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

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!

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!)

Almost Green: How I Saved 1/6th of a Billionth of the Planet by James Glave is one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time! But whats great about the book is that I learned a lot too!

Almost Green is about one man’s quest to live a more green lifestyle and make better choices, despite owning an SUV! James Glave takes us on a ride as he builds an “eco-shed” for himself in the backyard and tries to answer some good questions we all should think about. How can I live more sustainably? How can I afford it? What expense will this be to my kids and family? All along the way, I laughed out loud and learned something too-every bit counts!

You can find out more about the author and see pictures of the eco-shed at his website too! Click here!

Check this book out from the library or buy it today! Its well worth it!!!

This August, Seattle will be voting on a plastic bag tax, the first in the US, which will HOPEFULLY dramatically reduce the amount of plastic bags used at stores all across Seattle. Voting to approve Referendum 1, customers will be charged a tax for plastic bags, but if you bring your own bag, you pay no extra tax.

For more information, visit the Seattle Green Bag Campaign website, to find out more.

This campaign is based on the PlasTax, passed in 2002 in the Republic of Ireland, which saw a 90% drop in consumption of plastic bags. Thats over 1 billion fewer bags!!!

I think this could be an important step for people to act as a reminder to bring those bags with you where ever you go. Visit Reusablebags.com for a great selection of bags! But you don’t have to buy new bags either. Bring any bag you have around the house, reuse the paper bags you have collected from grocery stores, backpacks, or buy a bag from your grocery store for .99$!

Good luck Seattle! Don’t forget to Vote!

Become a fan on Facebook! Its been so fun to connect with old friends on facebook and it will be great to connect with new friends too!!!

Click here to become a fan!!!

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!!