Eco-Friendly Mailers

I am so excited! I received my new eco-friendly mailing envelopes today. They are made right here in Colorado where I live,  by a company called Ecoenclose. It is located in Longmont. I thought about driving there and picking them up myself. But then I thought it may be more "green" to have them shipped to my house.

I really really like the idea of compostable shipping materials. They are about one third more expensive than my old mailers. Maybe I need to raise my shipping prizes? Oh well, I think they are totally worth it.

What's your take on the subject?

Creating in Silence

I published the following article on the NaturalKids Team Blog yesterday. I wanted to share it with my readers over here, too. Hope you enjoy it.

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I was waiting for my daughter at dance class recently when I discovered this really cool article in the July 2011 issue of the magazine Real Simple: Life made Easier.

Oh boy, was it noisy in that hallway where I was waiting for my child. Waves of noise were coming at me from all directions: jazz and ballet music drifting out from classrooms, younger siblings chattering and crying, mothers making phonecalls. In the midst of all that I was trying to read this article on “Silence”. Kind of ironic.

In the article Holly Pevzner talks about noise pollution, and how it affects people in a negative way. The author argues that there is strong scientific evidence that growing noise levels in our modern world cause a host of problems in humans. For example, health studies have shown that loud noises make human hearts beat faster and increase blood pressure. Scientists even have gone so far as to directly link loud traffic noise to a great number of heart attacks that killed people. Not sure how they proved that one. Besides these direct health effects, noise can lead to problems with attention, aggression, insomnia, and general stress.

I can very much relate to the insomnia part. One thing that really frustrated me when I moved to US was the loud train whistles that go off all the time. I nearly fell out of bed when I first moved here and heard the trains the first night. “What is that? ” I asked my husband as I jumped out of bed.

Our family lives about 1.5 miles from train tracks where each morning, sometimes as early as 3 am, freight trains blast through blowing their whistles like there is no tomorrow. How stupid I thought. Why do we have to live with this kind of noise terror? Wouldn’t it be better to build gates so that cars cannot go onto train tracks at all rather than make all that noise? They have that sort of technology in Germany. How can the guy driving the train stand it? He must be going deaf for sure. My previous fondness and nostalgia for trains whistles, I believe, are gone forever.

I suppose as time went by I learned to live with this kind of noise pollution. Or maybe I have just learned to live my life around them. The train alarmclock has led to some lifestyle changes for me. I have become an early riser. What’s the point of staying in bed when you can’t sleep anyways?

But Holly’s article also made me think of other noises: Random noises, like people talking on cell phones everywhere, with no regard who they are standing next to and what that person is doing. Then there also the noises that we can choose ourselves to be surrounded by: like the TV, stereo, or radio, ipods. Pevzner suggests that we cut down on all of them and try some simple kind of meditation once in while.

She says: "You don’t even have to go to yoga class for that: Just sit in a quiet spot, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing. Try and relax your whole body from head to toe. And breathe! I really liked it."

Inspired by her article I tried something else. I turned off the radio in my little studio/work space. I usually like to listen to the radio, and I have some favorite CDs I like to play when working on my dolls. After reading the article I stopped that completely. What was the result of this experiment? I loved it! I found that by turning off the noise, even noise that I perceived as enjoyable, I was much more focused and relaxed in my work. I got a lot more work done, and I was in a better mood and happier. You should really try this some time.

I remember a conversation I had in the Etsy forums with other natural toymakers. We talked about why our natural toys are so much better for children. The main advantage over modern toys is that natural toys don’t overstimulate like so many lights-flashing noisy plastic toys.

That got me to thinking that maybe we adults would be better off too if we made some healthy choices about “our toys”. Maybe we’d be a lot less stressed if we turned off that cellphone and jogged, cooked, cleaned and created in silence…

Here are two books on the topic Pevzner quoted from in the article. I must find them in my quest to lead a simpler and better life:

Listening Below the Noise by Anne LeClaire
Peaceful Parenting by Nancy S. Buck

From the Annals of the Crazy German Lady...

I am feeling a bit depressed today. Our baseball season has come to an end, and I will really miss watching this amazing American sport. Being German I had not known much about baseball until my son started playing. I instantly fell in love with it! There is nothing that get's your adrenalin pumping like a game of  Little League kids going at it...

But there is one thing that really bothered me all summer. I had never seen such waste, mountains and mountains of trash, than at those little kids' baseball games. Most of this trash came in the shape of: Water Bottles.

