my challenge to you

Our church, Stirling Mennonite, introduced a new initiative for Lent yesterday. It is called the Stirling Carbon Fast. During the 6 weeks of Lent, there are daily challenges that encourage us to reduce our carbon footprint and help us focus on climate change. I thought it would be fun to extend this challenge out to you. Are you up for a challenge? It is not meant to be scary or time consuming. Just easy things that we all can do to make a difference.
Here we go...

Week 1 - Monday, March 2nd
Remove on light bulb from your home and live without it for the next 40 days. This will decrease your energy usage and remind you of what you are doing during Lent.

Andrew and I brainstormed about this one this morning. We both struggled. Honestly, we either have really poor lighting as it is (eg. family room) or we have already taken out extra lightbulbs from overhead light fixtures (eg. bedroom - we have two overhead lights. One has zero bulbs and one has only one lightbulb). So, I think it will have to be in the kitchen that we will remove one of our lights overhead. And I know, the one that is burned out and hasn't been changed yet does not count.

Since I don't have a photo to go along with this post, I thought I would include my photo for today. This is a picture of Abigail's lunch today. You may be wondering what the cool lunch container is all about. I purchased this cute Bento style container in the fall after reading an article about all the bad plastics that our food is stored in. A company from the States, Laptop lunches make these super cute containers made out of the safe kind of plastic. It fits perfectly in Abigail's existing zippered lunch container and allows me to fit a small ice pack on top of the box when it is closed. What I like about it is everything has its own place. The container with the oranges is the only section that has a lid, aside from the little pink dip container. The thought behind this is that there is usually only one "wet" item in a lunch. Everything else stays put when the whole container is closed. I had been sending Abigail with a normal Thermos, but then realized that that too was plastic, so I recently went to a local yoga place, Blue Skies Yoga and bought the small stainless steel thermos. You can check out the products from Blue Skies Yoga ecostore here.
They definitely have the best prices that I have seen.

I know the lighting is poor, so this is what is in Abigail's lunch today. Cut up oranges, hard boiled eggs, carrots with ranch dip (in the pink container), maple scone and two mint chocolate cookies (I made both on Saturday). I'll post the cookie recipe this week. I don't know if you can see it, but on the side there is a fork and spoon that come with the kit.