Have you tried out a reed diffuser yet?  I love mine!  I love the way it looks, and I love the subtle, safe scent that is always lingering in my living room area without the fire hazard.  So when I needed to get a refill, I decided to do a little research and find a phthalate-free version.  (Read about phthalates here, if you’re wondering about them.)  I went to one of my favorite places - Etsy, to look around.

I emailed a few different sellers that had reed diffuser refills, and Dee at Belle Aroma emailed me back with the most variety.  When I saw “Pumpkin Crunch Cake”, I knew that was just the scent I was looking for.  I received it in my mail box very quickly, along with some fresh new reeds, which were included.  I LOVE this scent!  It’s not too strong, but it is noticeable, and I’ve gotten several compliments on it.  The only problem is that it makes me want to eat pumpkin bread all the time.

So are you thinkin’ you’d like to have one to?  Well, here is my first giveaway!!  I’m going to give one lucky reader his or her very own phthalate-free reed diffuser kit!  The kit includes one glass bottle, reeds, and your favorite phthalate-free scent!  Here’s what you gotta do to win:

• visit Dee’s store, Belle Aroma, and find your favorite phthalate-free scent
• come back here and make a comment on this post telling me which one you’d love to try
• be sure to leave an email address (will not be displayed, and only used for prize notification)

Contest ends at midnight, November 28th.  I’ll use a random number generator (random.org) to choose the winner.  One entry per person.  Get an extra entry for subscribing to my feed, and let me know you did that in another comment.

Good luck! Have fun choosing your favorite scent!

Beet recipe?  Okay, it’s not exactly on everyone’s most-wanted-recipe list, but I stumbled upon an amazing way to eat this purple produce.  First, why beets?  Well, we recently joined a fresh organic produce co-op and we get a large crate full of various organic fruits and veggies every other week.  It’s a surprise what’s inside each time we get it and we often find ourselves with veggies we would not normally buy.  I’ve been looking at it as a sort of challenge.  It helps us try new things and new recipes!  I’ve not been a big beet fan in the past, but I did a little research and found that they are incredibly healthy.

Just look at all the health benefits of beets!

• lowers blood pressure
• effective in lowering LDL and total serum cholesterol, and triglyceride levels
• raises antioxidant enzyme levels in the liver and may promote detoxification in the intestines, blood, and liver
• may increase CD8 cells, which detect and remove abnormal cells in your colon
• help prevent stomach and colon cancer
• very high in folate = great for preventing birth defects during pregnancy
• high in magnesium = preventing osteoporosis
• lowers the level of free radical in your body, which are responsible for cell damage

There is something else about beets that can make them appealing…they’re sweet!  I remembered that I frequently see them as an ingredient in some of the freshly made juices at a grocery store we like.  So, I decided to throw some beets into our morning smoothie.  Here is what I did…

“We Got the Beet” Smoothie
1 1/2 cups apple juice
1/2 cup milk
1 pkg. frozen strawberries
1 banana
1/4 cup flax seed meal
1 beet, cut into large chunks

Throw it all in the blender and give it a whirl!  Makes about 4 cups.

OK, so if you don’t believe that this could actually be drinkable, here is the proof!

Ok, so go for it!  Try this out and let me know what you think.  Or, I’d love to hear about your very own beet creation!!

Did you see that super cute turkey in the November issue of Parents Magazine?  I’m always looking for ways to make Thanksgiving a bigger deal, you know, like a more memorable holiday?  I want our home to have a spirit and culture of thankfulness.

So anyway, when I saw this turkey, I knew we had to make it!  I thought I’d share our step-by-step in photos to inspire and help you along.  I wanted to go ahead and make it now so that I could ask Gabriel what he was thankful for everyday and stick a feather in, instead of doing them all on Thanksgiving day.

Also important to note, this project was a little time consuming and uninteresting for my 3 year old.  He’s happy with the end result, and he had fun making the eyes, but there wasn’t much else he could do.  If you want to make one, here is how we did it!

What you’ll need:
9″ polystyrene ball
dark-brown yarn
light-brown yarn
felt; white, red, and orange
pompoms
craft sticks
construction or craft paper

1. Cut a 1″ sliver off the bottom of a 9″ polystyrene ball.
2. Wrap sphere neatly in dark-brown yarn, covering surface completely; knot on bottom.
   
3. Make a 4″ ball from light-brown yarn and attach to body with a wooden craft stick.
   
   
4. Create simple facial features using the felt: white circles (the size of a quarter), with 1/8″ pompoms for pupils make the eyes, orange triangles for beak, long red tear-drop shapes for the wattle.
   