I felt like a total outsider carrying around giant gallon sized refilled waterjugs from home. I could feel the the stinging looks. Lookey here:" There comes the crazy German lady again with her water bottles. Or was I imagining it? My son was the only kid - I am pretty sure of it - who had a water bottle in the dugout. I kept jogging over to refill his drink bottle about three to four times per game. Was it too much work? Not really. Not much different from grabbing a throw-away bottle from a cooler.

I know they all thought I am bit cracked. But what seems crazy to me is that people would pay up to $10 per gallon of bottled water (or even more at concession stands) when you can bring it from home for about 1cent per gallon. This is not the reason I am doing it. I was doing it because I like to avoid trash at all cost! I just don't like it when a giant overflowing trashcan obstructs my view of the baseball field. Sigh!

Here are some facts I found on the Internet. Maybe I should print them up as a handout for the next season? Will they still give me that look?

• Unlike soda and other carbonated beverages, there is no deposit on water bottles
so fewer are recycled.

•Nationally, only 10% of plastic water bottles are recycled—90% end up as either garbage or litter.

•30 million single-serve non-returnable containers end up in landfills or as litter every day.

• We spend millions annually to clean up plastic bottles that litter our highways, parks and open spaces.

It’s a Waste of Energy

• 18 million barrels of crude oil equivalent were consumed in 2005 to replace the 2 million tons of plastic bottles that were wasted instead of recycled.

• Manufacturing that much plastic releases more than 800,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change.

• If we recycled the water bottles used in New York, we would save more than 67,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases.

• In New York, the oil used to make our bottles is equal to 66 million gallons of gasoline; enough to power 120,000 automobiles for a year.
Taking Action

• Since New York adopted the bottle bill in 1982, 90.6 billion beverage containers have been recycled.
Roadside container litter has been reduced over 70%.

• San Francisco and Los Angeles have banned city departments from buying bottled water. Ann Arbor, Michigan is calling for city events to be bottled water free. Salt Lake City urges city workers not to buy bottled water.

Maine, Hawaii, California and Oregon have deposit laws that include bottled water.


What You Can Do

•Recycle or return all of your beverage containers
•Pick up bottles along the road or sidewalk and recycle them.
• Drink tap water—it’s better for the environment, even using a fi lter is cheaper than buying bottles.
•Get involved—help start a recycling program at school, work and sporting events.
•Buy and refill reusable bottles.
•Learn more about your local recycling program.

Win this EarthDay Treasury!

Happy Earthday!

 Looking for a load of awesome free gifts? You can enter into a drawing for a collection of NaturalKids team products by simply leaving a comment on Etsy.

The screenshot shown here shows only half of the loot you could possibly win. So go check out the link and leave your comment!

Have you seen those Radioactive Piggies?

How long does it take for radioactivity to go away? Apparently just about forever! Check out this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/01/radioactive-boars-mushrooms-chernobyl_n_843498.html

Have you ever eaten wild boar meat? It's considered a delicacy in the Vaterland. I think I have to send this article to my sister in Germany. She likes to serve boar stew or sausages for a special Sunday treat. Makes me wonder if she has a clue as to how contaminated her special treat may be...

Garden Patch Status Report

Remember our Three Sisters Garden project? Before we went on our trip to New Mexico the dads put down some straw in the "trenches" between the planted hills. They did so to retain moisture from watering and keep the weeds down. Did it work?

The good part is: The plants on the mounts have grown immensely and look big and healthy. Wow! Check out the corn and squash plants!

The bad part: The weeds continued growing. They sprouted up through the layers of straw which makes weeding a bit of a challenge.

The children still don't like weeding. Neither do I, in the heat of the day mosquitos swarming about us...We had to bribe the kids with slushies to get the job done yesterday. After weeding for an hour, in the blazing heat, we all got a well deserved reward: Lemon Berry Slushies. We drank them so fast it gave us brain freeze. Quite painful, but oh so good. LOL

Also the beans have been planted about a week ago. My husband snuck out to plant them all by himself...Not fair! There is no documentation of the planting, and you can't really see the bean plants in the pictures because they are still quite small compared to the "older" sisters, named corn and squash.

Now the sisters are happily growing together. The family is complete!

Eat Your Greens: Swiss Chard

We have had a very successful gardening season so far. In February we planted lettuce, spinach, arugula, and Swiss chard. Swiss Chard has become my favorite vegetable I've decided. It comes in many different colors and varieties. I love the plant because it looks so pretty with it's yellow, red, or green stems in your garden. But I have also learned to appreciate it as a foodsource. You can cook it easily and in many different combinations. Freshly harvested from the garden it is just amazing! If you don't have your own garden or forgot to plant it, try and find it at a natural grocery store or farmers market.

