Monument Cafe in Georgetown, Texas

One of the most personally satisfying benefits of moving our spending more towards local businesses has been discovering some truly fun places. Topping our list is dining at the Monument Cafe.

The Monument Cafe in located in a beautiful building in Georgetown, Texas. Surrounded by raised beds and gardens, the sleek mid-Century modern building reminds me of a happier version of Hopper’s Nighthawks. When we are there, I expect to see men in fedoras to stroll in and sit at the counter. The simple decor makes the inside feel very restful and calm.

The food is equally pleasurable. We’ve been there several times over the last few months and have enjoyed everything we have ordered. The restaurant serves “locally-grown and organic vegetables, meat, and dairy to the greatest extent possible.” In addition to the food grown around the restaurant, the ingredients come from a network of local farmers developed over the restaurant’s seven year history. And the chefs are always experimenting with new ways to expand the local, organic options. Just recently, homemade ice cream was added to the menu!

The owner, Rusty Winkstern, is also working to expand the options for local food network for others. Beginning next month, he and his business partner Clark Lyda plan to open a market for fresh seasonal foods grown within a 250-mile radius. The Monument Market will be located at 1953 South Austin Avenue (the original cafe location for locals) and will be open to the public seven days a week.

The experience is rounded out by the friendly wait staff. The first time we thought we got lucky but, without exception, we have had helpful and pleasant servers. On our last visit, our eldest daughter placed her order herself (something she had been practicing with us beforehand since it made her a little nervous). When she ordered with a ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ our waitress said, “What nice manners!” and gave her a huge smile. Our daughter was thrilled! (As were Richard and I. I could have hugged our waitress for her kindness!) Richard and I have been talking with the girls about how important good manners are and how many people notice and appreciate them and here was proof. Having our kids hear that very message – independent from us – was so powerful!

So, in our quest to support local businesses, we found a gem that supports our local food network, satisfies our desire to eat healthy, organic food, and provides our whole family a truly enjoyable experience every time we visit. That is a win by any standard.

If you live in Central Texas, or are passing through, I highly recommend a visit to the Monument Cafe. If you don’t check the recipe section of the cafe’s website to get a little taste.

Photo by rutlo at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rutlo/ / CC BY 2.0

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Photo by lusi

January is a time for resolutions, many of which focus on health and finances. To help people get off to a good start on their goals this year, I want to discuss a topic that comes up frequently as we chat with other parents. How the heck is it possible to eat organic food when finances are tight?

We’ve been able to switch almost all of our food purchases to organic items without increasing the money we spend on food. Here is what helped us:

1)    Shop only from a list. We keep a white board in our kitchen. As we begin to run low on an item, we write it down on the board. When we’re ready to go to the store, what is on the list is what we buy and nothing more. This helps us avoid the tempting, and often expensive, items that sing a siren song while also cutting down on our food waste.

2)    Identify areas of weakness. The list idea works great when it is followed. However, we learned the hard way that going shopping with two cranky children makes it much harder to stick to the list. After one truly horrendous shopping trip, we banned grocery shopping after birthday parties – the switch from cake and games to walking quietly by the cart was just a bridge too far. And I know that if I am facing a big deadline, I am much more likely to swing by the candy section where for some reason there aren’t a lot of healthy bargains. Now we try to be more thoughtful about who will go to the store and when they will go so we can stay strong.

3)    Select a couple of quick, healthy meals and keep their ingredients on hand. Some of our family favorites turned out to be easy to put together. One example is brown rice with refried beans and cheese. Another is nachos made with corn chips and cheese (just put in the oven at 250 until the cheese melts) with beans (black, pinto, and refried beans all work well), sour cream, and cheese. Both of these can be ready quickly, especially if there is cooked rice already in the frig, and the ingredients can be easily kept on hand. This makes it easier to avoid the last minute orders for pizza.

4)    Join a CSA. I’ve written here and here about our experiences with Community Sponsored Agriculture. Joining a CSA did more to save us money and shift our eating to organic options that anything else. Check out Local Harvest to find one near you.

