Tag: green

Last Minute Mother’s Day Gifts for Eco-Moms

admin | May 11, 2012 | 0 Comments

Mother’s Day is a few days away, unless you’re in Mexico than you really blew it. If you waited until now for mom’s gift, don’t despair, we got you covered. We also think Mother’s Day is a perfect holiday for honoring Mother Earth and that special woman in your life.

Here are some last-minute Mother’s Day gifts for Eco-moms or lovely women looking to go green.

Clever Mother's Day cupcakes

Last Minute Gifts

Regurgitate Valentine’s gift ideas. Hey, we did a great job offering superb last-minute sweetheart gifts and most are perfect for mom so go check out the list.

Shop Indie for sustainable jewelry and wearable gifts. If you have a local Farmer’s Market, many take place on Saturdays, take a look at the amazing handmade products for sale by local artisans. Local Harvest offers a helpful tool for finding local markets.

Take a cue from Food Inc. and by from local ranchers. The Meat Shop in Phoenix, Arizona has a special Mother’s day package that includes breakfast meats from local farmers, a $10 gift card and a floral reusable tote for $35. This is a great way to help mom start shopping local. Not in Phoenix? No worries, most cities have a local butcher selling local, grass-fed meat. Again, Local Harvest will help find them.

Buy Used Books. But don’t head online to Amazon or some other big wig store, visit your local indie bookstore selling used books. Instead of buying a just one or two you’ll be able to buy a stack. Many of these shops also carry work from local artisans as well.

Wrap it Eco-Friendly. Once you find the perfect gift you’ll want to make it look amazing. Visit our tips on green wrapping ideas.

Feed Your Mama. Guess what? All those tasty gift ideas we talked about for Christmas are also perfect for Mother’s Day. Instead of Christmas tree cookies make flowers or something representing your special mom.

Give Her Memory-Making gifts. Speak to mom’s heart and buy non-materialistic gifts that matter and bring delightful memories for years to come.

{Cupcake photo via clevercupcakes on Flickr}

What are you buying that special woman in your life? Have any other green ideas to share? Leave them in the comments.

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Last Minute Mother’s Day Gifts for Eco-Moms

10 Green Date Ideas for Spring

Katie | April 25, 2012 | 0 Comments

Spring is a time of love and renewal, so how will you strengthen your romantic ties? The conventional couple dines out at a fancy restaurant and gives each other lavish gifts of jewelry, fine clothing, and other material delights. If you could reclaim the romantic date to fit your own values, what might that look like?

Here are 10 green date ideas spring, sure to lower your impact while raising the heat…in your body.

World Household Cooking Appliances Market to Reach 182.1 Million Units by 2012, According to New Report by Global Industry Analysts

San Jose, CA (PRWEB) March 3, 2008

World household cooking appliances market stands enthused by the huge untapped potential in developing countries like China, and India. Migration from rural to urban areas is resulting in a parallel rise in the urban population in developing countries, thereby contributing towards greater demand and uptake of modern cooking appliances. Widespread access to consumer loans, and credit is also expected to additionally unlock demand among middle and lower income households. In mature, developed markets, incremental growth is led predominantly by replacement sales, while in the developing markets new, first time sales contribute towards a large portion of the total growth. Continuous product innovation is expected to be crucial in keeping consumer enthusiasm alive, especially in developed markets where quality innovations help generate replacement sales. Efficient energy-usage, reduced noise level, automatic controls, consumer safety, cooking flexibility, versatility, easy maintenance, and varied colors, styles, and designs are all major product attributes promoted in recent years, to augment sales in developed countries.

The growing popularity of outdoor living, dining and eating is leading to a rise in demand for outdoor kitchens. This is expected to translate into increased market opportunities for outdoor grills, hobs, and ranges. The widespread acceptance of the low-carbohydrate, and high protein Atkins diet is leading to a spurt in meat consumption. And the meat heavy diet of consumers is spelling out attractive business opportunities for barbecue grills. Health conscious eating habits is creating a strong demand for health grills, which help reduce fat content in food being cooked. Rising energy prices are leading to increased demand for energy efficient cooking appliances. Benefiting from the trend are induction hobs and cookers, which are expected to score maximum gains in the marketplace in the upcoming years. Low market penetration of microwave ovens in developing countries offer lucrative potential for future growth in sales. The frenzied pace of modern lifestyles is expected to play its role in popularizing the convenience, faster and ease of cooking benefits offered by microwave ovens.