This is one very simple way to cook it:

1. wash and rinse leaves well in the kitchen sink, set wet leaves aside


2. separate the thick stems from the leaves to cook first


3. set wet leaves and stems aside, don't dry them because you will need the moisture for steaming!


4. chop the leaves into smaller, bite sized pieces


5. peel 2 cloves of garlic and cut it into fine slivers


6. heat some olive in a big pan with a lid


7. add your stems to the pot and steam for a 2-3minutes, then add the leaves


8. put lid on top and steam for about 5 more minutes

Once the vegetables are all wilted and soft they are ready for eating! If you like things a little spicy, you can throw a couple of hot pepper flakes into the oil before you start the steaming process.

This is so easy to do. And my children who are not great fans of this sort of thing have learned to appreciate the greens from our garden. They sure love to pick the vegetables and get more excited about eating something that they grew themselves. You can cook spinach the same way!

I have also added vegetables prepared in this way to pasta and added some pesto. My kids love pesto. The green of the pesto masks the other greens. Without knowing that they were eating their greens they gobbled them all up and said it was so delicious.

Garden Report: Weeding and Watering

Here are some new pictures of the garden patch. We planted the corn and squash first. Unfortunately about half the squash did not come up. So we had to replant some. The weeds, as usual, sprouted in large multitudes. The race "weeds against gardener" is at full speed. I can tell it's the kids least favorite part. Everybody loves to water and be in charge of the hose. But weeding is definitely the least popular activity. When I took my daughter weeding on Saturday she kept saying:" This is so boring. Can we go home now?" Patience, Dear! Weeding is an important aspect of being a gardener. As much as we detest it, it is necessary or you don't get any crop!

Planting a Three Sisters Garden

So maybe you have been wondering what we are growing in our garden patch. The Dads had the idea to try out what is called a Three Sisters Garden.
You can find great instructions on how to grow one on this site: http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html

What is a Three Sisters Garden?
Native peoples from different parts of North America have used a wide range of agricultural techniques. Perhaps the best known is the interplanting of corn, beans, and squash. This trio has often been referred to as the "three sisters."

The corn plant represents the oldest sister. She stands tall in the center.

A Squash plant stands in as the second sister. She grows over the mound, protecting her sisters from weeds and shades the soil from the sun with her leaves, keeping it cool and moist.

Beans are the third sister. The beans climb through squash and then up the corn plants to bind all together as they reach for the sun. Beans help keep the soil fertile by converting the sun's energy into nitrogen filled nodules that grow on its roots. As beans grow they use the stored nitrogen as food.

A pretty cool concept. We planted our garden 2 weeks ago. You can see some pictures of the kids playing happily amongst the garden patches. They pretended to be Indians defending the land against crop thieves with their bows and arrows...It was too cute.

Community Gardening/ Schrebergarten und Laubenpieper

A few months ago our family and a family of friends became proud renters of a community garden patch. It is a 15x15 feet piece of land that is owned and managed by the City of Greeley. Patches like ours are rented out to gardeners at an annual rate of $25. Originally the land was owned by the University of Northern Colorado, but since they had no use for it, the University donated the land to the Community Gardens project.

"In 2007, the city of Greeley, along with Steps to a Healthier Weld County, recruited a group of interested residents and formed the Community Gardening Advisory Committee. The goal of this group was to encourage families and individuals to enhance their health by growing their own food and getting outside to get exercise in the process." You can read more about this project here: http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20080309/FEATURES/8554907

There used to be two sites with garden lots. Our patch is located on a site that is in very close proximity to the university and in walking distance from our home. There are 22 patches on the site. The program has become so popular that a third site was added this year. The new site has even bigger patches with drip irrigation, but we'd have to drive to get there.
I don't know if you have ever visited Germany. The idea of small community gardens is not new to me. In Germany they are called Schrebergarten or Lauben and have been around since the late 19th Century. When traveling Germany by train, you may notice large green parcels of land surrounding most towns and cities. On closer inspection, you'll see that the land is divided into many little lots, separated by fences. Many of the lots may even have a small cabin or structure on them.

The original concept was invented by school principal Ernst Hausschild in 1864. Together with his friend doctor Moritz Schreber, Hauschild promoted the idea that children, especially poor city kids, should grow up closer to nature and get more exercise. During the economic crisis of the 1930s the community garden idea really took off in Germany, and many lots were given to poor families, so they could grow their own food and be saved from starvation. During WWI and WWII the little garden patches became important food sources for starving Germans. As many big cities lay in ruins after WWII garden plots with shelters gained in popularity as housing units.