5)    Explore farmer’s markets. If you don’t have easy access to a CSA, want to buy smaller quantities, or need to supplement your CSA share, farmer’s markets can be a gold mine for inexpensive organic options. There is no middle man between you and the grower so prices are often lower than in the stores. Make sure to ask if items are organic – just because someone is selling at a farmer’s market does not mean they grew the food organically. Also know that many small farms cannot afford the organic certification but may still utilize organic farming methods. It will give you an excuse to strike up a conversation and get to know the people growing your food! Local Harvest can point you to your area’s farmer’s markets as well.

6)    Buy ingredients rather than dishes. Whether you are shopping in a grocery store or at the farmer’s market, focus on buying items as close to their natural state as possible. Apples are cheap while apple pies are not.

7)    Cook more often. Buying ingredients means you’ll be doing more in the kitchen than opening a box and firing up the microwave. There are tons of sources for recipes online. I particularly like Cooking Light’s Recipe Finder because it is possible to search by ingredient – handy when a new item shows up in our CSA box. Richard is a huge fan of Alton Brown; here are his is most popular recipes from Good Eats.

8)    Use meat thoughtfully. Currently we are an omnivorous family. Vegetarianism does a lot to lower food costs, since meat is one of the most expensive items people buy. (This switch also does a lot to reduce one’s carbon footprint.) While we aren’t vegetarians yet, we purchase and use meat carefully. Our eggs come from a local family that raises truly free range chickens. When we buy beef, we buy grass-fed pastured beef. If you are not in the Austin area, check out Eat Wild to find humane sources near you. We then use meat more for flavoring than for the main entree. Think stir fry rather than a steak or pasta with meat sauce rather than sausages. And, as you can see from our favorite meals above, we simply don’t eat meat with many of our meals.

9)    Shop smart. These apply whether you are looking for organic food or not. Compare prices, be willing to try new brands, focus on produce that is in season (see the National Resources Defense Council’s food miles tracker for a helpful listing of what is in season in your area), use coupons (try Mambo Sprouts and VegWeb for organic food coupons), and watch sales.

If your pocketbook can only handle a small shift to organic food at a time:  First target the items that are located higher on the food chain (meat, eggs, dairy), then find organic options to the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen (click here for a handy wallet-sized guide), and then work on switching out the foods your family eats the most. If you have a baby or are pregnant, however, these three options should shift down a notch and purchasing organic options for the growing baby should become the first priority.

Here’s to a fiscally sound and healthy 2010!

Do you have any other tips for eating organically on a budget? Please share them below!

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Leave a comment below to be registered for Greening Families’ very first Giveaway. The randomly selected winner will receive a copy of this book, as well as the honor of being our first winner! The winner will be drawn on Sunday, November 22.

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally friendly way. Our goal is to encourage publishers to get greener and readers to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris’ website.

Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming by James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore is not an enumeration of the scientific details of research on climate change, as I thought when I first saw the title. It is instead a discussion of the efforts to hide and distort scientific findings by an extremely well-funded and -coordinated public relations blitz that is using the same game plan used successfully to protect tobacco from regulation for years.

Both of the authors are very qualified to discuss these issues. James Hoggan has more than 35 years of experience in public relations. He is the president of Hoggan & Associates, an award-winning Canadian public relations firm which he founded in 1972.  Richard Littlemore worked as a reporter for twenty years for Canadian newspapers, including the Ottawa Citizen and the Vancouver Sun, before he moved into freelance writing. He also sat as a delegate to the Canadian government’s Kyoto Implementation Process. Mr. Hoggan and Mr. Littlemore co-founded DeSmogBlog.com, for which Mr. Littlemore is the Editor-in-Chief, because they believe,

“There is a line between public relations and propaganda – or there should be. And there is a difference between using your skills, in good faith, to help rescue a battered reputation and using them to twist the truth – to sow confusion and doubt on an issue that is critical to human survival”

The book covers numerous crossings of that line, discussed in a clear and engaging manner. The information I found most enlightening and, frankly, distressing was the data shared on lobbying on the issue of climate change. Here are just a few of the facts shared:

