Plant A Tree Together
August 14, 2009 by admin · 5 Comments
I have a new favorite book I purchased from The Land of Nod. It is A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry and Marc Simont.
“Trees are beautiful. They fill up the sky. If you have a tree, you can climb up its trunk, roll in its leaves, or hang a swing from one of its limbs. Cows and babies can nap in the shade of a tree. Birds can make nests in the branches. A tree is good to have around. A tree is nice.”
My favorite illustration is the black and white one of the boy fishing surrounded by trees. He looks so relaxed and at peace surrounded by the beautiful trees. When I think of my relationship with trees a similar picture comes to mind.
You can also purchase it through Amazon.com.
Family Activity Ideas
- Read this book and have family drawing time where you draw your relationship with trees or a tree.
- Go outdoors with a field guide to explore different kinds of trees and teach your children the importance of trees.
- Spend some time drawing, reading, talking, resting, playing around the trees.
- Find a place where you and your family can plant a tree!
The Arbor Day Foundation is a great site to do a little research and planning before having your tree family activity.
Not Paper or Plastic
August 12, 2009 by admin · 3 Comments
Think you have seen every cute, eco-friendly shopping bag? Well, you haven’t! Want to see the cute bags the girls and I carry around our favorite grocery store?
It is estimated that one tote bag saves 1,000 plastic bags in its lifetime.
Dogeared Bags are eco-friendly in and of themselves because they are made from natural cotton. The size is a little larger than most eco-friendly bags and the carrying straps are large enough to throw over your shoulder.
We found ours at Nordstrom but they are also available online for $27 per tote.
Simple Shoes for a Happy Planet
August 10, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Sara Snow from Discovery Channel introduced me to Simple Shoes and we are now huge fans at our house! Simple Shoes is a “nice little shoe company getting in touch with its inner hippie.”
Organic Cotton, I.S.O. 14001 Suede, Hemp, Bamboo, Recycled Car Tires and Recycled Inner Tubes. Simple Shoes are also VEGAN shoes.
Their shoes are made with the above sustainable materials–what could be better than an eco-friendly shoe?
Women’s Toepaz-Hemp–These are the pair I wear out and about; they are unbelievably comfy and fun!
Toddler’s GT Janie - Little Kid’s–Abby wears these and shows them off to anyone who will listen!
Toddler’s Innertube - Little Kid’s–If I had a little boy this is the pair I would pick!
Nature Play Groups
August 7, 2009 by admin · 8 Comments
While reading Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv I decided to start “Nature Days” and invite others to come along. Some of my fondest memories growing up were unstructured “play times” in nature.
When I need to calm down, take a breath or need to get out of a “funk” I find myself thinking of times spent in nature as a child. These events included exploring the woods behind our home in Maryland, walking along the Chesapeake Bay, exploring the tide pools in Maine, hiking the mountains in Utah and impromptu excursions on the side of the road to play in fields of wildflowers. I hope I can teach my children the strength they can take from nature, to allow them to be able to have their own memories involving the outdoors and learn how beautiful everything around them really is.
The Nature Days we host with the local community are quite simple and low key. We meet together to explore nature without set activities; we just let the kids play and explore nature. It is a wonderful monthly experience for the children in my local community. Recent studies show that children are smarter, more cooperative, happier and healthier when they have frequent opportunities for free and unstructured play in nature. It gives them the chance to explore, dream, pretend, experiment and come to their own conclusions all at their own pace.
Start a Nature Days with your friends in your community! It will be a great opportunity to let your children enjoy nature along with other children. No playground, no toys, no itinerary. You can meet from anywhere to a fishing hole to a dry patch of desert.
Cooking Techniques
August 5, 2009 by admin · 1 Comment
You can simply and easily reduce your carbon footprint, save money on your power bill and teach your kids through example how to help the earth just by tweaking your cooking techniques a bit!
Did you know:
- Choose the right size pan for cooking and keep the lid on for most of the cooking process to reduce energy use by up to 90%.
- Cook in batches! Plan out your family’s meals and prepare enough for several meals. Just freeze, refrigerate or dehydrate the remaining portions. It will use up less energy and make preparing meals for your family quite a bit easier!
- Cook several items on top of each other in a stacked steamer to get the most out of the energy you use.
- Try one-dish meals; they are easier for you but also use about a third of the energy than cooking a meal using tons of different pans. This means you can feel good about cooking a pot of diry rice, casserole, paella, etc. and also have less cleanup!
- Stop checking! You waste heat and energy every time you open up the stove or crockpot to take a peek.
- Don’t preheat the oven when it’s not required. For some recipes it is critical you do this but for manyyou don’t need to.
- Stay away from prepackaged meals. Most of the time they aren’t terribly tasty and lack nutrients and fresh ingredients. Instead have a short list of go-to meals you know you have the ingredients for and are easy to cook.
For example, in my home we like to roast a large amount of butternut squash and use some of it that day, refrigerate some for the rest of the week and freeze the rest for the remaining month. We make butternut squash ravioli, lasagna, pancakes and even layer it in a sandwich in place of cheese. This makes putting together my family’s meals so much easier and also saves a lot of energy!
Breathtaking
August 3, 2009 by admin · 20 Comments
Breathtaking! It reminds me how lucky I am to live on this beautiful Earth.
Five Senses Fun
July 31, 2009 by admin · 2 Comments
Five Senses Competition
Have a tally card for each member of the family to keep score during this competition. The family member with the highest points wins! If you were at my house and you won you would get to pick what is for dessert that night!
