Baby2Baby

I love it when a plan comes together, especially when it involves friends and doing something positive for your community. Started by three friends with too much stuff, Baby2Bady recycles new and gently used baby goods and distributes them to families living in poverty in Los Angeles.

You can learn more about them from their website. Why not get your friends together and have a donation party?

If you live in the New York area Baby Buggy does similar work.

Natural Pod

We are always on the look out for online stores that stock more eco-friendly products, so we were happy to read about Natural Pod over on Ohdeedoh. It has a great selection of natural toys and items to encourage imaginative play, a number of which we haven't seen anywhere else.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Poot & Boogie Dolls



I couldn't resist buying one.

Yesteryear Clothespins Set



Paint Jar Holder

On the move...

I am in the process of moving my office from here. to here. Working from home will have many perks - best of all, the end to my daily commute. Instead of a 30 - 45 minute drive each way, I will now have a leisurely 10 foot walk out my back door.



So as the days toward completion of my new office space draw near, I began to look for movers to help me lug bookshelves and flatfiles to their new home. A quick look in our local Yellow Pages put me to Mean Green Trucking and Transport. Their trucks run on biofuels, their NY warehouse is solar powered, and they plant a tree for every move they make.

They do appear perhaps to be a little pricey - I am still waiting for a comparative quote from a "traditional" mover. Will let you know what happens.

(cross-posted at Sew Green)

P is for Personalization

Ever since the birth of my daughter a few months ago, that's her above, I've had a mysterious urge to personalize all her gear. Think Laverne & Shirley and the “L” on Laverne's sweaters. This sent me to Etsy in search of custom cuteness and look what I found.



Custom Name Stamp from Craft Pudding.



Personalized Hair Clip from Details Inc.



Personalized Flat Note Cards from Sarah + Abraham.

Eden’s Green Closet

This weekend we dropped by the grand opening of Eden’s Green Closet on Abbot Kinney in Venice, CA. The brainchild of Emily Blakeney, this children's eco store specializes in recycled children's clothing and new organic children's fashion and products. Think of it as a Buffalo Exchange for kids.



If you are a thriftier, like we are, it's fantastic! All the work has been done for you. Emily handpicks every item in the store. Her criteria? “Would I put it on my daughter?” We had a great time going through the racks of cute duds and you can be sure we will be back, not only to buy more, but to resell some of our own kid’s outgrown clothes.



Emily from Eden's Green Closet. Go sell her your kid's (nicely) used clothes.

Sow what?

This third installment in Tina Davis’s series of children’s book (following “Cook and Look” and “See and Sew”), “Sow and Grow: A Gardening Book for Children” captures exciting activities to take on with you little green thumb throughout the year: from sprouting Spring flowers in eggshells, to pressing Autumn leaves. And aside from the whimsical vintage-inspired illustrations, it provides age-appropriate lessons in simple plant biology. You can find it here.

More Poems for Mother

Hope is the Thing with Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

Sock it to me....

I have great aspirations of learning to knit socks. In the meantime, I am smitten with these I picked up at Muji in NY. They are made of recycled cotton (waste cotton, that is respun, but not sorted, resulting in lovely patterns) and are super comfy.

There were also sweet stuffed toys made with the same.


$21 at the MOMA store

All Fabric, All the Time

If I had to write a list of my favorite things I think vintage fabric would be at the top, closely followed by coffee and donuts...yum, donuts...but I digress. I like the idea of making use of something discarded or used rather than buying new and I love all those retro prints.

I have challenged myself to use vintage or organic fabrics for all my sewing projects so I'm feverishly on the lookout for new sources. So you can imagine my delight when I came across True Up, a new blog completely devoted to fabric written by Kim Kight, of Dioramarama fame. Best of all, Kim is a huge lover of vintage fabric and thanks to her I’ve already found a couple of alternatives to Ebay and Etsy.



These two fabrics are from Antiquefabric.com. After I bought the Lions and Zebras Seersucker, Kim featured it as a Daily Swatch – one of my favorite parts of the blog. But even more fun is the Buck Rogers Flannel I picked up. It’s hard to find prints for boys in vintage fabric and this one is truly fabulous!

More Poems for Mother

The Owl and the Pussy-cat

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Edward Lear

Illustration from the The Big Golden Book of Poetry

Give the Gift of a Poem

Mother's Day is around the corner and instead of the usual bunch of flowers, why not give or ask for a poem?

Caroline Kennedy in The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, writes:

...for each holiday or birthday, John and I would have to write or choose a poem for my mother. We had to copy it down and illustrate it, and she pasted them all in a special scrapbook. A few days before Valentine's Day or Mother's Day, there would be mad scramble for the poetry books, and a mild sense of competition to see whose poem was longer or more famous. It wasn't like a school assignment, but an infinite wandering that took us out of our own world, and into so many others.

It's a great idea for birthdays too. For my mother's birthday I wrote out The Flowers by Robert Louis Stevenson and she loved it. She said it made her cry.

So for the next few days I'll be posting some poems if you want to give this idea a try. Get the kids to draw a picture to go along with it.

The Flowers

All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames-
These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose and thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

Robert Louis Stevenson