Mark your calendars and get ready to see green! The 2nd annual Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase will take place on Sunday, April 25th all over Mar Vista. Hosted and organized by the Mar Vista Community Council Green Committee, the Green Garden Showcase is a chance for homeowners to display their drought-tolerant, California native, eco-friendly landscaping. If you’d like your home’s green garden to be on this year’s tour, please contact Sherri Akers at Sherri (at) MarVista (dot) org. Or just stop by the Green Committee’s booth at the Mar Vista Farmer’s Market on Sundays and they’ll help you get signed up.

*Photo courtesy of Sherri Akers

Yes, you heard that right — FREE. The Mar Vista Community Council’s Green Committee received a grant from the MVCC Board in order to be able to offer this hugely popular — and very informative — workshop here in Mar Vista at no charge to participants. Sustainable Works has been running these 6-week workshops in Santa Monica for years, but not in LA until now. And if the response is positive, I’m sure this won’t be the last time, either.

The workshops will be held from 7pm – 8:30pm on 6 Thursdays, beginning on January 28th and running through March 4th at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 11000 National Blvd., 90064.

Check out the MVCC Green Committee’s blog for more info, and you can sign up by clicking here.

The building got all new, high-efficiency, low-flow toilets, so they were getting rid of the old ones. Mar Vista’s going green all over the place!

Phase Two of my home’s solar conversion is complete! There are enough black glass panels on my roof now to qualify it as an electrical generator. You can read about phase one here. Here’s my roof before:  Here’s what it looked like yesterday:

and here it is today — all done: AWESOMENESSSSS.

And check out the a-DOR-able crew who did all the work: It was supposed to take 3 days and they actually finished in 2 days! Swift and efficient. Such sweet sorrow to see them go…

Now all that’s left is to be hooked up to the grid. It may take a while, but I promise to post as soon as DWP says we’re good to go.

And I know I mentioned this before, but the best part may be the fact that, because we’re doing the lease option, um, we haven’t had to write a single check; it’s all in the lease. So, for the next 20 years, we’ll pay exactly the same electric bill we do now.

Want more info on this for your house? Check out GoSolar Mar Vista on OpenMarVista.net or SolarCity.com. And I didn’t get any better deal for writing this than anybody else would. See for yourself.

The Mar Vista Community Council’s Green Committee has unanimously approved a motion to make Mar Vista the first clean electricity neighborhood in Los Angeles, with a goal of 100% clean electricity by 2018. The motion must be approved by the Community Council Board on November 10, and your support is needed! Please sign this petition, which will be presented to the board. It will only take a minute, I promise!

And check out Open Mar Vista’s GoSolar initiative to find out how you can go solar on your roof!

All your pre-Halloween excitement in one neighborhood!

Saturday there’s The Big Boo, Halloween Carnival at Mar Vista Elementary school, 3300 Granville Ave. 90066 10am – 3pm. and Richland Ave. Elementary is having their Halloween Scare Fair, 11562 Richland Ave. 90064 1pm – 5pm.

Sunday is the last chance to sign up for Mar Vista’s GoSolar initiative — sign up ends 10/25! Click on the link for more info,  and Sunday is also the  Mar Vista Farmer’s Market ’s Annual Halloween Festival, Grand View at Venice Blvd. 9am – 2pm.

The Green Booth at the Mar Vista Farmer’s Market was all about lunches last Sunday! Annie Barnes of InspireTheChange.com and I co-hosted the booth and were joined by Jennifer Taggert of TheSmartMama.com, Elizabeth Rietz of WhiningNDining.com, Emily Carey of ScrappyNaps, and Melissa Davis of Melissa’s Food Blog. We had the following products donated by their wonderful manufacturers and distributers so we could show them off to all of you who came to the market. And now I’m giving them away! Check it all out:

The GoodByn lunch box: The Laptop lunch box Bento system: Snack Taxis platsic bag alternatives (3 sets of 1 sandwich size and 1 snack size): The Tasty Lunch Tote by Built: A ScrappyNap placemat and napkin set: (Donated by Emily Carey) A bottle of Rebel Green Fruit and Veggie Clean spray: (Donated by Jennifer Taggert, who also sells it on her website.) And 2 Klean Kanteens (an 18-oz. and a 12-oz.): (Donated by BuyGreen.com, where you can buy them any time.)And now for the RULES:

Just leave a comment below letting me know which item you want to win. If you want to win several of them, list them all in the same comment, please. The contest will run through next Monday, October 26th at 11:59pm Pacific Time. Winners will be chosen at random and announced next Tuesday, October 27th right here. Be sure to leave me an email address so I can contact you for shipping details when you win.

Disclosure Statement: I do not work for any of the companies that donated products. They have not given me anything in return for mentioning their products. I simply wrote to them, asked if they would send me something to show off and then giveaway, and they said yes. (Those who said no are not being mentioned here.) I’m grateful to those who donated these cool products! Now, LET THE CONTEST BEGIN!

UPDATE: The contest is now closed. Thank you for entering!

Today’s shopper is Dr. Susanne Bennett, a holistic chiropractor who also founded a line of skin care products called Purigenex. She’s going to make her organic heirloom tomato bolognese sauce.  She starts with 6 – 7 cloves of garlic, minced, and about 2/3 of a yellow onion, chopped and sautes them in grape seed oil in a big iron wok. As they start to soften, she adds ground organic, free range sirloin beef she gets from Whole Foods. (Note: if you’d prefer to make this a vegetarian meal then just skip the meat — the rest of the recipe is the same.)  Once the meat is browned, she adds 5 – 6 tomatoes, which she’s chopped and removed most of the seeds. She cooks this for about 30 minutes and then adds about 1/3 cup of this amazing organic tomato paste from Italy called Bionaturae (which by the way comes in a glass jar). The she adds salt and pepper to taste, then some chopped italian parsley, oregano and rosemary, and at this point she adds about 1/2 cup of olive oil. Dr. Bennett says the grapeseed oil is better for the initial cooking because it can go to a higher temperature; the olive oil is great to add at this point because it helps thicken the sauce and it’s being used at a point that won’t expose it to high heat. Basil goes in at the very end, chopped slightly, and then again for a garnish as you serve it. She serves it over brown rice pasta. It sounds fantastic and I wish I had some right now!

Today in the Green Booth I co-hosted (along with Annie Barnes of Inspire The Change) a group of Mom Bloggers presenting ideas for No-Waste lunches. This is us: Me (Mar Vista Mom), Emily Carey of ScrappyNaps, Jennifer Taggert of The Smart Mama, Melissa Davis of Melissa’s Food Blog, and Annie Barnes of Inspire The Change.) Elizabeth Rietz of Whining N Dining joined us later as well. We had many donated products on display (which we’ll be giving away next week — check back on both our blogs), as well as products we currently use in our own kids’ lunches. Check back Tuesday for the contest to begin! We’ll be giving away a GoodByn lunch box, a GoGreen Lunch box, a Laptop Lunch box, 3 sets of Snack Taxis, a ScrappyNaps placemat and napkin set, 2 Kleen Kanteen drink bottles (courtesy of BuyGreen), a bottle of Fruit and Veggie Clean spray from Rebel Green, a Tasty Lunch Tote by Built and 2 Rubbermaid Litterless drink bottles.

Save The Dates: The Farmer’s Market will be holding TWO festivals on the next TWO Sundays. Next Sunday (10/25) is their annual Halloween celebration and November 1st is their Day Of The Dead extravaganza. Don’t miss either one!

I’ve got proof:

UPDATE: One barrel is not enough. Overflow!

I attended the festival this morning and here’s my impression, via Whrrl.