To wrap up the week, I’d like to share with you 5 eco-friendly shower gifts for every green mom-to-be!

1. Cloth Diaper Cake – A beautiful work of art and a great gift too! Make it special by making it yourself from organic cotton diapers, wipes, and other fun finds.

2. Nurturing Life Gift Box– Don’t forget mom! This gift box has all the little things that a new mom doesn’t realize she needs but will be super glad to have on hand!

3. Eco-Friendly Stroller – If it’s a little pricey for you, try to get others to go in on it with you, the mommy-to-be will adore it! Baby Planet makes a few models including a double stroller that are recyclable.

4. Organic bedding – Being that most of a baby’s day is spent sleeping, they’ll get a lot of use out of crib sheets, blankets, bumpers, and mattress pads. Dax Stores has a wonderful selection.

5. Food Mill – The perfect gift for mom’s that love to cook! All those little jars of baby food are nice and convenient but nothing is quite as satisfying as making your own! Don’t forget to include a recipe book!

Till next week…live green,

~Jennifer

I threw a very close friend of mine a green baby shower! Here’s how I did it.

I emailed invitations out through evite.com. They have a great variety! In the invite, I explained that I would like to keep the shower “eco-friendly” and mentioned that there would be a prize for the most earth-friendly gift. Speaking of gifts, organic cloth diapers and blankets make wonderful eco-friendly wrapping paper that can be a part of the gift as well.

Games included organic baby food tasting (yeah, I mixed the peas and carrots – don’t let guests see the color of the food!), ABC’s of baby gear (timed list – everyone makes their own list of gear from A to Z, one with the most wins), and who has the dirty diaper nametag. If none of those sounds like much fun, check out this free site for more ideas.

As for food, I went with organic appetizers like this Zesty Spinach Dip from Horizon Organics, which goes great with fresh vegetables, I made an organic carrot cake with this mix from Simply Organic, and served green tea, water, and mixed up a fruit punch from R.W. Knudson’s line of organic juices.

When the guests arrived, I used the envelopes out of a package of recycled paper thank you cards and each of them address an envelope to themselves. The mother-to-be really appreciated that all she had to do was “thank” and sign each one.

Please feel free to share your green shower ideas!

Ask any child what they like best and inevitably, it will be some type of toy. These days, with all the toy recalls and with young children especially, it is so important to choose their toys wisely. The U.S. has just recently implemented higher safety standards for children’s toys mostly due to the high lead levels that were found in the paints and pigments used to color the outsourced toys.

Being an eco-friendly mom, I really wasn’t all that affected by those recalls mainly because I try to buy locally. One of my favorite US toy manufacturers is Melissa and Doug. They do extensive testing on each toy including the paints and coatings they use. In addition, most (not all) of their toys are made the old-fashioned way, with wood or fabric. One of my favorite toys is this shape sorter, kept my kids busy for hours!

Till tomorrow…live green,

~Jennifer

Babies have lots of accessories! Of these, most moms have a favorite; mine happened to be my sling. I wouldn’t go anywhere without it. I admit, it was a little scary at first wondering if my little bundle of joy was actually going to stay in that piece of fabric and more importantly, would that fabric hold him? The answer to both (thankfully) was yes.

Choosing a sling is also a little daunting. Do you go with a slip on or a buckle? How do you wrap it? Living in L.A., I choose to go with this 100% certified organic cotton sling. I loved it because it went with just about everything! My friend in the Midwest loved the Karma Baby Pouch because of the cold weather. She didn’t want to hassle with a buckle, she would just wear the pouch and when she got out of the car, she would just pluck her son out of the car seat and stick him in the pouch and pull her coat over top of them both! It really is just a matter of preference and personal style, try them on and choose your favorite!

Till tomorrow…live green,

~Jennifer

Last week I wrote a lot about cloth diapering but to those of you that have babies, you know that there is a lot more to them than just diapers! This week, I’ll go over eco-friendly fashion for both mom and baby, safer toys, and how to throw a “green” baby shower.

