Once again we’ve partnered with the folks at Green Scene Mom to bring you an awesome giveaway featuring the best in eco-friendly baby gear. Check out this season’s award winners below and enter to win them for your family. We are very excited to help announce the 2015 Fall Green Scene Mom Award Winners, celebrating Eco-friendly product design and creative innovation, and bring you an awesome giveaway featuring some of the award-winning products.
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Like every transition we’ve gone through with our kids, I’ve spent so much time worried about how to transition our preschool son to big kid toothpaste. His dentist recommended the switch months ago, and I just couldn’t figure out how to teach him to brush and spit the toothpaste out. He is almost four, so I finally quit procrastinating and bought big kid toothpaste. We chose Tom’s of Maine Silly Strawberry Fluoride Toothpaste because I’ve loved and trusted Tom’s of Maine products for nearly 20 years and it is the perfect fit for our family’s quests to live green. Within a few days, the we had the whole brushing and spitting thing figured out and I realized I’d wasted time worrying about nothing. Read on to find out our three easy tips for teaching preschool kids to brush their teeth to make the transition easy and painless for your kids.
My oldest child is about to turn 4, and his birthday always makes me reflect on all I’ve learned in these few short years of motherhood. One of my favorite parenting decisions we made was the choice to use cloth diapers. We have saved thousands of dollars using cloth diapers for our kids, and have kept tons of waste out of landfills. Besides the obvious economic and environment benefits, cloth diapers are super cute and great for my babies’ sensitive skin. Today I’m sharing my best cloth diapering advice after 4 hard fought years in the trenches so you can learn from my mistakes.
Creating an environmentally friendly home can seem like a daunting task. There is always something more we can do to decrease our home’s footprint and lower our damage to the environment. How do we start down the path to green living without being intimidated by all that needs changing? At our house, we make one simple change at a time. Today I’m sharing a few simple and easy ways you can start to green your home in honor of Earth Month. Join in the conversation in the comments section or on my Facebook page here.
Raising kids to appreciate and care for the world around them isn’t easy in our society that loves instant gratification, constant entertainment, and disposable everything. We want our kids to become adults who appreciate the earth, take responsibility for their effect on it, and work towards conservation for future generations. We believe that it is our responsibility as their parents to teach them about nature and how to love it and care for it. Today I’m sharing a few easy ways we work to give our kids a green childhood. April is Earth Month, so this year I’m joining with a group of bloggers for a series on Natural Parenting and Green Living. Join us we celebrate Earth Month and help each live a greener, more environmentally responsible life. We are far from the greenest family on the block, but we are working to become more eco-friendly every day.
In our quest for a green lifestyle, we’ve tried lots of different things. Some worked for us, some didn’t. We love cloth diapers, but as hard as I tried I just couldn’t get used to a menstrual cup. We switched almost entirely over to reusable microfiber cleaning cloths, but I just can’t make the switch to using cloth baby wipes. Getting started with essential oils has opened up a whole new world of natural solutions for our home, and I know I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg so far. Today I’m sharing eight super easy and eco-friendly cleaning hacks to help get your bathroom sparkling clean without using harsh chemicals or creating waste. I’m joining my amazing team of Oil Explorers to share our favorite tips for spring cleaning using natural products.
Why did I spend money on essential oils? If you follow me on Facebook you’ll know that I’ve been asking lots of questions about essential oils, and after months of research finally decided to buy in a few weeks ago. Quality essential oils aren’t cheap, and we are on a tight budget. It took quite a while for me to decide to take the plunge, so today I’m sharing why I decided to spend money on essential oils. I’m joining with my fellow Oil Explorers as part of the Skeptic’s Guide to Essential Oils series. Each of us is tackling a different topic that we’ve wrestled with in a very real, raw series perfect for those of us who are intrigued but still a little skeptical about this whole oil craze.
We are now almost 2 years into this little cloth diaper experiment. I’ve learned so much and am still picking up new info every week. I’ll probably get the whole thing totally mastered by the time Mini Bear potty trains. Today I’m sharing with you the top five things I’ve learned from our first 20+ months of using cloth.
1. Diapers We Love:
If you read our about Great Cloth Diaper Trials you know that we’ve tried and tested 11 different kinds of cloth diapers. We are now up to 14. Out of control. Not all of the brands we tried worked for us, but we do have a few that we absolutely love and we are always looking to try more. Our all time favorite brand is Softbums
2. The Cloth Diaper World:
Did you know there is a whole underground world of cloth diaper people out there? We DO exist. There are Buy/Sell/Trade groups and fan pages on Facebook for every major brand. There are local cloth diaper swaps. There are forums where you can learn everything you every wanted to know about every diaper on the market. I’ve sold all of our used cloth diapers we didn’t love because they work really well for other people. I’ve bought used diapers from people who didn’t like our favorite brands. There are cloth diaper meet ups and mom groups in most major cities. The cloth diaper world is amazing, and I love being part of it. Before we started this experiment, I looked to blogs to learn everything I could. That’s why I now post about what I’ve learned to share with you.
3. The Laundry:
The cloth diaper laundry is no longer intimidating. You can read about our original simple cloth diaper laundry routine here. We just switched to Rockin Green
4. Over Night Cloth Solutions:
We struggled with this for a LONG time. Bear is a super heavy wetter and I thought we would never find the right fix. Bear would literally explode an over night disposable diaper, but we couldn’t find a cloth solution that worked either. Finally after begging for help from Twitter and Facebook friends as well as in cloth diaper forums, and visiting my two local shops, we have found a solution that works for our super heavy wetter. We use a waterproof cover (Rumparooz 
5. Cloth Diapering Really is Easy, Cheap, and Doable
It’s true. Maybe not for everyone, but it is true for me. I had many doubters when I first started talking about cloth, but thankfully I’m stubborn enough to prove them wrong. If you are interested in using cloth diapers, do your research and go for it. Don’t buy all one brand though, because that brand might not work for your babe. There are a few specific things that have made it easier on me as we have gone on. Our diaper sprayer is magnificent. We bought the Bumgenius diaper sprayer
Do you use cloth diapers? If so, what’s one thing you’ve learned from cloth diapering?