An assortment of recipes, books, blog posts, or other things that inspired me this week.

Simplicity Parenting Book Club Chapter 2 — It’s not too late to join in!

What Tree is That?

An Arbor Day-ish Tree  Game from Five Orange Potatoes

We are having a lot of fun making these kites

Healing Nettle Chicken Stock from the Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen

What is inspiring you this week? Please tell us about it in the comments below!

Something strange often happens to me after a day or two of vacation. I start to crave vegetables.

That sounds quite pure and a little annoying, doesn’t it? Full disclosure: I love cookies and pizza as much as the next person. But years of trying to be a healthy eater means when I lose balance nutritionally, I start to hunt out the nearest broccoli.

It’s kind of like the birds. There are a few reasons we went to visit some birds this past weekend during our trip to St. Louis. One, is of course, the bird learning we have going on here.

But the birds fulfilled another need for all of us — after a busy day at the museum and zoo, and plenty of meals in noisy restaurants and nights in sheets that were not our own, we needed a chance to unwind in nature. We needed that balance back too. Which is how we found ourselves at the World Bird Sanctuary.

Founded in 1977, The World Bird Sanctuary was established by ornithologist Walter C. Crawford Jr., as a place to care for injured eagles.

It has grown during the past 30-plus years, and now includes an emphasis on environmental preservation.

We were lucky to be there on Easter, and get the full of attention of both Dumpling, the 16-year-old resident indoor chicken and Owen’s new hero, a longtime staffer and fellow bird lover who was more than willing to talk turkey, so to speak.

We spent the early afternoon running between raindrops and visiting falcons, eagles, owls and recording Owen’s first woodpecker sighting, as well as peeking in the wildlife hospital, spotting eggs and chatting it up about native chickadees.

It was just what we needed on a cold, wet Easter in St. Louis — connecting a little to nature, and finding our balance again.

I want to tell you about this place we visited in St. Louis, because it is amazing and so unique and because it has taken the green concept of repurposing and recycling to an insane level.

But I’m not even sure where to begin, because words don’t really seem to capture the place. It is surreal, and beautiful, and a little creepy.

I’m talking about City Museum, if you have heard of it or been there. It wasn’t somewhere we were planning to stop, but it rained on Saturday, and a friendly hotel employee sold me with these words: “It’s all recycled materials and the kids will love it.”

Because we had promised the zoo, but Mother Nature didn’t cooperate, this sounded like a very good way to spend our morning. And hearing “recycled” intrigued me, although that word doesn’t even begin to tell the story … not that there’s much I can tell.

City Museum is a former shoe factory — I got that from the lady who works at the aquarium (yes, there’s an aquarium). As a nod to the place’s origin they make shoelaces now on the second floor out of giant spools of floss.

The museum opened in 1997, and is the work of a man named Bob Cassilly, as well as several artisans who apparently worked under his direction.

Before I knew any of this, I had commented that the aquarium brought to mind a really, really wealthy person’s basement. There are the fish — of course — and what appears to be an inground pool full of stingrays. And then there’s the tunnel, through a separate shark-filled pool, and as you climb out of the tunnel you find yourself in a glass-bottomed boat, because, you know, why not?

You can see where this is going — the aquarium only takes up perhaps half a floor of the 600,000 square foot, four-story factory. And a lot of people might say it isn’t even the main attraction.

So what is?

Probably depends on your mood. Feel like playing in a room filled with sponges? What about riding a tiny train? Getting lost in a cave that probably isn’t big enough for people in the first place? Or how about just staring at the world’s largest pencil, jutting out of the side of the building, and knowing the whole time that it isn’t even close to the weirdest thing you’ve seen that day.

And where is a good spot in this post to mention that the upstairs is a vintage clothing store/espresso bar?

Yes, City Museum is weird. And wonderful, in a horror-movie-meets-kids’ playground-meets-they-have-a-gift-shop-and-snack-bar-so-how-freaky-can-it-be kind of a way. 

Apparently, it is always changing too, which is why they don’t like to talk about it much. There’s no written information available, and during our three hours there I’m sure we didn’t even began to scratch the surface.

What is clear about the museum is that it has come together by way of found and salvaged materials. It is recycling and repurposing in a way that makes you slightly afraid of what a few thing used to be, and also a little irked that someone threw it away in the first place.

There is just no way to begin to describe it, and yet,  if you find yourself in St. Louis, I would encourage you to visit and see for yourself what can happen when an artist mixes lost items with a lot of paint and even more imagination.

