Ruth Bushard of Erie shops at Rags Consignment in Boulder in December.

I seriously love to thrift. It’s partly because I don’t make a ton of money but mostly because I love the challenge of it. Getting something awesome — and often practically brand new — for a fraction of the cost just feels, somehow, like you’re winning. The game. Whatever that is.

Oh, and it’s also awesome for the environment. And in Boulder, there is no less than 30 thrift-type stories. You read that correctly — 30. The thrift stores cover the entire spectrum from clothes (check out Rags Consignment or Buffalo Exchange) to bookstores (The Bookworm and Redletter Secondhand Books).

If you want to check them all out — leave no thrift store  unvisited — search no further than Eco-Cycle, which publishes two awesome maps to help you out: a Tour deThrift for both Boulder and Longmont.

Awesome.

Hessie Trailhead

Would you take a bus to the mountains to hike in the summer? A “recreation shuttle” that would connect Boulder with Hessie Trailhead and Brainard Lake is just one recommendation of a new mountain transit study released by Boulder County.

Other recommendations were more commuter oriented: a bus from Jamestown to Boulder, from Ward to Nederland and from Lyons to Longmont, among other things.

The county is asking for public input on the plan until Dec. 5. You can read it at the county’s Website and leave comments there, or learn more about the plan at DailyCamera.com.

Pajamas just look different these days. | Photo: Flickr user Elaron

Lately, it sounds like people have been losing sleep over what they’re sleeping on:

“Eco-friendly bedding and mattresses really just started being popular in the past year,” said Steve Savage, founder, president and store manager at Ellie’s Eco Home Store in Boulder.

“Where they have been educated about organic foods in the past 30 years, people are just starting to learn what chemicals are in their houses in regards to carpeting, bedding and furniture. We’re learning stuff every week. It’s still an ongoing educational process.”

Read more about eco-friendly bedding over at the Camera.

Katherine Lapp, left and Lindsey Jamison, right dance with Tim Hillman, as Doctor Drafty and Corrie Williams as the Kilowatt Kid as the play a song to finish the energy information visit to Flatirons Elementary.

I read somewhere that in explaining motives for action, it’s useful to have a villian. Well! How about a supervillain?

Friday was the third of five times the Kilowatt Kid (and some surprise evildoer) is scheduled to visit Strife’s class. The pilot program, which is being tried in eight classrooms across the Boulder Valley School District, is being supported by part of the $25 million in stimulus funds that Boulder County received earlier this year to expand local energy-efficiency efforts.

The other number that sticks out on this data from the 2009 U.S. Census American Community Survey is our work-from-home number — but we already knew that.

Here’s some of the relevant data:

In Amsterdam, they take more trips by bike than by car. Consider that!

In Portland, bike traffic constitutes 20 percent of the traffic on some roads, leading to bikejams.

Until we’re having bikejams — or until I have to stand up for part of my bus commute — it seems like there’s still a lot of education to be done. (But please don’t cut bus service to artificially make this happen. Here’s a great post from our neighbors to the south on that line of thinking.)

Note: When I lived on the Skip line, I did have to stand up — often.

Give those ghosts, skeletons... and sexy nurses... one more life

If you’re like me, the pressure is slowly mounting to figure out your Halloween costume. My ridiculously creative friends are putting the finishing touches on their Hollywood-quality duds and I’m drawing a total blank.

Happily, there’s a very cool, very green option out there:

Green Halloween Costume Swap
Swap last year’s costume for a new one, for free. Clementine Art and Common Threads are hosting a green Halloween costume swap. Free light alterations, make-your-own accessories, and refreshments provided, 1-4 p.m. Saturday Oct. 9, 2707 Spruce St. Boulder; 303-447-0473.

I’ve got last year’s space suit neatly tucked away in the closet (and it was a touch too short anyway), so maybe I’ll hop over and see what I can see to trade out.

