Every day should be a day when we commit to sustainable living. For a lot of us, we have committed to conscious living and we look at the choices we make to lower our environmental impact from big issues like how we transport ourselves to smaller issues like which bunch of broccoli to buy. Why…Read the full article.

If your children are looking forward to making Valentine’s Day cards, help them celebrate by sharing the coming spring. Children can easily make plantable paper, embedded with seeds. This is a simple craft project that could even be a step into more serious and creative papermaking. Materials Recyclable paper – Make it porous paper like…Read the full article.

Mmm. Chocolate. Valentine’s Day approaches, and there are many opportunities to indulge in a little piece of delight as it melts at your body temperature spreading across your tongue. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate bars, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate nibs, chocolate cake. I adore chocolate. Once your body chemistry returns to its pre-cocoa levels, or…Read the full article.

Groundhog Day is one of my favorite movies—one of those I can watch over and over. Every time, it reminds me of such a great lesson: we have to live consciously and deliberately to get life right. Phil Connor, the mean-spirited weatherman, wakes up and lives the same day every day for what the director…Read the full article.

This following post was an entry in our Blog to Inspire contest. The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and not necessarily those of Eco Baby Steps or Parenting By Nature. Blog to Inspire entrant Tiny Offerings is Julia Bain. Recently our family and friends celebrated my eldest daughters fifth birthday.…Read the full article.

In my husband’s family, in rural England, Christmas Day must involve playing Pooh Sticks after Christmas lunch. This is the game Winnie-the-Pooh devised in The House at Pooh Corner (the game that author A. A. Milne created for his son Christopher Robin Milne). The game of Pooh Sticks involves dropping sticks off a bridge into…Read the full article.

Last minute and you aren’t sure what you’ll use to wrap gifts? Don’t reach for paper. All you need to create colorful holiday gift wrap is a cloth bag, a tea towel, or a play cloth. No more post-holiday bags of garbage. Reduce and reuse. Sew a bag. Even last minute, it’s very quick to…Read the full article.

During this midwinter season, many cultures light the darkness with festivals of light, religious celebrations, new year celebrations, and parties and gatherings of all kinds. Some of these celebrations have deep, deep roots, while others are new, soon-to-be traditions not even a generation long. As an example of a festival of lights on the move,…Read the full article.

My family lives next to a golf course full of mature pine trees. We gather pine cones frequently. Our flower beds and gardens are full of them—yet the pine cones keep coming. So, we do crafts and make decorations with pine cones. Last year Nature Mom did the same. She and her children spent an…Read the full article.

One of the strongest senses evoking our emotional responses to holidays is smell. For this season in our house, pine and bay (evergreens) mix with spices like cinnamon and ginger. We have spiced pumpkin, spiced smoothies, spiced eggnog, spiced cookies, and spiced cider. There is a lot of cinnamon smell in our house. Every year…Read the full article.