The winner of the I’m Organic Earth Day Tote and Green Cleaning Kit is Christine who she was spending Earth Day:

” …making vegan green butterfly cookies, not driving anywhere today , and setting up my rainbarrels. Also, we are going through clothing and toys to take to Goodwill on Sunday on the way to church and dinner at my cousins – to which I will take a raw vegetarian dish in a glass or stoneware dish. We are also cleaning out the lot near our house this weekend, I see lots of paper and glass over there that will be in my recycle bin on Wed.”

Congratulations Christine, and thank-you everyone who commented!

And because every day really is Earth Day, and there are still a few totes and T-shirts left for purchase, so stop by to get one before they are all gone!

Back tomorrow with some highlights from a green weekend …

Wishing you a day of simple joys.

(Earth Day give-away ends tomorrow, so sign up now!)

An assortment of recipes, books, blog posts, or other things that inspired me this week.

Car Parts Made of Mushrooms

Scarf Made From Reclaimed T-shirts

Pajama Days

(Don’t Really) Kill Your Television

Little Quinoa Patties

What is inspiring you this week? Please tell us about it in the comments below!

And don’t forget there’s still time to sign up for our Earth Day give-away!!

Happy Earth Day!!

I am so excited to be featuring a really great give-away today from I’m Organic!

As a lot of you know, we’ve spent Earth Month talking about natural and safe cleaning and this give-away will help you to create your own green cleaning kit! Plus, you’ll get one of I’m Organic’s limited edition Earth Day bags!

Inside your I’m Organic bag you’ll get:

• two kinds of Dr. Bronner’s castile soap
• tea tree oil
• baking soda
• vinegar
• borax
• washing soda

With these ingredients will be able to make the recipes featured here during the past month including laundry soap, all-purpose spray, bathroom cleaners and more!

All you have to do to enter is tell us how you are celebrating Earth Day this year!

So leave a comment below about how you plan to celebrate Earth Day. Comments will close Monday at noon. A winner will be announced in Tuesday’s post! Good luck, and Happy Earth Day from I’m Organic!!

It’s Earth Day tomorrow! Are you ready to celebrate?

If you have kids, one way to honor Earth Day is to help them get a little closer to Mother Earth by spending some time with dirt!

There have been several studies published recently that say that dirt is actually really good for kids:

• It helps train children’s immune systems and may help prevent allergies.
• It may make kids smarter.
• Or happier.

And then there are the benefits that go along with dirt: if a child is playing in the dirt, they are probably outside. And just being outside has lots of benefits  – fresh air, sunshine and Vitamin D to name a few.

(And that other one — have you ever noticed how well kids sleep at night when they get lots of time outside during the day?)

Unstructured outside play is so important for kids. If you are looking for inspiration for getting outside, Richard Louv’s book, “Last Child in the Woods” is a favorite of mine. He discusses what he has termed “Nature Deficit Disorder” and the effect it is having on today’s generation of children.

But as Louv talks about, nature isn’t necessarily available anymore the way it was a few decades ago. So for a lot of parents, the struggle is coming up with ways to help their children connect with nature.

I am one of those parents for sure. We have a small urban lot for a back yard, and live downtown. We do have a tree, but pretty much everything else we have to work at!

And so, we :

• have a garden
• feed the birds and squirrels
• built a sand area
• kept logs for play after a tree fell in our yard

We try to do nature-related projects and bring nature inside to encourage the connection.

Right now:

• we have a spring nature table covered with stones, twigs, flowers and other found object
• we are hatching butterflies
• we have a worm farm
• we have started composting
• we are growing Easter grass, an eggshell garden, grassheads and a pot of sweet peas

We also like to go on outdoor adventures.

We love to:

• hike
• birdwatch
• play in the creek
• visit the pond
• dig for bugs and worms
• and hit the playground

But sometimes I need some inspiration for getting dirty. I am not naturally an outdoorsy-type-person (although I am trying to raise some).

Some favorite resources are Let’s Go Outside and I Love Dirt. We also have a collection of nature guides. We’ve found the books at used book sales and online and try not to pay a lot for them, but I find that the more we learn, the more connected we all feel to that great big world out there!

So I am looking forward to spending Earth Day in nature with my kiddos. I will try not to worry about getting dirty — wearing old clothes and rainboots or other weather appropriate gear makes this easier — and instead focus on connecting with the planet where we make our home. How lucky we are that it can be our playground!

Looking for more ways to get outside?

Download this free Nature Club for Families  kit.

And please share your ideas for helping kids connect with nature in the comments below!

A couple of fun Earth Day announcements:

First, tomorrow I am going to announce a really cool Earth Day give-away from I’m Organic. So stop by in the morning to sign up!

Also, for those in the Madison (Wisconsin) area, sign up for LivingSocial today if you are not already a member. I’m Organic is featured with a $12 for $25 deal!!

