Summertime is here and it's time to get our green in gear.

Typically summer is a time where we waste a great number of resources, like water to fuel our summer fun and energy to keep us cool. We tend to travel more by land and air in summer, which drives our carbon consumption off the charts.

Here are some simple ways to help green our summer:

1. Try a staycation instead of a no-holds-barred, see-the-world vacation. Vacationing closer to home will save energy and can ultimately be more relaxing than a full-on travel adventure. Exploring our local environs can be very rewarding and surprising. We certainly won't miss getting a ripping cold from recirculated air on a plane.
2. Conserve and recycle our gray water for the garden and lawn. This is a wonderful way to green our summer, literally and figuratively. A small bucket in the shower to catch over-spray, a small pan in the sink to catch the mostly clean water we use to wash our summer bounty. These two things alone can make a great overall difference. We can also try diverting our washing machine rinse water onto our gardens and lawns. Water is so precious, we don't have a drop to waste.
3. I know this next one is going to sound like a bummer but we need to get real about separating what our needs are and what are our desires are if we want to make a difference. We humans oftentimes get to feeling that we are entitled to more than our share of comfort. Turning off our air-conditioning and feeling the summer through our windows and doors is what I am talking about. Unless we are elderly or have health issues like asthma or some other serious disease, there is no reason why healthy humans can't put up with a little, or a lot, of heat in summer. In case you are wondering, we installed only one air-conditioning window unit at our house this year, a little oasis of cool for those especially desperate hot days. We use old-fashioned oscillating fans to cool ourselves when needed. The good news is, we have not melted yet.
4. This is an important one: Let our lawns be. Stop trying to kill every weed and bug in sight. Pesticides and herbicides are harming much more than what we intend them to harm. They can ruin our health, environment and wildlife, all for the sake of what? A green lawn that looks like a carpet? Are we crazy? We need to live and let live, in some great measure, all of the cogs in this great wheel.
5. Support local farming by shopping outside the box at your local farmers market or CSA. Becoming a locavore is a great way to keep our dollars working to better our own communities. It also saves on fuel consumption and fosters a great sense of community. Treat yourself this summer to some great local dining out as well.

If you have any suggestions for greening up our summer fun, please feel free to share them.

(Photo credit:chrisbaxter Super Eco group on flickr)

A website called, How Can I Recycle This, asks the question: "How do I recycle 1000 mugs?" Super Eco has some suggestions.

Well, here goes:

1. Drill a hole in the bottom of each mug and fill it with potting soil. Plant a seed, water it well and then donate to a local school for students to nurture as a class project.
2. Buy packets of Tea or Hot Chocolate and pop one in each cup. Donate to a local Woman's shelter.
3. Donate them to Animal Shelters where they may be used to scoop up chow at feeding time.
4. Donate them to a local Art school where they can be upcycled into art.
5. Hand them out on a street corner with eco-quotes or quotes on compassion inside as a kind of Art Happening.
6. Take them to the next local event or community clean up day and give them out as thank-you-for-attending favors. 
7. Donate them to a local Visiting Nurse or charity fundraiser to be sold.
8. Use them to store leftovers in the fridge, buy neat little reusable shower-caps for the top. Make pudding in them!
9. Fill them with good will and distribute at random to co-workers. Who can't use another mug?
10. Sink them up-side-down part way into the ground around a flower bed to make a festive border.

If you have any more suggestions feel free to jot them down in our comment section!

(Photo credit:Per Ola Wiberg ~ Powi on flickr)

Kids are more likely to eat food they've picked out and prepared themselves. It's established wisdom. But when the cards are down and it's time to head to the store, it's all too easy to give into the temptation to leave the kids at home with your partner and go pick up the groceries yourself. It's so much quicker and easier, right?

What you need, tired parent, is a dirty dozen cheat sheet for kids. We hope you already carry a copy of the Environmental Working Group's dirty dozen produce list in your wallet, reminding you which fruits and vegetables are the worst offenders when it comes to pesticide residues. (If you don't have one, you should; cheat sheets make healthy, sustainable shopping sooo much easier.) Now, you can arm your kids with their own treasure map for the hunt: a colorful, kid-friendly version of dirty dozen cheat sheet from My Paper Crane. Download and print off a copy (you can even laminate it, if you think it'll be seeing a lot of hard action), then hand it to your kids at the store and let them pick their own.

I've done this with my own kids since they were big enough to read the list, and they love sleuthing out the tastiest healthy choices. With this new kid-friendly version, you can introduce your own family to the thrill of the produce hunt even before they can read. That's one more job off your list and in the (grocery) bag!

