Get BOTH of my newest kits, Tweet and Deep in the Forest for just $5.00! That’s a special sale I’m running ONLY AT SHOPJMT through Monday, September 22nd. In addition, I put up 2 other 2 Kit Combos and they’re also on sale for $5 for each pair:

I’ll be back next week once I get Tweet & Deep in the Forest up at SBB and will post another e-tip. I’ve been sick this past week & now my youngest DD is also getting sick, so I think I’m in for a busy weekend to top off a busy week.  Happy Scrapping!

I’ve also got a system set up now for grocery shopping & honestly, being prepared is what I need. Because if I review the sales ads, make up my list & then go shopping, I’ll remember the reusable bags. Otherwise, when I do a spur of the moment trip, besides spending more money, I usually forget my bags, too.

Now, how about a new tip? This one is about your car & gas. Until recently, I’ve totally been a violator here. Topping off your tank when you fill up with gas - Don’t do it. I never understood this. I mean, if I’m careful, how can it hurt, right? Why not just top it off to get that extra little bit into my tank?

Well, gosh, check this out, straight from the EPA. Below I’ve summarized their reasons (in bold) & then added my commentary.

Topping off the gas tank can result in your paying for gasoline that is fed back into the station’s tanks because your gas tank is full. Although I don’t *think* we live in an area that uses vapor recovery on the gas lines (I remember years ago seeing them, but lately they’re not on our pumps), I had no idea that some gas could get fed back into the line.

Gasoline vapors are harmful to breathe. Well, that’s a given, I guess.

You need extra room in your gas tank to allow the gasoline to expand. I had no idea this was the case. I actually had my check engine light come on for a few months & the final diagnosis was that something was wrong with my vapor recovery system or exhaust something or other. Anyway, initially one shop told me it was my gas cap (isn’t that, like, a standard thing with bad auto shops? “Oh, your check engine light is on? We’ll diagnose that for $85,” and then the answer is always, “It’s your gas cap.” So after getting a new gas cap, it was still on & finally we took it to another shop & they found a crack in a hose somewhere underneath the car. I wonder if me topping off the gas caused this.

Topping off your gas tank may foul the station’s vapor recovery system. Again, I had no idea that it could cause ill effects like this!

So the bottom line is, when the gas pump clicks off, just let it be. Because even if you don’t think you’re causing any troubles, the vapors could be wreaking havoc on the air around you.

Finally, don’t forget about the layout challenge I posted about below! Get your entries in to win!

Go Green - it’s the new black!

I’ve got a little layout challenge for you & one random winner will get a $10 coupon to my store at SBE. 2 other random winners will get a $3 coupon to my store at SBE. EVERYONE who participates will receive a $5 coupon to my personal store at ShopJMT. The layout must be created with my new kit, Green: The New Black and posted in the gallery at SBE. So, buy the kit for $3.74 and then get a $5 coupon in return. PLUS, have a chance to win more. Not bad, huh?

Here are the specifics:

1. Purchase my new kit, Green: The New Black at SBE before Saturday, 9-13-08. It’s “In the Spotlight” through then, so you’ll get it for just $3.74, which is 25% off the retail price. If you’ve received this this past week as part of my pre-release promotion, then you’re in luck! No need to re-purchase.

2. Create a layout and post it in this gallery here. The layout must contain primarily products from this kit (but you are free to add other elements or papers from other kits).

3. Come back here to THIS VERY BLOG POST and post a comment with your layout link in it. Layout must be completed and comment posted by Sunday, 9-14-08, 11:59pm EST. (Note - if you can’t get comments to work, send me an email at blogmail “at” jmt-art.com. I do have to moderate comments, but so far haven’t gotten any, so I wonder if my comments aren’t working.)

4. Next Monday, 9-15-08, I will email all the participants with a $5 coupon to my store at ShopJMT, as well as pick the 3 random winners.

That’s it. Get creative & have fun with this kit. I know it’s got great potential for so many layouts & let’s see what you can do with it!

Go Green - it’s the new black!

Although I’ve been an environmentalist for years now, it seems that lately “going green” is very trendy. So why not go green with the digital scrapbook kit? Included are 6 green and brown papers - 2 solid greens, 2 solid browns and 2 patterned (recycled and solar power). Each is grungy and dirty. Elements include 4 different trees (not all shown in preview) and the trees come with separate tree trunks, 7 different leaves and then 4 pre-assembled trees. There are 3 birds (1 owl, a robin and a bluebird), a bunch of paper pieced grass, 3 sproingy strips, a sun, 3 epoxy buttons, 2 flowers (in 2 versions each), a postage stamp frame, a staple, a journaling label and some word art pieces. Word art includes a unique “Remember you Roots” colored stamp, a “Fragile” earth, a “Fragile” label, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, “Go Green” and “The New Black”. Finally, there are 2 hemp pieces - one plain and one adorned with beads that spell, “play.” Finally, there is an epoxy button lowercase alpha with numbers and {}!&,.?-* also included.

