Do your kids take vitamins and mineral supplements?  I’ve never been that great at remembering to take vitamins myself.  My husband is much better at that type of stuff.  I can’t even remember to take my daily medication.  My children have both become quite fond of taking their vitamins though thanks to Shaklee Kids Incredibites and Mighty Smart supplements.

Both my 8yr old and my 3yr old ask for their vitamins every morning while they are getting ready for school.  It’s (finally) become part of our morning routine.  This is the season in Florida when vitamins can be very helpful for keeping my kids healthy.  The Florida weather can be bright and sunny and 80 in the afternoons – or it can be chilly (for our standards) and 40 in the morning.  Perfect weather for our little ones to get sick.

Have you heard of Shaklee before?  It’s not a new brand or company.  In fact, they have been around for over 50 years and are a very environmentally friendly company.  Here are just a few random eco-facts about the Shaklee Corporation:

• They created one of the first biodegradable household cleaners back in the 1960′s.
• They have never, and will never, test their products on animals.
• They were the first company in the world to go Carbon Neutral, meaning they have net zero impact on the environment.
• They rescue and recycle one ton of other companies cardboard.
• They have a long history of environmental stewardship awards from several state agencies and from the EPA.

Today they have a full line of healthy home, healthy beauty, and and nutrition products including the Shakleebaby line.

Five things I loved about the ShakleeKids Incredibites:

1. No artificial sweeteners,
2. No artificial colors,
3. No preservatives,
4. Contains 23 essential nutrients, and
5. My kids ASK to take them!

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How is it possible that my Lil’ B is actually turning THREE years old tomorrow?

Just a few minutes after we introduced him to his baby sister for the first time.

January 2009

First photo in a cloth diaper!  bumGenius 3.0 – February 2009

January 2010 – 1st Birthday

Yes, I made the tutto to match the top.

January 2011 – 2nd Birthday

Last picture as I kissed my tot goodnight on the eve of her 3rd birthday!

(Photographic evidence that mommy needs a new iPhone with flash!  Oh, and yes – she does have a fat lip from the weekend just in time for birthday photos!)

Happy Birthday Lil’ B! You’ll always be my little baby!

Remember how we said goodnight when she turned two?  We officially gave up the boob (breastfeeding)!  She never looked back but she does still remember that milk came from mommies boobies.  She’ll be happy to tell you all about it if you ask her.

*****

OK – I’m going to go shed a few tears as I look through more photos.  Oh, and I have a big surprise celebration for you in the morning!  You are following me on Facebook, right?

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When I was little I always had dreams of being an art teacher. I was very creative and still suffer from the creative bug quite often (just not as often as I would like).  My son has always enjoyed crafting with me but never fully L-O-V-E-D it like I did as a kid.  I’m so excited to see a little bit of my craftiness in my daughter.  She can sit at a table and play with dough for hours.  Her teachers tell me that she is the only one who sits still for painting and begs to keep painting when the project is done. Yes – I think she’s my child!

There are a few craft related blogs that I read often to keep my mind creative even if I’m not actively crafting myself.  I absolutely love Make and Takes blog by Marie LaBaron.  She usually gives simple craft idea for kids or for the home that don’t require the obscure materials.  I still have quite a craft stash in my closet and there is never a shortage of glue!  You can imagine my excitement when I received Marie’s new book in the mail a few weeks ago.

Make and Takes For Kids is her first book and it’s filled with 50 craft projects, recipes, and fun activities for kids (or moms) of all ages.  The book is divided into chapters by month with a few themed projects for each season or holiday.  This weekend the kids and I will be making some edible art – Oat Cereal Wreaths – to nibble on for the holidays (think Rice Crispie treats with Cheerio’s – yummy!).

You know what I absolutely love about many of the projects in this book? You can use trash or found items from around the home!  How eco-smart is that?  We are always looking for projects to make using toilet paper rolls, scrap paper, scrap fabric, cardboard (cereal mostly) boxes, aluminum cans, and milk jugs.  The book is loaded with ideas like:

• egg carton sea creatures
• milk jug bean bag toss
• bubble wrap raft

With Christmas just a few weeks away this would be a perfect additional for any school teacher, home schooling parent, or general crafty mama looking for fun projects to create with their kids.  I think my son would be excited if I gave it to him – even though he’s not my creative sprite! He still has fun and likes to find new uses for household items.