(Photo credit:My Paper Crane)

How would you live if you could rethink virtually everything? That's the top question on the minds of the socially conscious explorers attending Rethinking Everything, an international conference taking place this September in Dallas, Texas. What began 14 years ago as a local conference for unschooling families has evolved into a meetup of like-minded people sharing fresh and empowered ways of parenting, self-design and sustainability.

Founded and produced by Barb Lundgren, an entrepreneurial unschooling parent with decades of experience questioning everything, this conference literally bubbles over with activity for children and adults alike. "Expect nurturing support for the creation of respectful, exuberant, freedom- and responsibility-filled lifestyles for everyone in your family," she writes. "The five conference days are overflowing with multiple options at all times, from early morning to late night.  Expect to be loved and challenged. Expect shifts in the way you believe the world works. Expect to take full responsibility for yourself and your children/teens. Expect to prepare for the conference with meaty conversations with your family on the meanings of freedom, respect and responsibility for both oneself and others."

The nonprofit Rethinking Everything conference, sponsored by Michael Mendizza and his Touch the Future Foundation, will be held in five days over Labor Day weekend, Sept. 3-7, 2010, at the American Airlines Training and Conference Center in Dallas, Texas. Register by Friday, April 30 for lower early registration rates.

(Photo credit:englishsnow, flickr)

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." John Muir

"I still find the day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see." John Burroughs

The very first step in greening our lives is to green our attitude, the way we think about and embrace life.

Here are some simple tips:

1. Unplug our media mind once in awhile and get out on a walk or even a sit in nature. A study by University of Illinois scientists Frances E. Kuo and William C. Sullivan found that a canopy of trees and greenery cools more than the forest floor, it can help to cool mental anguish and unrest. Their findings clearly indicate that: "Exposure to trees and vegetation seems to reduce mental fatigue and feelings of irritability that come with it." Gardening is a great way to unplug from stress and connect with nature.
2. A green time-out is usually just the ticket for improving our kids mindset because children benefit greatly from immersion in the green world as well. Head on over to the National Wildlife Federation's Green Hour website for great info. and ideas about family green time.
3.  Unleash your inner artist/writer by starting your own naturalist journal. Starting a nature journal is a great, simple, inexpensive way to deepen our connection with the natural world. Remembering that we are a part of and not separate from nature is key.
4. Practicing compassion for ourselves and all of our fellow beings as a daily ritual is incredibly rewarding. Compassion can color our world green faster than almost any other discipline.
5. Being ethical consumers of the bounty that our green planet affords us is also essential. Ethical, organic, humanely farmed or biodynamically farmed products will help to ensure a more sustainable future and give us some peace of mind. It is important to love and nurture, not disdain, neglect and fear what feeds us.
6. Get involved by supporting and volunteering at your local farmer' market or community clean up. This level of support and interaction with the green community helps us all to sleep better at night.

HAPPY EARTH DAY 2010!

(Photo credit:ms.lume on flickr)

Life in the 'burbs can be isolating for children and families. Nobody walks anywhere, even to school. Kids play in their own back yards, behind privacy fences, during scheduled playdates. Family members hang out in entirely different areas of cavernous McMansions. But must families who want to become closer to one another, their neighbors and their community sell everything and move to the city?

Not necessarily. Dr. Michael Ungar, author of "The We Generation: Raising Socially Responsible Kids," says the solution lies in staying focused on what families need, no matter where they live. Ungar poses questions designed to help readers balance the various costs and consequences of where they choose to live:

• What are the real costs of building, renovating or moving in terms of quality time with family, friends and community?
• What price, emotionally and financially, are family members willing to pay?
• Will we be mortgaged to the point we have no life?
• Will our family find the things it most wants: healthy relationships, time to entertain and look at the garden, and less stress?
• Should the spare room be a children's playroom, a music room, a place for the television, or a sewing and craft space?

It's great food for thought, when the temptation to upgrade so often overcomes common sense about how we actually like to enjoy our downtime at home. Read more about raising social responsible kids.

(Photo credit:betacam, SXC)

The Baby Bond: The New Science Behind What's Really Important When Caring for Your Baby by Dr. Linda Folden Palmer isn't hot off the presses, by any means. We bring it to readers here today for one simple reason: This book is a classic resource that should be on every parent's shelf. Age-old, natural ways of parenting have historically been the last to be scientifically examined. After all, there's no commercial interest backing research and publicity for parenting that doesn't involve products. Backed by more than 1,200 sources, The Baby Bond draws back the curtain to reveal the science behind the responsive, nurturing style of parenting known as attachment parenting.

We're all children of parents, of course, and many of us are parents in turn as well. With so many been-there-done-that "experts" handing out parenting advice, it's easy for parents to find themselves parenting in outdated, unscientific ways. The Baby Bond shows which methods, old and new alike, work and why.

