Take a minute and look around you. How much plastic do you see? So many products that we use everyday are made of or stored in plastic. Plastic will NEVER break down - EVER! You may be able to upcycle it or recycle it but there is a limit to the number of times it can be used. In the end, it will end up floating in our oceans as tiny little plastic pellets that will harm the animals and ecosystems. I won't go into the details behind all of the waste but I encourage you to visit a friend of mine, Beth Terry, and her blog My Plastic Free Life. While she may be one of the biggest advocates for living plastic free; we can all make little changes in our lives to help the problem. Keep reading and scroll down to enter the Balm Baby Plastic FREE July Challenge and Giveaway! I have compiled a quick list of practical tips on how we can all reduce the plastic in our lives. Don't let these overwhelm you - just pick a few of the items on the list and pay attention to the things that ... [ Read More ]
An Earth Day Award…to My Mom!
I received an email about halfway through the day yesterday from my mom asking me to give her a call at work. Of course I picked up the phone and called to see what was up. She was super excited and all bubbly about another email she sent me (which I didn't see yet). I quickly opened my email to find this link: Congratulations to Triangle Elementary School, the National Winner (in the TerraCycle Drink Pouch Derby)! My mom is the cafeteria manager at Triangle Elementary School and a few years back implemented a recycling/upcycling program for drink pouches. Part of their school nutrition program is a free breakfast program for their students which includes a drink pouch with every breakfast. With over 500 students in the school you can imagine the kind of waste this creates. Instead of trashing the pouches, she decided to start a TerraCycle collection program and earn points (to redeem for cash) for the cafeteria. It's not a small undertaking cleaning out several hundred ... [ Read More ]
Tips for Celebrating Earth Day with Your Children
Do your kids share the love of nature with you? How do you teach them to be good environmental stewards and take care of the gifts that have been given to us? Earth Day is a good reminder for us to teach these lessons to our children; not just one day a year but every day. Take a few minutes today and show your children some of the beautiful things that surround them and how they can preserve those treasures. Here are a few fun ways I like to celebrate Earth Day with my kids: Take a family trip to the recycling center.Don’t save this chore for the weekends or for dad; do it together as a family and show your children what happens when the recycling truck comes and hauls off your trash. Many recycling centers have community educators that are available to share how recycling benefits your local community. Start a garden. Kids love to play in the dirt and be outside. Set aside a small area in your backyard to start your own family garden with your favorite fruits and ... [ Read More ]
Dear Mrs. P,
A few days ago I told you that I was going to my sons school for the Great American Teach In. On Friday he came home with a handful of Thank You cards all decorated by his classmates. I wanted to share a few of them with you: Dear Mrs. P, Thanks for visiting. I never new that glass dose not disinagreat, thats so cool. I'll tell my step mom about the re-use able dippers. Sincerly, Marissa Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for helping our class how to reycle. Sinsily Jaquan Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for speaking and for teaching us about reduce reuse and rescyle aslo refuse. Sincerly Chloe Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for teaching me all about reciciling. My most favirt part was that it can take a straw 500 years to incinegret. Sincerly, Jimmy Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for coming to teach about recycling. Sincerely, Peter Dear Mrs. P, I never knew dipers could be reused! I though one baby could use less than 20 dipers a day! Thank you for teaching me! From Abby Dear Mrs. P, ... [ Read More ]
Trash to Treasure Thursday
My husband cleaned out his drawers a few months back and gave me some of his old t-shirts to experiment with. I got a sewing machine for Christmas (for myself) and have been learning as I go. I took a sewing class in High School but that was YEARS ago...so I've become friends of YouTube to re-teach me how to sew. This use to be a concert t-shirt that he probably wore only a few times. Now it's a cute toddler skirt. I didn't have a pattern to follow - but I did look closely at a skirt that she already has in her wardrobe as a reference. I forgot to take pictures along the way but I promise to make it again and provide you with a tutorial. Have you made any Trash to Treasure projects this week? I'd love to see them - leave a comment with a link to your pictures. ... [ Read More ]
Saturday Morning iMusings