More about Make and Takes for Kids: http://www.makeandtakes.com/book
‘Like’ Make and Takes on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/makeandtakes
Follow Make and Takes on Twitter: https://twitter.com/makeandtakes

Here is a picture from our most recent crafting day where we were playing with homemade playdough (recipe not in the book but she does have it on her blog).

Homemade Playdough

Our "Snowman"

Do you like to craft with your kids?  What household items do you save from the landfill for those crafty days?

Disclosure:  I received a copy of Make and Takes for Kids for the purpose of a review.  No other compensation was received.

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I’ve always wanted to get Lil’ B one of those cute indoor playhouses (like these) but I try to stay away from too many plastic toys. I know that for the most part they are safe but the environmental cost of making too many plastic toys and accessories will make your brain hurt if you think about it. First their is the petroleum use, the transportation from some unknown factory in some foreign country, who may or may not ethically treat their employees…you see where I’m going right??! Not to mention the cost of disposal and the lifecycle of such products. Most of these houses end up at a garage sale or in the local dump where they rot for hundreds of years to come.

We are also quite limited on space in our house and if your kids are like mine they usually only play with their toys for a short period of time before they get tired of it and move on to something new. That’s why I was excited to review a new trend in playhouses, the cardboard playhouse by Cascades.

When the box arrived I have to admit I was a little overwhelmed – it was HUGE! I contemplated waiting until Christmas to open the box and give it to the kids for Christmas but I just had to see what was inside this rather large box.

Once the kids arrived home from school we started to assemble the house in my bedroom when we suddenly realized it was too large to fit through the doorway. Thankfully we do have a nice size living room (even though the rest of the house is small) and we quickly found a spot to place the house.

We placed all of the accessories upon the house; the window awnings, the mail box, and the chimney. Finally the moment came where it was ready to play with. We decided that this would be a perfect place to put Lil’ B’s kitchen and all of the felt food that I made her last Christmas. It’s actually quite perfect because the playhouse has a door that we can pull shut to keep the dog away from the toys (he likes to eat the felt food).

Here are a few pics from our first night playing with the house: (excuse the iPhone quality images)

Yes, even daddy and the dog tried to pay our newest homeowners a quick visit. The house is quite spacious and has plenty of room for multiple children. We’ve had the house for a few weeks now and it’s a favorite hiding place for when mommy needs a time out!

Now, I just need to get my creative juices flowing and decorate the house (or let them decorate it).

Here are some cute ideas I found on Pinterest. I’m sure after adding a few over-sized pillows and using a box of markers or paint our little house will become a truly unique home. I’m thinking about adding some curtains too with some scrap fabric from my sewing stash. How would you decorate your cardboard playhouse?

Where to buy: Cascades’ ecological products Boutique
Retail price: $48.00
Facebook: Boutique Cascades’
Coupon Code: THEECOCHIC valid until Dec. 31st, 2011.  Save 25% off!!

Eco-Benefits: Sure cardboard doesn’t last as long as plastic but that’s OK for this product. The cardboard is made from reclaimed cardboard and is 100% recycleable once it can no longer be used. Depending on how well your kids take care of it this playhouse should last for several months – or longer. To view the Cascades’ environmental policy statement click here: http://boutique.cascades.com/us/en/cascades-environment/

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Happy Thanksgiving friends!  I hope and pray that you all have a fabulous day with family and friends.

Me?  I’ll have a quiet day with my kids while my husband works in the morning.  Then we’ll have a quiet Thanksgiving dinner with just the 4 of us.  No huge meal plans, no fancy table settings, no friends or extended family – just the 4 of us!  I may not even clean my house for dinner and try to enjoy the day playing with my kids.  The weather is so gorgeous still in Florida that I’m sure we’ll be outside most of the day.

Tonight I made the first part of our little Thanksgiving meal, my dads Frozen Cranberry Salad (a yummy dessert).

Ingredients:

• Container of sour cream (Small or large depends on how many you are feeding)
• Whole cranberry sauce – 1 can
• Crushed pineapples, drained – 1 can
• Mini-marshmallows – about 1-2 cups (again depending on how many you are feeding)
• Handful of chopped pecans

Directions:

In a freezer safe dish or pan mix all of the ingredients together.  When they are all mixed together the end result should be a light-medium purple colored bowl of delicious goodness.  Cover and freeze!  You’ll need to make this the night before so it has time to freeze.

To serve:

Take out of the freezer about 20-30 minutes before dessert is to be served.  Cut with a knife and top with a small scoop of whipped cream (although I usually eat mine plain).  It should still be slightly frozen but not melted.  Once I pull it out of the freezer I’ll snap a picture and share it with you.