If you ever visit Berlin make sure to visit the large garden communities, Laubenpieper colonies, in various neighborhoods of the city. Laubenpieper is the name for the people who rent the lots. http://http//www.morgenpost.de/printarchiv/familie/article1164166/Schrebergaerten_als_Ackerland.html Am I going totally off topic here? Maybe not. The idea behind the new community gardens project in Greeley is not so different really. With so many obese kids these days, kids who spend countless hours playing Nintendo or watching TV, having a green garden patch seems like a really good idea.

Also considering the current economic crises, interest in vegetable gardening is booming. Have you been to your local gardening center lately? They seem packed these days. More and more people are thinking about growing their own food to save on grocery bills.

Luckily our two families are not in financial distress, and we are thankful that we don't have slave away on our small lot with empty stomachs. The main reason our families decided to rent a garden patch is to grow healthy organic food and teach the children about gardening in the process. We have had a small vegetable garden by the side of our house for years. We grow tomatoes, basil, herbs, squash, and salad greens in the spring and fall. But it's not very big and this year the dads had the great idea of growing a Three Sisters Garden. Since this post is already quite lengthy I will safe that topic for another day...

Recycled Packaging

A few days ago I received my package from http://www.katsinthebelfry.etsy.com/. Kat is one of my NaturalKids team mates. Sadly, she lost her mother recently, so the whole team chipped in and bought items at her lovely shop to help her family pay for the trip to her mom's funeral. I am so proud to be on this awesome and very supportive team!

I LOVED the upcycled packaging/envelope my purchase, a cool pouch, came in. Who knew that an old papersack could have so much charme? I really like the images of old cars, explorers, and inventors. Now I just need to find a Trader Joe's store or some other store that has cool papersacks...

Maybe the papersack I received my fabric in from the Fancy Tiger will work. I am looking forward to making my own recycled envelope soon..

Happy Earth Day!!!

It's the last Day of my Earth Day promotional sale today! So if you were thinking of buying something from my germandolls etsy shop, shop today to get your 10% discount. But there are so many lovely shops from my Etsy NaturalKids team who are having sales also. You can find the list here:blogger.

In order to do something good for the earth, I ordered these gorgeous snack bags from

http://www.wastenotsaks.etsy.com
I think using them will safe our family a lot of money, as well as keep a lot of plastic trash out of the landfill...



Happy Earth Day!

Save the Planet: Bring a Bag for your Groceries!

I would like to find more Earth friendly ways of wrapping and shipping my product. The other day I found this really cool tutorial on how to make your own envelopes by NaturalKids Team friend Katsinthebelfry. http://natural-kids.blogspot.com/2010/04/earth-day-how-to-make-upcycled-shipping.html
Once I run out of my envelopes, I will definitely give it a shot. The only problem is I never get paper sacks at the store. I bring cloth bags. Duh! http://www.etsy.com/shop/katsinthebelfry

I am often stunned at, how many people in this nation still go shopping every day and DON'T bring a bag. I see people with shopping carts loaded to the brim, yet they did not bring a SINGLE bag. Did they not know they were going grocery shopping that day? I mean, I understand forgetting a bag once in while. I am not perfect myself. If I ever forget, I can politely ask for a papersack and use it for the envelopes mentioned above!

Did you know that in Germany they actually charge you money for the bags at the check-out lane. I am not sure, how much it costs these days. But before I moved away the price was up to 15 cents per bag. I wonder how many people in Greeley, Colorado would do a better job of remembering to bring their bags, if it cost them a few dollars more to haul home their pile of groceries in planet polluting plastic bags?

People here seem to have it all backwards. Most people don't even know that the grocery stores here give you 5 cents per bag for every bag you bring with you. When I first heard it, I was in shock: "Wait a minute. You are telling me that I get paid here for bringing my bags - as opposed to paying for being a "Umweltschwein"? Yes, there is actually a word in the German language to describe people, who are selfish and don't think of the ramifications of their actions. If you don't bring your grocery bags you are a environmental pig or hog! I know that in some areas in the US plastic bags became such a huge problem that they were outlawed (e.g. San Francisco).

I will keep chugging along, bringing my own grocery bags, and trying to set a good example. Maybe on Earth Day I could start a campaign and hand out some flyers about plastic bags and how much pollution they cause. I am scared though. Most people in this town are very conservative and set in their ways. They already think I am a freak because I have a German accent...