When Erma Tipton and her family moved from Colorado Springs to Black Forest three years ago, it ended a 12 month search for a home and set her on a path toward practical, eco-friendly living.Tipton said she was skeptical when her husband found their current home because it needed plenty of work. The home was built by a construction contractor for his family of 10 children. The materials used for building the home had been collected from construction sites – things that people gave away or didn’t need. Tipton said the extensive wood floors and ceiling beams are reclaimed wood from the old Garden of the Gods’ visitor center.When Tipton moved in, she applied a fresh coat of paint and then started collecting bids to replace 29 aluminum windows. “Talk about falling on the floor. You just spent $300,000 for a house, and then there was another $25,000 for the windows,” she said. “I looked at my husband and I said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.'”Keeping the home’s history in the back of her mind, she began scouring Craigslist.com, an online classified-ad bulletin, to see what deals she could find. “Sure enough, I immediately found two windows, brand new in Monument,” Tipton said. “My prerequisites were they had to be white, double-pained, vinyl and they had to be low-energy.” Slowly, she found windows for sale that matched her measurements, for a fraction of what it would cost to buy them through a retailer.”From August 2008 to March of this year, we bought all the windows on Craigslist. I have all the receipts for the windows and the caulking – I paid $2,800 for 29 brand new windows,” she said.Tipton has carried the lesson learned from the windows to all the corners of her home. She said she has bought furnishings, found granite tiles to replace her kitchen counters and fenced a goat pen with other great buys or free items on Craigslist.She saved money and kept usable items out of the landfill.Tipton insists she’s not a tree-hugger, just someone who genuinely cares for the earth through simple, practical means. “If everyone could do those tiny, small things; multiplied by our population, we would be in so much better shape than we are now,” she said. Another area of environmental concern for Tipton is the quality of cotton that is used in a majority of clothing sold in retail stores. She said only 40 percent of the cotton used in clothing sold in the U.S. is grown within our borders. The remainder comes from other countries without the same environmental standards, where pesticides are heavily used.As an 11-year cancer survivor, Tipton became concerned about the toxins in the cotton clothing. She said she researched organically grown cotton and discovered a clothing line available through a new direct sales company – KikaPaprika. She fell in love with the comfortable and stylish clothes. Within a few months, Tipton went from customer to the first KikaPaprika consultant in Colorado. KikaPaprika is a green company, she said. They use all organic cotton in their clothing, they package merchandise with recycled materials and all clothing tags are made out of handmade paper, which, if planted, will yield a bouquet of wildflowers.Some of the clothing is made from recycled plastic water bottles – resulting in a soft, flexible fabric that is easily mistaken for cotton, she said.Although Tipton was nervous about investing in a startup company, she said she’s enjoyed getting in on the ground floor and working with the founders. The company has been very responsive to her suggestions, and she is constantly seeing improvements, she said.As a KikaPaprika consultant, Tipton said she uses home shows to share the value of organic clothing. “It’s been slow, but I’ve gotten a lot of interest,” she said.Every show is an opportunity to help people become more informed about their clothing options, she added. Tipton encourages women to try it because it’s eco-friendly and low maintenance clothing that is intended to mix and match. “(The founder, Kim Shaw) wanted something that was super comfortable, stylish and ready to wear.”More about Erma TiptonWhat do you do when you’re not scouring Craigslist for deals?The boys. And we are always redoing the house.How many children do you have?“Two boys, they are 10 and 13, he’ll be 13 in August. They go to Meridian Ranch Elementary and Falcon Middle School.”What is the next project on the house?We’ve filled in the floors, but we haven’t sanded and refinished them. After that is done, we’ll have sanded and refinished the floors in the whole house ourselves.Have you ever done direct sales before?“Absolutely. There was a company called Weekenders, who sold clothing, and they were in business for 40 years. They went bankrupt very quickly last year. I was with them five years and got an e-mail that the bank had locked their doors.”What is your day job?I work at Shriver; I’m a contractor out there. I’m an analyst. It’s government work – it’s all I’ve ever done. I spent the first half of my career in the Air Force and now I’m a contractor. My husband is in the reserves and he’s a contractor as well.What brought you to Colorado?The military brought us here 13 years ago, and this is where I’m going to stay. We’ve talked a million times about moving back to Virginia, but you just can’t beat this climate for what you get. We love it so much – more now that we’re out here (in Black Forest) and we have more peace and quiet.