As stated by the recent report published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., world market for...

Play Board Games. There are tons of great board games available for 2+ people. Aside from the classics like Chess, Checkers, Monopoly and Life, you can try out some other varieties like Burger Joint, Carcassonne, or Mancala. If you want to up the love potential, play your board game with a dirty twist such as strip-style or simply playing naked.

Cook Dinner Together. Cooking a meal and enjoying it together is a great bonding experience. Use organic ingredients, and throw in a bottle of biodynamic wine. Light up some nice beeswax candles, play some soft tunes, and you’ve got the beginnings of a great evening.

Take a Trip to the Local Organic Farm. Organic farms are an incredibly nurturing place of growth and renewal. Working with the soil and plants is like growing your own collective garden of love. Volunteer together on a farm and soak in the lovely connection to nature. Talk about how great organic farming is and bond over the wonderful shared experience.

Go Stargazing. If there’s an observatory near you, chances are there’s free stargazing opportunities. They may have public star parties or telescopes. There’s something extra special about seeing baby stars together.

Walk to the Farmer’s Market. Walking together is a great time to get to know each other and have deeper conversations. The farmer’s market is a connecting and nurturing place where you can both feel comfortable and supported. After the Farmer’s Market, cook a meal together.

Have Your Own Earth Hour. Turn off your computers, TV’s, and other electronics. Light some candles, and snuggle together to keep warm, or cool off with some icy cold drinks. Foster a real-life natural relationship instead of a virtual one.

Make Your Own Gifts. Instead of buying jewelry mined from questionable sources, make something for your lover. Make your own card, write a love poem, or bake some cupcakes.

Have a Massage Night. Get out your scented oils, light some beeswax candles, and treat your partner to a loving and soothing massage. Receive one in return. Have a glass of wine and get cozy.

Have a Green Picnic. Make some lunch together, pack it in reusable Tupperware, grab a bottle of wine, real silverware, and cloth napkins, and take it to the park. Enjoy the good vibes Nature offers and bring some games to play while you’re there. When the picnic is over, don’t forget to reuse and recycle!

Make Something Together. If you both have a knack for DIY, then get crafty! If you’re not so crafty, make your own kiddie art with finger paint and glue sticks.

What green date ideas would you add? Which of these are you looking forward to trying out?

6 Strong Cooking Sites

How do I get a very strong cooking smell out of the. | CafeMom .
Aug 25, 2011 How do I get a very strong cooking smell out of the house?

How to Keep Strong Cooking Smells from Entering the Whole House
Mar 13, 2009 How to Keep Strong Cooking Smells from Entering the Whole House. Some cooking odors have a

Strong cooking urn (full) - The RuneScape Wiki - Skills, quests .
The Strong cooking urn (full) is an item made by filling a Strong cooking urn while cooking food. It.

GEC - Item Details - Strong Cooking Urn (nr)
The Grand Exchange Central is a constantly updated repository of Grand Exchange item pricing. This page covers the

Strong cooking urn - The RuneScape Wiki - Skills, quests, guides .
A Strong cooking urn can be created at 51 Crafting. It is used with the Cooking skill to help.

How to Remove Cooking Odors | Cleaning Guides
Fried fish is a common culprit of this problem as are other exotic foods with strong flavors and spices. To remove the

...

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10 Green Date Ideas for Spring

The Green Diva Year: Earth Day to Earth Day

Katie | April 23, 2012 | 0 Comments

Listen, laugh & learn with the Green Divas (and Green Dude Paul) anytime Podcast here!

You would think that being a Green Diva would mean that I celebrated Earth Day every day. I don’t know whether I celebrate daily, but I do try. The truth is when you’ve been living this lifestyle for as long as I have, this annual Earth Day frenzy can get a little silly. I don’t mean to be all bah humbug on the Earth Day thing. It is actually rather exciting to see more and more people getting involved in the festivities – especially the kids. They are really the important ones who will likely have the opportunity to take this crazy ball and run with it after we’ve finished doing our best.

Most years, I try to hide on Earth Day and have a quite time being a little more mindful of how I treat momma earth (see my post on some ways I celebrate Earth Day). But this year, I got to participate in a great local event, where we co-hosted the soggy festivities for a surprising number of hearty souls.

