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!!!

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!!

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!)

Wishing everyone a happy and fun holiday!!

Before you head out for your picnic, don’t forget to pack your biodegradable picnic gear, reusable bottles, bring plenty of organic fruits and veggies.. oh yeah, and some apple pie too! Enjoy the day!

June 8, 2009 has officially been named by the United Nations as World Ocean Day! Just like Earth Day, everyday should be a celebration of the ocean, but on June 8th, there will be events around the world to celebrate this special day. Its a great reminder to take a visit to the ocean for a picnic and stop and think about all the ocean does for us…. Generates oxygen, supplies us food, and regulates the earths temperature.

The ocean needs to be taken care of treated with great respect! Never leave your trash at the beach, choose sustainable and safe food choices when buying/eating seafood, and never put harmful chemicals down storm drains!

Visit The Ocean Project or Thank You Ocean for more information on how our oceans help us in our lives, whether you live near an ocean or not, and for events around the world on World Ocean Day.

Remember… With a little devotion, we CAN save the ocean!!!

I know I’ve had several posts on waste-free lunches, but I just keep finding such great products. I’m obsessed!

To add to my obsession is SnakSaks, which can be found on Etsy. Lola makes all of these adorable snack bags beautifully by lining the fabric with a waterproof nylon which can be easily wiped clean. The velcro closure makes it easy for kids to open and each snack bag can be filled with sandwiches, carrots, pretzels, or other snacks your little one likes to munch on.

So check out these adorable snack/sandwich bags. You just won’t be able to decide which one is cuter! But the bonus is you get 10% off after ordering more than 3 bags, which is not hard to do!

This is a wonderful alternative to plastic bags and your kids will really enjoy them. In fact, you will enjoy them too! I have to order some more for myself! Happy Shopping!!

We are all a buzz here at Little Green Star at our first “celebrity sighting” of one of our tees! Heidi Klum and Seal were photographed on a walk last week and their adorable son was wearing our Bee Green tee! Click here for photos!!

In honor of this fun photo, all Bee Green tees are on sale for $15.00! Get ‘em while they last! And don’t forget to BEE GREEN yourself! Bring your bags to the store, recycle, compost when you can, and turn off the water when brushing your teeth!

Here at Little Green Star, we have a mission… to educate kids on the importance of science, nature, and protecting the environment. Not only do our tees reflect this message, but we think of our mission with everything we do from the paper we use in our office, to the inks on our tees and tags, to how we ship our products, and most importantly to the shirts that we use. I guess you can say we want to practice what we preach!!

So in order to be kind to the earth, we use shirts that are made from 100% organic cotton, which have been grown and sewn in the US. Even the organic lunch bags we carry are made in the US. I never knew I was such a patriotic person until I started a business of my own! It feels great to say that our little tees help support organic farms and manufacturers in the US.

So when you can, think local and think USA! If you have a choice between a big box store or your local farmers market, try out the farmers market! If you have a gift to buy, check out our SHOP page or Esty, for handmade and unique gifts! It helps keep your carbon footprint low and helps supports small businesses!

Specializing in unique organic cotton shirts that inspire & educate your little star!

Earth Day is a fun day, but everyday should be Earth Day, right?! In the morning, we are going to do an Earth Day craft.. I’m thinking something we can reuse in the house, like making cute flowers out of the toilet paper rolls or telescopes from paper towel holders. We are also going to do a little walk up the street and clean up as we go, all the way to the bakery of course Then I’m taking the boys to a San Francisco Giants game in the afternoon where the Giants have teamed up with the California Academy of Sciences for a special Earth Day game! Well, I guess the game won’t have anything to do with Earth Day, but they’ll be giving away reusable bags and will be giving out green tips during the game! It will be great to see and show the boys that even baseball stadiums work hard to stay “Green” by having recycling and compost containers. We are taking the train to the game too and it should be a really fun day!! So what are you doing to celebrate the day?

To find out more about the history of Earth Day and to see what people around the world are doing, check out Earth Day Network! On this website, you can become a member of the Green Generation, by registering what you do to help the earth, learn about bringing healthy foods to schools or just find out about local Earth Day events!

On Thursday April 23, Little Green Star will be doing an Earth Fair event at 555 Mission Street in San Francisco. The event will be held in the lobby of this LEED Certified office building from 11-1 and will feature many other local “green” companies. It should be a fun event and we hope to see you there!!

So get out and do a GREEN activity! Visit our Green Activities page to find fun and green activities to do with your kids, like start working on our Bee Green Calendar, make nature bookmarks, or create an eco-collage! Or do things like take the train to work, bring your reusable mug, and be sure to turn out the lights before you leave the house. All these things make a difference and if you start tomorrow, try again the next day too!!

Enjoy the day and enjoy our beautiful Earth!

image from the national oceanic and atmospheric association