If you have a budding Tom Brady, why not pick up this soft cute ball at the super reasonable price of $9?

AppleBlossomBaby’s shop, Blossom Toys, has so many nice, affordable items for kids, from crayon rolls to teething rattles. Even gift sets stay within the “baby shower for a coworker” price range, which is generally hard to do when shopping for home- and handmade wares.

There is much to love about rikrak. I can speak from personal experience that the customer service is great (I ordered letters in vintage fabric in each of my son’s initials to iron on to their winter coats). Now I have my eye on two cute gifts for special occasions: the new job and the new home.

For the former, I know I would love an upcycled business card holder like those offered by rikrak for $12. Maybe a cute gift for a new mom, too, with some playdate calling cards!

And for the latter, the similarly fabulous vintage fabric coasters ($14 for 4).

This weekend, we’re buying a used triplet Runabout stroller.

They are an ugly industrial grey with bright blue seat covers. Ugh. Fortunately, a fellow triplet mama has an Etsy shop, Tip to Tip, where she sells the custom seat covers she designed. I want to select my own fabric and have a few front runners:

Echino birds (too hipster?)

Amy Butler leaves (too grown up?)

Michael Miller peapods (too literal?)

Organic Mod Green Pod Kids (too… not yet available for sale, unfortunately)

What’s your favorite? Anything else in blue or green that is stroller appropriate but not too old or too young?

Here it is, the first of the steals on Etsy that meet sage criteria: clothing or items specifically for children, or household items that would be useful for parenting, with a careful eye to both materials (as green as possible, please), and price (I see it as inexpensive for what it is — something individually made by a craftsperson). Generally, if I’m loath to share it because I love it and want it for myself, and it’s so affordable I’m actually thinking about buying it, that’s what I’m going to post!

Today: TheCrayonBin’s fabulous travel crayons, a steal at $9!

I’m not sure what I like best… the crayons are recycled and in the shape of trains that are just adorable. They’re stored in a crocheted pouch with recycled variegated yarn that doubles as an eraser when you use the crayons on the wipe-clean, upcycled VHS case that holds the pictures (and additional pictures can be downloaded for free at their website).

A self-contained, no mess, creative, expandable, recycled, and upcycled toy for $9. What an awesome gift, and the store will customize one for your budding artist. Which they’ll have to do, because I’m buying this one!

I wasn’t the only person thinking about green school supplies in August, and now I’m clearly not the only one thinking about what actually goes into those lead- and vinyl-free lunch boxes each day. (Didn’t get that new lunch bag yet? EcoBags has a great line of eco-friendly bags.  Now until October 15th, iLunchBox has a code for 15% off. Use code iLunchBox08 at check out.) So far, we’ve sent a peanut butter and honey sandwich in place of bologna and a chicken sausage in a bun on hamburger day. I’m feeling more inspired for the meals to come, for sure. Quinoa muffins? Yum.

Meanwhile, The Not Quite Crunchy Parent has ideas for making schools greener all year!

eBay has taken over the online store World of Good, designed to connect socially and environmentally aware purchasers with sellers. The items lean more towards international fair trade than organic or locally sourced, like Ten Thousand Villages, while the community section has some interesting green lifestyle articles.

MamaBid has details for recycling those pesky Tyvek envelopes. Add that to the long list of things I didn’t know could be recycled!

Green Your Design links to the EcoEtsy team. I could spend a whole day browsing Etsy online, in fact I’m sure I did more than once when I was on bed rest. Ecosalon culls the best of their favorites at least once a week, too. I’m thinking of adding a feature where I’ll do the same for kid or household items that are green and reasonably priced. Sounds like a lot of fun to me!

It looks like much of the internet is thinking about back to school right now, and many blogs are discussing, in one form or another, lunches with less waste.

There is a fantastic post at Want Not right now covering all of the options I was going to post here. Conservation counts on the web, too, so hop on over to the lovely Mir’s site and check out the original question, her suggestions, and the bountiful comments. Ask Moxie also covered the topic with amazing detail and insightful comments last September.

Two Green Chickens posts a pattern from the Small Object, I see how this could be done easily with tablecloths and fabric sourced at tag sales and thrift stores. Time to finally get that new sewing machine! And the Etsy Spotlight today is on all sorts of mama-made and vintage lunch items, too.

So now that you have the perfect bento box for your grade schooler, what are you to do when they’d rather eat the standard (and pretty unexceptional) school lunch fare? I’ll gather up links for greening your school lunch program and post on that soon!

I am dying to check out Dig ‘N’ Swap when I have a little time.

I don’t know if this is simply greenwashing (probably), but it is nice to know there may be an easy-to-obtain organic option for road trips and the like at Pizza Hut.

I’ve been exploring Etsy Teams, groups of sellers that band together to promote their stores, like the Natural Kids team and their beautiful blog.

I’m going to add a bunch of new reads to the blogroll tomorrow, too.

How timely! An Etsy/treehugger colaboration post. I *love* Etsy, but I find myself using what I see more for crafting inspiration than for actual purchases, like that onesie with the vintage washcloth sewn on to it. I could definitely make that. (When I get my new sewing machine, that is…)

Did you know that Martha Stewart sends out all sorts of free daily emails? I get most of them because I’m kind of a Marthawhore. Detractors aside, the woman/empire puts out a lot of excellent ideas, many of which are very much in the sage spirit. For example, yesterday’s organizing project, the Shirt Pocket Quilt. Considering my husband always tears his shirts in the elbows, this is a keeper for us.

Ask Moxie ponders the “no gifts, please” party invite, while the fact that Target is trotting out Christmas already has me thinking… Can I impose an all-Etsy policy for the holidays for my boys (and maybe for Mama, too)? Not too many makers in my family to do a homemade holiday, but if there are homemade goods they could buy and we could support individual artists, WAHMs and the like, maybe they’d go for it.