my first loaf of bread!

I made my first loaf of bread tonight and it turned out pretty good! It was the boxed kind though :( Baby steps though :P  Sadly there was some plastic packaging in it :/ but the small box it came in is recyclable so thats good.  This was my first step to bread making.  When I have time to go to the market and some more time to bake I'm going to try to make friendship bread (making it with my sister as a little girl seemed pretty easy and the bread tasted great) so I'm going to start with that.  Seeing as I know absolutely nothing about baking...I didn't realize that you had to kneed bread :/ This concerns me because it seems to complicated for the beginner baker I am.  But I am willing to try and I'll just cross my fingers :)

I'm bummed that I didn't have time to make my family produce bags for Christmas but I'm not completely discouraged because hey, why do I need it to be Christmas to make and give my family produce bags!?! So my goal is to make and disperse them by February! :)

I've been reading a lot of blogs of people who try to completely cut plastic out of their life.  Its a little intimidating.  (sorry if I've already mentioned this.  I can't remember if I have) Plastic really is everywhere!!! It makes me wonder why everything is made out of plastic!?! I mean, I know why to a certain extent, its cheap, convenient, easy to make.  But its so bad on many levels.  And the worst part is most of the general public isn't even aware at how terrible the stuff is. Even me, who has been environmentally conscious since I could read wasn't aware of just how big of a problem plastic is until I got cable and started watching the Green Channel and then started doing tons of research on line.  I know I won't be able to completely cut it out of my life, at least not for a while but I can try my best to slowly weed it out of my daily habits.   Thanks to a video I watched on fakeplasticfish.com I'm excited to check out Whole Foods and see what kind of bulk bag free items they have that I can eat.  That would completely eliminate any kind of packaging, more importantly, plastic! This is my first step.  

I could probably go on and on with the whole plastic thing and i had wanted to write stuff about frugleness but I'll have to save that for another day.  I am up way past my bed time :/