Summer begins

Like I’ve mentioned on previous posts, I like to put books away and only get them out during their special time of year. It makes my children real excited to see them again and it creates tradition that way too. Since summer is growing near, (pretty much here where I live) it’s time to dig my summer books out of the garage and bring them in while putting the spring books away.

The word Solstice is derived from a combination of latin words meaning “sun” and “to stand still.” As the days lengthen, the sun rises higher and higher until it appears to stand still in the sky. The Summer Solstice is a major celestial event. It results in the longest day and the shortest night of the year. The Northern Hemisphere celebrates in June, but the people in the Southern half of the Earth have their longest day in December when the Northern hemisphere has it’s shortest day.

The sun has been celebrated for centuries across many civilizations. One of my favorite books for children to learn about the Summer Solstice is The Longest Day. I also like The Summer Solstice. They both cover customs celebrated by other cultures and countries as well as describe the why the day is so long. I love the artwork in both books, so full of summer inspiration and excitement. The Longest Day is a bit more detailed.

Both books offer fun craft ideas at the end as well.

I love books that have illustrations and descriptions of nature. Another favorite is Peter in Blueberry Land by Elsa Beskow. If you aren’t familiar with Elsa Beskow’s books, they are all some of my favorites. Her art is simple, beautiful and old fashioned.

To celebrate the day with my children we will be singing, dancing and celebrating. We will also have a fire in our fire pit. In the days before I have plans to do rock art and make sundials with the instructions found in the back of The Longest Day. It also suggests planting sunflowers together but we’ve already planted ours. This is one from our garden.

In summer, the song sings itself.  ~William Carlos Williams

1. My Moshi Handset that plugs into my cell phone. It’s comfortable and makes me wonder why we ever gave these up for cell phones! It also eliminates 99% of radiation which is a top priority for me. I used to use a bluetube but this is way more convenient.

2. My BPA free Stainless Steel ice cube tray. I’ve had this for years and I still love it! We don’t use plastic in our house so plastic ice cube trays or automatic ones don’t work for us.

3. My Reusable Baggu Shopping Bags. I’ve had these for four years now and they are still holding strong. They are light weight and I can fold them up small and keep them in my purse so I always have one when I need it.

4. My Stainless Steel BPA free straws. No more plastic straws in the landfills and no more chemicals leaching into our favorite drinks. I chose these rather than glass to use for the kiddos.

5. I LOVE Tropical Traditions coconut oil. It’s my favorite coconut oil. I’ve tried other brands and they just don’t compare to it.

6. I love my Klean Kanteen Wide Mouth Insulated Mug with Cafe Cap. I love drinking tea and this keeps it warm for sipping for hours and is easy to grab and go.

7. One of my favorite cooking reference books is Nourishing Traditions.

8. My Big Berkey Countertop Water Filter with the additional Fluoride filters is the most affordable countertop water system we could find that met our standards for removing toxins.

9. I use my Flip produce bags so I don’t have to contribute to the landfills.

10. I use my Tampico Body Brush to exfoliate my skin and clean my Lymph System daily. Our lymph sysytem doesn’t have a pump and requires our assistance to help move things along.

Life Changing, Must See!

America: Freedom to Fascism

Are Vaccines Safe?

Birth As We Know It

The Business of Being Born

Cut: Slicing Through The Myths of Circumcision

Dirt! The Movie

Food Inc.

The Fluoride Deception

Gasland

The Gerson Miracle

The Greater Good

Healing Cancer From The Inside Out

The Story of Stuff

Tapped

Vanishing of the Bees

Everything Else:

A Beautiful Truth

A World Without Water

Addicted to Plastic

The Age of Stupid

Agenda: Grinding America Down

All in this Tea

American Politics All you Can Eat

Babies

Beyond Treason

The Big Sell-Out

Birth Into Being

Born Into Brothels

The Botany of Desire

Burzynski, The Movie

Bush Family Fortunes

Chow Down

Collapse

The Corporation

The Cove

The Creature From Jekyll Island

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

Cut Poison Burn

Crazy Sexy Cancer

Dear Zachary

Diet For A New America

DIVE! the movie

Doula

Dying to Have Known

Earthlings

The 11th Hour

The End of Poverty

Enron: The Smartest Guys in The Room

Ethos

Eustace Mullins: Murder By Injection

Farmageddon

Fat Head

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead

Fed Up!

