Holiday Gift Show

WRC is excited to host its second annual gift show for holiday shopping! This year, the show will be in Danville, CA and feature a wonderful jewelry designer: Life, Love and Ladybugs.

Bring a girlfriend, your mom or sis, and enjoy a glass of wine and some hors d'oeuvres while you shop for children's clothing, play things, and baby gear, and gorgeous custom jewelry!

Admission is FREE, but you must have an invitation to gain entry to the show.

The Well-Rounded Child

&

Life, Love and Ladybugs


Holiday Gift Show



2:00pm - 6:00pm

Saturday, December 5th
Crow Canyon Country Club

Email info@thewellroundedchild.com or call 916.505.2458 for more information or to have an invitation emailed to you.

Holiday Gifts for Children - Can they be green AND fun?

YES! There are fabulous green gifts out there for all ages. At The Well-Rounded Child, our criteria for childrens' goods generally follows that the item must be organic/natural and made in the USA. However, some things just aren't made in the USA, and there are other countries out there that do a beautiful job - some with a much deeper and older history than the US in developing a specific item.

That being said, the primary reason we sell goods made in the USA is of course to support our US businesses and the economy in general, but there is another "green" reason: buying as local as possible means a smaller carbon footprint, and if you haven't noticed lately, Mother Earth seems to be having her unwanted share of hot flashes, so we'll do our part to help keep her cool.

So what toys can you buy in the USA that are green AND super fun? My first pick would be the Tea Set and Cookware & Dining Set made by Green Toys, which are on sale in our Green Things Boutique!

For your creative builders, Stonees are a great hit as there is virtually no end to the way in which a child may build or use the stones. While they are made just a short jaunt away in Canada, they too fit our green criteria. And don't be fooled - the rich colors of the stones are NOT dyes, paints, or otherwise - it is the natural pigment of the rocks, which makes each set unique.

For your snuggle bug, I highly recommend a Sock Monkey. They have been a big hit with all our customers - great as baby gifts, superb stocking-stuffers, and wonderful cuddle toys for your preschoolers.

Outside of WRC, I have some other personal favorites:

• Keva Planks - fantastic free-form building kit; great with marbles!
• Waste-Free Lunch Bags - you can find fabulous kits, bags, and containers on Etsy, at Kids Konserve, and Reusablebags.com
• Maple Landmark Wooden Toys - from trains and puzzles to rattles and rocking horses, they make wonderful wood crafts for all ages - and they are all made in the USA!

You don't even have to buy new things to make a great present - handing down a treasured toy from an older sibling makes a heartfelt gift or making something from goods you already have at home can be fun too, such as blankets or doll clothes from fabric scraps, mittens and hats from old yarn, and building blocks from wood scraps (untreated, of course).

Whatever gifts you choose to give this holiday season, consider how you might give green.

The New Compost Bin!

Okay, so we wimped out on trying a worm bin. If you don't get them right they can be smelly and the worms die - so I guess, even a change agent can be a creature of habit sometimes.

Anyhow, the bin is complete and absolutely fabulous! It's a rectangular-shape with an opening in the bottom to shovel out the humus that accumulates.

The problem we had with our last bin was not enough air circulation and that resulted in moldy foods sitting in the bin. Hopefully, the chicken wire lining inside the the bottom portion of the bin will help by providing more air circulation while keeping out the little mice that live under our deck. (Wishful thinking, right?)

My husband used old wood - in its former life it had been a deck, and as you can see, it has a beautiful silvery color to it now.

We threw in the inaugural bowl of kitchen scraps just before the Thanksgiving holiday and it has increased substantially since then.

Did you know that pasta and bread can be thrown into a compost bin too? Of course, they have to be free of sauce, oil, cheese, and the like, but rinds of sandwiches, left-over noodles, and stale bread are great for the bin.

And while we've added another green component to our new digs, I am thinking about Christmas and how we can greenify this holiday season. As I ponder a greener holiday, I consider the past...

I have childhood memories of wrapping paper and toy packaging spilling over in our garbage cans, ribbon being used once and then thrown out, and of course, the volume of "stuff" that came with the gifts, food, and decorations. Now I am a parent - can I still make the holiday magical and wonderful for my child without all the excess?

Over the next few weeks I will explore holiday gifts, greener giving, and enjoying the holiday season without buying into the commercialism - literally.

Composting and Worm Bins

For the last two years I have been composting food scraps. I started out with a New Zealand style bin I built in the far reaches of my backyard. The upside - it was very inexpensive and easy to make. Took me about an hour total to get it set up. The downside - with the open top, our resident Sacramento rats enjoyed their fair share of treats.

So the second compost bin my husband made out of old wood scraps from a fallen fence. This time, we put a lid on it to keep out the rats, but made sure that there were little spaces between the boards to allow for air flow, and a larger space at the bottom for more ventilation. This bin looked fantastic in our yard - my husband affixed the boards in a horizontal fashion, which matched the 1950s style home we had and the post-modern style of the neighborhood. The only downside to that bin was that turning the compost was difficult as the sides were fairly high.

