I’ve been reading all of my same sources but, sadly, haven’t seen any green coupons, freebies, or discounts! This is the first time that’s been the case since I started writing here a few months ago!

Potentially of interest is that many Walgreens locations are offering Halloween photo shoots for kids in costume. Depending on the store, it’s free (ours is) or $0.31, and they are offering everything from one free 4×8 photo card to a free photo CD. Details and locations here.

To make up for the lack of the good stuff, how about a recipe? Here is a one bowl banana muffin or bread goodie that will get some of the Halloween candy out of the candy bowl…

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter (microwave it for 30 seconds so it’s soft)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 mashed overripe bananas
• 3-4 individual sized packets of m&ms, Raisinettes, or other small chocolate candies

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan or 9 regular-size muffins in a muffin tin.

In a large bowl, combine butter, brown sugar, eggs and bananas with a potato masher. Add flour, baking soda and salt on top and mix together until just moistened. Add candy and stir to mix. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake in preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes (more for a loaf, less for muffins), until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

The yummy results:

Before:

During:

We’re not quite at after, yet. And you’re saying, I see boxes, I see papers, but where is the sewing???

It’s a long story, but like most things, it starts with the triplets. I had a craft/guest room before the babies were born, but that became P’s playroom when their stuff took over our family room. For the past seven months, I’ve thought that I could fit all of my endeavors into our street-facing sunroom and still keep it presentable. Finally, two weeks ago, my husband convinced me that I would never get anywhere if I was just trying to keep the room neat, so I moved everything into the basement office we had been using for general storage.

Now that everything is downstairs, I’m trying to make it functional (and a little pretty) so that I can indeed sew again! I did have room for an adventure with fusible web and a wolf costume, so we’re definitely half way there.

parenting

Just in time for me, How Do You Do It?, a blog about parenting multiples, has the most in-depth tutorial for making your own baby food. Step by step and lots of pictures.

Also timely, Uber Parents shares guidelines for monitoring fever in children. I particularly liked the idea of taking their temp a few times for a baseline so that you know what really constitutes a fever in *your* kid.

crafting

KIWI magazine has a pattern for making a tote out of all of those Halloween candy and snack wrappers. Genius!

Green Phone Booth shares a quick pattern for door draft dodgers. Just fabric and some beans! I need to make a huge one of these for the french doors from our living room to our drafty sunroom. Kelly at Almost Frugal has an equally easy and useful pattern for reusable fabric gift bags. If you’re like me, you have a box (or a closet) of fabric you’re not in love with anymore. Move some of it along with practical projects like these and make room for some new things you really love!

Crafting a Green World has details on upcycled shrinky dinks (remember those?) from #6 plastics you might have laying around anyway.

eating

Don’t want to make a whole cake or heat your entire oven? This microwavable cake-in-a-mug is such a cute idea for an after-school treat with your little ones.

A Year of Crockpotting is an awesome resource, but now Stephanie has included information on just how frugal a choice it is and links to key recipes on making pantry staples. I will miss her when her experiment is done!

resources

Re-nest posts a request for wool sweaters with holes to be upcycled into rugs. I have a few to send to the artist, unfortunately. Does anyone have ideas for extending the life of my sweaters? I barely seem to make it through a season with some these days.

Baby Cheapsakte reviews several of the deal-a-day sites. Not bad to follow some of these if you are looking for specific types of items for holiday gifts.

My next post is up at BeCentsAble so make sure to check it out!

If you’re visiting here for the first time, welcome. A new sage reads post will be up tomorrow, new green and natural finds on Friday, and perhaps some of my random thoughts in the middle Get the feed and you’ll always have the inside scoop!

For the first time, I’m participating in the Green Moms Carnival, home to a group of women I really enjoy reading. I’m so happy to join the party!

This month, the topic is gratitude/name three most favorite green things ever, which is exciting but so hard to narrow down to just three things!

1. The eco-friendly cleaning wonders of Borax and vinegar. I’m working on a Borax tutorial post for BeCentsAble so I won’t go into to too much detail, but really, what *can’t* these two things do? Just this week, I ran out of Seventh Generation dishwashing powder and made a substitute on the fly from Borax and baking soda. For $3, you can get a huge box of Borax and a 2 gallon jug of white vinegar at just about any supermarket in America. It’s an easy way to go green that’s soft on your pocketbook and gentle to your family and household items.
2. Perhaps a stock answer, but how about the internet? We don’t have to buy magazines or cookbooks anymore for recipes, design ideas, or parenting tricks. Email is more efficient than snail mail or faxes. More importantly, we have more venues for selling or swapping items before they hit the landfill and more easy access to information about green options. Better information enables us all to do more with less and make choices kinder to the earth.
3. “Knit an x into a y” patterns: knit plastic bags into a new tote, t-shirts into a dish scrubber, I’m a sucker for these upcycling, utilitarian patterns. I love to knit but can’t get bogged down with something complicated or using a lot of pricey yarn. Knitting up a potholder from an old sweater over the course of a weekend is just my kind of thing.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year, my expanding green network just one of them. If this is your first time stopping by sage, I’ll hope you’ll be back to visit again!