I’m no fashionista by far, but I do know what I like and I try to buy quality clothing that is either organic material or produced in an eco-friendly way. This past week has been very busy looking for green maternity clothing for a friend of mine. I happened across this boutique website that offers a nice variety of items including this cute tee shirt from Pure T. In addition to this 100% organic cotton tee printed with vegetable dyes, Pure T will plant a tree with each one purchased! Of course, there are many places online that you can find organic boutique clothing; however, I realize that we are all in an economic crunch so just remember that you can always be eco-friendly by going second-hand as well!

Till tomorrow…live green,

~Jennifer

Although making the decision to cloth diaper was a no-brainer to me, I was still a little overwhelmed by just what that meant. In spite of the up-front cost of cloth vs. disposable, I wasn’t sure how it would all work. My mother and mother-in-law scared me with tales of how they “used to do it”. It all seems so time-consuming and messy. However, after a little research, a cloth diapering class, and a couple of weeks of trial and error, I came up with a method that worked for me. At first I liked the “all-in-one” (AIO) idea but quickly found out that it takes those diapers a long time to dry! Pocket diapers really never appealed to me because the inside and the wrap had to be separated to wash/dry so that left the other two options and I pretty much went with both; all-in-two (AI2) and pre-folds with a cover.

The AI2’s have a doubler (hemp/fleece) that snap in/out of the cover and I usually used them for “wet days” when I wasn’t expecting a BM, although I was surprised more than once! More often than not though I used pre-folds with covers and I since I had the AI2’s, I had quite a few covers that I could use. I found that with 18 regular sized organic cotton pre-folds and about half as many covers/AI2’s I could go every other day without washing and sometimes two days. It’s best to see what you like by buying a couple of each type in the infant size before you buy an entire set of “regular” size diapers. Keep in mind though that you will go through a lot of diaper changes in the first two months and the stools will change when you switch to solid foods!

Till tomorrow…live green!

~Jennifer

I mentioned yesterday that my mom and mother-in-law scared me with tales of how they “used to do it” when it came to cloth diapering. Well, times have changed and so have cloth diapers! You no longer have to use diaper pins, there is now a handy little thing called a “Snappi” that replaces them and is far easier to use and less dangerous too! In addition, a lot of diapers and diaper covers utilize either snaps or Velcro to fasten them together. This allows for faster, easier cleaning and drying!

My mom used to keep vinegar in a bucket and dump the dirty diapers in there to “stew” after rinsing in the toilet and before loading into the wash. These days, we have better washers and can use “wet bags” to hold our dirty diapers until ready to wash. Wet bags can be thrown right into the wash with the diapers! I usually just turned mine inside out and just dumped the diapers right in!

Speaking of washing, you don’t want to use certain products on your diapers. Products like bleach can leave residue that could irritate your baby’s bottom. I liked Allen’s Naturally Detergent with a splash of white vinegar and an extra rinse cycle to get my diapers clean. Then I hung them out in the sun to whiten them up!

Till tomorrow…live green!

~Jennifer

A very close friend of mine is going to be having her second baby in a few months and that got me to thinking that I haven’t written about the “major” topics of interest to eco-friendly parents! So this week is dedicated to issues such as whether or not to cloth diaper, different cloth diaper types, how to care for cloth diapers and wraps, and The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act and what it means to cloth diapering and children’s resale.

There has been a lot of debate over the past few years as to whether cloth diapering is really more eco-friendly than disposable diapers. Most of that debate centers around the water consumption and energy usage associated with cleaning the cloth as compared to how long it takes a disposable diaper to deteriorate. To me, it’s a no-brainer. Popular disposable diapers such as LUVs, Pampers, and Huggies can take 500 years to decompose not to mention all the methane that is off-gassed during the process! If that isn’t enough to sway you, cloth diapering will cost you approximately $600 and will take you through multiple children whereas using disposable diapers will cost around $1500 per child. Now that can really add up! For more arguments regarding cloth over disposable, please check out this Eco-Bite!

Till tomorrow…live green!

~Jennifer