As I lay here in bed typing away on my iPhone, too scared to pull out the laptop in fear of waking the wee ones, I am pondering the weekend that has appeared. Today will be spent at the Little League field with the Opening Ceremonies. It's going to be a little different this year since the hubs and I aren't coaching. Instead I have a new role, recycling coordinator! The past 6 months I've worked to implement recycling at the fields. The only element that I didn't finish is the signage. I'm out of printer ink so posters will have to wait. I just hope people are smart enough to realize that the trash can next to the recycling bin is where the trash goes! Seems like such a simple concept, right?? The rest of the weekend?? Recovering from a round of colds. Designing our bathroom remodel. And whatever else comes our way. Maybe I'll even find some time to pull out the laptop and write. For now, the iPhone is being set aside as I hear the babbles from Lil B. What are your plans for ... [ Read More ]
Great American Teach In
Today I spent an hour at my son's school with about 40 first graders talking about trash! The Great American Teach In is a time for parents and community members to come into the schools and show the kids what we do for a living. I love talking to the kids but I was a bit intimidated when I drove up...there was a garbage truck, a helicopter, and a police car in the parking lot! And here I come with my reusable shopping bag full of goodies. I was afraid they wouldn't be interested but they loved it. I decided that this year I would talk about the 3R's - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! The media tends to push recycling but they don't mention the other 2 R's. I started by asking kids if they knew where their trash goes to...that big hole in the ground we call a landfill...and told them that hundreds of years from now their trash will still be there! Then I talked about the Mobius Strip (the recycling symbol) and what it means. Did you know that it was created in 1970 by a 23 year old ... [ Read More ]
Fuji EnviroMAX Batteries – A New Evolution of Batteries
Like most parents our house is littered with kids toys that require batteries. You can't celebrate a birthday or a holiday without obtaining a few more of those e-toys that are suppose to make your child smarter. My baby alone is sleeping with 3 stuffed animals that require batteries to send her off to sleepy town more peacefully. We have a special basket in our pantry that stores all of those excess batteries so that we never have to deal with 'dead' toys. I even have 2 battery chargers and about 8 rechargeable batteries...however they are always dead when I need to use them! My son hates it when a toy actually dies because he knows it is usually months before I actually replace the batteries. Seriously...he has a set of walkie talkies that have never had batteries...and he uses his imagination to make them work! Shocking I know...but we survived this way as kids, so can he! Inevitably we all require batteries in our home to make things work. From the Wii remotes to the ... [ Read More ]
Back from Vacation
Yes, I've been on vacation! My Twitter followers have followed my adventures with my family at Disney this past week but I wanted to share a few fun things with everyone. Cloth Diapers and Traveling: We didn't have a washer or dryer so we took disposables to Disney. This made me very sad but it was very stress-free. One day I'll try to travel with my cloth but I have to be able to wash them. Breastfeeding: In honor of World Breastfeeding Week...we have a long way to go to educate people about breastfeeding. You would think at Disney World, a place for kids, breastfeeding would be easier than it was. The parks have these great baby care centers where you can nurse but they are not always where you need them. There is only one center per park and the parks are huge! I ended up breastfeeding in some odd places and got quite a lot of different reactions...including the one mom who made her family leave the bench I was sitting on while breastfeeding (PS...I was not exposed ... [ Read More ]
Day 6: Greener Fundraising
GIVEAWAY ALERT! Be sure to read all the way to the bottom for the fifth contest of The Eco-Summer Blog Party! CONGRATULATIONS KIM! Today is a little different post for the Eco-Summer Blog Party, it's about green fundraising. School is out and I'm still thinking about fundraising, I must be sick! Not really, just have some good 'virtual' friends in the green fundraising field that I had to include in the Party. Plus now is really a good time to start planning fall fundraisers for your schools (and other organizations). I had forgotten how many fundraisers kids are involved with until my son started Kindergarten last fall. Between school and sports there was never a time when we weren't raising funds for something. Last year we sold cookies and coffee; and collect donations for Jump Rope for Heart and Take a Hike. For t-ball alone I think we had 3 different fundraisers. This coming year I will have a little more input into the fundraising programs at school...I have ... [ Read More ]