5. Cut feather shapes from construction paper and write “I’m thankful for…” on each one.  (We made our feathers 6″ long and 2″ wide in the middle.)  Bend in half lengthwise to create seam, and glue wooden craft stick to the bottom third of the feather. (I made one feather and used it as a pattern for the rest.  I also wrote “I’m thankful for…” on each one before creasing and gluing on the craft sticks.)
   
   
6. Then we asked Gabriel what he was thankful for that day and stuck in a couple of feathers.  (Insert in a fan shape on turkey body.)  Here is a picture of our turkey a week later.

By Thanksgiving, he should have a full set of tail feathers!  I think this is going to be a great tradition for our family.  It cost me about $20 to make, but I think I’ll be able to reuse it for a few years, and just make new feathers every year.  I’d love to hear some of your favorite Thanksgiving traditions!

The Making of a Green Mom
An encouraging article for those of you on the same journey!

SafeMama’s 2008 Safer Toy Guide
Great, great safer toy guide!! Lots of wonderful ideas just in time for your Christmas shopping!

Lovely SafeMama
Check out this great site for a “one-stop safe beauty, health, and eco-gorgeous resource.”

Corn Syrup’s New Disguise
Yet again, the Corn Refiner’s Association is trying to fool you!  If you haven’t read it yet, check out this post, as well.

I love Peanut Butter Cookies!  So when I saw the very easy Peanut Butter Cookie recipe in the October issue of Parents, I knew it was one I wanted to try.  One afternoon after nap time, I decided we should make a welcome home treat for Daddy, so Gabriel and I made ‘em.  They were SO good, and a great surprise for Daddy too!  Of course I used all organic ingredients.  You won’t believe how easy this recipe is, and maybe you can even use it for your family night tonight!  Friday Night = Family Night!!

1 cup peanut butter, smooth or chunky
1 cup sugar, plus more for rolling
1 egg

1.  Heat oven to 375 degrees.  Stir together the peanut butter, sugar, and egg in a large mixing bowl
2.  Roll dough into 1″ balls.  Put some sugar on a plate and roll balls in it to coat.  Place 2″ apart on ungreased   cookie sheet.
3.  Press each ball down with a fork to make a crisscross design.  Bake for 10 min. or until cookies just start to brown on the edges.  Remove from the oven and let cool on wire racks.

The only other tip I have for you is to use parchment paper.  I never bake cookies without it.  I hate washing cookies sheets!  Hope you enjoy these!

Great subject, right?  Well, since I’ve been doing a lot of this in the past week, I thought I’d share some techniques with you.  Nathaniel got hit with the stomach bug, then me, then Gabriel.  Johnny feels like a hunted man today since he’s the only one left.

A few years ago, Parents magazine (the September 2006 issue to be exact) printed an article about how to do all sorts of different things.  One of those things was “How to Clean Up Throw-Up”.  I tore it out for safe keeping because I knew the information would be invaluable at some point in my life.  So here is what they said, along with my own helpful pointers - from experience, of course.

1. First, use a paper towel to lift away any solid remains.  For hard surfaces, cat litter works to soak up what’s left so that it can be scooped up and thrown away.  You don’t have a kitty?  Sprinkle baking soda or cornstarch on the affected area to absorb the throw-up (and the odor.)  Make sure to do the baking soda thing.  I did it one day, and forgot to do it a different day.  It really does make a difference in SMELL!
2. For carpeting and rugs, consider investing in dry-cleaning fluid (do a test run to make sure it won’t bleach out the color.)  After cleaning up the vomit, pour the fluid over the stain.  Blot with a dry, white cloth.  Rewet the stain with a squirt of mild liquid detergent, then blot again with the cloth.  Flood the stain with water and blot, repeating until there’s no soap residue.  I have never tried the dry-cleaning fluid, but I do have this Woolite POD, and it works great!!  In fact, I need to go buy another one.  I used mine up this past week.
3. If your child vomits on a wood floor, use a pH-neutral cleaner or a solution of white vinegar and warm water.  If you’re cleaning a mattress, car seat, or the living-room couch, sponge the stain with cool water, then cover the spot with baking soda and allow to dry, then vacuum.  We have wood floor in a large part of our home, and my white vinegar did the trick again!  But I will admit, there was a crazy weird fume when I cleaned up the puke with the vinegar.  My floor is still good, though!

While I hope this information will help you, I hope you don’t have to use it anytime soon.  Stomach bugs are NO fun!

I have an unusual disdain for grocery carts. When you think about all of the gross things people can touch out of the grocery store and inside the grocery store and then they put their hand on that cart and push it around. I mean, YUCK!! I probably need to use my vinegar spray on the grocery carts!! To top all of this grossness off, I have a story about grocery carts.