We used the occasion to present our first annual That’s SO Green Diva Award to our favorite innovative sustainable manufacturer making Green Diva products – G2 Organics. If you haven’t had the G2 Organics experience, check out their website and indulge in a couple of their products – it is totally worth it! These thoughtful ladies put their heart and soul into beauty and skin care products that are organic, non-toxic AND reiki charged! They’ve come up with some wonderful nail care products – cool colors and ODOR-FREE on top of being organic, non-toxic and reiki charged! Seriously, how cool is that?

Beautifying Morristown with Seed Bombs (Mayor Tim Dougherty, Green Diva Meg & Cherie Corso)

To honor G2 Organics, we are donating a Seed Bomb vending machine to the Office of Sustainability for Morristown, NJ, who will benefit from all proceeds. Mayor Dougherty came out and met Cherie Corso, founder of G2 Organics and we ALL had a wonderful time using the slingshot to lob seed bombs of regionally appropriate wildflowers into the ugly empty lot next to the event venue.

It was a cold and rainy day (and I’m still trying to warm up!), but we had a rockin time. It was a different way to celebrate Earth Day for this Green Diva and I loved it.

Meanwhile, Green Diva Lisa took the time to pick her favorite podcasts from this past Green Diva Earth Year (marked from Earth Day to Earth Day).

The Green Divas Radio Show, podcasts, audio vignettes and blog posts feature fun and low-stress ways to live a deeper shade of green, while maintaining some comfort and style. Green Diva Meg, co-host Green Diva Lisa and Green Dude Paul offer tons of easily accessible information and resources to help make the journey to a more sustainable world easier and a little more fun and entertaining. The radio show broadcasts live every Saturday morning from WMTR 1250 AM in Northern, NJ/NY Metro area, streaming live on WMTRam.com, or catch up on the podcast.

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The Green Diva Year: Earth Day to Earth Day

Getting Greener the Practical & Fun Way

admin | April 10, 2012 | 0 Comments

Listen, laugh & learn with the Green Divas (and Green Dude Paul) anytime Podcast here!

A rather fun show this week. Perhaps it was all that talk about food and natural and creative ways to dye easter eggs. Or maybe it was Meghan Van Dyk, being in the studio with us for the whole show. Not sure, but our interview with the very energetic and articulate Susan Hunt Stevens, CEO and founder of PracticallyGreen.com might have had something to do with it!

If you have not played on the PracticallyGreen.com website yet, you’ll want to click on the link above and go have some good green fun. Susan and her merry band of smart greenies have devised a great way to learn about a variety of ways to bring more sustainable living practices into your lifestyle. Beware – it is kind of addictive! It offers some really easy ways to get started and as soon as you realize that you are already doing some of these things and you start racking up points, it makes you want to do more!

Listen to this 5-min segment on local, sustainable community – this week’s discussion was about Food Coops & CSA.

As always, please visit our website for LOTS of relevant links & resources from the show - Green Divas website.

Hope you’ll listen to this broadcast!

Listen to the show here!

As always, please visit our website for LOTS of relevant links & resources from the show - Green Divas website.

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7 Excellent Reasons to Quit Drinking Bottled Water

admin | March 13, 2012 | 0 Comments

We had an extra Green Diva Meg in the house today! Our special guest Green Diva Meghan Van Dyk, the editor of the Daily Record’s Grassroots section was in the studio to help kick off our new weekly segment called, Gettin Local with the Green Divas: Wherever You Are! This segment is sponsored by the Daily Record’s Grassroots section and will focus on highlighting interesting stories and events within our community that help to illustrate and celebrate our community’s sustainability progress and share ideas with other communities around the country . . . or the world for that matter!