The “Driven to Drive Less” campaign — which will launch in a few weeks — will try to convince people to choose one day a week to not drive their cars based on color. Blue cars should stay at home Mondays. Silver cars should take a break Tuesdays. Red on Wednesdays… you get the idea.

The city wants to get thousands of Boulderites to participate. Would you give it a try?

Read more about the campaign at DailyCamera.com.

Allison

A few months ago I moved into a quiet apartment that had one amazing feature: A large balcony. We aren’t talking 4′ x 9′ or even 5′ x 10. We are talking a 6′ by 25′ balcony that had so many possibilities that the mind boggled.

I happened to move in next to a green thumb and, throughout the cold winter months, before she ran off to Arizona, we devised greater and greater plans for what to do with my space. Her balcony, even in the dead of winter, was a warm, cozy place with chairs spaced appropriately for company and gardening pots and tools carefully placed on the side, ready to be used again as soon as it was time.

Why compost?

So these grandiose plans came down to one simple fact: I needed dirt. Three options arose.

First, sneak out and “borrow” dirt from neighboring homes in the dead of night. Second, buy dirt from a dirt store. Third, and the most enticing, make dirt. Create compost using all the organic materials left around after making a meal, coffee and reading the newspaper!

The first one would land me in jail, the second was not very appealing due to a small budget and even smaller ambition to carry large bags of dirt up to the second floor where my apartment was located. The last one made the most sense. Eco-friendly, cost-effective and hey, I have a balcony, I have plenty of room to “grow” dirt.

What I knew about composting at that time could have fit into a very small paper lunch bag. With room left over. But, with the help of my gardening nerd neighbor and what I was able to find on the internet, I have successfully handcrafted a balcony compost system. A huge thanks to Balcony Compost for the directions, which I’ve slightly modified.

Materials needed:

Two 5-gallon buckets — available at any hardware store or at thrift shops — usually holding skis and other random objects for display in the store. Dump out the contents (carefully) and make the thrift store an offer.

One large plastic storage tub with lid — also available for pennies on the dollar at your local thrift shop.

Drill with small bit (or a hammer and screwdriver, my dad happened upon my grandfather’s old drill and gave it to me, bonus!).

Small, recycled plastic container with lid — you’ll use this in the kitchen to store your compost materials.

Shredded newspaper, about a weeks worth of papers — after using the color comics to wrap a gift for your bestie, of course! This is one of the things considered as “brown” material you need for composting.

Two cups soil/dirt — recycled from repotting a plant works perfectly.

One cup water — recycled rainwater, if your balcony and/or state allows you to catch it.

Kitchen scraps – as much as you can save up in a week or so should do. Carrot peelings, egg shells, coffee grinds, strawberry greens, etc. Nothing cooked and no meat. This is some of the “green” materials you’ll need for the composting process. Well, eggshells are considered “brown” but you get the gist.

Materials

Make your compost bin:

First, I’d recommend safety glasses, just in case. Take the two plastic buckets and plug in your drill or get out the hammer and screwdriver.  Around the bottom and top of the buckets, drill holes approximately one inch from the top and bottom, two inches apart, around the entire bucket.

Then drill five holes in the bottom of each bucket, this is to let water or “compost tea” drain.

Next, drill holes throughout the body of each of the buckets. You’ll want them to be about three to four inches apart, going around and up the bucket. This allows air to flow through and help create a nice, warm, composting friendly environment within the bucket.

Air holes

Start your compost:

Now, with the hard work out of the way, let’s make dirt!

Place one bucket into the plastic storage tub (this catches any water and/or compost tea from dumping all over the balcony and your neighbors heads if they live below you).

Place two inches of the shredded newspaper in the bottom of one bucket. Wet with the cup of water

Dump the kitchen scraps on top. Add the two cups of soil to jumpstart the composting process. Cover the bucket with the storage tub top and weight with a rock (or in my case, a large, purple hippo paperweight).

Place in sunny corner of your balcony and sit back to enjoy the feeling of a job well done.

