Eco-Kid Friendly

Birthday Crowns, Felt Horses and Unicorns oh my!

2014-01-19T20:18:00.001-08:00

Here is a collage of the felt birthday crowns I made for my kids last year! I bought a pattern and some wool off Etsy to make felt horses, two of which I turned into unicorns with a felt horn wrapped in yarn. Pattern Here

Gift ideas Photo Books - Microscope Slide Ornaments - Peg People

2014-01-19T18:56:00.000-08:00

Most of December I was busy making Christmas presents for my 4 kids as well as our family and friends. These gift ideas are not limited to just Christmas, they can be used for any occasion. One of the gifts I made for my mom was a book I designed on printerpix.com. It came out really nice, but I had issues with their software and their website popping up with errors all over my book after submitting my order. It also takes them forever to ship it out! It got there after Christmas when I submitted my order on the 3rd. Yorkphoto.com I used to make a book for my kids. Their software I felt was much easier to use and design the way I wanted and their shipping was super fast! If you're in the market for a photo book I would definitely go with yorkphoto.com. Before deciding to order a photo book I would check livingsocial.com and groupon.com for deals on photo books. I found great deals on the books I ordered from those websites.

In 2012 I made some personalized photo magnets in a similar fashion to these ornaments I made this year. The ornaments are made with a soldering iron, flux, copper tape, solder and microscope slides. Super simple to make and they turn out really nice. Other materials needed were jump rings, holiday charms, ribbon, stickers, pliers, photos, and holiday themed paper. Originally the soldering kit I purchased came with solder that had a rosin core. Personally I really did not like this as I found it to be difficult to use as opposed to the solder and flux. It just was not coming out as smooth as it should have (can be seen in the picture). The 2x3 microscope slides I used are purchasable on amazon.com. There are many tutorials online on how to make microscope slide ornaments/magnets.

For my kids I spent many hours making them peg people. These took me almost a couple hours per to make, but it was worth it. They loved them! I made some gnomes, animals and some of their favorite Pokemon / Super Mario characters. The pegs I purchased were from caseyswood.com. I chose to order them online so I could get them in 3 1/2 inches rather than the 2 inch ones I found at the local craft stores. There is a huge difference between the two sizes and I much prefer the larger ones for my kids, especially since I have a little one. Other materials that were needed acrylic paint, felt, embroidery thread and a hot glue gun. These pictures were taken before I used a beeswax/coconut oil wax seal.
I am considering opening an etsy with some of the crafts that I make. If anyone is interested in ordering any custom work please send me a message on facebook eco-kidfriendly

Waldorf Homeschool Supplies

2013-08-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

I have been busy getting ready for the next school year, preparing a curriculum for my 3rd grader and gathering all the necessary materials. I would really recommend joining the yahoo group waldorf home educators for those interested in homeschooling in this way. Mrs. M has posted a plethora of information in the files section which has been a tremendous help for me. Waldorf Inspirations is another great resource for putting together a curriculum. This year I got my son some bigger main lesson books since they were on sale and the larger size was all they had, but in all honesty a little extra room on his paper wouldn't hurt. He likes to draw his pictures kind of big and runs out of space sometimes. I got a couple of each and will probably end up purchasing some more later on in the year.

I had purchased both stick and block crayons from Stockmar last school year and the little ones got a hold of them. So there are some teeth marks and what not on them. I figured for this school year we would just start fresh. I ordered off amazon Stockmar stick and block crayons (16). I also got a set of Lyra giant colored pencils for his sentences, as well as a box of Stockmar modeling beeswax (which is nice and fragrant). Something else that I purchased that is not pictured, Stockmar watercolor paints - 50ml in Yellow, Red and Blue. I recommend pre mixing these paints in a mason jar with water and storing them in the fridge. Paying extra attention to the amount of water added to the red so it does not look pink. In doing this the paint will not dry up in the bottles.

As part of the curriculum there is a lot of story telling. The majority of the books I get are checked out from the library, but I did recently find out a way to get cheaper waldorf inspired books at www.half.ebay.com . There are a lot of books on there for as low as .75 cents with a shipping charge for each book. You can save a little on shipping by purchasing more from the same seller.