• In 2004, the Center for Public Integrity reported that the oil-and-gas industry had spent more than $420 million on lobbying and political contributions in the preceding six years.
• More than 14% of that total – $60 million – came from one company, Exxon Mobil. (Yes, the same Exxon Mobile that has been earning record-breaking profits again and again and again.)
• Other pieces of the energy sector were equally active in purchasing lobbyists’ time. Southern Company is one of the United States’ largest generators of electricity, the great majority of which comes from burning coal, spent $25 million of lobbying between 2001 and 2004 plus another $4.4 million for political contributions.
• Between 2004 and 2009, there has been an increase of more than 300% in the number of registered lobbyists on climate change. There are now more than 4 climate lobbyists for each member of Congress.
• Spending for lobbyists has been increasing significantly. In 2007 alone, the oil-and-gas industry spent $82 million on lobbying. That increased 57% for 2008, bringing the total for lobbying in 2008 to $128.6 million.

Clearly the businesses involved believe their investment in lobbyists is worth it because they are not only maintaining this spending, even during this time of serious cost-saving measures, but also increasing it considerably. Given the articles linked above on Exxon Mobile’s record-shattering profits, I guess they are right.

The book contains much more explanation and detail about the extent of the movement to confuse, or at the very least postpone, a true dialogue on global warming and our world’s best next steps. I have to admit that PR is one of the professions for which I have not felt many positive feelings so the obvious depth of the authors’ feelings of betrayal in the first couple of chapters was initially startling. But as they laid out issue after issue and itemized common practices in manipulating the public discussion on global warming, I better understood the intensity of their outrage.

Global warming is a topic that has become incredibly politicized. The last chapter contains a piece of advice that surely everyone can agree makes sense.

“But this is not a time for easy answers. This is a time for right answers, which you will find only if you insist on the best sources, the respected journals and national science academies that have no agenda other than advancing the scope of human knowledge.”

The consequences of misunderstanding or underestimating the effects of global warming are too great. We need right answers. The information in Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming can help you discern where spin is getting in the way of the facts.

As mentioned above, Eco-Libris organized the Green Books campaign to highlight the fact that there are more eco-friendly methods available for book publishers. This book was printed on forest-friendly 100% post-consumer recycled paper, thus providing a market for all the junk mail and school worksheets we have been so diligently recycling. The paper was also processed chlorine-free. This means the publishers, Greystone Books, saved water as well as trees. As detailed on PlanetGreen.com, an 8×11 inch sheet of paper made with chlorine chemistry requires more than thirteen ounces of water (for each sheet!) while those made with chlorine-free technology require less than two ounces of water. After living through the hottest summer on record in Austin, which exacerbated our ongoing drought and pushed Lake Travis to its third lowest levels, I have a much deeper appreciation for water savings so was happy to see this! The book feels and reads exactly like our other books so the changes in the way this book was produced did not cause any loss of quality while still saving significant resources. I encourage you to check out the other books featured in the Green Book Campaign and to consider the publishing process utilized when purchasing books!

To help spread the word, Greening Families is offering its first Giveaway! To be entered to win our gently used copy of Climate Cover-Up, which we received as part of the Green Books Campaign, please leave a comment below on this post. We will announce the randomly selected winner on Sunday, November 22.

Logo designed by Susan Newman

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As I mentioned when I listed my goal of learning how to sew this year, I haven’t done any real sewing since I took a home ec class in junior high. That was a few years ago (ahem!) so I felt a little nervous preparing for my sewing class. What fabrics would be best for the various projects? I checked out organic fabric online but for my first projects, I wanted to feel the fabrics. The selection of organic fabric at the chain store in my area was nonexistent so I had to find another option.

Then I heard about The Common Thread, a new locally-owned fabric store. I walked in not knowing what to expect. Is it me or do some smaller stores seem to specialize in making non-experts feel like idiots? Thankfully that was not the case here. When I explained that I was clueless about sewing and fabric options, the owner walked me through the available fabric in the store, explaining the pros and cons of the different types for my upcoming projects. The information was delivered in a very helpful manner and my many (many) questions were answered clearly,fully, and without a hint of condescension.

The fabrics there are beautiful! I can already understand how people get hooked on sewing. Seeing the beautiful colors and patterns got me thinking about all kinds of things I can make. Next time I’ll take my daughters so we can ooh and ahh together.

