Tag Archives: natural family tips

Enhance Your Natural Home With House Plants

Looking for a way to bring that extra something to your home or office?  Try adding an indoor plant to your space.  They have a LOT to offer a natural home!

House plants offer proven benefits for your overall health and wellness including –

Improving Air Quality

Reducing Stress

Providing A Natural Feel or Ambiance

Increasing Feelings of Well Being and Happiness

House plants can also be a fun way to involve kids in the care of the natural family home.  They offer them a bit of responsibility, but not too much, while at the same time allowing children to experience the always miraculous event of watching something grow.

Not only do house plants have all of these benefits for us though; they’re affordable too!  You can find them pretty small for a dollar or two and enjoy the rewards of watching the plant grow, even if it is kind of slow.  Or, look for larger plants at yard sales and moving sales.   Last year when we were on the lookout for a few more large indoor plants to add to our new, much sunnier home we found some at a moving sale for free in fact!

house plant cuttings in a windowMany house plants make their own babies too like spider plants for example.  Others are pretty easy to re grow from cuttings like Jade Plants and Pothos.  Either way growing new plants this way can be another option to help make adding plants to your natural home affordable.

All you need to do to begin growing a new plant from the ones you already have is just take the tiny plant or the cutting, gently remove a few leaves from the bottom if necessary,  and put it in a jar of water in a sunny window.  Before you know it there will be roots coming out of the cutting and you’ll be able to plant your new plant into its pot of soil.

It can be fun to start or add to your collection of plants by asking your friends for cuttings of theirs too.  Much like separating plantings for sharing with fellow gardeners, sharing house plant cuttings is fun and makes the resulting plants even more meaningful.

Now, I know many will read this and say “I don’t have a green thumb – I can’t grow house plants” but there are some indoor plants, like Pothos and Spiders, that are so easy to grow.  You just need to be sure not to over water them.  Check the moisture level of the soil each time by hand and water only when its dry.  House plants are very forgiving and worth a shot even for those with the blackest of thumbs.

If you need affordable pots for your houseplants, check thrift stores, yard sales, and post on freecycle.org; never know what treasures you might find!  You can also reuse items from around the house like coffee cans or old tea cups.  Make plain pots more lively with paint, glitter, stickers, etc.  Chalkboard paint can be a neat addition to plant pots too.

House plants offer so much to a natural home and can bring many years of enjoyment with just a bit of your love and care.  Bring some plants into your home or office today and see what a difference they can make naturally.

Tips and Tricks For Great Green Gift Wrapping

Looking for a way to make your gifts greener?  Here are some tips for wrapping your presents in reusable and/or recycled items so you make gift giving more eco friendly during the Holidays or any time of year!  Your loved ones will enjoy the originality of the packages and, everyone will appreciate the earth friendliness of green gift wrappings!

Recycled Cards As Gift Tags

This one is wicked simple!  All you’ve got to do is save the cards you get, cut the fronts off of them, find a nice spot to write the TO: and FROM: info, then tape it onto the package you’re giving and wallah – the card gets a new life as a gift tag!

Reusable Fabric Gift Bags

A reusable fabric gift bag can be an excellent way to not only create green gift wrap but, they become a little gift in and of themselves.  The fabric bag you make can then be reused by your loved one to give a gift to someone else, and then they can reuse it, and so on.

You can buy fabric gift bags from several different online shops, or, you can easily  make your own. Either way reusable fabric gift bags are a really neat way to wrap and give an eco friendly gift.

recycled kid drawing for great green gift wrapRecycle The Children’s Drawings Into Extra Special Green Gift Wrap!

A LOT of kids we know love to draw and a lot of their parents don’t ever want to throw any of those precious drawings away; ourselves included.  Yet, this artwork can begin to take up tons of space very quickly.  Recycling your child’s drawings into green gift wrap though is a win win.

Not only does your child’s art work find new life as eco friendly wrapping paper but, those receiving the gifts will think the wrapping paper is a gift all its own; especially when given to family members.  At the same time, you get to move a few of those special pieces on to new owners and out of your house!

Reuse Brown Paper Bags

While many of us working toward living a more natural lifestyle try to remember our reusable bags when we shop, invariably, most of us forget them at one time or another.  Don’t fret, just reuse the brown paper bags as gift wrap!

recycled brown paper bag packages for green gift wrapIf you’re child is up for it, and you have no artwork to use as mentioned above, you can even have them draw on the paper for added effect.  Better yet, use some other recycled decorations to add pizazz to your brown paper wrapping.  There’s something simple about a package wrapped in brown paper tied simply with string or yarn too; classic style!

Save Gift Wrapping From Other Gifts To Reuse

Whenever possible try to save the wrapping paper, ribbon and gift bags from presents given to you for reuse as green gift wrap for your presents.  Saving the actual wrapping paper may be difficult sometimes; although many are quite skilled at removing the tape just so!  But saving ribbons and paper gift bags is quite easy if you just plan ahead and have a bit of storage space.

You can also find gift wrap made from recycled paper, make homemade paper for your packages, use the funnies, and, you can make green gift wrapping any number of other ways too.

Not only will using greener gift wrapping help you be more eco-friendly though – it’ll help you save money too!  None of these options require new materials; which means no expense either!  Even the fabric gift bags can be made of old flannel shirts or sheets for example so you aren’t spending a dime yet still using earth friendly gift wrap on all your presents!

In addition, you’ll also create conversation and awareness surrounding the waste that can be created from using new wrapping materials as well as about how easy (and cost effective) it is to use green gift wrap!