This dish always reminds me of the holidays – both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  He always made it for both.  I’m not sure that my family appreciates the dessert as much as I do or if they will even eat it.  While I won’t be spending this holiday with my parents or any extended family I look forward to spending it with my family.

I pray that you all have a blessed day and that you find hundreds of reasons to be thankful.

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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, Thank you for all the things you tote us but my favorite was when we talked about the straws.  Thanks, Sincerely, Kali

Dear Mrs. P,  Thank you for teaching us about your job. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Sarah

Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for coming in the room and the part I liked the most was when you said glass was recycled. Sincerely, Jordan

Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for teaching us how to rycicle glas, plastick, and all those other things. Sinsirly, Harold

Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for tiching me how to yous stuf. If you recyle you can make new thies and what i lern is that you can make things out of recyle. Thank you. Sincerly, Hope

Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for thaching me of how to recaikle prosas. Sincerely, Tyler

Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for teaching us about recicling. I learned about the 4r. Sincerely, Paris

Dear Mrs. P, Thank you for teaching about resikaling, and glass never gos awhy. Sinsely, Noah

These all made me smile.  I especially love the few who said thank you for teaching them about reusable diapers.  The children are our future.  We should teach them well.

I copied their words exactly as they were spelled since I think it adds to the charm.  This is from a classroom of 3rd grade students.

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Do you have a question about cloth diapers?  Breastfeeding?  Homemade baby food?  Living a more eco-friendly lifestyle?  Pinterest (hehehe)?  Leave your question below and I’ll be happy to answer it right here on The Eco Chic. No question is too big or too small…chances are if you have a question so does someone else who isn’t brave enough to ask me.

 

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I’ll admit it, my kids aren’t perfect!  It’s so easy to talk about their strengths and brag about their achievements because that’s what we do as parents.  But what about when your kids misbehave, lie, cheat, and steal?  Do we go around talking about that or do we just sweep it under the rug and hope that no one will find out?

I don’t want to go into all of the details because this blog is not my place to embarrass or humiliate my children (after all, one day hopefully they will read some of this) but I want to acknowledge that my children aren’t perfect.  This has been a challenging week as a parent.  My son got caught cheating.  He is a very competitive academic and puts a lot of pressure on himself to do good.  When things don’t go as he thinks they should he gets very angry and doesn’t know how to react properly.  He’s always been sensitive and tends to over-react when he gets angry, that’s nothing new.  I’ll take full blame on the sensitivity issues because I tend to over-react myself (although none of my friends ever see that side of me).  He ended up receiving a punishment that I think will discourage him from cheating again so hopefully the incident will have a positive influence on him.

Then tonight my 2 year old got her first lesson in lying.  She damaged something in my room tonight and instead of admitting that she did it she blamed her brother.  Two year old’s aren’t the best liars so I had a feeling she was lying to me but I couldn’t guarantee it.  She was upset when I punished her and gave me her dramatic tears.  I asked her one more time if she lied to me and finally before bedtime she admitted that she ‘did it.’

I think I was harder on my son at this age because I knew I was teaching him a lesson.  With her, she’s our baby and our little princess who can do no wrong.  With 6 years between them it’s amazing how different our parenting strategies are with them.

Why is it harder to talk about their weaknesses and failures than it is to talk about their achievements?  I feel like I could have written a post 10X longer and more well spoken than this if I was bragging about his mad math skills.  Instead I’m admitting that my children lie and cheat!  They aren’t perfect!

Are yours?

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It’s that time of year again, the Great American Teach-In is this week and I’ll be talking to my sons class about How to Be Green.  I’ve talked to his class every year since Kindergarten and each year seems to take a slightly different turn.  I have 30 minutes to spend with them on Thursday and I have to decide what this years message should be.

I always talk about the 3R’s (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle) but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the 4th R (or first R).  REFUSE! We can all practice this one in our daily lives and I think if we teach children at a young age that it’s ok to refuse wasteful items we can train them to be even more eco-friendly and green than we are.

