Since I did not get a chance to write my review post yes­ter­day due to get­ting so busy with other things going on I will save what I was going to write until next week (How to fig­ure out when you are ovu­lat­ing), this week my favourite fru­gal and green blog posts:

• 10 lifestyle changes that will make you richer!
• Fru­gal and Green Clean­ing Options
• 10 Ways To Go and Save Green With Your Kids
• Cloth dia­pers: a fru­gal green alternative

Fem­i­nine Hygiene products

There has been a lot of con­ver­sions on the preg­nancy forum I post at about fem­i­nie hygiene prod­ucts (aka, the prod­ucts you use at the time of the month) which you can wash and use again and again (they were using soft­cups to keep the sperm up near your cervix after sex and less mess) , I can see the idea behind it, it is cleaner and less waste­ful as a lot of women use tam­pons and pads, plus it does not remove any of your nat­ural lube like tam­pons will do, there are three dif­fer­ent cups to choose from.

Moon­cups — These look like a lit­tle fun­nel, it is made from sil­i­cone and you sim­ply insert the cup which folds and it col­lects up to three times as much as the ‘super-absorbent’ tam­pon.  At the end of the day (every eight hours) remove and tip down the toi­let.  You can still have sex and go swim­ming with it in.

Soft­cups — These look like a con­dom cut in half and put on a rub­ber ring, the same idea as the moon­cups, you can do all the things that the moon­cups can do, what con­fuses me is how do you remove this with­out it going every­where as there is not any­thing to grab onto. But you can wear these up to 12 hours which is longer than the moon­cups but these are NOT reusable you have to put it in the bin after the 12 hours or less, so you will still have to buy at least 7 or more a month, not really sav­ing you the money it costs £5.00 or $10.00 for 24 which would last you 3 months.

Divac­ups - These are a cone shape and they ARE reusable like the moon­cups, accord­ing to the web­site you only need to remove, empty and clean twice a day. But you can not have sex while this is being used.

If you are not keen, like I am (I really do not know why I can­not seem to stom­ache mess­ing around down there dur­ing my period, but I would really like to try them just so I know first hand, does any­one use these already?) you can try cot­ton tam­pons which do not con­tain any per­fume or any of those extra bits you do get with tam­pons or you could try cloth pads.

Cloth pads, seem to be tak­ing off and there many dif­fer­ent designs and styles out there, my mother did ask me to research this awhile back and I do like the idea behind this and the nor­mal pads make me feel like I am wear­ing a nappy!  There is no more sweat­ing, itchy and feel­ing uncom­fort­able because these are cot­ton and it is not like you are going to run out as you will always have a sup­ply washed which gets rid of that dash to the shops when you start (unless you are really organ­ised, I for­get, you think I would know with all this temp­ing I do for TTC but I still for­get and still have to send the hus­band out to get tam­pons at ran­dom times).

This one is from clothpadshop.com, who ship to the UK, Europe and USA, this has to be one of my favourite.  I love the pat­tern on it accord­ing to the web­site: This pan­ti­liner is topped with soft quilter’s cot­ton in a gor­geous vin­tage style print by Moda. The bam­boo and cot­ton core is trim but absorbent, and the liner is backed with mois­ture resis­tant microfleece. This pad here is used for spot­ting, light flow and a back up for the cups.

Even bet­ter you can buy a pack from the same web­site where you can make your own cloth pads!! You could have it so it any pat­tern you like and you can cus­tom it, this web­site — http://www.comfyclothpads.com/ has a lot of infor­ma­tion on how much you would save about £3,600 over a 30 year period which is pretty impres­sive I know it does not seem a lot over 30 years but still it saves you a decent amount of month and this only adds to about one wash­ing extra a month.

Here are some I found on ESTY which I really like:

This one is by Sugirons, she sells a lot of these kind of prod­ucts — Check her out!

Or you could buy this fab Show Some Uter­ine Love– Mini Men­strual Pack

Hope you enjoyed this post I have enjoyed research­ing it all.

My uni­ver­sity is cur­rently upgrad­ing, they have been cre­at­ing these huge steel build­ings for the last two years, since I have started. I would really like to see inside these build­ings and I think they might open to the stu­dents when I got back in Octo­ber, they are going to have new lec­ture halls, a cafe, offices and study cen­tre which I really hope holds com­put­ers just so the other stu­dents won’t keep steal­ing the infor­mat­ics com­puter, we our own spe­cial room with a code. It is nice but they are tak­ing away more of our build­ings every time I go now there maybe this will give us more space which we need.

Since we did not cook the caramel tart that I wanted to cook on Sun­day, here are some of my past favourite recipes:

• Pizza Recipe — Home-made pizza
• Stew Recipe — Great for those cold win­ter evenings
• Tomato Soup with Bacon
• Pineap­ple upside-down cake
• Veg­gie Soup
• Roasted Gar­lic Ciabatta
• Lamb & Rose­mary Skewers
• Leek & Bacon Pasta
• Fast Fried Rice
• Home­made Burg­ers and Buns

What is your favourite recipe?