Miomarmo

Free day at National Parks tomorrow!

Tomorrow, September 26, is National Public Lands Day when entrance to all 391 National Parks is free.

What are you waiting for? Plan your hike/picnic/getaway now!

Kids quote contest from Earthbound Farms

Organic growers Earthbound Farms are having a great contest for kids! Complete the sentence "Thank you for choosing organic. It matters to me because... " The winners will see their quote on a label of Earthbound Farm's organic salads, receive a $500 savings bond, and have $500 donated in their name to the nonprofit environmental organization of their choice (there are eight to choose from). Sounds like a great way to educate and capture the wonderful clear way children have of getting right to the heart of things.

If you and your family would like to enter the contest, click here to check it out!

And while you're on the site, test your knowledge of organic farming and you could win coupons good on Earthbound Farm's products. (Don't worry, they give you reading material!) We did this and the coupons arrived almost the next day - just in time for our trip to the store!

Go bento!

Sophie's very excited about having LUNCH at school. We are going bento to have as little waste as possible. No plastic baggies, no paper, and apart from this special lunch, she'll be eating leftovers from (planned ahead of time) dinner.

I'm excited too - it's a chance to get creative in the kitchen and make sure they're eating healthy at school. Plus it's fun!

Sophie's lunch, clockwise:
Watermelon balls
Purple cabbage salad
Little container of soy sauce
Veggie sushi rolls with carrots, cabbage, cucumber, and avocado
Annie's bunny grahams

Not pictured: Her water bottle and chopsticks (she wants to bring them!)

Angela is bringing her own container of sushi rolls for a snack (again, she wants chopsticks too, but she's actually pretty expert with them)

Peter wants pretzels and goldfish crackers today. Tomorrow they've all requested roasted chickpeas for snacks.

Anyone want recipes? :)

Crafting on the cheap

As a mom of three small artists-in-the-making, I am always on the lookout for good craft ideas. I just discovered Dollar Store Crafts, a website that shows crafts you can make with, well, stuff from the dollar store, as well as loads of recycled and free projects from things you probably have around the house. They show how you can take something simple and/or cheap and turn it into something absolutely lovely. The categories make for interesting searching as well. Some of my favorites, which all can be made from recycled stuff and even trash:

• How to make beautiful Kanzashi flowers using leftover fabric scraps and a button.
• Fork curtain tiebacks.
• Make a Trashcycled Hermes Birkin Bag - I think the homemade one is so much better looking than the real one!
• Create a field of paper bag mushrooms (and then make friends to live underneath them).
• Make a bracelet out of an old cassette tape. I so totally want to make this!
• Create your own beads from plastic soda bottles. Colorful and fun!
• An adorable peg doll necklace from clothespins - we make fairies with ours, but these look fun too.
• And for the incredibly ambitious: The Alien Abduction Lamp!

Bike to Work Day

This year's Bike to Work day is Friday, May 15 - although some sources are giving it as Thursday, May 14, so you have twice as many chances to saddle up! If that weren't enough, according to the League of American Bicyclists, May is National Bike Month, and this whole week is Bike To Work Week. Get the picture? There are plenty of days to take your bike out for a spin and get a great workout besides.

The League says,

People ride bicycles for all sorts of reasons, from better health to saving money on fuel. Additionally, bicycling helps the environment, allows you to escape from the endlessly clogged freeways of America, and is a lot of fun!

Although I have the shortest commute ever, I do have a hankering to take my bike out for a ride this afternoon and run some errands. Have you ever biked to work, and would you give it a try tomorrow?

To get you in the mood:

Walking New Jersey Point to Point

Back in the day, my husband Paul and Rich biked the 200+ miles from High Point to Cape May in one very long all-day trip, appropriately titled “The Longest Day.” You can make the same journey -- but you don’t have to do it all at once!

Check out a fun online initiative from Rutgers: Walk New Jersey Point-to-Point. Just wear your pedometer or walk on a treadmill and keep track of your steps and mileage. If you don't have a way to count your steps, the site has a table to help you figure out how many miles you've logged by gardening, mowing your lawn, and chasing after your children.

You will need to create an account and set a goal for yourself to keep track of your journey. Walking from High Point to Cape May is just one of the trips you can log; you could do the Lighthouse Tour, the Historic Tour, or create a custom goal of your own if you don't live in NJ. Or get a team together of friends or co-workers together and walk as a group!

I'm beginning to walk the trip Paul and Rich took those years ago, and I think next I'll try the ambitious 1,000 Mile Challenge. It might take me all summer to do it, but eventually I'll get there, the same way you do anything. One step at a time.

Our favorite things (to do to save the Earth)

In honor of Earth Day and the almost-one-year anniversary of Miomarmo, we’ve got a list of some of our favorite green tips and practices.