Recently, family and WRC business relocated to the East Bay. As a result of downsizing our physical space from .25 acre to a postage stamp lot, we have a new challenge - how to build a bin that will fit in our tiny yard.

Our first attempt in small-space composting failed and stank. We tried just burying the food scraps under some yard clippings and adding some compost enhancer. While it was very exciting for our cat to catch all the little mice that enjoyed a nightly feast, we did not enjoy the smell or the addition of the mice to our yard. (Okay, the reality is that they live under the deck, but at least there I don't have to see or smell them! Our cat is still bringing us daily "presents" of little mice parts. At least she is having fun!)

So, after much research, we are going to build a worm bin! Many worm bins are made out of tubs you can easily buy and adapt, but being the plastic-phobe that I am, it doesn't seem very earth-friendly to create such a wonderful, natural soil fertilizer in a container that may contain BPA or phthalates. Thus, we grabbed some old wood scraps from a family member's deck and are about to embark on building The Worm Bin Tower.

We'll let you know how it goes - I'm still researching different styles to make sure we don't end up with a heap of dead, rotting worms.

And for those of you who wonder WHY in the heck we should compost our food scraps, let me give you the "short list":

• If every one composted, we would have a 30% reduction of waste in our landfills!
• The castings from worms and the hummus from composting is THE best fertilizer for any and all plants - natural and safe
  
• It's a great way for kids to learn about the environment and how we're all interconnected and interdependent on one another
• It's fun - really!

Back to researching The Worm Bin Tower. Look for pictures to follow tomorrow!!!

Green Drinks San Ramon Valley

I am excited to share a new green program with the San Ramon Valley community - Green Drinks San Ramon Valley, which is an ad-hoc organization with the mission of providing a forum for green conversation, networking, and sharing of green ideas!

Green Drinks San Ramon Valley is having its inaugural event at The Crown British Pub and Restaurant in Danville, CA on Tuesday, November 3rd at 6pm. All people are welcome to attend - whether you are currently in a green business or are looking to live a more sustainable lifestyle, we welcome you to walk, bike, take public transportation, or carpool to the Tuesday night event. Bring a friend or two! We welcome you all!

Green Drinks meets once a month on the first Tuesday of every month, so be sure to email or check back here for updates on meeting places.

Cheryl Dodge, Organizer
Green Drinks San Ramon Valley
GreenDrinksSRV@gmail.com
916.505.2458

Friday Night Football - An Environmentalist's Nightmare

So it was with equal amounts excitement and trepidation that I recently attended a high school football game. What could have changed so greatly in the decades since I was a high school student? Would I feel old and out of place? Would the game be exciting to watch?

Well the short answer is a lot as changed, and then again, much has stayed the same. Score boards are all digital and game plays are replayed on a massive screen - just like at a major league baseball or NFL game, kids stand in the bleachers texting friends three rows behind them, and the field was definitely in better condition than I remembered, but other things had remained the same.

The fans were just as excited about the evening's events, the high schoolers were still more concerned about how they looked and who they were hanging out with than the actual plays of the football game, and the food was still bad - I mean really bad. The snack shack food has remained exactly, and unfortunately, the same as I remembered it in my day...terrible.

The bill o'fare included:

• nachos - you know, the kind where the cheese is a neon color of yellow that's not even on the color wheel, and the ingredients - well, they are all some strange chemicals I've never heard of
• hamburgers - meat origins unknown
  
• hot dogs - with chili, if you want to go all out!
  
• candy - with delicious preservatives, petroleum-based food coloring, and partially hydrogenated oils
  
• chips - same amount of fat, different oil (hormone disrupting soy oils)
  
• sodas - sugar has been replaced with high-fructose corn syrup - yum!
  
• cookies - wrapped in yards and yards of plastic containing BPAs and phthalates
  

Well, you get the idea - the food wasn't what I call real food, as none of the ingredients actually came from plant or animal origins with which I was familiar. However, the worst part about all the non-food they served was that it was heavily packaged in containers that for the most part, could not even be recycled!

So, even the hoopla of the band couldn't get me excited as I watched in horror - not because one of the football teams was getting smashed on the field (oh the fun of contact sports), but because the trash cans were teeming with soda cans, single use water bottles, wrappers, and all the plastic the pre-made foods were wrapped in. It made this environmentalist cry a few tears that night!

Sadly, without even a recycling bin around, all of the food scraps and containers consumed that evening are sure to make their way into landfill at some point. [Heavy sigh.]

The bright side? Programs such as Alliance for Climate Education that seek to educate youth on on how to reduce their carbon footprint, how to preserve the environment, and steps schools can take to do so, such as implementing waste-free lunch programs. There are many programs out there that help groups learn how to transition from disposable lunches to healthy, reusable options.

Another great organization out of Berkeley, CA, is called The Center for Ecoliteracy. They offer programs that teach schools and communities how to create sustainable societies, from rethinking lunch programs to cultivating competencies in ecosystems.

While I expect I will continue to frequent the local high school football games, I am hoping that the high school considers some programs to help change their perspective - and actions towards sustainable lifestyles. (I'm sure the little email I sent them will help spark an idea or two.)