The Sleeping Naked is Green

No More Water Bottles

7 Good Reasons to Quit Drinking Bottled Water

The U.S. is the largest consumer market for bottled water in the world, followed by Mexico, China, and Brazil.
In 2008, U.S. bottled water sales topped 8.6 billion gallons, which represented 28.9% of the U.S. liquid beverage market.
The average American drinks 21 gallons of bottled water per year.
According to MSNBC, the use of water bottles increased dramatically from 3.3 billion sold in 1997 to 15 billion in 2002
National Geographic estimates that 17 million gallons of crude oil is used on an annual basis to produce plastic bottles.
- If you fill a water bottle ¼ of the way with oil, this is about how much oil is used to manufacture that one bottle!
- This amount of oil is enough to fuel approximately a million cars for one year.It is estimated by the Container Recycling Institute and ReusableBags.com that 22 billion water bottles end up in landfills every year.
According to Environmental Working Group’s scientific study on bottled water vs. tap water, bottled water contains distinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue and pain medication . . . ahhhhh! Seriously – read this article.
The bottling companies have created a FALSE sense of NEED in the U.S. for bottled water by convincing us that our tap water is tainted and bottled water is the solution . . . NOT if you watch this awesome video by the Story of Stuff about the bottled water industry.

Good Reasons to Recycle Those Plastic Bottles!

Although many plastic bottles are being recycled for good re-use as a variety of materials, National Geographic Kids states that only 1 in 6 plastic bottles makes it to the recycling bin!
Recycling plastic bottles saves energy.
According to recycling only one plastic bottle saves the same amount of energy as powering a 60-watt light bulb for six hours.

Good Ideas!

Cool stuff made from RPET – RPET stands for recycled PET (Poly Ethylene Terephthalate), which is a member of the polyester family.
Get a stainless steel or glass re-usable water bottle – and use it!
Last month, the Grand Canyon National Park Service approved a plan that eliminates the sale of bottled water! There are water stations in the park to refill water bottles, which a visitor can bring in to the park.

References for this segment include: Livestrong.com Wikipedia

Listen this Sleeping Naked is Green 5-minute segment.

Why We Should Care

Please join us in being part of the solution! Visit our Why Should We Care Campaign page and enjoy our silly short video, donate and share (and get some awesome goodies when you do)!

Meanwhile, we are busy lining up some interesting high-profile folks, who are passionate about a variety of causes that help to make this a better world, for this ongoing feature on the radio show. Look forward to hearing from Fran Drescher, Frederique and Carol Alt - all beautiful, passionate women using their power of celebrity and success for good - in the coming few weeks! More fun surprise guests for this segment soon to be announced!

You can listen to the entire show or download the podcast from here.

Please visit Green Divas website for LOTS of relevant links & resources from the show.

NOTE: Jessica Alba will be LIVE on the show on 3.31.12 along with her business partner, Christopher to talk more about why they started this company and why they call it The Honest Company . . . mark your calendar and be sure to post any questions for them on the Green Divas Facebook Page!

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7 Excellent Reasons to Quit Drinking Bottled Water

Practically Green: Your Online Green Habits Planner

Katie | March 12, 2012 | 0 Comments

Practically Green is an online tool that helps you to make smart, practical, and sustainable decisions. It offers “expert advice, scientifically accurate information, and real-world, friend-to-friend recommendations for hundreds of things you can do.” Its mission is to provide you with tools and ideas that will help you to make “green living easier and enjoyable, and to remove some of the guilt, confusion, and cost that can arise”.

This tool is so exciting and very encouraging because, as we all have experienced, it is difficult to be green sometimes. (We hear you, Kermit!)

How can you use the tool to lead a greener life?

To some people, being eco-friendly might be construed as “trendy”. Or some might believe it’s impossible because it’s too costly or too difficult. But to understand how your daily habits might already be affecting the environment, Practically Green shows you how wonderfully green you already are, high fives you for every action you’ve committed, and recommends actionable steps to help you become greener.

Upon registering with your e-mail address and creating a password, the FREE site takes you to 400+ questions that you can answer which green actions you already have taken, giving you points, or you can plan to take in the future. If the question doesn’t apply to you, i.e. baby related questions, you can mark it as “Doesn’t Apply to Me.”

You can track your answers and change them if you complete the action, i.e. buying a fuel efficient car or insulating your attic. There are badges that you earn, based on the number of actions you take in a category, i.e.

And depending on the level of “greenness” by adding up the points, you are ‘graded’ into following levels. The beauty of the site is that you can always go back and answer the questions at your own pace.

You can recommend green actions and products to Practically Green and they will add them after an evaluation. It truly is a community and user based interactive site for making green lifestyle sustainable and quantifiable.

The site is FREE for individuals and customizable for companies and their employees for a fee.

What level of green do you think you are? Wicked Green? Superbly Green? Why don’t you take the quiz and find out!