Nichole:
Grocery stores, Staples stores, Wal-mart all now have bins at the entrance to the store or just inside to recycle the plastic shopping bags.  I’ve doing it for a while now & I’m noticing more & more people.  It’s pretty cool because even though I mostly use my tote bags when I shop, we all still wind up with these plastic shopping bags that we all never wind up using (well…not all of them at least).

On your weekly, monthly, whatever trip to the grocery store…bring the bags back & recycle!

Chintan:
Go veggie! I don't know if I can be anything but a vegetarian. There are far too many reasons to list here, but some of the most important ones according to me are:

• It’s good for the animals. Stop the cruelty towards animals. What have they done to deserve this violence towards them?
• It’s good for you health. Simply doing a google search on vegetarianism and health will get you tons of information proving so.
• It’s good for the Earth. We are destroying pristine forests and converting them into farmland that can provide food for cattle.

Some links to get you started:
http://www.goveg.com/
http://www.peta.org/
http://www.vrg.org/journal/

Elena:
Check out yesterday’s post! Seriously, turning off lights and appliances you’re not using has to be one of the simplest things you can do.

Tim:
Some things we do on a regular basis are:

• using minimum amounts of detergent when doing laundry (you really don't need a full cup)
• re-using towels and work cloths
• find other uses for otherwise discarded items (I made birdhouses out of old deck lumber)
• using the fireplace more often in the winter (I use my own trees when possible and ask the neighbors if I can have the one they plan to discard)
• I no longer use bottled water; instead I use a filter pitcher
• discard batteries and other contaminates appropriately (our public library has a bin just for old batteries)

Matt:
The reusable grocery store bags – my family all uses them.

Dany:
Seek out sources for refilling containers, such as laundry and dish detergents. Our local coop has this service available for these and a few other items.

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

Small Steps

While everyone is hopefully inspired by Earth Day (and Arbor Day!) this week to do something good for the world, our family actually made our big list on New Year’s Day of things we wanted to do this year to help make the world a better place. In the past 4 months, we’ve been taking small steps to try to be in better touch with nature and the world around us. Our hope was to show the children that even preschoolers and kindergartners can make a difference – that no step (or person) is too small. Below is our list – most of the suggestions coming directly from our kids (“hug the birds” being my favorite, though impractical, suggestion).

We broke our list down into three sections:

Helping the World:

• Turn off lights.
• Don’t leave water running.
• Plant trees.
• Learn about other countries/cultures and who needs help -  not everyone in the world lives the way you do.
• Walk more and drive less.
• Pray for peace.

Helping Nature:

• Create a website for our favorite park.
• Feed the birds.
• Help clean up the park.
• Hug the birds.
• Plant more trees.
• Plant flowers that bees like.
• Read 50 Things Kids Can Do To Save The Earth for ideas.
• Help clean up the reservation near us (they have trail cleanup days and are always looking for volunteers
• Go on walks and spend more time outside enjoying nature.

Helping Kids and People:

• Bring coats and food to Foodbank (we did this and it made a huge impression on the kids)
• Adopt a child from another country
• Rice bowls at Lent
• Visit people who are shut-in or hospitalized
• Draw pictures/share art with people who need cheering up

What are your favorite small steps?

Together in Electric Dreams

When I read this recent article in the New York Times, all I could think of was the scene in “Electric Dreams” where the Edgar, the computer, runs all the household appliances and makes coffee as well. (It also tries to steal the main character’s girlfriend away from him, but that’s a whole other story.)

The article, "Keeping a Green Home, Remotely", says:

“Now a new set of software tools lets a cellphone owner track a home’s electricity use from wherever she is.

The new tool from Tendril … lets the cellphone user turn appliances and furnaces on and off from a distance. It integrates with a collection of tools that track consumption and broadcast it to local and distant displays.

Their systems will compare your home’s consumption against similar sized ones in your neighborhood. It will also make suggestions and predict how much lowering the thermostat would lower the bill.”

“Electric Dreams” came out in 1984, and it’s exciting to think that 25 years later, we could actually do some of the things that were so over-the-top techhy back then. Apparently there’s a remake of the movie being planned for 2010 – I can’t wait to see what they come up with for Edgar (the computer) to do this time. I'm sure managing the electricity for a greener household will be part of it.

Below: Edgar tries to get his lovely neighbor's attention....

Switch off your lights for Earth Hour this weekend

"Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness.

In 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote. Unlike any election in history, it is not about what country you’re from, but instead, what planet you’re from. VOTE EARTH is a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community. A call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet. Over 74 countries and territories have pledged their support to VOTE EARTH during Earth Hour 2009, and this number is growing everyday.

VOTE EARTH by simply switching off your lights for one hour, and join the world for Earth Hour. 8:30PM local time, wherever you live on planet earth. Saturday 28 March 2009."

And if the above from the Earth Hour website doesn't convince you, watch this.