Best yet, The Common Thread works to provide customers with:

unusual, exciting, beautiful fabric for creating clothing and crafts

Earth and human-friendly sources and fibers

reasonable prices

Due to the difficulty in meeting all three characteristics, not all the selections are organic but many of them are. They had some vintage fabric that was so pretty even my hockey-playing husband remarked on it!

If you live in the Austin area, The Common Thread is having its Grand Opening on Thursday, September 24 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. The store is located at 701-E South Lamar Boulevard, which is one block south of Barton Springs Road. Discounts, door prizes, and refreshments will be available.

Happy sewing!

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This may not be news to the green crafting crowd, but finding cute organic fabric can be tough!

One of my goals for this year is to learn how to sew. I’m signed up for a class that begins shortly so I’ve started looking for fabrics for the class projects. (Exciting!) I naively walked into a nearby Hancock Fabric expecting to find an organic section and found… no organic fabrics in the store. Not one. When I asked about them, the salesperson said, “We only get a few of those and they sell out quickly.” If I were working in the fabric world, I would see this as a sign that there is a strong demand being unmet!

Rather than driving from store to store, I decided to hop on the information highway to see what I could find.

My first stop was Mod Green Pod. This Austin-based company creates the organic fabrics that started me thinking about making our curtains myself. It is fair to say that I am going to learn how to sew so I can use their fabrics. Their beautiful selections are made out of 100% organic cotton, which is grown, woven and printed in the United States. They keep the fabrics free of fire retardants, wrinkle-free agents, and other toxic chemicals so they don’t off-gas. I love the bright colors and clean designs! Both of my girls and I enjoy playing with their Room Creator. Check out the Bloom fabric to the right as curtains!

The fabrics at Mod Green Pod led me to Near Sea Naturals. This site carries organic fabric from a number of companies, including Mod Green Pod and Harmony Art, which is listed below. They carry not only organic fabric but also organic lace, organic ribbons, organic sewing thread, organic stuffing and other notions so you can find everything you need in one place. They carry several out-of-production selections from Mod Green Pod, including this one called Tickled Pink that my daughters love. ( Pink ladybugs with flowers for spots, could anything be more perfect for little girls?) Their site even shares project ideas in case you need a jumpstart.

Harmony Art is another source of lovely organic fabric choices. The prints are especially compelling and I really appreciated the fact that coordinating fabrics are listed. Details for wholesale purchases of 50-yard rolls are listed. For smaller orders, retail distributors, including Near Sea Naturals, are listed on the site. I see a possible dress option for my girls here!

I recently came across Betz White’s book Sewing Green: 25 Projects Made with Repurposed & Organic Materials so thought to see if she carried any organic fabric on her site. It turns out that she has a very cute organic fabric line that just came out at the end of July. (Sounds like smart folks ARE paying attention to the strong demand!) These colorful fabrics made of 55% hemp and 45% organic cotton are available at her Etsy shop. So far the Sprigs and Sprout on the left-hand side of this pillow is my favorite but the Lawnchair on the right-side of the pillow is growing on me as well. I have a feeling the more I look, the longer that list will grow.

Etsy is also the home of Daisy Janie. Her organic fabrics are a blend of 55% organic hemp and 45% organic cotton or 100% organic cotton sateen that are printed in the United States. Her patterns are very clean and crisp looking with lots of fun colors. I think the Parkside fabric would make a cute skirt; good thing I am going to learn how to make one!

I’m continuing my search for organic fabric so please share any sources you have found.

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(1) Financial Benefits of Going Green

I’ve mentioned before that we started down the green path to save money and boy, has that worked for us! On our new site, Family Profits, you can read about how we have paid off more than $80,000 in credit card debt and the majority of our $100,000+ student loan debt, all while working in the nonprofit sector. By taking to heart the green mantra of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and paying particular attention to the order of those three R’s, we were able to focus our salaries on paying off debt rather than making another run to the mall.

While companies and advertisers want you to think that going green is expensive, the fact is that reducing consumption is the greenest thing you can do. Using less energy, less gasoline, and less stuff is much more green than any eco-friendly product.

