Green Beer?

Top o’ the early evenin’ to ya and happy St. Patrick’s Day , folks!

Image via Flickr user Anselwood (CC license)

For those of you who have the free time to take the weeknight off and enjoy the holiday, I have a suggestion: try to select a truly “green” beer. While Bud Light with some food coloring may sound appealing to your wallet, “green” beer can appeal to your conscience. There are scores of breweries out there who pride themselves on brewing with local ingredients, using alternative energy to power their factories, promoting conservation, etc. For instance, the Great Lakes Brewing Company, our hometown brewery, holds a festival every year to raise awareness in the Cleveland community about environmental issues.

If you want to do a little research before you go out and make a smart choice this year, several larger websites have devoted some pixels to the subject. Check out the links below and have one for me tonight (I’ll be doing homework).

Great Lakes Brewing Company

AT Re-Nest: “For St. Patty’s Day, Reach For a Truly Green Beer”

Sierra Club: “Green Beer for St. Patrick’s Day”

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It’s A Small World After All

Our home is our base, our escape from the rest of the crazy world, so it’s important to us that where we live reflects who we are–and since we’re becoming greener, so is our humble abode!

I was recently very inspired by an AT Re-Nest post on the tiny house movement, so I hit the internet and started looking for myself. The first tiny house company that caught my eye on the AT links was Tumbleweed Tiny Houses . Isn’t the name alone just adorable?

Ranging from “Tiny Houses” (a Chihuahua-sized 65 sq. ft. which we’re sure would make Jack feel right at home) to the slightly roomier “Small Houses” (from 251 – 837 sq. ft.) the humble homes come in a surprisingly diverse range of styles to choose from, or you can actually get the plans and instructions to make your own. We love the idea of building our own house–talk about urban homesteading! The houses are beautiful and I think that we might actually be comfortable in of the, um, bigger tiny houses.

The itsy-bitsy houses also remind me of the red-and-white, two-room house where my grandfather was born in 1925. He would always point it out to my cousins and I when he drove us to school in the mornings when we were little. He lived there with his parents, his older brother and a collie named Shep. I’m sure these “simpler times” weren’t always as wonderful as we picture them, and I’m sure it was difficult, but it also seems so blissfully simple. I think that a sustainable lifestyle is really about simplifying our lives, getting back to the basics. How much do we actually need, and how many of our “needs” are actually just wants that have been deemed essential by society?

It’s something to think about. Even if we can’t move into a tiny house right now, we can at least try to downsize within our comfort range.

We want to know what you think: Is there such a thing as over-simplification? If we give up too much, will we just gain it all back and then some (kind of like a crash diet always seems to do)?

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