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!!!

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!

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!!!

Having kids in the city is fun and exciting, but also a challenge to be sure they get enough exposure to nature, not just cement! Thankfully, San Francisco is full of wonderful parks, trails, trees, and green spaces. But I see the difference between my childhood where we would camp out in the backyard in CT any summer night and my kids “camping” in our living room. So we make it a point to get out and enjoy nature all the time! Which is why I was thrilled to discover Wonderbug Adventures!

Wonderbug Adventures was started by 2 Bay Area Moms Hillary and Melissa who both have backgrounds in early childhood education and environmental science. Their mission is a great one- to encourage kids to explore nature through hands on activities and to get out there and see just how beautiful our city is!

Wonderbug Adventures offers weekly classes for little ones aged 18 months up to 4 years. Each class is an hour long and includes educational lessons on a variety of topics likes birds, ponds, ducks and bugs! There are stories, songs, pictures, and dances! The best part is a nature discovery walk, where the little ones get a nature bag with some tools to collect items that will be used for an art project at the end of class. My 3 year old has learned about ducks, bugs and birds and loves to tell me and daddy about all the new things he’s learned!

So please check out this wonderful program! I’ve learned a lot too and its a great way to connect with nature and your little one all at the same time!

For those not in San Francisco, I’m sorry! I hope there is something like this in a city near you, google it!

Little Green Star is proud to have met the wonderful people at Operation Shower, a non-profit group that coordinates baby showers for those women who have loved ones serving overseas in the military.

For Mother’s Day, Operation Shower will be hosting the first ever Eco-Friendly baby shower called Boxes in Bloom. The showers will be held from May 2nd-May 9th at Ft. Hood, Texas and Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.

We were happy to donate some baby onesies for this very deserving group of ladies! To find out more about Operation Shower and to find out ways you can donate for this and other events they do, please click here to be directed to their website! They make it easy to donate $25 and have it go towards a variety of “new mom” essentials like high chairs, cribs, organic clothing, blankets and more! Or you can contact Co-Founder and Chief Shower Officer (love the title!) Lena Morrissey at Lena@operationshower.org for more information about the organization or how you can help!

I recently “met” the founder of Pure Mothers website online and I’m so happy I did! Deborah is a mom and a very knowledgeable gal in all matters of living a green and natural lifestyle. Her website is devoted to a natural way of living and her passion for finding safe and healthy products comes through in her writing. Not only does she offer product reviews, but offers very insightful articles on vaccines, birthing, breastfeeding, nutrition, and many other areas that new and experienced moms will find helpful.

I’ve enjoyed this website very much and I’ve learned a lot! I love her book suggestions, as well as product recommendations.

Thank you Deborah for inspiring me to learn more about a natural way of life, not only for my kids, but for my whole family. I’ve learned a lot and I look forward to reading more!!

Please visit Pure Mothers today!!

Such an exciting and historic day! President Obama has made a commitment to the environment by promising new green jobs, finding alternative energy sources, and putting more hybrid cars on the road. To read more about our new President’s plan for energy and the environment, visit the White House website!

Going to the library is one of our favorite activities. We’ve been going to all different branches here in San Francisco trying to find the perfect one while our local library is undergoing renovation.We’ve been going to story time at the big library downtown and visiting a smaller branch in Noe Valley for their fine selection of Thomas the Tank Engine books! The boys love that they can find different books they’ve never seen before and actually get to take them home! The self-service checkout machine is also a big hit too. Kids can get their own library cards and when you check out their books using their cards there are no overdue book fees!

The library has become a special place for our family. Its a chance to sit and read together, a place to learn new things (I love to check out the latest cookbooks!), and a great way to teach the kids about borrowing from others, taking good care of the books while we have them and bringing them back for others to use. At first bringing back books was a little traumatic. There would be tears involved for sure! But now the boys understand that they are just ours for a little while and now the next family gets to enjoy them.

Going to the library is the ultimate lesson in recycling and reusing, not to mention just a fun way to spend the afternoon. We encourage you to visit your local library soon for a story time, book club, or just to browse the selections of new train books like we do!

I just stumbled onto the site called Green Bag Lady, where you can send an email to get a free hand sewn bag all for the promise to use it. The site was started by Teresa early this year, who is an artist and a teacher living in Nashville, Tn. She started making fabric bags for herself, then started bringing them to her classes, then started giving them to friends, and then she started giving them away for free to people all around the world!

Teresa has made and given away close to 500 bags in the US, Italy, and Costa Rica… how fun! She explains on her website why she is not selling the bags, but giving away them away… ” They are a gift. I want you to feel obligated to use them, that is why I have you promise to use them instead of paper or plastic. If you were to buy them from me, they become a commodity and there is no obligation any longer because you own it”.

All you have to do is email her, promise to use the bag over paper or plastic and she will send you a bag. Each bag has a number and she logs where the bag is.There are also lots of photos on her site with people with their bags! And if you have extra fabric, you can send it to her.

I think this type of grassroots effort is really what is going to change the world. Using your own bags instead of paper or plastic is one of the easiest things to do for the environment and sometimes you just need a push in the right direction, like with a free bag! When you get your bag, you use it and you are excited about it and you tell your friends, then they tell their friends… its just a fun and exciting thing to be a part of. I hope more and more people look to this as a model for how we can all be a part of change.

And I love that it is just a kind gesture. A free gift from a stranger to help protect our world. Its just a nice thing to read about in this crazy world of ours. Thanks Teresa! I can’t wait to get my bag and start using it!

I got the cutest book for Christmas last year 1,001 Ways to Save the Planet by Joanna Yarrow. Its the cutest book ever, small and chunky with wonderful illustrations and really great tips!

There are so many tips, I haven’t even made it through the book yet, but there is something great on every page. Just a few random ones…. Wrap gifts in reusable fabric. Encourage your little ones to be “green helpers” by having kids check to make sure the lights are out or to take out the compostable materials. Instead of using harsh chemicals to clean your oven, make a paste out of baking soda and water. Leave on for one hour then rub off. Deter fleas naturally by putting finely chopped garlic in their food twice a week. The fleas won’t like their blood. eeewwww. But you can see, I can go on and on and on!

I just love the idea of having really simple things I can do around the house or with my family that actually does some good!

This book makes a great gift or check it out from your local library. Its a fun book to read and really inspiring too!