• Evidence why exclusive breastfeeding is so beneficial
• How attentiveness and touch impacts permanent brain development in infants
• Under-reported facts about reducing colic, food allergies and illness
• Why sharing sleep with your baby is both safe and natural
• How early bonding carries through to later child and teen years

Visit The Baby Bond for more of the author's ongoing, passionate pursuit of news and resources to help parents raise naturally healthy families.

(Photo credit:The Baby Bond)

The beginning of April is about the time that I start to plan my tick and flea avoidance strategy for the year.

There are so many downsides--for the environment, us and our pets--to using conventional pesticide remedies. There is also real danger for us and our pets from contracting tick borne illness such as Lyme Disease and let's face it, flea infestations are just plain horrible.

So how do we keep these unwanted pest insects out of our homes, off of us and our animals?

Here are a few great tips to green our flea and tick remediation:

1. For starters a clean, well groomed pet and pet environment is essential. Pet bedding should be washed regularly. During the flea and tick season pets should be brushed and checked for pest insects every day.
2. Vacuuming your home and carpets regularly helps as well.
3. Keep the areas just outside your home where you walk your dog well pruned and mowed. Short grass is less likely to harbor fleas and ticks. Trim flowers and grasses away from walkways where fleas and ticks hide just waiting to jump.
4. Walking and working outside in light colored clothing helps us spot ticks more easily.
5. Do regular "tick checks" on yourself and your family, check behind the ears and in the scalp and crevices behind the knees and under arms. Ticks like to hide away in sheltered areas of the body.
6. Keeping just a few Chickens can be a great help when it comes to cleaning your lawn and property of pesky ticks.
7. This simple blend of Almond oil and Rose Geranium is the remedy that I will be trying this year!
8. Check out this Natural Dog Health Remedies website for some great ideas.

Remember, just because it is for sale in a pet store, does not always mean it is safe!

(Photo credit:ms.lume on flickr)

No matter where you stand on America's recently passed health care package, the vitriolic partisanship and "us vs. them" mentality of those struggling to pass or block the bill has got to register as a shock. When did our society become so unwilling and unable to cooperate? And how can we expect families building their lives in this atmosphere to overcome this kind of "me-centric" thinking to raise "we-thinking" children?

Michael Ungar, author of "The We Generation: Raising Socially Responsible Kids," nudges parents out of the boxed-in mindset that's become endemic to America today. "We want our children to have access to every available medical and social service imaginable, but we look for ways to avoid paying our taxes, hoping someone else will foot the bill," Ungar writes. "We don't mean to be so self-centered, but as individual adults, we haven't shown much inclination to take responsibility for the fiscal, environmental or social liabilities we are leaving our children."

It's no surprise, then, when the social disconnect comes home. "It is a small step from such selfishness to the actions of the parent who excuses her son's belligerent behavior when his principal calls home," Ungar notes. Yet we don't even notice as the excuses eat away at a sense of compassion, cooperation and responsibility.

Ungar's book is a wakeup call to complacent parents. He explores the causes of "me" thinking and explains how parents can encourage "we" thinking through every stage of development. He identifies the ways parents unintentionally cause their children to become more self-centered. "The We Generation" also examines how where we live impacts development and leads children to become alienated and selfish. More than just an examination of modern culture, it gives parents the tools and support to raise children who are compassionate, community-minded, responsible and accountable for their actions.

(Photo credit:hortongrou, SXC)

I have always loved collecting and reading books.

I love the smell of them, the tactile sensation of turning the pages, using a special bookmark to mark my place.

Certain books are like old friends to me. I would never give them up.

But the world of reading is changing and it is important to change with it. To blend the old with the new.

There are so many new and old ways available today to green our read:

1. Book swapping is a great way to make our reading greener. Outside of swapping books with nearby friends and neighbors, websites like PaperBack Swap, BookMooch and Swaptree make it easy expand the swapping circle.
2. Shopping for books at used bookstores is a fun eco-friendly way to expand our library.
3. Donating books that we feel comfortable parting with, books we do not plan on reading again, is a great green idea. Local library, VNA and other fundraisers are a great place to bring our used books.
4. Gifting lightly read books at the holidays and for birthdays is also a very green practice. Including a beautiful bookmark and creatively presenting a used book, can make it a very special gift.
5. Sierra Club suggests eco and nature themed books as a way to green our reading.
6. Support authors and publishers who print on recycled paper and do not support the cutting of old growth forests.
7. Buying used textbooks and then recycling them by reselling or donating them is a great economical and green practice for students. Using online textbooks is a great choice as well.
8. Using our local Public Library is a very green practice.
9. There is some question as to how green the Kindle device is and according to this article in The Chic Ecologist "it is if you use it enough".

Happy green reading!

(Photo credit:Lin Pernille ♥ Photography on flickr)