In case you’re curious, and because I thought it might be entertaining, the following posts are the green topics that have created some lively (or just plain popular) discussions here at Tree Hugging Family…

Ah global warming – not only does everyone have an opinion, but people have cranky opinions. Fun.

People LOVE baby turtles, soap, and Tree Hugging Baby Names.

People REALLY LOVE homemade sugar scrub.

Peggy sounds off about how Palmolive eco+ Gel Dishwasher Detergent is greenwashing and everyone has something to say about it, including me.

32 Unique Homemade Popsicle Recipes & Ideas – this post resulted in a ton of comments, many with helpful extra tips.

We all hate Dixie paper product commercials and overly priced green goods.

Bring up female green period options and just see what happens in the comments!

I can’t believe people have so much to say about dryer sheets.

Seven Evil Ways I Harm the Planet – turns out I’m not the only one.

25 safe, non-toxic, homemade cleaners – this post has had a ton of comments, some questions, but many are cool helpful hints from readers so very worth a read.

Should we Raid spiders? Readers come up with other options that I won’t try.

People have super mixed emotions about Seventh Generation dish powder.

Eco-friendly ways to reward kids – cool post, cool comments.

Surprisingly people have a lot of opinions about reusable coffee filters.

Homeschooling goes illegal and everyone chimes in.

I really like our chats about consumerism, for example, on posts like If you’re so against having stuff, then why show all these products on this blog?,

This kitty litter post got more comments than we thought it would.

Of course there are other posts with many comments, these are just the ones that come to mind. Check some of them out and contribute your own thoughts in the comments.

[image via stock.xchng - altered by yours truly with actual THF comments]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

The parent birds are a little kooky. One, they hate me because I have to water the flowers which means moving the pot, but other times they’ll come sit right by me on the patio. I think they’re torn between liking me and not. But in any case the babies are hatched and here are some pictures…

How cute right!? If you have any nature or kids in nature images to share, you can send them in by contacting me. We’ve had some great photos sent in the past by Tree Hugging Family readers, such as…

• Meet One Tree Hugging Family
• An Adorable Tree Hugging Family
• Tree Hugging Families Love Fishing!
• One Tree Hugging Family – Nature Kids!
• One Tree Hugging Family: Playing in the Creek!
• My own tree hugging tot when he was tiny

It would be cool to get some new tree hugging families posted so send in your photos and if you’ve got one, a link to your blog (I like to link out).

[images via miss Jennifer]

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“This is my daughter, Savie, and my dog Halley playing the creek here in AZ. We have a campsite up in the Chiricahua Mountains. We go there every year to the same site and they have so much fun there, and as you can see they are enjoying themselves.”

Kids and dogs and creeks – oh my. Too cute. This little one is loving the water.

This next one is my favorite..

The “Hey, you got me by surprise” shot!

As always we love to see families out in nature, having a great time. Pets too. If you’d like to send us pictures of your tree hugging, nature lovin’ family you can contact us here.

[photos via Kisha]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

It’s not a realistic campaign. While I agree with the reasoning, I don’t much agree with how they’re trying to pull this whole, get the family together or get moving or what have you.

First off they lie, or at least exclude decision making processes:

From the TV Turnoff Network: “All TV is passive, sedentary and non-experiential. Most viewers tend to watch show after show–not individual programs. Instead of watching a documentary about birds, go out (with binoculars if you have them) and see how many real birds you can identify in your neighborhood. The purpose of National TV-Turnoff Week is to leave behind judgments about the quality of television and focus instead on creating, discovering, building, participating and doing.”

ALL TV is passive. Really? All of it. I think that’s a stretch. We learned things on home shows that we used to build our house (not passive). Cedar wants to join a jump rope team when he’s old enough and is already doing hip hop dance – every single day (not passive), and why? Because he watched Jump In on TV. If you’re going to call for a ban, at least be honest and consider that some people use the TV to their advantage in useful ways.

I hate the implication that humans can’t make good decisions when exposed to something that’s potentially harmful.

Is TV turnoff week realistic?:

There are other broad claims they make as well. However, one of my biggest issues with TV turnoff week goes back to the whole, it’s not realistic situation. Asking people to turn of the TV for a whole week is not a normal way to learn how to make change. In most cases folks won’t keep that TV off. They might for a while. In fact, the TV site claims that 90% of the folks who participate in turnoff week don’t return to their old TV laden habits. That said, how many are participating? That 90% is a pretty small number if the TV turnoff forums are any indication.

