HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

To all of our families, friends, customers, and supporters…we wish you all a healthy and happy 2010!

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays! There is so much love in the air and so much good food! In fact, there is so much food, that this is a great time to start composting. Places such as San Francisco and Minnesota all have regular compost pick up with their garbage service. If you don’t live in one of these places, now is a great time to start your own compost bin. Collecting everything from potato peels, egg shells, to scraps of pie dough, composting your leftovers will result in wonderful quality soil for your garden and a huge relief on your weekly garbage can. Its not as hard as it seems! Check out this helpful article on composting to find out more. You can even purchase countertop containers that help get the compost process started… sounds like a good Christmas present to me!!

Another great tip to remember is to buy organic, local turkeys. Actually, shopping locally for all of your holiday food is a great way to support sustainable practices and support local farms. LocalHarvest.org is a great site to find local farms or farmers markets in your area. You can even order organic turkeys and anything else you might need for your holidays!

The easiest of all tips is to remember to bring those grocery bags to the store!! Most stores have reusable bags you can buy, but they make great gifts too! Check out Reusablebags.com or The Inconvenient Bag for wonderful options.

Since this is the season of giving, what better time to start giving-everyday! Click here to learn more about the 29-day giving challenge. A friend recently shared this with me and I can’t wait to learn more. Give a gift to someone everyday for 29-days-anything from clothes, to a hug, to money. Its a very simple lesson and applies to the environment as well as to ourselves…”to see our world change, we have to do something to change our world”. I love this and look forward to signing up for my challenge!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

With two little boys at home, I’ve been through my share of playdough. It probably still can be found on the floor somewhere, as it seems to end up more on the floor than anywhere else. But since we’ve been through so much of it, its been much easier and cheaper to make it ourselves!!

Follow this easy recipe for a long lasting fun clay, that can be made into any color!

1 cup flour
3/8 cup salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Natural dyes (see below)

In a medium sized bowl, mix the flour and salt. Pour in the oil and dye and stir well. Knead the clay on a floured surface for a few minutes. May need to add a little more flour if it is too soft. The clay can be stored in airtight containers in the refrigerator.

Natural Dyes
Brown: 3/8 cup plus one tablespoon hot water and 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
Fuchsia: 3/8 cup hot beet juice (from canned beets)
Orange: 3/8 cup hot water and 1 tablespoon paprika
Yellow: 3/8 cup hot water and 1 tablespoon turmeric

If making your own clay just isn’t your thing, check out this amazing collection of aromatic, gluten free play clays from Mama K’s shop on Etsy! Beautiful colors and scents like geranium, lavender, lemongrass, and chamomile. These clays are scented with organic essential oils.

Have fun!
Recipe courtesy of Family Fun Magazine October 2009

I listened to a very interesting and scary interview today on Fresh Air on my local NPR station. Journalist Charles Duhigg is doing several articles for the New York Times about the safety of our drinking water and how safe drinking water regulations are not being enforced. As a terrible and scary example, farmers who have excess “waste” from cows, spray the waste on the ground, which in turn, goes into the drinking water wells near the farm causing many people to get sick.

Click here to listen to the interview and read the entire New York Times series called “Toxic Waters” here!

Print out our Welcome Wreath and glue on colorful leaves you have collected on an afternoon stroll! Hang your creation in the window so everyone can see!! All you need is paper, colorful leaves, glue or tape, a hole punch and some string!! It is great to get out for a short walk, and then come inside in to your warm house to get started on green activity!

Happy Fall!!!!

While visiting a friend today, I got to check out her new floors.. cork floors!!! Enviro-Cork is a really cool looking floor, that is sustainable too!! Cork renews after it is harvested from the tree, so the Cork Oak tree is not damaged and continues to grow! It feels nice under your feet too, not to hard or cold, and is a great addition to any home.

Its easy to install, no gluing involved, and it has a nice finish on it, so it will be certain to last. Plus its much more economical than conventional flooring!

So if you are in the market for some new floors and looking for a “green” product, be sure to consider this flooring in your home.

With school just around the corner, its time to start thinking about school lunch!! Not only is the lunch box important (remember look for labels that say PVC-Free!) but what you pack for lunch and what you pack the lunch IN are just as important!

A wonderful resource for all things related to lunches is a great website called ilunchbox.com. Full of tips, recipes, and ideas, this website makes it easy!

For packing lunches, we love:

Remember, the less plastic, the better!

Other lunch accessories we love:

Little Green Star Lunch Bags -why the cutest ones around and only $6.00!!

We are thinking of painting our bathroom a nice bright color. Its always hard to decide on colors, but one thing we do know is that we will use a zero VOC paint. VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) is basically anything that can evaporate into the air, under normal conditions. Traditional paints are made from gasoline based solvents, which is that icky smell we all know from when you paint a room. The paint continue to emit gasses or off-gassing, long after the painting is done, which can be harmful to your health.

Benjamin Moore has come out with a beautiful collection of durable, washable, and quick drying ZERO VOC paint called Natura. With no odors, this paint goes on easily, can be matched to any color, and dries in 30 minutes!

Visit the Benjamin Moore website for more info!

One of my favorite places to visit is Muir Woods. Located about 12 miles north of San Francisco, Muir Woods was declared the 10th national monument by President Theodore Roosevelt on January 9, 1908. And quite the monument it is! Muir Woods is over 550 acres with over half of that covered in old growth Coast Redwood trees. The tallest tree is about 250 feet tall and the ages of the trees range from 500 to 800 years old!

You can hike around the main loop on a nice paved pathway, which is perfect for kids and strollers. Or you can be more adventurous and take the trails that lead to the Pacific Ocean. Whatever you choose to do, you will be in awe of the greenery that surrounds you. Because of the fog, the new growth (called burls) can be seen on almost every tree. These bright green sprouts of new trees are just waiting to shoot up! The green color of the new growth that covers the forest floor is amazing-something you’ve got to see for yourself!

We created our Nature Lover shirt with these very images in our minds. Its just so simple… we love nature! And kids do too! That is why no matter where you live, just get out and enjoy it!

Now that my guys are in preschool, we get invited to lots of birthday parties! We enjoy giving the birthday girl or boy a book! My older son likes to pick them out and we usually end up giving one that is a favorite of ours. A lot of our friends do the same for my boys, so its a great way to see what others are reading!

Our favorite book gift has been The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. A wonderful story about a little boy and his garden and how nature can grow in unexpected places! Great lessons on the environment, being a part of a community, and patience. Great for “city kids”!

We then also wrap the gift in one of our eco-friendly lunch bags! Its a perfect fit for a large book! On sale for $6.00, these lunch bags can be used again and again for more than just lunch! They make great toy bags for the car or beach too.

So when you are thinking of gifts for kids, think books! All kids love them and I’m sure the parents will love them too! (Don’t forget to support your local book shops too! Check out Indiebound.Org for links to your local independent book shops!)