Kool-Aid Dyed Play Silks

2013-07-21T21:23:00.001-07:00

I have wanted to make these play silks for a while now and finally I decided I would give it a try. It was actually really easy to do. I purchased all the silks from Dharma Trading Co. For first time orders there is a coupon for a free Hobotai 8x54 scarf. I found the coupon here at Ultimate Coupons. Just click on get deal then add the scarf to your cart. I purchased 12 of the Hobotai 8mm Scarfs 35"x 35", a Hobotai Veil 35" x 108", and the free scarf. There are so many different sizes to choose from.
The silks need to be soaked in a hot water/vinegar solution to prep them for dying. I put about a half a cup of vinegar in and turned the burner on medium heat. For this process I used my glass pyrex pots.
While the silk was soaking I got a second pot ready by adding hot water from the tap to speed the process up. I also put this pot on medium heat. Once it was heated up on the stove, I put 3 packets of Kool-Aid in and stirred it around.

Next I removed the silk from the vinegar solution and allowed it to drip into the pot for a minute before moving it over to the dye. I did not completely wring the silks out before dyeing them. (at this point I put another silk in the vinegar solution to soak.) Then I made sure to keep stirring the silk in the pot to make sure it would all get dyed evenly. Sometimes taking it out to rearrange it if I thought it was too bunched up. The silk is ready to be taken out once the water no longer has any color in it. The water just looks cloudy from the vinegar. The only time where one of the silks did not come out evenly in color for me was when I mistakenly put the silk in the pot before adding the dye. A couple spots turned out slightly darker than the rest, but was only slightly noticeable.

After the silk was ready, I poured the water in the sink and rinsed the silk out with cold water. Rinsed my pot out and added some new water for the next color.

For the Veil I wanted it to be rainbow colored. I looked around the web for ideas and I found a suggestion to use red/yellow/and blue dye and over lap to get the effect. Instead I chose to just use 3 packets of each color dye to do the rainbow. I wanted to make sure the colors came out nice and dark. I soaked it in the vinegar solution while I prepped my mason jars. I added hot water to each of the jars then poured the Kool-Aid packets in each mason jar and stirred them. I kind of eye balled the amount of silk I dipped into each mason jar. I did a minimal amount of stirring for this, Note: The water never turned clear for this process. I made sure after dying each section of the silk to rinse each section in cold water separately before taking it outside to hang on the line.

I hung the rainbow veil with clothes pin to the metal frame of their Ikea Kura bunk bed to make a play house.

TED Robyn O’Brien

2011-06-16T12:30:00.001-07:00

This is about food allergies in the US and GMO’s in our food… Makes me mad that when the U.S. decided to introduce all this crap in our food supply other countries said no! So in order to export to other countries, companies like Walmart, CocaCola and Kraft, they reformulated their products to not contain GMO’s. Consumers in America need to demand that this happens in the U.S. Please watch this video!

Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business

2011-06-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business from BurzynskiMovie on Vimeo.

Our visit to a local farm

2011-06-01T15:31:00.001-07:00

This was our first time visiting The Yellow Deli in Valley Center. I love that they have a produce stand out front with fresh picked fruits and veggies. The Yellow Deli and Morning Star Ranch are ran by a community.

This cow really loves strawberries!

After going to The Yellow Deli we drove a few more miles over to their farm. These are pictures from Morning Star Ranch.

This was actually the only chicken hanging out with the goats.
This is the peacock that made it’s home with the chickens.

This is a very smart goat undoing the latch to get inside.
And there they all go charging in there.

Baby goats!

They also had tons of grapefruit and avocado trees. My kids loved going and seeing all of the animals, I would encourage everyone to take their kids to a farm. This is definitely something I want to do again with them in the future. My daughter especially was so overwhelmed with excitement. It was great seeing where the food we purchase is being grown and very kind of them to allow us to see a little bit of how they live in this community.
This was a very generous parting gift that we are so thankful for. Absolutely love their produce!

Forks Over Knives Trailer

2011-06-01T13:50:00.001-07:00

The Story of Cosmetics

2011-04-28T16:00:00.001-07:00

Here’s The Story of Cosmetics brought to you by the makers of the , “The Story of Stuff.”

