It’s been a long couple of days away from the computer, so I’m going to put a few things out there, in no special order…

It seems like every once in awhile, one of the many blogs I read does a round up of all of the current printable coupons for organic groceries and baby stuff. The latest is from Green Mom Finds. Enjoy!

I read this entire article on Depression-Era posters and modern remakes in Readymade with great interest. The posters these are inspired by are from my favorite exhibit at the Smithsonian American History Museum. As an American History major in college and a constant student of political communications, they’ve always appealed to me. The new ones are excellent, and some how I managed to miss… free to download!

Skip to My Lou rounds up more free downloads — all sorts of adorable gift tags, including some especially for for handmade gifts.

Eco Child’s Play has a bunch of links for quick, thrifty and eco-friendly Christmas crafts to do in the waning days before the holiday. I especially love the idea of Lego ornaments and will be filing that away as teacher and grandparet gift potential for next year. And as soon as we’re clearing off the mantel, I’ll be making some of the cool holiday card puzzles featured at The Crafty Crow (which has had a pile of nice Hanukkah crafts lately, too, although as you can tell by the picture from my living room, we believe any project can be a Hanukkah project around here…)

What are you making with your kids this week?

I somehow powered through the busted ankle and the four kids with three different ailments (cold, stomach bug, and teething, of which I also have two!) and had a robust post planned for today. My laptop had other plans and suddenly stopped working. The fine people at my local Apple Store fixed it in a matter of seconds, but it threw my day and my writing off. Apparently, the more I try to be mindful about my blogging, the more complicated my life seems to get just to throw me off.

parenting

The Crafty Crow has posted a kids homemade ornament swap. Sign up now for a fun crafting exchange. Though we don’t do Christmas at home or have a tree, I love ornaments (is that weird?) and would really have loved to do this with my oldest. I just don’t think it’s in the cards for us this year. Our family life is a little too unpredictable for activities where we would disappoint other kids if we didn’t come through!

crafting

Cool, crafty make your own recycled bath mat! This looks like so much fun. The Cookie Magazine “nesting” blog has a lot of smart how-tos, like this on making fabric covered drawer pulls. Considering I was thinking of shelling out $6 each for some at Anthropologie today and I have *tons* of fabric, I’m definitely going to try this first!

resources

Got piles of music or data CDs you don’t know how to recycle? Re-nest points out the CD Recycling Center.  They take disks, cases, and liners, and have great ideas for setting up recycling stations in an office, library or school.

Cool Mom Picks shares hand-me-downs, a freecycle and freepeats-esque resource that also combs craiglist and other sites to put info in one place. Right now, it’s only in a few cities, and not mine. Let me know if you check it out…

parenting

Just in time for me, How Do You Do It?, a blog about parenting multiples, has the most in-depth tutorial for making your own baby food. Step by step and lots of pictures.

Also timely, Uber Parents shares guidelines for monitoring fever in children. I particularly liked the idea of taking their temp a few times for a baseline so that you know what really constitutes a fever in *your* kid.

crafting

KIWI magazine has a pattern for making a tote out of all of those Halloween candy and snack wrappers. Genius!

Green Phone Booth shares a quick pattern for door draft dodgers. Just fabric and some beans! I need to make a huge one of these for the french doors from our living room to our drafty sunroom. Kelly at Almost Frugal has an equally easy and useful pattern for reusable fabric gift bags. If you’re like me, you have a box (or a closet) of fabric you’re not in love with anymore. Move some of it along with practical projects like these and make room for some new things you really love!

Crafting a Green World has details on upcycled shrinky dinks (remember those?) from #6 plastics you might have laying around anyway.

eating

Don’t want to make a whole cake or heat your entire oven? This microwavable cake-in-a-mug is such a cute idea for an after-school treat with your little ones.

A Year of Crockpotting is an awesome resource, but now Stephanie has included information on just how frugal a choice it is and links to key recipes on making pantry staples. I will miss her when her experiment is done!

resources

Re-nest posts a request for wool sweaters with holes to be upcycled into rugs. I have a few to send to the artist, unfortunately. Does anyone have ideas for extending the life of my sweaters? I barely seem to make it through a season with some these days.

Baby Cheapsakte reviews several of the deal-a-day sites. Not bad to follow some of these if you are looking for specific types of items for holiday gifts.

After the best of the baby clothes have been snatched up by the resale store or passed along to friends, what do you do with the rest? Here are a few ideas for donating, and for upcycling what might not be feasible to donate.

Donations

A lot of people think initially to drop a box of clothes off at the Salvation Army or Goodwill. Nothing wrong with that, but if you have the time, think about other types of nonprofits that could use the items for their clients:

• Homeless and domestic violence shelters see more children than we care to think about and will accept clothing and baby gear. In my experience, they frequently need car seats in clean and safe condition. Call the office of the shelter nearest you, they definitely have a wishlist handy you might be able to fulfill part of, and your donation is also a tax write-off.
• Your Humane Society will gladly take old towels and bed linens, no matter their condition. A great destination for an excess of receiving blankets!