Everything has been created at 300ppi. Papers are 12×12. Some elements do contain drop shadows, as many are pre-assembled and require internal shadowing for realism. Special thanks to Atomic Cupcake.

Some additional previews:

Go and pick this up now. It’ll be at this price (which is 25% off) through Saturday. Tomorrow I’ll be revealing the details of a layout challenge and you’ll need this kit for it. You’ll have a chance to win a $10 coupon to my store at SBE with some second-chance prizes for $3 coupons to my store at SBE.

I think they all turned out fabulous, don’t you?! Kudos to Jeannie (first 2), Debbie, Aly & Terri for such fab layouts! I’m amazed that most of them turned out to be related to some of my environmental posts! It’s great that not only can I make a kit being inspired by the environment, but that you guys can then go & create layouts with the same inspiration.  I think the kit definitely lends itself to that, but as you can see in Terri’s layout, there are so many other uses for it, too!

Stay tuned tomorrow when the kit is released, because if you have it already or pick it up this week, I’ll give you the chance to win a $10 coupon to my store at SBE. I’ll give you all the details about that tomorrow!

Of course the “green” answer to paper or plastic would be, “neither.” Reusable bags are always better. Lately I see canvas or other reusable bags popping up everywhere. Almost every grocery store has them, I’ve seen them at CVS and Target, too. I purchased a few at Wegman’s a few months ago:

You know what my biggest problem with these bags is, though? I always forget them. I’m trying really hard now to organize my shopping trips better - clip coupons, read the sales flyers and make sure I’ve got everything in order before I shop, because if I don’t, I either a)forget the bags or b)shop on a whim and end up spending more money. So by planning and making sure I remember my bags, it’s actually saving me money.

What if you don’t have reusable bags? Which IS better - paper OR plastic? You’d think paper, right? Well, not necessarily. Paper makes a pretty big environmental (or ecological?) footprint. The amount of trees it takes to create the bags is almost unfathomable. This source says a 15-year old tree makes 700 bags. I have no idea how reliable that is, but here, MSNBC says to make all the paper bags we use each year, it takes 14 million trees. Wow, that’s a lot of trees. Add the actual amount of trees being used to the amount of fuel needed to run the plants to produce the bags, chemicals, etc. and you’re talking some major air pollution. (A whopping 70% more than plastic, according to MSNBC.) OTHO, plastic is not much better. Again, MSNBC says it takes 12 million barrels of oil to produce the plastic bags we use each year. And they amount to 4 times the amount of solid waste as paper. And the plastic never decomposes in a landfill. Biodegradable plastic bags would be nice, but I just checked my stash of plastic bags and not one of them says it’s biodegradable.

The whole thought of solid waste to me is just daunting. The amount of packaging used in everything anymore is sickening to me. I hate it when we get something new & I see all this plastic and cardboard, packing peanuts, plastic ties, large boxes used to shop a small battery…it just makes me so angry that things have to be that packaged. And that’s not even considering food packaging. I already admitted yesterday that I run a disposable kitchen, using rolls and rolls of paper towels, individual servings of crackers and cookies…gosh, I’m just adding to the mounds of trash out there, aren’t I? It’s depressing to think about. Before my last job as an environmental specialist, I worked as a waste disposal coordinator for both hazardous and non-hazardous waste in industry, so I saw the amounts of waste generated each year by industries and it’s amazing to me how much of the general plant trash is packaging waste.

Of course packaging is probably a topic for another blog post completely, as you can see I’ve rambled on about it enough already.

So that I don’t end this blog entry on a really depressing note, and since we’re talking about the grocery store, I wanted to share with you an amazing product find I’ve recently discovered. This is completely NOT environmentally-related, but I love this stuff so much, I had to share. For some reason, I can’t find this in every grocery store, but I did find it at one of the several in our area:

I simply love this stuff I am a sucker for sour things. I love a good, tart lemonade. I LOVE Rita’s tart water ices (green apple, lemon, their old lime & even their new Key Lime). I had this stuff at my brother’s house a few months ago & just had to find it here. If you like the tart stuff, you’ll love this.