For more information visit:

The Story of Stuff

The Campaign For Safe Cosmetics

Banana Nut Muffins

2011-04-28T15:54:00.001-07:00

One goal I have for this year is to start baking. Last night I made chili with honey cornbread and today I made some banana nut muffins for the first time that turned out really yummy. Super simple to make.

All the ingredients I used are organic.

4 bananas mashed
3/4 c organic cane sugar
1/4 cup melted earth balance butter
2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tablespoons chia gel as egg replacement
1 cup chopped walnuts

Chia Gel

Spoon chia into a cup add water and let sit for a few minutes until it forms a gel. I just add enough water to cover the chia which makes a thick gel.

Mix bananas, butter, sugar, chia and walnuts. Add flour, baking powder and fold until mixed well. Spoon into 12 muffin cups.

Vintage Posters

2011-04-18T14:19:00.001-07:00

Check out these vintage “green” posters on treehugger

Homemade Raw Organic Health Food Bars

2011-03-19T19:26:00.001-07:00

We buy packaged on the go health food bars way too often and in my attempt to buy less packaged foods I’ve decided to start making my own. This was my first attempt in making my own bars and they turned out delicious, even my kids love them! I plan on experimenting using other ingredients as well as making bars that aren’t so sweet.

I put all the ingredients in the food processor except the cacao nibs, I put those in last to give the bar a crunch to it. Then I scooped the mixture out of the food processor and shaped them into 8 kid sized bars. All the ingredients I used were organic.These are rough measurements of what I put in the bars.

1 tbsp. extra virgin coconut oil
7 medjool dates pitted
3/4 cup raw cashews and pistachios
1 tbsp. raw cacao powder
1 tbsp. raw honey
1 tbsp. raw cacao nibs

Yerba Mate Latte

2011-03-16T12:37:00.001-07:00

My latest obsession is a Yerba Mate Latte. What’s that you ask? Instead of having coffee that gives me that really bad jittery feeling for energy, I’ve started making a latte using almond milk and Guayaki Yerba Mate as well as Mate Factors mocha mint flavor. I’ve been drinking Guayaki Yerba Mate at least twice a day for a long time now and I love the way it makes me feel. I tried my first Yerba Mate Latte at The Yellow Deli, which btw is a very cute place with nice people, great food and delicious freshly made breads. They use Mate Factor for their Mate Lattes I believe. On Wednesdays they bring all their produce to The Yellow Deli and have a farmer’s market out front. They make a drink we like to buy from the farmer’s market that’s made out of a bunch of leafy greens, yerba mate, flax seeds and grapefruit juice (I may be missing some ingredients). Very healthy and very good even my kids like to drink it!

Both brands of yerba mate are organic and fair trade!

Here’s a video on how to make a Yerba Mate Latte. You can also make it in a French press or steam some milk (whichever you like to use) and pour it over a wet tea bag and steep.

Here’s a great video of how Guayaki Yerba Mate is harvested and processed.

My new years resolutions

2011-03-15T12:55:00.001-07:00

I know it isn’t January, but here are some of what you could call my new years resolutions. Some of the things I’d like to accomplish this year in no particular order

Start sprouting (in a jar) check
Cook more from scratch including making my own bread.
Buy even less packaged foods and throw away less. As Americans we are constantly being advertised to and it’s programed in our minds to go out and consume, consume, consume. There is just so much waste. When did it become the norm to just throw things away? Out of sight should not mean out of mind. Think the Great Pacific Ocean Patch. I used to buy my kids clif kids fruit twists all the time, but why give them processed fruit wrapped in a plastic wrapper when they can just grab an apple off the table and eat it? My kids eat a lot of fruit sometimes I have to tell them hey! Get out of the apples you’ve had 2 already today!
Gardening – Would like to be more self sustainable, I am inspired by the Dervaes Family. We can grow a lot in our own backyard! We’ve been working in our backyard a lot lately clearing out all of the weeds to put in raised beds. I bought a ton of organic seeds to start planting as well as a bunch of plants – 2 blueberry bushes, goji berry, ana apple tree, lemon tree, peach tree, and a hass avocado tree. Right now we have strawberries, lettuce, swiss chard, onion, bell pepper, tomatoes, cilantro, broccoli raab, and golden berries growing in our garden. Our blueberry plants are already producing a bunch of blueberries. Soon we’ll be planting a lot more! We don’t buy a lot of “things” in general, most of what we spend our money on is healthy organic food. Would save a lot of money growing our own fruits and veggies!
Stay on track with healthy eating after all your health is your greatest wealth.
Fresh from the farmers market jams taste so much better than store bought, would love to start making my own.