(2) Environmental Benefits of Going Green

While it is clear that there are wide-spread environmental benefits to going green, what we has surprised us is how quickly our immediate environment improved. Several years ago we moved into our current home. Based on the items left in our shed and garage, the former owners used several pesticides and herbicides on the yard. We haven’t used any (there are those financial benefits again!) and the amount of wildlife in our yard has grown incredibly. We’ve gone from only seeing a few birds to seeing lots of birds, possums, tarantulas, lizards, snakes, squirrels, and hummingbirds.

Along the way we’ve added native plants to portions of the yard and those have attracted monarch butterflies, hummingbird moths, red wasps, garden spiders, ladybugs, and some bees (though we hope to see more bees in the future).

In just four years, this property has shifted from a fairly lifeless zone to one that is much more biologically diverse. Most of that shift occurred because we simply left the land alone and didn’t poison it. We marvel when we think of how much it could have changed if we had known more when we moved in four years ago.

(3) Health Benefits of Going Green

By cleaning with homemade cleaners and carefully disposing of hazardous household waste, we removed many toxic items from our home very inexpensively. By eating organic, local produce available through a CSA and avoiding plastic in our kitchen, we are ingesting fewer pesticides and harmful chemicals. And we have seen the difference in our health.

Richard used to get show stopping migraines on a regular basis. Those have ceased. I used to get a sinus infection several times a year. Those have also ceased. We feel better than we did when we first met, even though we are now ten years older. That is a true benefit!

(4) Parenting Benefits of Going Green

Although our family approaches going green together (thus our tagline!), I was really surprised by the parenting benefits of going green. Making our life more eco-friendly has allowed us fabulous opportunities to talk about important concepts like sharing or taking turns in a real world context. Empathy, patience, and thoughtfulness — skills that parents want their children to have — get lots of practice when going green.

I’ve also treasured the opportunity to slow down and experience nature with my children. There is an amazing world all around us. Taking the time to see it and talk about it with my children has been incredible.

(5) Time Management Benefits of Going Green

When we think about how our weekends used to be so rushed, we wonder how we maintained that pace for so long. We used to rush from store to store, running our errands and preparing for the week. There were groceries to be bought, drycleaning to be dropped off, items to be purchased. I get tired just thinking about it!

Now Saturday mornings usually start with buttermilk pancakes, made from scratch. (Try Alton Brown’s recipe – it is our favorite!) We hang out reading library books or playing games. If it is a nice day, we work in the yard while the girls play. No more racing from store to store for us!

And less stuff inside our house means less to tidy up and less to clean. Reducing our consumption has given us more time in several ways!

(6) National Security Benefits of Going Green

I’ve had the good fortune of working with military personnel and have seen first-hand how much they and their families sacrifice. The United States’ dependence on foreign oil is nothing less than a national security threat. And for our troops overseas, maintaining access to fuel is a life threatening job. According to “Pentagon Looks at Green Options”

The stakes are high, with the army estimating that reducing fuel consumption by just one per cent translates to about 6400 fewer soldiers in fuel convoys, a favourite target of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lots of people talk about supporting our troops. One very tangible way of doing so is reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

(7) Tax Benefits of Going Green

In 2009, there are some serious tax benefits for going green, many of which extend beyond this year. There are federal tax credits for items that improve energy efficiency in homes, such as approved windows, doors, insulation, and HVAC units. See the bulletins issued by the IRS on Credit for Residential Energy Efficient Property and Nonbusiness Energy Property for more information. There are also federal tax credits for hybrid and electric cars. And the details on rebates for energy efficient apliances will be announced soon.

What benefits of going green have you experienced? We’d love to expand our list!

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Our eldest began kindergarten last fall so I don’t have a lot of experience dealing with schools as a parent. We tried several schools before we found the right fit, which didn’t occur until the end of February, so I have even less experience with our current school. We love, love, love the school’s approach to teaching, the teachers, and the other families but are still learning how the business of the school is structured.

We received our student supply lists and my initial reactions fell into four categories. For items like pencils and notebook paper, I immediately started thinking about products that would be more eco-friendly, like pencils made from recycled wood and recycled paper. Other items came with very precise descriptions, leaving me to wonder if Fiskar scissors were really needed or if the non-Fiskar scissors we already have would suffice. A quick conversation with the teacher will resolve these issues and, since the school has encouraged folks to use items already on hand, I think I know how it will go.