They’re asking for people to make huge leaps all at once instead of incorporating less TV on a normal sort of schedule. In my experience, large leaps don’t tend to hold up. In a completely bizarre switch, TV turnoff week goes from asking folks to make this broad jump, to asking people to make too minor of changes. Like the Family Dinner Night:

“Have you picked your night? Each one of us is picking a night, that cannot change. Pick yours and after dinner, pull out a board game, a deck of cards or something else to do and make a night of it.”

A dinner. One dinner? I’m sorry, but if you’re only eating one dinner, one meal a week together, there’s a much bigger issue at hand then television. Something besides TV is gonna have to give. You should be having far more meals together each week than one.

Learning by negatives:

Learning by negatives is also a big pet peeve of mine. I don’t agree with negatives to make a positive. If a child considers TV a positive in their world, then taking it away to teach them a lesson in fitness, family time, better grades, what have you, is a negative way to do so. A better and actually more realistic way to pull off this lesson is to simply incorporate outdoor time, family dinners, exercise, and togetherness into your life, before, or without taking anything away.

Is TV an easy thing to blame?

Trust me, your kids would rather be with you, doing fun things then watching TV – I’d bet on it. Your kids would rather eat with you than watch a movie. If this is not true in your house, if your kids don’t want to be with you, then however harsh it sounds, it’s your fault. As a parent you make the big choices. You make the choices from day one that define how your kids feel about family time, TV time, and most other issues. If your kids are reluctant to hang out, it tells me that so are you, and you need more than TV turnoff week. You need major changes in your household.

If TV turnoff week got you thinking about this fine, that’s a good thing that TV turnoff week has accomplished, but it’s not TV that’s the issue. It’s our family actions that are to blame. We talk about spending time with our kids a lot here. One because that’s how it should be. And two, the only way our children pick up our green actions is by being with us, by doing.

30 ideas for family activities:

1. Make Your Own Natural, Colorful Dyes – Great Kid Nature Project
2. Play dress up – let the littles totally raid your make-up and clothes
3. Make Your Own Solar Light!
4. Color
5. Green audit your trash as a family
6. Play board games
7. Nature Themed Autumn Craft
8. Build A Plant Maze!
9. Go fishing
10. Make some paper
11. Read together
12. Take a sign language class
13. Cook a meal
14. See what other other families are doing
15. Homemade Organic Paint Soap for Kids
16. Play with clay
17. Study water – and do some experiments
18. Bake cookies or cupcakes
19. Five Fun Ways to Reconnect with Nature
20. Go bike riding.
21. Go On A Treasure Hunt
22. Join Journey North
23. Build a playing card castle
24. Start a garden
25. Search for rocks
26. Get outside
27. Get a pet
28. Volunteer to build a house
29. Go swimming
30. Volunteer to keep the planet clean

There are at least a hundred more ideas on this blog alone related to activities and actions you can take as a family. Not to mention countless others beyond this one little blog. Honestly, you don’t even have to do anything dramatic – just hanging out around the house, doing everyday tasks together works. Don’t just celebrate TV turnoff week to see if you’re up to some random challenge. Make the challenge about your whole world. This is your life, your children’s lives, time you can’t get back. All in all, my biggest issue, I suppose, is that we can do so much better then TV turnoff week.

What do you think?

[photos via stock.xchng]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

See how right I am – just beautiful. Shawna notes that these shots, “Are from a camping trip we went on this last weekend to South East Utah. It’s called Buck Horn Wash! Very beautiful!” I agree.

Many parts of Utah are exceptionally beautiful. We’ve been there often and Cedar loves visiting. It’s a great family friendly state to visit with plenty of get up and go activities. During our trips there Cedar managed to sled, ice skate, and ski, all before he was five years old, and you cannot beat the summer scenery – I highly recommend you plan a family trip there. Winter or summer.

Look at these great kids!

You can tell that these are kids comfortable with being outside and loving every minute of it – which of course is what we’d like to see all kids doing.