5 Examples of ways to refuse:

• Refuse a straw at a restaurant and drink from the edge of the cup instead. Or use a glass straw like glass dharma – they are kid friend
• ly and guaranteed for life.  We have one but I always forget to take it with us.
• Refuse bags. Do we really need a bag for everything?  Even if I forget my reusable bags when shopping sometimes the item is  easy to carry without a bag.
• Refuse your receipt at the gas station. Unless you need a receipt for tax purposes do you need to have a receipt for all of your gas purchases?  I’ve even noticed more restaurants asking if you need a receipt for your purchase.  As long as I don’t plan on returning an item, giving the item as a gift, or verifying that the prices are correct I always just thrown them away anyways.  What a waste!
• Refuse more than one napkin – or refuse them all and bring your own.  When you are at a restaurant do you really need more than one napkin per person (unless you have small children the answer is probably yes)?  Sure if you are eating ribs or chicken wings you may need more than one but for the average meal one napkin is plenty.  General rule of thumb – we may need 5 napkins but I doubt we need 25 of them with your Happy Meal.  Be honest, how many have you just thrown away unused?
• Refuse bottled water. Bring your own refillable water bottle and fill it in a sink or faucet.  Whenever we visit friends or family away from home I will usually try to bring at least one bottle or cup with us.  Those new reusable plastic cups with lids and straws are the BEST yet!  I actually use them more than the bottles – and I remember to bring it more often.

The best part of talking with the kids is that I open up the conversation.  I don’t want to be all preachy and tell them what they ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ do.  I ask them to brainstorm with me and come up with simple ways they can Reduce, Reuse, Recycle…and now Refuse!  I always love hearing what they come up with.  Last year I even talked about reusing cloth diapers and the kids loved it.

The final part of my presentation is always a quick craft project using found items.  I think the project they liked the best over the years was making bookmarks from cereal boxes.  I had them pre-cut and ready to decorate and they each got to take home a ‘brand new’ bookmark at the end of the day.

I need to look through our junk collection and plan our a project for this year.

Have you ever spoke to your kids class about your job or passion?  What are some ways you can encourage change by getting kids to start problem solving at a young age?

Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1191196

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My Lil’ B is almost 3 years old (Jan 4th) and she’s still sleeping in her baby crib.  This is the same (out of date and recalled) baby crib that her brother used over 8 years ago.  She hasn’t ever tried to escape (climb out) from the crib so I’ve never pushed for converting the crib to a toddler bed.  (That plus I secretly want her to remain a baby because I refuse to accept that she’s almost 3!!)

Yesterday while the kids played I decided it was time to clean and organize her room.  I’m dying to remodel her room but I have a few limitations:

1.  Space – her room is not very large and it’s also our guest bedroom.  In addition to her crib, dresser, and bookshelf we also have a futon for when guests (usually one of the sets of grandparents) stay the night.  We only have 3 rooms in this house so there is no official guest room.

2.  Guest bed – the guest bed must stay in her room because there isn’t another room to move it to.  In addition the guest bed must hold two adults so a twin bed won’t cut it either.

Here is what the room looked like before I started the clean and organize…excuse the mess!

What this picture doesn’t show you is all the boxes that are stored underneath her crib.  What you can barely see here is the purple bucket full of stuffed animals.  In the corner behind that are even more toys – stuffed away out of sight.

Here you can see our collection of books, most of which were acquired from her brother because I save EVERYTHING!

Our guest bed that gets used about once a month (maybe).  Not really the most comfortable of guests beds but space is really limited in the kids rooms.

Again, another hand-me-down from her brother.  The changing table & dresser combination holds about half of her clothes.  We won’t even show you the closet because it’s a disaster that I don’t even plan on attacking this round.

Inspiration! I only have 2 key elements in the remodel that have inspired me.  The first is the bedding that I found at beyondbedding.com.  They were kind enough to send me a 4-piece twin bedding set in the Pink and Brown Modern Dots.  The set includes the comforter, one pillow sham, a bed skirt, and a window valence.

The second inspiration is more of a “PIN-spiration” from Pinterest. Since her crib is 8 years old and has been recalled I can’t do anything with it.  I could put it out at a yard sale but my heart just wouldn’t feel right giving it to a family when I know it’s been recalled.  The eco-junkie in me can’t stand to trash it so I’d rather find a reuse for it…even if it takes up valuable space in an already tiny room.

Crib turned children’s art table.

Seriously…this is just such a cute idea!  I even have some chalkboard paint left over to paint the table top.  All I need to get is a few small tot sized chairs and some accessories.

I have lots of dreams of what her room could look like but with the space we have (and my lack of a carpenter who could build my dream loft) I’ve decided to work with what we have for now.  I’m almost finished with the remodel but you’ll have to wait until it’s completed before I share the after pictures with you.

What are the biggest limitations that you face with your children’s rooms?  Is there ever enough space for all of their toys?

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