Black Gold–Documentary

2011-03-14T12:13:00.001-07:00

Please make sure when you purchase your daily cup of coffee that it’s fair trade! Also the bag of coffee off the grocery store shelf.

The Beautiful Truth

2011-03-11T14:40:00.001-08:00

Very interesting documentary.

Sprouting in a Jar

2011-03-11T09:43:00.001-08:00

It’s incredibly easy and cheaper to grow your own sprouts. I have just started growing my own and I wanted to share this how to video I found.

Hang Drying Clothes

2011-03-11T08:27:00.001-08:00

I have been pretty excited about my new dryer, the sun! My dryer has been broke for probably a couple months now, pretty much it likes to eat our clothes putting tons of holes in them. The dryer breaking wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I have been wanting to hang a clothes line for quite some time and this was the perfect excuse to do so. I spent probably $5 on a couple packages of wooden clothes pins and a rope. I strung the rope from the fence to our orange tree for the time being. Sometime in the future I plan to make a better one, along with a kid sized line so my kids can help out. Both of my kids have really enjoyed going in the backyard to help me with the laundry. It takes probably 2-3 hours to dry a load of laundry depending upon what it is. I’ve had a free dryer in my backyard this whole time, makes me wonder why I never utilized it before. It’s definitely more reason to go outside more frequently throughout the day, the sun feels nice!

Documentaries

2011-03-10T13:39:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple clips from some interesting documentaries I have watched recently, Dirt! The Movie and The Botany of Desire.

Eat to Defeat Cancer

2011-03-09T09:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.eattodefeat.org/

Organic Vegan Items at Costco

2011-01-04T13:23:00.001-08:00

Here’s a list of organic vegan items I’ve found at Costco -

Annie’s Homegrown Cookies
Cliff Kid’s Fruit Twists – Definitely not a replacement for fresh fruit but a better alternative than fruit snacks containing artificial coloring and high fructose corn syrup. Here’s an article on naturalnews about food coloring.
Organic Lundberg Short Grain Brown Rice
Amy’s Organic Lentil Soups
Kirkland Organic Tortilla Chips – A little salty for my taste, I’d prefer unsalted.
Organic Carrots
Organic Spinach
Organic Spring Mix (salad)
Organic Raw Blue Agave Syrup
Organic Peanut Butter
Organic Strawberry Jelly
Muir Glen Organic Tomato Paste
Muir Glen Organic Pasta Sauce
Organic Soy Milk – Not buying this anymore trying to stay away from soy. I buy hemp milk at Trader Joe’s.
Organic Bread – Don’t care for the texture of this bread, I prefer Ezekiel.
Organic Nature’s Path Flax Plus Granola – Love this granola!
Organic Kirkland Nature’s Path Ancient Grains Granola
Garofala Organic Whole Wheat Spaghetti

They do sell tofu from non gmo soy, but it is not organic.
In the frozen section there’s yellow and red curry tofu dishes. I can’t recall the name at the moment, but I’ve tried them and they are very good. There are probably a lot of other items that I am missing including organic juices and frozen fruits/veggies, these are items I do not buy.
When buying “vegan” food I try to stay away from anything that isn’t organic and anything with a ton of ingredients/preservatives. They have a lot of fruits and veggies, but I get the vast majority of ours from the farmer’s market.

Health Freedom and Herbs

2010-12-30T11:41:00.001-08:00

I want to share these two articles with you.

http://www.naturalnews.com/030872_health_freedom_natural_law.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/030873_EU_directive_medicinal_herbs.html#ixzz19cp6yQaG

Finding Vegetarian – Vegan options while traveling and preparing ahead of time for an event that isn’t veggie friendly