Oh, yeah, and another layout share. This is another one from our Pocono trip this summer and another one of my DS, Ty:

I used a template by Jen Caputo, but everything else is by me. The red ribbon wrap, bow and crown are from Cosmic Bowl at SBE. The little flower in the bottom corner is from He Loves Me at SBE and everything else is from my new kit, Green: The New Black, coming to SBE on Sunday!

That’s it for today! Happy Scrapping!

Why is it so bad to just dispose of a computer in your trash? Well, besides the fact that it’ll just sit in the landfill, along with lots of other bulky stuff, computers have all sorts of nasty stuff in them that are hazardous to the earth. There’s lead - lots of it, in a CRT (the monitor). There’s cadmium in rechargable batteries used in laptops. Those are both heavy metals which, when put in a landfill, will leach into groundwater. Surely you’ve heard of all the toy recalls because of toys being made with lead paint - well, that lead from our computers getting into the groundwater is just as bad. You’ve got a flat panel montitor, you say? Well, there’s mercury in those - another heavy metal.

So what can you do? Well, you could donate old computers to charities. I totally forget how I found the one near me - I think it was listed in the newspaper or something, but you could try calling your local government & asking if they have any places that accept donations of old computers (or e-waste, it’s sometimes called). Now, I haven’t checked out this site much very recently, but here is a link to a site that offers info on finding a place to donate your computer (or cell phones, printers, any electronics). It’s called Earth 911.

How about recycling? Instead of donating, there are places that actually recycle computers & electronics. The EPA has a helpful little page here that can help you find a recycler in your area. As an example, I’ll use my own EPA Region III. I’m in PA and when I follow the links, I get to this page. It tells me county by county how to recycle my e-waste. And, it even lists Electronic Discards Collection Events. How cool is that? I can find out exactly when they’re having an electronic discards drive & bring my stuff right to them.

Is there anything else I can do? Yeah, you could try to buy green. There’s that word again - “green.” Look for products that claim to have fewer toxic parts - less mercury, less lead. Maybe ones that use less packaging or use recycled materials in the make-up of the computer. This is kind of hard for us as consumers because we really rely on the computer companies to be honest with us & to tell you the truth, when picking out a computer, there is so much to look for, trying to find “green” computers may be difficult. You can always start with ones that are energy efficient. There’s the “Energy Star” rating to look for. That tells you that it’s energy efficient. That’s a good start.

Finally, EPA has this little partnership thing going called Plug-In to eCycling.

EPA has partnered up with lots of retailers and manufacturers to help out us consumers and enable us to e-cycle. You may have seen this - I know I have with my HP printer ink. When I buy new ink, there’s always info there on how to return the old ink cartridges so they can recycle them. (I don’t do that, though…I donate all my used ink cartridges to my kids’ school who then sends them all back to HP and they actually get money for it - even better, right?)

So there you have it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. That’s enough info to last you a lifetime, huh? Recycle, e-cycle, freecycle…seems “cycle” is the hot word this week. On that note, let me first say that I’ve emailed a few people who have contacted me about yesterday’s entry and given out a few free kits to those that promised layouts. So have a look in the galleries this week for some layouts with the new kit, Green: The New Black coming to SBE on Sunday. Here is a layout I did with the kit:

(Credits include other items, too. Everything is by me & in addition to the new “Green” kit coming to SBE, I’ve used the following: Flair from Jelly Buttons by me at SBB, Dotted ribbon from Just4Girls by me at SBE. And I modified a “Smarties” template by Teresa Ferguson.)

Oh, and a little “it’s a small world” update on my Freecycle post. After I posted a few times on my local Freecycle Yahoo Group, I got an email from one of the mods. She was a childhood friend of mine & lived down the street from me all my life. How’s that for weird? So Freecycle does more than help you recycle, it helps you touch base with old friends, LOL!

That’s it for today! Happy e-cycling!