Then came the items that I would prefer not to purchase but will because I understand why they are helpful in a group of small children – things like tissues are included here since I just don’t see 10 kids with hankies working out well during the winter. The last category is where I am struggling. The supply lists for both of my kids included plastic zip lock bags – one box for the youngest and two for the eldest. That means 10 boxes of plastic bags will be used one classroom and 20 boxes in another for a total of 600 plastic bags just for their classes! The very thought of that makes me feel ill.

I started looking around for information and ideas to help me begin a positive discussion aimed at creating a green school. Or at least a greener one! Along the way, I found Cool the Earth. Their program is so, well, cool that I wanted to share it.

Cool the Earth is

a grassroots, school-to-home program that provides climate change education through action. We engage kids and their families to take simple, measurable actions that collectively make a significant impact on global warming.

The program is volunteer-based so parents can shoulder most of the burden rather than asking (already busy) teachers or school administrators to take on an additional task. The program is comprised of:

• A Kick-Off Assembly to get things started.
• Action Coupons that allow families to take an action, turn in a coupon, and get a reward.
• Action Spotlights to highlight a particular action.
• An Action Banner so everyone in the school to see how all their actions add up to make a big difference.
• Team Assembly, which is simply creating the group that implement the program.

I love that the suggested actions are ones that families could implement together and that the program concentrates on what each individual can do to make a difference. I was also happy to see that the materials are available in English, Mandarin, and Spanish.

So far 204 schools are using the program and they have a saved a combined 50,315,555 pounds of carbon dioxide.

I’m still trying to figure out how best to talk with our school about the plastic bags and some other ideas I have to make it a green school (vermiculture is high on my list!). Do you have any suggestions?

In the meantime, I’m planning to start the discussion with a proposal to bring Cool the Earth to my girls’ school. I want to help make my kids’ school a green school. How about you?

This post was include in the Carnival of the Green at Recycle Your Day.

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The first is Nickelodeon’s Big Green Grants. Part of Nickelodeon’s Big Green Help program, these grants are available to public and private elementary schools and middle schools and after-school nonprofit organizations that serve kids from 5 to 15. The Big Green Grants provide up to $5,000 to support environmentally-friendly projects that educate and inspire kids to:

(1) take care of the environment

(2) be active and live healthier, and/or

(3) engage in community service.

To be eligible, applicants must host a Worldwide Day of Play event on September 26, 2009 (or an Earth Day event back in April). To receive a copy of the grant application and to see all the eligibility requirements, visit the Big Green Grant homepage.

Next are the Seeds for Education grants. This grant opportunity provides funds for schools, nature centers, and other nonprofit places of learning to purchase native plants and seeds. Projects should should focus on the enhancement and development of an appreciation for nature using native plants and must increase the educational value of the site and emphasize the involvement of students and volunteers in all phases of development. To learn more about the application procedure and requirements, visit the Seeds for Education page listed above.

These green grants for schools provide an opportunity to get involved with your child’s school and to encourage green efforts beyond your own home – what a great combination!

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Whether you have a .35 acre lot in the suburbs, a sprawling ranch in the boonies or a mere balcony in the city, you can attract wildlife that will intrigue and excite your wee ones with a minimal investment of work and money.  The National Wildlife Federation’s Certified Wildlife Habitat program provides you with all the information you need to get started as well as the actual “certification.”  I don’t imagine your local bluebird’s likely to notice the certification sign that you can proudly display but, just perhaps, your human neighbors may ask you a few questions and convert their own piece of turf to a haven for native flora and fauna.

Our own efforts to get certified began about a year and half ago. As a family, we discussed the kinds of animals we wanted to see, or just see more of — butterflies, frogs, lizards, songbirds, and owls all came up. My wife mentioned hummingbirds but I wasn’t sure if we could expect to attract them because we live in north central Austin; a pretty urban environment. It would be nice, though…

The City of Austin was pushing the certified wildlife habitat pretty hard because it was trying (and has now succeeded!) to become a Certified Community Wildlife Habitat. The parks department provided some planning checklists to help us provide for animals’ necessities: food, water, cover, places to raise young, and an environment relatively free of dangerous pesticides and fertilizers. This is all covered on the NWF site as well.

