a cold snap to stop them, but then they will be the last of summer's gifts to us!!  Then it will be time to put the garden to bed.

So we will enjoy our fresh snacks while we can!

Jetson Green

I have to share one of my favorite websites with all of you.  Jetson Green is my source for everything green - eco-friendly design, sustainable building materials and products, book reviews and everything happening now in the world of environmentally friendly, green, eco, - whatever you want to call it - information! 

The net zero playhouse above would look great in our yard! 

Check out their site daily for new content.