I love Isabooties. They’re machine-washable, soft, vegan, and adorable. I have two pairs in a larger size that P wore, but wanted a set for the little boys to keep their feet warm (and their socks on) in the winter.

I have a million eBay email alerts running at one time. Things I have and want to sell, to see how many are listed and what they are priced at. Things I love that I want more of or need to replace, in case someone lists some. And then a simple alert, just for “isabooties,” hoping to score a pair or two or three for less than  $29.00 (retail)!

I was delighted this morning to get my alert for a variety of sizes and colors at $12.00/pair!!! I have no experience with the seller, so of course buyer beware, but I know I will be ordering 3 pairs today.

Green Your Decor posted about a new line of organic baby clothes at Target. They currently sell Kee-Ka online along with some others, but this looks to be much more affordable (majority of pieces are $9.99). Visit Target, and search for “Under the Canopy.”

Treehugger deals spotlights YummyEarth organic lollipops. I bought 3 bags of these (70 pieces/bag) at Whole Foods for $5 bag. There are 14 natural flavors. These are also the treat given out at our haircutting place and the 3 year old verdict is that they are very good! Our trick-or-treat is Saturday, but if you have the time…

From now until October 31, 2008, TreeHugger readers will get 20% off their order of $25 or more, plus free shipping - just in time for Halloween! Coupon code: treehugger.

If you missed it before, the Bare Naked granola freebie is back. A nice snack or a healthy addition to a gift basket for the holidays.

Had to edit to add this cute button:

As a native New Englander, Dunkin Donuts holds a special place in my heart. Why not get a free sample?

Got a spare glove that lost its mate lying around? Etsy shares how to turn it into a chipmunk softie in just a few steps.

My city doesn’t take #5 plastics. I bring them all to Whole Foods, which kindly has a bin set out for customers. Here’s another great idea — send them away for recycling into household goods. Kirstin has all the details at Trying to Be Greener.

Some awesome frugal cooking tips — OAMC with chicken at Mommy Making Money, Make it yourself bake mixes at Leaving Excess.

Dare I save all of our baby food jars? Re-nest has creative reuse ideas. I tried making a snow globe (well, Halloween confetti globe) last week but it didn’t come out so well.

After the best of the baby clothes have been snatched up by the resale store or passed along to friends, what do you do with the rest? Here are a few ideas for donating, and for upcycling what might not be feasible to donate.

Donations

A lot of people think initially to drop a box of clothes off at the Salvation Army or Goodwill. Nothing wrong with that, but if you have the time, think about other types of nonprofits that could use the items for their clients:

• Homeless and domestic violence shelters see more children than we care to think about and will accept clothing and baby gear. In my experience, they frequently need car seats in clean and safe condition. Call the office of the shelter nearest you, they definitely have a wishlist handy you might be able to fulfill part of, and your donation is also a tax write-off.
• Your Humane Society will gladly take old towels and bed linens, no matter their condition. A great destination for an excess of receiving blankets!

Upcycling

Even after donating items, you may find you have some stragglers that no one is interested in taking off your hands. You still don’t have to hit the landfills!

• Sometimes, an item is not resale quality due to a hole or a stain. If you’re handy with a sewing needle, a cute applique can fix it right up. If you’re only handy with an iron, try Rikrak iron-on letters, hearts, or birds for a quick fix. I’ve saved all of our outgrown plain-colored onesies to personalize as baby gifts in the future.
• Sewers can also fashion T-shirts into grocery bags (how cute with onesies!).
• Re-nest posted a how-to and pattern for knitting dish scrubbers out of t-shirts. They would knit up so quickly and since it is plain knit stitch, it’s a practical project even for novice knitters.
• Crafting a Green World details how to unravel and recycle sweaters into yarn for new projects. (The photo above is my own recycled yarn project, a pair of slippers for my oldest son from an old cotton Gap sweater.)

Creative re-use ideas are popping up everywhere. What do you do with your cast off items around the house?

Angie from Freepeats, Baby Cheapskate, and Blog Coach was kind enough to share sage as a blog critique yesterday. And wow, what helpful comments! I am going to work on all the areas mentioned, many I never thought of. We do live in triplet land, though, which means that it will take me awhile to get rolling on some of the ideas. If you have additional comments about how sage can be more helpful to you or what you would like to hear more about, just let me know anytime on any post or via email.

The first change I’m going to roll out has been on my mind for awhile, a more predictable schedule for posts. Going forward, I will post any time-senstive, breaking deals, like the Whole Foods coupon or Bum Genius sale, as they come up, since that’s kind of my core mission. Other than that, a broader sage finds will appear on Fridays. A more tightly-edited sage reads will be out on Wednesdays. Features like sage *hearts* etsy and the goose is getting fat will appear over the weekend.

Otherwise, I’ll still join in on some memes from other sites, like Menu Plan Monday. I’m looking for a fun parenting meme that I can bring the sage perspective to, if anyone has any favorites you could recommend. Oh, and I’ll increase the font size ASAP, too. Probably this afternoon during football