It’s kind of funny to be typing this post on the heels of yesterday’s media diet post.

But I was talking with some friends just the other night about electronics when traveling with kids.

For some of us, they give parents a chance to talk and connect while driving long distances. For others, they are sanity savers reserved only for when boredom hits. But then, there are the parents who choose to skip electronics all together.

Because it is screen-free week, and our little family is hitting the road soon to visit family, I thought it would be a good time to talk about keeping kids entertained during car travels.

This isn’t to say that you should never again pack the portable DVD player, but if you don’t own one, or even if you are just looking to balance out screen time with some other activities, these are some ideas that have worked well for us.

I hope you’ll add your own ideas in the comments!

• Audiobooks. I’ve written about our family’s love for audiobooks in the past. We usually have a few in our car, but for long trips, we pack some new library finds and a few family favorites. We can all listen to these together, or pass headphones if one child wants to listen while the other looks at books.
• Which leads me, of course, to regular books. I usually try to find a few new ones at used book sales and put them away for these kids of occasions. I really hit pay-dirt a few weeks ago and found a bird guide and an old Judy Blume for Owen and some beautiful picture books for Ellery. I used to like bringing library books on road trips, but I like this method better. They are still “new” and exciting, but because we only paid a dollar or two for each book, there’s less worry.
• Snacks. Snacks are not an activity, I know. But my kids like it when I pack them snacks in their own travel bags. We buy a few special treats too. Favorites are homemade cookies or muffins, granola bars, apple or orange slices, popcorn, crackers, trail mix, etc. The key is low-sugar and not too much liquid or we will never get where we are going!
• Art supplies. I like to pack paper, crayons, markers and stickers and bring supplies for them to make their own postcards to send or letters to mail. Adding a few stamped envelopes makes it really special and gives kids a fun “job” to do.
• I also like to throw in a few things to keep hands busy. But I also really dislike the kind really of inexpensive toys that break while still in transit. So instead, we do sewing cards, or give kids pasta to lace into necklaces. Stickers are really good for keeping kids busy. My friend swears by giving each kid a box of band-aids. I saw another mom once talk about giving each child a roll of tape.
• I do think puzzle pages and workbooks can be fun if your child enjoys them (mine do). I am excited about introducing Owen to Mad Libs on this trip.

After several long trips, including the one we took to South Dakota last year, I find one of the very best ideas is to give each child a bag, and let them pack a friend, a few things they like, plus a few surprises. The bags help keep the car organized, and help kids see all their options for the drive.

Are you taking a road trip this year? What do you pack to keep kids busy?

About five weeks ago, our family went on a “media diet.”

As many of you know, this week is Screen Free Week across America, so today I wanted to talk a little today about why we made the choice to cut-back on media, how we did it, what we did instead, and how it all worked out.

Before I go further though, I know that television can be a bit of a hot-button topic, especially when it comes to kids. So please just know that this is the honest experience of one family, trying to find our way.

Why?

During the winter, we felt like we had spent a lot of time plugged in, and we were looking for a way to break the habit.

It had become really natural to walk into a room and turn on the television, or to keep checking computers and phones for new e-mails and Facebook updates.

Our kids don’t have e-mail or Facebook pages, so those last two things just referred to us, the grown-ups. We worried that we were setting a bit of a bad example.

How

And so, we moved our television. It went from the living room of our house to the office.

Because computer time is a part of my job, I made a committment to try to work more in blocks, instead of spreading things out so much throughout the day. I also tried working more when my husband was available to be with the kids (meaning Saturdays, mostly).

And I switched my e-mail address … I know you’re probably wondering why that’s relevant.

For me, an issue I have with media is the disease-of-the-month thing (and Yahoo is all about this).

It’s broader than the disease-of-the-month, of course, but so much of what is on television or available through other media is sad, upsetting, violent and/or intended to promote worry.

I worked in the media for a long time. My husband still does (which added an interesting dimension to this whole media break). So I can say with a lot of confidence that what is “news” is very subjective — this is certainly the case with Yahoo’s front page.

During those long blue months of winter, it had begun to feel like there was a lot wrong with our world.

Certainly, there are very real problems. During this media diet there was a lot of talk of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Thinking about it made my heart ache. I tried to think of ways our little family could help.

But I also felt I didn’t need to see all the footage, all day long.

And I felt it important to shield my children. They are young, and it is important to me that they see the world as a safe place.  I want them to grow up compassionate and empathetic people, but I don’t believe that now is the time for them to be exposed to a 24-hour news cycle of tragedy.