Fiat Empire

Flow For the love of Water

Flu and Flu Vaccines, What’s Coming Through That Needle

‎Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution

Food Fight

Food Matters

Food Stamped

For Liberty

Forks over Knives

The Future of Food

Freedom Fries

Fresh

Frontline: The Medicated Child

Frontline: Sick Around America

Frontline: Sick Around the World

Generation RX

Gentically Modified Food Panacea or Posion

Gentle Birth Choices

GMO Film Project (Coming Soon)

Grass

Hemp Revolution

The Human Experience

The Idiot Cycle

Ingredients

Innocents Betrayed

Invisible Empire A New World Order Defined

Killer At Large

King Corn

Life Running Out of Control

Loose Change

Louise Hay: You Can Heal Your Life

Making of A Killing

Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve

The Money Masters

Money Talks: Profit before Patient Safety

More Business Of Being Born

The Naked Truth

Natural Born Babies

The New Medicine

No Impact Man

anything by NOCIRC

Nutricide & Codex Alimentarius

One World Birth

Orgasmic Birth

OutFOXed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism

Pregnant in America

Processed People

QUEEN OF THE SUN: What Are the Bees Telling Us?

Radically Simple

Raising Cain

The Real Dirt on Farmer John

Scientists Under Attack

The Secret of Oz

Seeds Of Deception

Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes

Side Effects

Stupidity

Supersize Me!

Sweet Misery

Sweet Remedy: The World Reacts to an Adulterated Food Supply

The Tapping Solution

Thrive

Transcendent Man

Unconditional Parenting

Uncovered: The War on Iraq

The Union: The Business Behind Getting High

Vaccination: The Hidden Truth

We Feed The World

What in the world are they spraying?

What The Bleep Do We Know?

What’s on Your Plate

Who Killed the Electric Car

The World According to Monsanto

A World Without Cancer

Zeitgeist

The winner of this give away will get this handcrafted, eco-friendly Sun and Moon Wooden Rattle.

How to Enter:

I have made it so simple to enter! 2 steps only!

The Giveaway starts today and runs through midnight, pacific standard time, on Saturday, April 14, 2012

• You must be a  subscriber of the blog through Feedburner to participate. You can subscribe through the Feedburner boxes on the right of the page of the blog.

• You must also visit the Friendlytoys store on Etsy and leave a comment on this post letting us know what your favorite item in their store is and why. This comment will be used to select the winner. Important: You must leave a comment HERE on the blog (Not on Facebook) so I can find you when you win. Please only one comment. They have to be approved so be patient if it doesn’t appear immediately.

• Share this giveaway with your friends on your Facebook page…this isn’t mandatory.

The winner will be chosen by Random.org and announced here on the blog on Sunday, April 15, 2012. The winner will have 48 hours once I contact them to email me to claim their prize or another winner will be selected. This Giveaway is open to Continental US readers only.

We spend so much of our time in our man caves and the air in them can be extremely toxic. Anything we can do to reduce our toxic load from textiles is worth it. NASA actually did a study that concluded that house plants can purify and rejuvenate air within our houses and workplaces. They safeguard us against any side effects connected with many prevalent toxins from textiles such as formaldehyde, ammonia and also benzene. I have an areca palm, boston fern and peace lillies in my house. The Boston Fern is the hardest to care for because I live in a dry climate but I keep it alive. The Areca Palm is a humidifier, so it actually maintains moisture throughout dry periods as well as continually removing chemical toxins from your air!

