In continuing with my reviews this week, I thought it would be nice to look at a holiday-minded product. On with the show…

Product: Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations and Traditions for the Whole Family by Corey Colwell-Lipson and Lynn Colwell

Basics: Celebrate Green is a mama-daughter book collaboration – the title is fairly self-explanatory – this is a book about all things related to green holiday celebrations.

Cost: Family friendly at only $17.95. Plus for a limited time, you can score an even better deal. “Right now when you order a copy of Celebrate Green! from our website, you can choose between a box of organic truffles from Sjaaks for one penny plus shipping or a free jar of fair trade whipped shea butter from Vintage Body Spa for nothing but shipping.” That’s a great value. Especially during the holiday season.

What I think:

There are many outward positive aspects of this book. For example, it’s printed on 100% recycled FSC certified paper, which more books should be. There’s also a highly interactive website going on for this book. Plenty of green tips, author info, and fun stuff is offered, along with a value on reader participation.

Pros:

I like how the book is set up: The table of contents is divided into seasons, and then sub-holidays under each season. Spring through winter holidays are offered and a cool section with year round holidays -such as birthdays, family reunions, and baby showers. The last section is very nice with a great big list of helpful green websites (three pages worth) and a green-smart glossary. There are also blank page sections in the back of the book where you can make notes about each season. This book is super easy to skim through and find what you need, and their index pages are actually very well done (I’m sick of poor indexes).

I like the design: The design is simple but easy to follow. The colors flow through the book in soothing sage and browns. Important information is either in a solid color block, or has a great big header; both of which really break up the text in a bite size way. Also, each holiday is clearly marked in the bottom page corner – which is nice, so if you’re flipping through spring, you’ll see where Easter topics end and Earth Day begins.

The holidays are covered well: It would be impossible to go through how they discuss each holiday, but trust me, plenty of green tips are covered for each holiday. I’m going to use Cinco de Mayo and 4th of July as examples.

In the Cinco de Mayo chapter some of the various items covered include:

• Eco issue facing Mexico in general, and how you can help.
• Organic veggie enchilada recipe.
• Paper bag pinata instructions.
• And more.

In the 4th of July chapter some of the various items covered include:

• The dish on if fireworks are green and air quality and child labor issues related.
• Alternatives to fireworks and how to safely manage them.
• Recycling bin contest idea.
• Three worthy summer eco-causes you can support.
• How to organic up your picnic.
• Choosing eco-friendly summer drinks including where to score eco-beer.
• News about tap water.
• Organic Red, White, and Blueberry muffin recipe.
• Fun family activities that don’t kill the earth.
• And more.

So, as you can see, each holiday not only focuses on the green aspects of the holiday, but also on other green issue important to the season – that is pretty cool.

Cons:

I couldn’t really find many cons about this book. My only issue is that the text is a little wordy. (Like I’m one to talk though). The intro was really long, a little too long for my taste, and there’s a back story behind almost everything in this book, and in some cases I felt they could have just offered the tip and moved on. On the other hand, some people like that kind of thing, and as noted, I’m not exactly the most succinct human ever, so… take this with a grain of salt. It is what it is.

Celebrate Green final score:

Five out of five happy trees. This is one of the most in depth green holiday resources I’ve seen. It’s also perfect for families. Very well balanced with both kid and adult friendly aspects. It’s not just for one member of the family. Also, right now, with the special deal going on, this is an extra great value for a green book. It would make a great holiday gift.

Learn more at Celebrate Green

Buy the book

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

Tips that can help you green your homeschooling experience: 

Borrow don’t buy: Curriculum pushers, as most homeschoolers know, can be hard core. However, there’s no reason to give in. If your choice is to use a set curriculum, you can buy used sets, go in on a set with another family (or two), photo copy for sibling use, or see if renting a set is possible.

You can also borrow books and videos on all topics at the library of course.

Get it used: Used homeschool materials are super easy to come by. Thrift stores, garage sales, and library sales are great places to get used, slightly used, or even brand new (that otherwise might be tossed) materials. Look for school and daycare sales. Often if a daycare is relocating or closing up shop you can get killer deals on all sorts of learning materials.

Make learning renewable: If you don’t have to keep careful records, you can invest in a large chalkboard or white board for doing things like math problems, drawing maps, and learning letters. If you do need to keep records, you can adjust this method by using a digital camera to record progress.