2010-12-22T14:13:00.001-08:00

First off I want to say how much I love HappyCow and the HappyCow app I got on my phone. If you’re unfamiliar with HappyCow it’s a guide to finding vegetarian, vegan, raw food restaurants and stores. Just a few days ago we were in Utah for my brother in laws wedding. I found that there are 3 health food stores in the St.George area as well as Benja Thai and Sushi, a restaurant with vegan options. We ordered the spicy basil with tofu, so good! On the way back we stopped at Go Raw Cafe in Las Vegas. We ordered the Gimme the Beet “Cheese” Burger with House Salad. The veggie burger is made with beets, carrots, sunflower seeds, & parsley. Served on living bread w/ hand prepared catsup, mustard, mayo, onion, tomato, lettuce, sprouts, avocado, & almond cheese. Sooo delicious! We also ordered a spicy veggie juice and a smoothie for the kids. For desert – a raw chocolate cheesecake and strawberry truffle we all shared. Everything was so delicious, will definitely stop by this cafe again whenever we’re in the Las Vegas area. I love that they have lectures, prep classes, demos etc.. While we were there she mentioned she might show the class how to make the strawberry truffles. It’s a shame we don’t live closer I’d love to attend a class. I also want to mention how super nice the people are that work there, one of the ladies held my baby for a while so I could eat my food!

I also wanted to mention for my brother in laws wedding the only thing on the menu was meat and for the rehearsal dinner they had cheesy lasagna, neither of which we can eat. If you’re going to an event that you know will not have vegan options ask ahead of time if you’ll be able to make your own food or if you can prepare something ahead of time to bring. For the rehearsal dinner I brought my own salad dressing and made spaghetti made with ezekiel pasta for my family to have instead of the cheesy lasagna. For the wedding I brought something super easy to make - A can of vegan (no lard) refried beans, unsalted blue corn chips, tomatoes, salsa, onions and avocado to make a quick nachos for the kids. For us same thing – just made tacos with Ezekiel corn tortillas.

Our Charlie Brown Christmas tree and other “things”

2010-12-13T11:34:00.001-08:00

Christmas is creeping up so fast and there’s so much going on this month, one question we asked ourselves is, Do we want to put up our fake, plastic Christmas tree again this year? or do we want to get a real one? The answer was for sure a real one. Then a second question we asked ourselves, Do we really want to go buy a tree that was cut down for the sole purpose of putting it in our house only to end up on the curb a month later? Just didn’t make sense to us. Sure we could have went the route of “renting” a Christmas tree, which I think is a great idea, but instead we chose to buy a potted semi dwarf tangerine tree. Yes, you read that right. We have a very small semi dwarf tangerine tree decorated with the few ornaments that we do have, among them some cardboard ones my son colored and the rest we have gotten over the years as Christmas presents. After telling my mom about our Christmas tree, with laughter, the first question she asked me was, “omg is it a Charlie Brown Christmas tree?!,” Here are pictures of the two, you can decide for yourself. Funny thing is the only bulb ornament we have is a red one as well. We have yet to put any Christmas lights up on it and really I’m not sure if we are going to. Our plan - plant it in our backyard when we are done using it.

Yes, those are Chipotle bags I reused for presents. <3 Chipotle

Something that has been driving me super crazy lately are my kids toys. The thought of my kids opening their toys on Christmas should provoke pure joy, but right now my only thought is to go through my kids toys yet again and donate as many as possible before those presents get opened. It seems I can pick them up and organize them all I want, they are still going to find their way all over the floor not just in their room but in the hall, in the living room, kitchen etc etc. My kids are lucky if they are able to find their way through their room after dumping all their toys out. I know my kids thoroughly enjoy having a clean room with plenty of space to play, they just have so many toys they couldn’t possibly begin to know what to do with all of them. Don’t get me wrong though it isn’t just my kids toys that drives me crazy, it’s clutter in general. When things coming in the home aren’t monitored and get pushed aside they quickly add up and become overwhelming, as is what has happened in our home. I have a room right now completely dedicated to sorting things under their designated signs - keep, sell, and donate which are tacked to the wall. I’ve made a lot of progress but it’s going to take some time.

I wanted to share this link I found on how fewer toys will actually benefit your kids.

Why you should avoid getting a flu shot

2010-10-24T18:33:00.001-07:00

As we were walking around Encinitas I noticed this sign in a window. Please educate yourself before getting yourself or your kids a flu shot. Here are 10 Reasons Why Flu Shots Are More Dangerous Than a Flu!