Also FYI, Shawna has a new blog that looks like it’s shaping up to be a great resource for green families. The blog, Nature for Kids – looks like it’ll be covering outdoor activities and tips for easing outdoor adventures. My favorite page there is the Leave No Trace page – a great resource for green families. If you’ve never heard of Leave No Trace you’ll LOVE it. Even new, I’d say that Nature for Kids is worth a visit – especially since there are even more cool pictures to see there.

Big hugs to Shawna and her family for sharing their beautiful photos. Don’t forget, if you have photos of your family out enjoying nature, or doing any sort of green family activity, send them in, because we’d love to share them with everyone here at Tree Hugging Family. No worries if picture taking isn’t your best skill. I post my photos here – and you can’t get much worse than mine. We like all photos. 

[photos via Shawna - aka tree hugging parent]

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“We cannot win this battle to save the species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well — for we will not fight to save what we do not love.”

 

~ Stephen Jay Gould

Agreed.

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

He looks a tad concerned in this one — maybe camera shy?

And now he’s got his fishing game on…

Here he really looks happy to be in the great outdoors. He probably gets it from his mama who says, “At 8 months pregnant, I still hiked up to the waterfalls in the mountains in Central WY. Talk about an adventure!!!” Now that is true tree hugging style.

I love this last one.

A big old thanks to Mysti and all the other families who have sent their tree hugging family photos in. It’s great to see so many happy healthy kids enjoying the great outdoors.

If you want to see your family here at Tree Hugging Family send your photos in; you can snag my email by clicking on the “contact me” link to the side. We’d all love to see your family in nature.

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

Anyhow this post’s title is a bit tricky because I do tend to think all little tree hugging kids are adorable… Still, these pictures are extra adorable. The talented Kate from a favorite b5 blog of mine; Babylune sent these “meadow cuddling” shots to me.

This is a picture of Kate’s little one, BJ, (5 years now), doing some yoga!

Then we have MC, age 1, examining a flower. This may be one of the cutest kid pictures I have ever seen.

These pictures bring up a good idea of how to get great children photos — take them outside and find the brightest green landscape possible and shoot away. Just beautiful!

Many thanks to Kate and her family for sharing their tree; um, meadow hugging kid photos. 

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

Also if you’re worried that your photo taking skills aren’t up to par don’t be. Look at the kind of pictures I take:

This is Cedar at around age two in one of the Redwood forests in Humboldt.

Notice that I myself cannot take pictures very well. Flash anyone? In fact the poor child’s face appears to be glowing. Which attests to the fact that I also cannot successfully manipulate photos on my computer. He was having a great time though. Soon after this he found a big old stick and climbed around on that fallen tree you see behind him.

This next photo is where Cedar thought he was part of the fish family. He’s not.

This is at the the Samoa Peninsula — the beach in front of our house in Humboldt. Mostly he liked to slide in the sand but on this day he got to the beach and took off running towards the ocean like a crazy person and JUMPED in. (He was under two years old). After we freaked and fished him out he rolled around in the sand so it wasn’t very pretty. But fun!

As he got older he learned not to full force jump into the freezing ocean (it’s not Southern California; it’s 60-65 in Humboldt year round so the ocean is cold).

He did take up a fun activity where he’d pick up sand and stuff it in his face. Which may be better than sugar?

For now this is all I have which means you need to email me pictures of your fine tree hugging family in the great outdoors! Much like, in fact exactly like Hilary did. Go nature kids!

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

I love this picture. One, her kids are adorable playing near the lake, (pond?), river (much like the turtles but, you know, more human-like and less brownish) and two, it’s always great to see families outside in the great outdoors. I also really enjoy the look her son is giving her at the moment. Classic kid camera face.

Hilary writes green-style for b5media as well. She has a great blog called Eco Friendly Driver that covers all green things that go. Hey, that would be a good Dr Seuss book — “All Green Things That Go.” Maybe. Anyhow Hilary is a great writer and her blog is packed with tips and information about electric cars, money issues to consider, new hybrids, ethanol, and other way to drive greener, smarter, and better. Visit today.

Why not introduce your family here at Tree Hugging Family? Even send pictures like Hilary. I’d love to see them.

Lastly don’t forget to grab the kiddos and stop by last week’s Nature Detective game; a new one goes up tomorrow.

Post from: Tree Hugging Family