Cover was pretty easy — we had some old branches we stacked up in an out-of-view spot in the front yard and made some “toad abodes” from some broken flower pots (lots of toad in our yard but I still haven’t seen one in any of those abodes).  Native bushes and trees can also count as cover. (Ed. note, to learn more about native plants and how to find what is native to your area, visit our Book Review for “Bringing Nature Home.”)

We’ve been “chemical free” (emphasis on free) since we had a yard to care for so that did not cause any adjustments for us. NWF requires that you make at least two efforts to garden with “green” techniques such as drip irrigation, herbicide-free, “integrated pest management,” rainwater collection, eliminating non-native plants, and more. These are detailed on their Garden in an Environmentally Friendly Way page.

I thought providing water would mean having to make a major water feature replete with a fountain. It turns out that a plain old bird bath was adequate for certification. We purchased one at a store that sells discontinued merchandise for pennies on the dollar (okay, a quarter on the dollar) and I cannot believe how much activity it gets. We’ve had some funny moments with birds that apparently squawk, “Yo, buddy—this thing’s dry. Are you gonna fill it back up or what?!” Last week, at dusk, we even had a pair of screech owls belly-up to the bar! They’ve actually become regulars at the Miller waterin’ hole.

As far as a place for animals to raise their young, host plants for caterpillars certainly qualify. We had great luck with our milkweeds (see my previous post about that) and, of course, a birdhouse can be a fun project to make and thrilling when it becomes occupied. If you can leave a dead tree standing, they are highly sought after by a number of birds and other animals.

When it comes to food, shrubs, vines, trees and annuals can provide berries, seeds, pollen and nectar. A bird feeder is not required but, again, these are fun to make and a special delight when you see them being used. We put up a trumpet vine that has transformed our dated, 50’s-era columns and turned them into things of real beauty. And guess what — we saw our first hummingbird about three weeks ago! One darted by while I was working on this article just awhile ago. I guess we hadn’t seen them before since they had no where to go.

As you see, it really can be done with a minimum of time and money. Of course, you can really go wild and there are many houses in our neighborhood with majestic flower beds, verdant mounds of greenery and a variety of bird houses and feeders. If you’re like me, however, and you don’t have the time or skill to take it to that degree, don’t be ashamed to take it slow and keep it simple. The rewards may well surprise you and, I believe, you’ll be doing one of the best things you can do to help wildlife and keep your family connected with nature.

Lucas is a professional children’s author and songwriter from Austin, Texas. He recently released a DVD, called “Animals Rock,” which is available on his website.

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We thought we had planned well for this summer. We had a list! And a calendar! But then plans changed, as they tend to do, and the heat blasted day after day, which changed more plans, and we found ourselves with more time to fill than interesting projects with which to fill it. Add to that two parents with heads full of deadlines and work obligations (rather than fun ideas) and it was clear we needed some help.

Thankfully, I found the Future Craft Collective.

Based in Austin, they have a mission of

… inspiring children to become makers and create beauty, while simultaneously teaching them ways of minimizing our impact on this earth. We want kids to discover ways to create a world in which the belief in handmade looms larger than the messages of the marketing machine.The time has come to infuse our children with the message of appreciation, creativity and sustainability. It is our belief that this message can instill a great feeling of self worth and save a kid from a lifetime of seeking contentment through mindless consumption.

Exactly!

Even better, the folks at the Future Craft Collective have project ideas already laid out in a family-friendly manner. This summer they have partnered with Craftzine.com to create activities for Craft: Summer Camp so there are lots of projects from which to choose.

And the best part is their emphasis on using items that you already have. These crafts do not come with a $50 visit to Michaels but instead use items you already have around your home or can easily find.

One last note. I’m not a Super Crafter, nor is my husband, but these are projects we can complete as a family. We’re starting on the Gratitude Banner first. I’ll let you know how it turns out for us!

In the meantime, have fun exploring the offerings of the Future Craft Collective and making your own family project!

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If you’re looking for a project to carry your family through the start of school, check out our new booklet, One Month to a More Frugal and Healthy Life. It is available for free on our home page.

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This article was syndicated on the AustinEcoNetwork. If you live in the Austin area, or want to learn about eco-happenings in Austin, be sure to visit the site.

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