Ideas on how to have some fun with your kids today:

Build an obstacle course in your backyard with things you already have like sticks or logs, cones, large rocks, small toys, small buckets, small boxes or any other small object item you think your child can jump over.

Talk about whether they are jumping low or high depending on the objects height.

If you don’t have time to include the above make a point to jump up the curb or over a rock on a path as you are making your way through your day with your children.

Children develop and foster fundamental gross and fine motor skills during play. Movement is essential to a young person’s life, especially in developing necessary skills to function throughout life.

Through movement children become aware of their physical space. This helps with understanding how their bodies function in space. Through practice, children develop greater control of their gross-motor manipulative skills, such as throwing, catching, bouncing, and kicking which leads to development of fine-motor skills.

So get out there and jump over something!

Here’s a few of the ingredients broken down:

Tricalcium Phosphate: Caution is advised. The additive may be unsafe, poorly tested, or used in foods we eat too much of. May cause a variety of adverse effects. Inadequate safety data available. May reduce mineral absorbtion. May cause kidney damage.

Gellan Gum: Caution is advised. The additive may be unsafe, poorly tested, or used in foods we eat too much of. May be source of hidden MSG. Contains nitrogen containing compounds; eye, skin, mucus membrane, respitory irritant; harmful if inhaled, swallowed or absorbed; non-toxic in rat studies: toxological properties not fully investigated.

Vitamin A Palmitate: Synthetic vitamin. May be toxic in very large doses. Caution is advised. The additive may be unsafe, poorly tested, or used in foods we eat too much of

Ergocalciferol: The additive is unsafe or very poorly tested. On the EPA extremely Hazardous Substances List.

All of the above said to look up nutrient additives where it says: May lead to nutritional imbalances, most nutrients added to processed foods are synthetic, highly processed and derived from petroleum and processed with toxic chemicals like formaldehyde; may be genetically modified.

I think too many people blindly trust that if it is in a health food store it’s safe to eat. As you can see that’s clearly not the case. I’m sure it’s much better than what you would find at a regular store where there would probably be HFCS in it but that still doesn’t mean we should be putting it in our bodies.

It’s so easy to make! Here’s a 2 minute video on how to do it yourself!

Congratulations to Tabatha Lynn, the winner of the wrap skirt!!

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate spring than a giveaway of this beautiful patchwork skirt! Diverse Elements is generously sponsoring a giveaway of this beautiful skirt! I know from our poll on Facebook that many of you were super excited for this giveaway! Jennifer Finkle, the owner of Diverse Elements is extremely talented. A little bit about her:

She is a mother, a crafter, a chicken-keeper, a collector, a gardener and a burner. She sews, embroiders, crochets, knits, knots, and whatever else she can do to keep her hands busy with. My kind of girl!!

A few lovely facts about the skirt:

-it’s made of upcycled t-shirts
-has exposed turquoise overlock seams
-is also fun to wear as a shirt or a shawl

The winner of this give away will get ONE Patchwork Wrap Skirt $65 VALUE!!

How to Enter:

I have made it so simple to enter! 2 steps only!

The Giveaway starts today and runs through midnight, pacific standard time, on Sunday, March 25, 2012.

• You MUST be a  subscriber of this blog Primitive Mommy through Feedburner to participate. You can subscribe through the Feedburner box on the top right of the home page of the blog. If you are selected and this step has not completed a new winner will be selected.

• You must also visit the Diverse Elements store at Etsy and leave a comment on this post (down below in the reply box) letting us know what your favorite item in their store is and why. This comment will be used to select the winner. Important: You must leave a comment HERE on the blog (Not on Facebook) so I can find you when you win.

That’s it! Come on, lets show Diverse Elements some love!

The winners will be chosen by Random.org and announced here on the blog on Monday, March 26, 2012. The winner will have 48 hours once I contact them to email me to claim their prize or another winner will be selected. This Giveaway is open to Continental US readers only.

*If you don’t see your comment right away it’s because it has to be approved. Thanks!