A Little More How

Full disclosure here: We didn’t ban television for the past five weeks. But we might as well have. Our kids watched almost no television programs at all. We did watch two movies as a family. We also all watched a show via Netflix last Saturday night.

My husband and I watched a couple of things after the kids were asleep, including the movie Jackass 3.* 

Our kids don’t spend a lot of time on the computer normally, but we did talk about what they like to do on the computer and learned how they view it in our home. Owen enjoys  going to sites about birds right now, so he did spend a little time each week looking at bird-related sites.

Owen also likes to write books, so a few times throughout the past five weeks he worked on typing.

Ellery didn’t seem to miss computer time much. She just recently learned to play an online educational game and I had gone back and forth a lot about her using the computer at all at age 4. This break confirmed for me that the game is such a small part of her world, and she doesn’t miss it when it is gone. 

What We Did Instead/How it Went

Something strange that came out of all of this was realizing how much we talk about media in our culture today. We didn’t set out to tell people about our media break, but it ended up coming up in conversation a few times.

The biggest question we got after, “Did the kids get upset?” (they didn’t) was “Well what do you do instead?”

It’s a valid question. Television eats up a lot of time.

It became time to: do puzzles, play board games, create a pretend post office, do an animal fashion show, go outside, go outside, go outside, read, draw, grow stuff, tell knock-knock jokes, work on household projects, knit, play music, take walks, spend time with friends, build stuff, birdwatch, learn, sew, play in the sand, talk, play baseball, go to the park, have adventures, climb trees, make paper airplanes, snuggle, dig for bugs, dance in the dining room, learn rhymes, bake bread, have ticklefights and sleep.

Finally, all the animals in our backyard have names and backstories now — Elmer and Jane, Wally (Waldorf), Dee-Dee the Chickadee and Mr. Cardinalis, Downy, Passer the House Sparrow and Mr. Hairy.

I saw some things I really loved – I saw two kids fall deeply in love with the works of Beatrix Potter. I saw more time for imaginative play. I saw children amazed by a hand-made  ”Hawaii postcard” and an airplane made out of recycled paper.

There were not so good moments. I recently saw a post at Rockin’ Granola where Kara (no relation) talks about a quote she heard from Kim John Payne, the author of Simplicity Parenting: “The step between boredom and creativity is sibling torture.” 

There was a little of that.

(Note: If you are looking for resources on cutting back on media – Payne’s book is one of my very favorites and it’s no coincidence that we went on our media diet a few days after hearing him speak. Clean is actually doing an online Simplicity Parenting book club right now!) 

So What Now

I’d like to say that getting rid of television for five weeks led to some sort of big change here, and that everything is different.

It’s not.

But there are some small changes I’ve noticed.

First, I can’t remember what we used to watch all the time.

I referenced above that my husband and I watched a couple of shows and a movie. I was really glad we didn’t miss the Michael proposal episode of The Office. But I would be OK with never seeing another Jackass* movie again. I didn’t watch all of it, it was on in the background while I was doing some school planning (doesn’t that sound ridiculously innocent?) but it was really upsetting to me for some reason (for those who have seen it, I’m thinking specifically of the tooth thing here).

Was I more sensitive because we had cut out so much media, or did this whole media break thing come from feeling a little burned out on that stuff in the first place?

I mentioned that we saw a lot of creative play, but that wasn’t missing before, there was just more time for the kids to go deeper into the experience (the animal names, for instance, or the fully functional post office).

I referenced sibling torture, which sounds extreme. It wasn’t that bad, and it wasn’t any worse than before, it was just I couldn’t take the easy way out and say, “Why don’t you guys go watch a show while I finish my work.”

So where does this leave us?

I’m not sure yet.

I can acknowledge that a lot of our worry about too much TV came from it being the cold months of winter. Some days it was literally 4 degrees outside which limited other possibilities.

But I don’t want to go back to that either.

Some very good things have happened during the past five weeks. I do feel like we are all a little closer. We’re all talking a little more about the important stuff.

I do still like curling up for a movie night on occasion. I even like that the Wild Kratts taught my 4-year-old what a proboscis is and what it does. I like talking TV with grown-up friends.

I don’t miss my old e-mail, although I hate the new one (stop stacking stuff, Gmail!)

I do feel less worried. I have to say it. I feel less barraged, you know?

Diets are usually associated with deprivation, and when you end a diet, all you want is to go a little nuts (as in nuts by way of a Snickers bar). But I’m just not there yet.

In fact, as I sit here writing this, I don’t feel like we have been deprived at all. I feel just the opposite.

I think that says something important. I just haven’t figured out exactly what. 

But I do know I have more time now than I used to to think about it.

I would love to hear your feedback on this post and your feelings about media in your home. Please comment below!