Keep it up!

Use the small plastic container in your kitchen to save scraps as you make them. Mine usually has fruit discards, egg shells, coffee grinds (a lot of coffee grinds), flower cuttings and leaves from plant trimmings. Again, nothing that has been cooked and NO meat. Oh, and no used kitty litter or other animal droppings. First, it doesn’t break down quickly and second, you might be using this compost to grow peppers on your balcony next year. Do you really want it to be grown in poop compost?

Compost's temporary residence

Continually add more kitchen scraps until you get a good three to four inches of scraps in the bucket. This is where the second bucket comes in. Take the first one, dump the scraps and newspaper into the second one so that it gets a breath of air and decomposes more quickly. Drop in a few more scraps of newspaper, water with a bit of recycled rainwater (or tap, of course), recover and start the process all over again.

A few notes:

1. Scraps being left on the kitchen table in the plastic bin. I make sure and dump it every few days, but even when I have forgotten to, it hasn’t smelled bad. A little mold, but nothing too icky.

2. The compost bin on the balcony – does it smell? No. Except when I put garlic cuttings from my best friend’s garden in it. Then it smelled like I’d made pesto and forgot the basil.

3. This isn’t going to make you a lot of compost very quickly. In order to set up my garden, I did in fact have to purchase dirt in bags. But, it will be great for when you need to replant indoor plants or want to set up seeds for next year’s growing season.

4. Compost tea, if you collect it, can be used as a non-chemical fertilizer. Pretty cool, right? Google it!

Finished product:

Interior

And outside…

Exterior

Allison Barrett loves everything online, gardening and figuring out how to make things work. She works at the Camera as their Online Coordinator and always knows where her towel is. You can catch up with her on Twitter (@tofallfromgrace).

Scott Pardee, a technician for Bestway Insulation, finishes installing insulation in a crawl space beneath a home in Longmont on Thursday. Insulation projects are a popular improvement paid for with money from Boulder County's ClimateSmart Loan Program.

Boulder County has suspended its popular, voter-approved ClimateSmart Loan Program, which lets you borrow money from them (at relatively low interest rates) to make energy-efficient improvements to your home like adding solar panels or blowing in some more insulation.

There are, apparently, a couple of problems that came out last week. One is a set of new rules from the DOE that govern loans like ClimateSmart — though that one will  likely be no that big of deal. The second, which is more of a problem, is a letter from mortgage-buying giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The letter implies that the government-sponsored agencies won’t buy mortgages for houses that have ClimateSmart liens on them.

“Every program in the country — in Colorado the programs that are just getting set to launch in Eagle County — are going into neutral and saying, ‘We’ll continue developing programs,’ but nobody is going to issue any additional financing until there’s clarification of the letter,” Commissioner Will Toor told the Camera on Thursday.

“The timing here in Boulder County is very unfortunate because we had a round of residential loans that would be closing tomorrow and we were looking at a bond sale in a few weeks,” he said. “There are a bunch of property owners and a bunch of contractors who were hoping that this would move forward.”

Read more about the suspension at DailyCamera.com.

Patrick Doyle made this trellis with lead spun from Thor's loom or something. I don't know, just click through and find out how yourself.

OK, actually, the trellis here won’t make any beer for you at all. The fellow who made the trellis however, Patrick Doyle, will be a strong candidate for Vanity Fair’s “Awesome Gentlemen” issue in about 25-30 years, and does make a good beer. 

Here’s what he has to say about his newest design for urban gardening — the Most Indestructible Trellis Ever 2.0:

Introducing the Most Indestructible Trellis Ever 2.0, which is so strong, I’m confident I could grow watermelons and pumpkins on it. (Which I’m not planning on doing, but it’s that beastly.) All that stainless steal is just gorgeous.

Looks awesome. I’m going to grow bowling balls and anvils for my famous Most Inedible Chili Ever recipe.

Check out the specs over at Grown In The City.