So, this is my vow - I’m going to try to be more “green” when it comes to my kids lunches. Here is my tip for the day:

Bento lunches - these are so cool. Bento is a single-portion take out meal or home-packed meal common in Japan. There are lots of sites out there that sell Bento containers & one I’ve been really looking at lately is LaptopLunches.com. The idea is that you have everything all together in one main container & there are no plastic bags. This is what one of the laptop lunch sets looks like:

There are some other really cool looking Bento boxes & stuff, but I don’t even want to go there. 1. I’m afraid my kids will get too caught up in the cuteness & then not eat. 2. I don’t plan on making anything but a basic, standard lunch, so any rice press or things like that just won’t get used. My biggest problem with these Bento sets is that I’m not sure I trust my kids enough yet with them. My 9yo would LOVE this, though. She’s all about organization & I *think* now that she’s starting 4th grade that she should be responsible enough to bring one of these home every day instead of accidentally throwing it out in the trash. My 6yo, however, would probably throw it out. He’s just starting 1st grade, so he has to learn how to have lunch at school, too. Maybe what I’ll do is try to make up some of my own Bento boxes with my own containers & see if that works for us. I do actually have an old container of mine that my Mom bought me a while ago. It’s partitioned & just the size of a square sandwich container, but it’s thicker because it has multiple compartments.  Anyway, so I’m rambling now.

I think the basic idea here is to try for a litterless lunch. See what you can do to make your kids have no waste after they’re finished with their lunch. (I draw the line at washable napkins, though. I just can’t send my kids to school with a cloth napkin & expect it to come home.)

And now for another sneak peek of my kit coming to SBE on Sunday:

And since going green with back to school lunches is a difficult thing for me, what I want from you are some tips. What can I do to make a litterless lunch for my kids? Give me some of your tips so I can try to make my kids’ lunches green!

Now for a chance to get my kit before it’s released. But, there are strings attached. Can you create a layout with this by Friday? If so, comment here & I’ll pick a few to get the kit in advance with the stipulation that you create a layout and post it to some galleries by Friday, Sept. 5th. Just agree to post to at least one of these galleries & I’ll pick some winners: SBE, DST or MSA. The winners will create their layout, post it & then email me with the link. So who’s up for the challenge?!

So, to kick off my kit coming out next week, I wanted to start blogging about some tips to help us all become more green. First off, let me show you a little sneak peek of the kit:

All this week I’m going to give some environmental tips, I’ll ask you for some & I’ll even be handing out this kit to some lucky commentors! So keep an eye on my blog, be sure to comment & you may get this kit for free before it even goes on sale!

My environmental tip for today is this: Freecycle.org

What is it? The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,590 groups with 5,720,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.

Their mission statement: Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.

Say what? Well, Freecycle is a place where you can give or get used stuff.  Have some furniture that you don’t need anymore? Offer it up on your local Freecycle group and someone may be interested in it. I only just signed up on my local group yesterday, posted 2 items & already they are gone from my house. It helped me de-clutter and it helped someone else get a free rocker/glider and ottoman and a treadmill. That treadmill has been taking up space in my house for years & I never use it. I tried to sell it at a garage sale & it never sold. So now Phyllis has it & can use it because she has trouble walking outside, but wanted to keep active.

What can you do? You can go to www.freecycle.org and enter your town in the search box. Then, join the local group & start giving away stuff! (Or start looking for stuff you might need!)

How does this help the environment? Well, to quote their website & as I said above, “It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.” That treadmill of mine? I’d have thrown it out if someone didn’t come take it from me. Sure, I could have just “curbed it” - put it out on the curb with a note that said, “Free” but we don’t get a lot of drive-by traffic in our neighborhood, so it would have probably ended up in the trash. So I did my part to keep that monster piece of equipment out of the landfill & instead it’s in someone else’s home.

So have you ever used Freecycle? Post here & let me know if you’ve ever heard of it or used it & what you think!

Included in this set are 4 basic quick pages in neutral colors created mostly with my She’s Krafty Papers. There’s plenty of room for you to embellish them with your own scrap stash. In addition to the quick pages, I’ve included 10 different word art / titles, pre-assembled and created mostly from my All Natural Alphas. Some are stapled, some are stitched. but they’re all ready to just plop on your page. (Includes the following titles: No! Why? STAR, LIFE, Live, I “heart” U, AWESOME!!!, {sweet}, fun and aspire). Finally, I’ve included 2 crumpled bag shapes (a star and a heart).

And I can’t wait to show you some of what’s coming to SBE next week. It’s a new kit that I just adore & I’ve even created some LOs with it. Just wait for it, because it’s FAB!

Well, this week, I’m hoping to get things back on track since school starts on Tuesday. I’m so excited to have both Allison AND Tyler in school full days this year! Ty SO needs to be back in school. He needs to get more reading & writing in. I’ve really slacked off this summer & haven’t done much with him at all. Allison has kept up with her reading, but not Ty. And he was just average to begin with. But, I’m sure that 1st grade will teach him so much more & he’ll get better as the school year goes on.