By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
This year I am challenging myself to grow a vegetable garden. I have tried in the past and failed miserably. Having a green thumb is obviously not an inherited trait. I have many fond childhood memories that are all about helping my father in our garden, going out to pick the lettuce for our evening salad, or simply pulling out carrots, beans and sugar peas to munch on.
I want my children to have similar memories and to see firsthand how food is grown. My childhood memories are from living in a small town, in a [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
When a company’s motto is “Nothing wasted. Everything gained“, you know that they take a serious stand on green living.
Preserve makes stylish, high performance, eco-friendly products for the home – from personal care to tableware to kitchen products – all at a reasonable price. All their products have innovative designs, bold colors, are eco-chic AND 100% recycled.
Preserve only uses #5 plastics for recycling. Many communities do not recycle #5 plastics so Preserve partnered with Whole Food Markets to create a Gimme 5 bin (#5 plastic containers) at each of their stores making it easier to [...]

Beatrice Holiday has the cutest bike accessories for the biking fashionista and the biking commuter.
We love the matching seat covers and handlebar bikebags that will have you truly be stylin’ as you will be wheelin’. The unique handlebar bag also converts into a beautiful and functional shoulder bag, to keep all your valuables safe, on and off the bike. All are made with vintage upholstery fabrics that suits the look of a beach cruiser, but would also fit on the handlebar of a Baby Stroller, making this also a great gift for new moms.
Beatrice Holiday also designs a stylish line [...]

Much to my chagrin, we are now in that time of year when days are getting noticeably shorter (I almost feel the vitamin D leaving my body as I type…). The lights in the house will indubitably get turned on earlier in the morning and earlier in the evening. I never used to think about how much energy a light bulb consumed but now, in trying to conserve resources, I do think about it every time I turn on a light.
It’s a good time of year to let you know about a product that I just learned about: a dimmer [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
I will admit that I do not have much use for an eco-friendly leaf pick up and biodegradable bag as I live in Southern California, but I do remember that while growing up in Canada, raking the leaves before the first snowfall was a task for the entire family.
Dsolv bags makes this chore a little bit easier and far more eco-friendly than the traditional paper leaf bags. The compostable dsolv lawn bags are easy to fill, can hold more leaves and debris than paper bags and are more cost efficient. The dsolv bags are made [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
We, at The Succulent Wife, thought we were done writing about Water Bottles. So, for us to write about another one it had to be pretty special…
I was given a Filtrete Water System to try out. Not unlike Brita, the Filtrete Water Station filters tap water through a filter that reduces sediment, chlorine and odor. The big difference is that the Filtrete Water Station filters the water in seconds into 4 individual bottles.
I leave mine on the kitchen counter and each morning the girls and I grab our bottles to go. So easy! The tightly [...]

Picture your beautiful bathroom that you have just lovingly freshened up with some new towels, bath mat and cute accessories. Then you take one look a your new waste basket and it’s draped with the ugly, ill-fitting shopping bag with handles. Ok, so you get points for re-using but still, it’s not a pretty sight and the whole ambiance has just taken a nose dive. This is exactly what Muriel Wiener thought when she came up with the idea for Designerliners that will ’dress the mess!’
These decorative, disposable, reusable and biodegradable liners can be used in any of your home or [...]

Remember the days when our mothers and grandmothers pinned up the laundry on the clothesline outside? Ours was a reel line that spanned the yard and went from the patio to the nearby wooden phone pole. I remember handing the clothespins to my mom, picking out the colorful plastic ones over the too-old-fashioned wood pegs (of course, today, I think that the wooden ones are way more charming!).
And then, with the switch-over to electric clothes dryers, air drying became a thing of the past, a blight on the urban landscape even. Until very recently, there was a definite stigma attached [...]

It was during a Mother’s Day church sermon in 1909 that the thought of having a “Father’s Day” was born. Sonora Smart Dodd, in Spokane, Washington was raised solely by her father, after her mother died when she and her five siblings were young. She felt that fathers deserved as much recognition

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on new giveaways as they get posted. Thank you all for  playing!

We wrote about BTTR Easy to Grow Mushroom Garden and after we told them about the post, they offered a Mushroom Kit for one of our lucky readers to win. A $19.95 value. Thanks BTTR!
If the father you know loves to garden (I know a few myself) then this may be the perfect gift idea for Father’s Day.

To enter this giveaway, please subscribe to our blog (see the subscribe field in the right [...]