Supplies: Like for kids in school, any learning supplies for homeschoolers can be found in recyclable or reused version. There are plenty of recycled papers, pencils, pens, and so on you can invest in vs. conventional versions. Also look for non-toxic versions of things like glue and crayons.

Don’t make green a “lesson”: Live green to live green. Sure you have more time to do special green projects like start a worm composting project or build your own rain barrel, but really, green living is best learned as life experience, not a lesson. Instead of reading about and discussing recycling in the home, do it on a regular basis.

Field trips: Because you’re at home trips to the forest, recycling center, paper mill, community garden, beach clean-ups, and more are within an easier reach. Contact local green businesses and see if your child can shadow for a day.

More green homeschool tips to come…

Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in August 2008

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

It wasn’t a long conversation but Shai; one of the b5media team members got me thinking about how no one can be green all the time. Frankly, you’d have to a hermit in a cave to achieve perfect eco-sensibility and as I’ve mentioned before simply by being born you’ve used too much energy and you can’t take that back.

I’ve gotten emails from people asking me how I find all this green stuff so easy. I don’t; green is hard. We all get frustrated when trying to go green and we all have things we could do better. There are a lot of die-hard green resources out there and when everyone looks so nice and green (Tree Hugger comes to mind) it’s easy to say that green has too many expectations. I hate when people give up trying to go green because they can never live up to someone else’s standards. Don’t be the person who gives up.

I’ve been told that I have crazy green standards. Not true.

Honestly, I think I have reasonable green standards. In case you think my standards are impossibly high I thought I’d share some of the ways I am currently evil to the well-being of the planet.

1. I forget to recycle toilet paper rolls. My recycling is not in the bathroom and I just forget. I try not to but I have thrown some toilet paper rolls away this year. They add up.
2. I LOVE coffee. My local grocery store does not sell Fair Trade so I have to drive a bit to get some. If I happen to run out of Fair Trade coffee and I’m on a writing deadline then I will run quickly to the store and grab some plain old coffee. I always feel bad, yet I do drink it.
3. I like cherry Pepsi. Do you know how toxic this junk is? Seriously. It takes all this energy and chemicals to make this crap and I will drink it sometimes.
4. I own both an obscene amount of books and art supplies. We unschool so we do use the art supplies and books but we could cut down.
5. Twice I got really frustrated with all the junky little toys that people give Cedar — like happy meal toys, cereal toys, and so fourth. He didn’t want them so I gathered them all in a bag and threw them out. I didn’t try to recycle them, give them away, or anything I just threw them out. Twice.
6. I don’t always use recycled ink cartridges because I don’t think they work as well — I did a test and it’s true but still what’s more important the planet or me being picky about ink.
7. This is really bad and almost too embarrassing to admit but for the sake of this post I’ll say it… I own a can of… Raid. Yes. Raid. Do you know why. I am deathly afraid of spiders.

So deathly afraid that once when I was 12 years old my mom and siblings went to the beach but for some reason I stayed home. While they were gone I saw a spider in my bedroom — a big hairy brown Oregon spider. I ran down the hall and to the living room and basically curled up waiting for someone to come home and save me. The whole time I thought the spider was coming for me. It’s irrational but that’s how I am. I’m still like this.

When I had roommates or lived with my ex I had back-up. Now I live alone with just my son. He’s no help so if I see a spider I have no choice but to stand really far away and spray it dead. Truth is, even getting close enough to spray them gives me an almost heart attack. I’ve tried to use a vaccum cleaner with a long hose but I always think the spider is still in there and will climb out. Nothing works.

Raid is my biggest green sin. I’m completely against it and what’s in it. It’s evil — like me when I use it.

Now, am I really evil. I doubt it. Can people help the planet even if they fail to be perfect? Yes, absolutely. Even though I may do some things that are less green I will still talk all day long about living more eco-sensibly because I do know about green issues and I do care about them. Do you think that makes me a hypocrite? Maybe you do.

My point is, that in today’s world, with all that we have, all the temptations, even the greenest green eco-talking people have a few sins up their sleeve.

What’s one of your eco-sins? How bad do you feel about it and does it make you think twice about supporting green living efforts?

Post from: Tree Hugging Family