Upcycling

Even after donating items, you may find you have some stragglers that no one is interested in taking off your hands. You still don’t have to hit the landfills!

• Sometimes, an item is not resale quality due to a hole or a stain. If you’re handy with a sewing needle, a cute applique can fix it right up. If you’re only handy with an iron, try Rikrak iron-on letters, hearts, or birds for a quick fix. I’ve saved all of our outgrown plain-colored onesies to personalize as baby gifts in the future.
• Sewers can also fashion T-shirts into grocery bags (how cute with onesies!).
• Re-nest posted a how-to and pattern for knitting dish scrubbers out of t-shirts. They would knit up so quickly and since it is plain knit stitch, it’s a practical project even for novice knitters.
• Crafting a Green World details how to unravel and recycle sweaters into yarn for new projects. (The photo above is my own recycled yarn project, a pair of slippers for my oldest son from an old cotton Gap sweater.)

Creative re-use ideas are popping up everywhere. What do you do with your cast off items around the house?

I’ve tried so hard to come up with a creative post about greening Halloween, but it seems like those are everywhere right now and I’m seeing what I thought were my brilliant ideas in print after they apparently occurred to other brilliant mamas. I don’t want to be repetitive, so I refer you instead to the Green Moms Carnival featuring dozens of posts and to Green Halloween and I’ll get back to the winter holidays.

I was very inspired by the October Tiny Challenge to do small deeds that help others make green choices. I’m going to take it further by doing that for as many holiday gifts as possible. I already had envirosax on my list for my stepmother, and since I came up with this concept, more and more ideas are coming to me.

There is a preponderance of “Green Your Lifestyle” kits out there that run $35-60 each (here’s one example). How about buying the same materials yourself and making several kits for friends and family members? CFC lightbulbs can be bought in big packs at hardware stores. Pick up some of your favorite items or make bulk batches of homemade dishwasher powder to include. I’m guessing with a little ingenuity, you could do this for less than $15 each.

A sweet simple gift for a teacher or a stocking stuffer is a handkerchief holder with a new or vintage handkerchief that might discourage use of paper facial tissues. Likewise, if you have basic sewing skills, you can repurpose t-shirts or other linens into cloth napkins very easily.

So, like the Tiny Challenge, I challenge you to replace one conventional gift with another that will please the recipient but also help them trying something new and green! Let us know what you decide to do or leave a link in the comments to your ideas.

I read this at treehugger…

I think, and I think you’ll agree, that our days of decadence are done. I mean, who can afford a $5 daily coffee fix everyday anymore? Who can afford the bottomless tank of yesteryear’s monster SUVs? Who can afford to travel? Or heat and cool their McMansion? It seems that we have been living in a time of decadence; a time of $100 burgers and $12.5 million bras. Key words: have been. Is it safe to say that those times have come, or are coming to, a close? So what now? Well, times like this, there’s only one thing to do. Simplify!

… and thought, “Yes! Yes! Or at least I hope so!”

Don’t get me wrong. I love nice things as much as the next girl, but our disposable culture is totally unsustainable. I don’t want to see people lose their shirts (or anything else) in this economic climate, but some readjustment of our values and priorities is long since due.

With that in mind, re-nest has had an amazing number of posts for reusing and upcycling in the last week or two.

• 7 household uses for coffee grounds (Repairing scratches in wood? I’m all over that.)
• 11 uses for egg cartons (We give our back to our poultry farmer, but know that’s not an option for everyone)
• Tin cans to drawer organizers (I have SO many 25.7 formula cans to do this with…)

Eco Child’s Play writes up 30 Green Ways to Stretch Your Family’s Budget. Along with my fellow green mama Katherine, we posted our introductory feature at BeCentsAble and I’ll have a new post up this Tuesday about introducing organics into your grocery shopping, no matter your current budget or shopping habits! (Jo is already talking about that over at the Modernity Ward right now, too.)

Recycle your jeans into insulation for Habitat for Humanity. Recycle your sweaters into kid’s pants (or perhaps wool soakers?).

I loved this dollhouse makeover post, because mine is sitting in our basement, but my thoughts have leaned more towards several coats of semi-gloss and then using it as a bookcase for board books. Or maybe one of my boys will want to play with it some day?

I do know that I want to get them some cool name plaques made up, or perhaps go on an adventure where we photographer letters and shapes of our own. I have special time with my older son each Friday that I try to plan ahead for. Crockpot carmel apples are also on my agenda soon, as is making “Boo Baskets” for some neighbors.