Touch: Blindfold each player and have them touch different substances in bowls that are covered with cloth (that way the other players can’t see). You can put anything in the bowls from flour to lunch meat!
Hearing: Blindfold each player and have them try to identify different common noises. You can have these prerecorded or do them as you go. You can do anything from crumpled newspaper to a baby blowing raspberries.
Sight: Have a tray full of different items. Let everyone look at them for 30 seconds and then take the tray away. Have them write down as many items as they can remember.
Smelling: Blindfold each player and have them sniff different bottles full of substances. You could fill the bottles with vinegar, lemonade or chocolate milk!
Taste: Blindfold each player and have them taste a wide range of foods. Don’t get too Fear Factor with your family during this one!
Quick Version of this Game: Name an object you see while driving, for example, a tree, a cow, a tire, etc. Have your child describe it using the 5 senses: what does the object look like, does it make a sound, what would it taste like, etc. This is a perfect quick game to play during a long car ride or when stuck in line at the store.
Meal Planning for Part-Time Vegetarians
July 29, 2009 by admin · 5 Comments
For almost two years we’ve been eating vegetarian or vegan twice a week and seafood twice a week. I guess you could consider us part-time vegetarians. Eating this way keeps us from overloading our diets with too much meat or dairy and cuts down on our grocery bill. It forces us to eat more fresh produce and to shop locally so the produce actually has flavor.
It is extremely eco-friendly to eat vegetarian twice a week; eating meat takes a toll on the environment big time. The beef, poultry and pork industrial farms notoriously contribute to water pollution, use large amounts of fossil fuels and generate prodigious amounts of greenhouse gases. The United Nations has actually issued a call for citizens of the world to go vegetarian one day a week to curb global warming.
My girls love fresh veggies and fruit on their own, but I also like to puree it and add it to other meals. I’m not trying to hide it but it’s another great way to add more essential vitamins to their diet. When my girls were babies I made their baby food and always used organic ingredients. Their teeth came in quickly and they moved onto solids sooner than later, so both times I ended up with extra bags of frozen cubed baby food. I started adding the pureed butternut squash into their grilled cheese for lunch and whole grain pancakes for breakfast. During that time two cookbooks were released dedicated to adding pureed fruits and veggies to favorite recipes!
We’ve slowly been going more with our meals every month to the point that I can honestly say more than 75% of our meals are completely organic. A big turning point for me in making this decision was something Sara Snow wrote in her Fresh Living book. The importance of “factoring in the kids when deciding to go organic” reaffirmed my decision. Sara puts it in such great way:
All of this becomes particularly important when you recognize that kids eat, per pound of body weight, more food than adults every day. Plus their variety is limited. So when a child eats a food that contains residues, the dose they receive is much higher than the dose you or I might get from the same food. Couple that with the fact that children’s bodies don’t have the ability to metabolize chemicals as quickly or as completely as adults do, so the chemicals remain in kids longer, posing greater risks.
It has been a learning experience to teach myself to cook this way but it has been worth the work. These wonderful cookbooks have served as manuals to me and I highly recommend them to everyone!
In Season: Cooking with Vegetable and Fruits
The River Cottage Family Cookbook by Huge Fearnley-Whittingstall & Fizz Carr might be one of our favorite cookbooks. The book itself is a work of art–everything about it is beautiful. They take the time to explain in plain terms why to prepare your food a certain way, why you should make the choice to go organic…there was a lot of love put into this book and you can tell.
The PDQ (Pretty Darn Quick) Vegetarian Cookbook: 24
Slice of Organic Life by Alice Waters & Sheherazade Goldsmith goes over everything from growing your own food organically, cooking home-grown produce, keeping selected livestock and leading a more sustainable lifestyle.
But most importantly, above all, you must have a cute apron to cook in which is why I give you…Cottage Road Designs and a link to her gorgeous aprons.
Mmmm Mmmm
July 27, 2009 by admin · 14 Comments
I’m adding this recipe to our breakfast rotation–it sounds so yummy!
Banana-Oat Smoothie from the Every Day Food magazine
In a blender combine:
1/4 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup plain lowfat yogurt
1 banana cut into thirds
1/2 cup fat-free milk
2 teaspoons honey
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Serve immediately. Mmmm, mmmm good!
Green Books
July 24, 2009 by admin · 2 Comments
Looking for new board book additions to add to your infant’s book collection? I was thrilled to come across these three new (to me) authors and series.
Little Panda by Little Green Books
Meet Little Panda and his friend Little Monkey as they spend their day eating their favorite foods and playing together. Your little ones will enjoy cuddling with this book made out of super soft fleece. The book is machine washable and made from 50% recycled material. It will help you as you start teaching your children about being eco-friendly and covers subjects such as improving the environment, learning about endangered animals, recycling and much more.
Baby Series written by Michelle Sinclair Colman and illustrated by Nathalie Dion
Is your baby a Country Baby, Winter Baby, Urban Baby, Beach Baby, Foodie Baby or Jet Baby? You will find the perfect book to fit your baby’s lifestyle and personality. The illustrations are bright and colorful and the text is so clever. These are my favorite books to give as baby shower presents.
My Friends from Author Taro Gomi
My Friends follows a little girl who thanks all her friends around her: the rooster who taught her to march, the ant who taught her to explore the earth and the teachers who taught her to study.
Spring Is HEre from Author Taro Gomi
Spring is Here is the perfect board pictures book that tells of the changing of the seasons.
What perfect gifts these would be for the little ones in your lives!
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