One day my mom went grocery shopping. As she pushed her cart around the store she kept noticing a rather peculiar odor.  A really stinky one.  She kept wondering to herself, “what is that smell, and where is it coming from?”  She finally decided to smell her hands.  Hmm,  poop.  Oh, yeah, there was poop ALL OVER the cart handle.  Needless to say, she left that cart right where it was, and went straight to the bathroom to wash her hands and start all over again with a fresh cart.

After I had kids, the thought of them touching a grocery cart and then putting their hands in their mouth, was just too gross.  So I bought a Clean Shopper cart cover.  I take it with me every time I go shopping and put it on the cart before I even touch the cart myself.  My routines goes as follows: arrive at store and park, get out and find a cart, put cover on, go back to car and get kids into the cart.  I thought you might like to know what I do, because it’s really not that inconvenient to put on the cart cover.

I love this PureCart System idea. I’m not sure it would actually wash poop off of a cart, but that is probably hopefully a rare occurrence.  The PureCart System is a cart purification system. The sanitizing solution it uses has a 99%+ kill rate on common bacteria. Sounds good to me.  I would totally use this every time I went to the grocery store if it were available!

Got any cart horror stories?  I’d love to hear ‘em.  They’re usually pretty funny.  Do you use a cart cover?  There are tons on the market now.  Or, have you gotten to try out the PureCart System?  I’d love to know about that experience!  Have fun grocery shopping this week.  Hope you get a clean cart.

Biggest Toy Recalls of 2008
Parent magazine has the recalls, along with photos, so you know just what they’re talking about!

Coconut Oil May Help Fight Childhood Pneumonia
Coconut oil is really good for you, and here is another example of it’s many benefits.

Ask Z Recommends:  Is Similac’s New Packaging BPA-free?
If you’ve been wondering, and are a little confused, this is where you need to go!

I don’t know very many people who actually know how to prepare a fresh pumpkin, and this is only my second time.  I thought you might like instructions, along with pictures.  Just in time for the holidays!  It does take some time, but it’s not terrible, and it’s really fun if you do it with kids.  Here we go!

First, using a sharp knife, cut a circle around the stem and remove it.  Then stick your hand in and pull out all the slimy pulp!  (Gabriel LOVED this part!)

When you’ve gotten all the seeds, and slimy pulp out of the pumpkin, you can wash the seeds off in a colander and then spread them out on a pan for roasting!  We put a little sea salt on ours, and then put them in the oven at 325 degrees for 7 minutes, stirred them around and put them in for 10 more minutes.  They were yummy!

Next, cut the pumpkin into chunks, put it in a baking pan skin side up with about 1 inch of water, and cover it.  Bake it at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. (Another recipe I found said to cut the pumpkin in half and bake at 450 for 45 min.)

After the pumpkin is done baking, take it out of the pan to cool.  After it is cooled, peel the skin off and cut the pumpkin into chunks.  You can either mash up the pumpkin, or puree it in your food processor.  I mashed it up.

We made VERY YUMMY Harvest Pumpkin Bronwnies with cream cheese frosting.  I substitute organice ingredients whenever I can, so our Pumpkin Bronwnies were actually organic.  Here’s the finaly product:

Do you remember last year when dogs and cats were getting sick and dying from pet food containing melamine?  How about earlier this year when you heard about the babies in China who got sick, or even died from drinking formula containing melamine?  Melamine is an organic compound that has been found in dog food, baby formula, Mr. Brown coffee, and your melamine dishware. Yikes!

Melamine is a chemical that is used to make all sort of things; plastics, fertilizers, pesticides, and has been added to milk products to falsely increase the level of protein.  It can cause kidney stones, and kidney failure.

According to SafeMama, it is often combined with formaldehyde to produce melamine resin, a synthetic polymer that is fire resistant and heat tolerant.  A report from the National Toxicology Program states:

Melamine resin, a hard thermosetting polymer made from melamine and formaldehyde, is widely used in the US in the form of kitchenware, including plates, bowls, mugs and utensils. Reports in the literature indicate that some kitchenware based on melamine resin leach considerable amounts of melamine monomer. A migration of up to 2.5 mg melamine/ 100 cm2 was observed under conditions that simulate an exposure to hot acidic foods…

The FDA recently announced that there is no safe level of Melamine in baby formula, so I’m thinking I don’t want my kids to be eating off of it either!  So yes, I am again telling you that I’m riding my house of something potentially toxic.  Goodbye Melamine!

If you’re not ready to say goodbye yet, (or maybe your kids aren’t), then here are some tips to be a little safer:

• Don’t ever microwave, heat, or boil the dishware
• Always hand wash with mild soap
• Use them in the “play” kitchen, bathtub, or sandbox

Sources: SafeMama, Healthy Child Healthy World