If you’re anything like me, you love magazines. And if you’re really like me, you feel super guilty about buying them. Coverleaf seems like the start of something good: the ability to read magazines online. If you don’t have a subscription to a certain magazine, you can thumb through it and then purchase digital access to that issue for much less than the print cost. Use a popular Firefox addon like ScreenGrab! and you can save recipes, projects, design ideas, and parenting tips, all without touching a tree. (Thanks to Freebies4Mom for bringing the site to my attention.)

How about 50% off any regularly priced item at Michael’s craft stores? They are carrying a number of greener supplies these days, from bamboo yarns to recycled scrapbooking papers. (With all of the various ditch the disposables challenges out there, if you need my knitting pattern for scrubby dish towels, let me know…)

There’s a new CVS coupon out, too, also useful for the staples as well as thinking ahead to Halloween and beyond.

I was looking for information about infant eczema when I stumbled across the article at Z Recommends (a go-to source for product reviews as well as consumer advocacy on issues central to parents’ concerns for the health and safety of their children) detailing violent reactions that children are having to those plastic tagless tags that grace all of our clothing these days. If you find you (or your children) breaking out in rashes on your backs, this could be the culprit. And phthalates in the tags? How unfortunate.

TinyDecor blog is now offering products in their store with that cute Mod Green Pod Kids fabric I posted last week. Lovely!

Thrifty Jinxy has a recipe for homemade dishwahser detergent composed of stuff I know I already have in my house. Definitely going to give that a try!

Considering cloth diapering versus G diapers? tiny Decor has done the head-to-head (or bottom-to-bottom?) research for you!

Re-nest shares recycling and donation resources in 10 Ways to Give Things Away for Free. A number of these I hadn’t thought of or didn’t know about. Double check what your city accepts, too. Our recycling center takes athletic shoes, batteries, tires, and computers on top of the standard paper, plastic, yard waste and the like.

Isn’t this a sweet idea? (From a number of things via The Crafty Crow, with more detailed instructions at SouleMama)

I love the idea of doing this project alongside the one suggested by ohdeeoh using vintage fabric and embroidery hoops of different sizes. I need to get on freecycle and see who has some hoops lingering in their attic that they’re never going to use.

Did you know that Firefox tends to crash when you have more than 30 tabs open? I know this (very well!) because I have so many sage reads items open these days and so little time to write! I am planning some reorganization, like a more tightly edited reads as a once- or twice-a-week feature, and a new design and layout, when I have a little time. Soon!

Last week, I got some inspiration from this bunting picture at The Crafty Crow.

I’ve seen lots of handmade buntings around, and I felt like our older son’s playroom was really needing some decorating attention. This weekend, we sat around with a big pile of magazines and boxes and other papers intended for the recycling bin and picked what we wanted to cut out. Right now, we have a large pile of colorful images ready to hang. I’ll take a picture when we’re all done, the hardest part will be the hanging because the walls have a weird texture to them.

Also Crafty Crow inspired is the very cool Playful Learning’s custom ABC book. Martha’s craft of the day today is the similar and beautiful leaf alphabet.

I would love to have the big brother help me collect some leaves in the coming weeks and then we can create letter cards for him and his brothers. Special gift idea, too, with a cute frame! (Treehugger shares the Martha love today, too.)

Parenthacks suggests ideas for repurposing Melissa & Doug packaging. Now why didn’t I think of that before?

Ike has us all thinking about family preparedness. I know I could do better in this area. I need to look into tornado safety, which is the real threat in this area, and get better prepared for the winter with infants in tow. We might have a frost tonight, so no time like the present!

A quick add to the baby shower gift list: Priddy books has added a line printed on recycled paper with natural inks!

Leaving Excess has a good check list of things to do now to be prepared for winter. It made me realize that we might have a winter coat that still fits P, but that he probably needs a new hat, snow pants, boots, and mittens.

I’m both intrigued and perplexed by the Kid’s Busy Box over at Cool Mom Picks. I’m guessing there’s excess packaging. I’m guessing the materials aren’t the best out there. I’m guessing that you could assemble the pieces yourself for a fraction of the price. What I’m liking is the idea of creating a list of items that could be put together, perhaps as a gift or to bring when visiting family members without small children, using better sourced ingredients. Add that to the huge list of future posts/big ideas

Wonder what to do with those various plastic bottle caps that aren’t recyclable? Aveda will take them.

Visit Aveda.com to find a salon or store where you can drop off your bottle caps. The Aveda Bottle Cap Collection program accepts rigid plastic caps from soda, juice, shampoo, and laundry-detergent containers, as well as other flip-top caps.

Stretching a Buck has good news — Kiss My Face has launched a brand new line of kids products! They contain no artificial colors or fragrances, no parabens, and no Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. Their kids line includes everything from lip balm to toothpaste to shampoo. Through the end of the month, use her code KMFBLOG3 to get 30% off of your entire purchase when you shop at their online store here.

A couple of great how-tos:

• Get top resale dollar for kids clothes
• Make felted wool yarn balls
• Sew cloth napkins