• Share books with friends (or strangers)
• One word; library
• Used book stores
• Donate your read eco books to schools or community centers
• Try to buy from eco-friendly book publishing companies to start with — such as ones that use recycled paper and eco-friendly ink.

Wow that was a digression. I really just meant to post some good green shopping books I know of. I’ll just do that now:

The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience

The Organic Food Guide : How to Shop Smarter and Eat Healthier

Safe Shopper’s Bible : A Consumer’s Guide to Nontoxic Household Products

Animal free shopper (UK based info)

And there you go.

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

Douglas Fir trees make great Christmas trees because of their beautiful range of green to blue color, great needle retention, soft bushy feel and of course the scent. When you walk into a home that has a Douglas Fir you know it right away. My son says they smell like, “Fresh water and peaches” which I’m not sure I agree with but the sentiment is nice. They do smell amazing.

In Oregon the forests are full of Douglas Fir which is one reason when you drive in from California or Idaho the first thing you see are views like this. This is why I missed the Northwest so much when I was in NM.

If you’d like to spend way too much time looking at photos visit Forrest Croce — as you can see this is where the photo above came from. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone capture how I see places so well. This photographer has seemingly been everywhere I like and taken pictures of it all; Oregon, Washington, San Francisco, and more. Beautiful work. Pages of places shot in amazing ways.

If you’d like to read about the various types of Christmas trees common to different areas then Needlefast Evergreen is a great jumping off point. They discuss various celebration trees such as the Douglas Fir but also trees like the blue spruce, scotch pine, balsam fir, concolor fir, fraser fir, korean fir, white pine and more.

For the littles:

The Mouse and the Douglas-Fir Cone (this one is best if you have a cone with you).

Tree Story: The Life of a Douglas fir Tree — set up like a lesson; good for homeschoolers. This is good for all kids though, personally, I’d ignore the lesson issue and just explore trees using this as a jumping off point.

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It’s not an all-inclusive list though. A good bet is to buck plastics and battery operated toys. Although, I know that’s not the most helpful stand-alone suggestion.
One blog that can help you do this is Eco Child’s Play this blog covers, “Natural toys that inspire your child’s imagination! A review of developmentally appropriate, ecologically friendly toys for young children and green family news.“ Jennifer who writes Eco-Child’s Play, (what’s with all the green Jennifers?) is extremely knowledgeable about eco-toys and always has amazing posts, reviews, and suggestions on non-harmful play items your child will love. It’s one of my favorite kid-minded green blogs so check it out.

You can also take a look at some green toys I’ve featured here that are safe and yet completely fun:

• Seasons Natural Toys
• Recycled Friends
• Build A Plant Maze!
• Color Your World Green

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

There is so much you can learn about this amazing and beautiful tree that it can be overwhelming. Cacao Web has some nice and simple information about this tree and b5media’s own Heather over at Chocolate Bytes also offers some handy facts along with more chocolate fun.

Here’s the perfect kid-friendly project for the family — one that uses real trees and real chocolate!

Chocolate leaves! These are fun but kind of testy. The best leaves to use come from organically grown trees but well-washed leaves will do as well. Have your kids gather leaves of all shapes and sizes — the sturdier the better but I’ve used some flimsy ones too.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler and let cool slightly. Spread on leaves with paint brushes. Place on wax paper, chill (no less than 15 minutes) and carefully peel leaves off.

You can get super creative with these. You can use white chocolate or color white chocolate with food coloring. You can add tiny candies on top of the leaves or paint two colors of chocolate on. Kids love them on cakes or alone.

Visit Hawaiian Vintage Chocolate to see secret chocolate recipes, beautiful chocolate tree pictures and more.

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Look here to see full project instructions.

As I hope you gathered from the picture this autumn nature wreath craft is from Craft Ideas. They have many neat fall projects right now but I like this one because you get to go for a walk outside plus use recyclables and nature for art.

You can use a glue gun the project states but I’d bet any sort of plain old craft glue will work. Also, I’d plan on using whatever your own kids happen to find and like outside. The one above is pretty. But the one your child makes will be unique; besides, pine cones, leaves and acorns, consider fall flower petals, tiny branches (tiny), seeds, and more.

Lastly you can sprinkle the finished project lightly with a dash of cedar, cinnamon, and or orange essential oils to give it a real autumn smell.

Have Fun! Don’t forget to send cool pictures of your completed projects to share. My camera is a tad busted but I might use my phone to take a picture of Cedar’s. (We have to finish first!)

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The best part is that any tree hugging family can grow their own organic lemon tree!

Viva Terra has some of the most amazing eco items at their website; including a tiny Organic Dwarf Meyer Lemon tree. It grows full size lemons though so lemon dishes a plenty are good to go.

For the kids check out this giant lemon! Now that is a lot of ice cold lemonade.

For the older more adventurous kids maybe a lemon battery experiment is in order.

Wow, the amazing lemon and the tree it grows in… Don’t you want to hug a lemon tree today?

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

Maybe try seven steps to cut back your personal tree consumption. Trees do little for your diet anyhow.

1. Use reusable grocery bags. 700 paper grocery bags use up one tree. Use your reusable bag 700 times and there’s one tree.
2. Recycle your newspapers. After you recycle about 750-800 newspapers you’ve saved one tree.
3. The average wooden home is built with around five trees. If you build use an alternative method like adobe or straw bale. That’s five trees you can save all at one time — it’s like being a super hero. If you still build with wood plan a smaller than average home which could save one or two trees.
4. Don’t buy a Christmas tree — or save one by having a living tree.
5. Plant one tree. Better yet plant back all seven you may have used.
6. It takes 10 million trees to create all this junk mail we get. Cancel yours and be responsible for less. If you also recycle your phone books and do not pick up fliers everywhere you go during the year you can save around one tree per year.
7. The Rainforest Action Network reports that the average hamburger represents 55 square feet of forest area that contains one full grown tree. That’s what is cut down to allow cattle to graze. Eat less meat (or none) and save countless trees.

Kids will like the Lorax’s Save the Tree game and after playing kids get to add their name to the official Lorax’s “Friends of the Earth” honor roll!

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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.

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This is my contest entry; which doubles a nice autumn post for my tree hugging friends. It is autumn and that’s a great time for chocolate! Ok, anytime is a great time for chocolate. Try munching (or using) these green-based items. They also would make great gifts for a chocolate and nature loving pal.

Chocolate acorns! How cute.

Or try organic chocolate covered pumpkin seeds!

When it starts to get chilly outside you can curl up inside with Green & Blacks Organic Hot Chocolate.

Or warm up in a toasty bath with all natural, handmade Chocolate Soap from Herbaria.

So, munch on autumn chocolate foods, drink warm chocolate beverages, and then soap up in a tub of warm water. All the best things to do as the days turn brisk. Maybe even go enter Heather’s chocolate contest yourself to win some fine autumn chocolate leaves!

Post from: Tree Hugging Family