I’m enjoying writing this blog so much I decided to purchase my own URL for it. Please (pretty please, new friends), follow me over to sage-parenting.com or switch your feed here!

Right now, it looks more or less the same. I’ll bring the blogroll over ASAP. I hope to make it much prettier very soon. If anyone out there is a savvy wordpress designer, let me know!

Mama Speaks has a review up of Eco-Friendly Families. I’ll be adding that to my library book queue (a Google Doc where I keep my library’s URL, my card number, and a list of all the books I want to check out so that I can easily request a book online or double check the name of an author when I’m actually at the library).

We’ve talked about checking the Taylortown Coupon Preview to see if the Sunday paper is worth buying for your household. If you do pick up a paper, what do you do with the coupons you know you won’t use? If you have the time and inclination, you can swap or join a coupon train at Organic Grocery Deals or Hot Coupon World. If you just want to pass them on to a good cause, consider this reminder from Hooray for Free-bates! and Chief Family Officer, intended for expired coupons but that would work just as well for unwanted products:

Instead of throwing the coupons away, please consider sending them on to The Happy Housewife. She will forward them to military families overseas, who can use the coupons at the commissary or base exchange for six months after the expiration date.

The Crafty Crow gave another suggestion for repurposing cereal boxes, this time for drawer dividers. I’m especially looking forward to trying this with the larger-than-normal boxes you get at Costco. Another fun project you don’t need a lot of crafting supplies or a sewing machine for is the outlined placement at Ohdeeoh. I love the modern look of these, and imagine they’d be as helpful in table-setting as boundary-keeping when my triplets are older.

And finally, Eco Child’s Play writes up Gaia Herbs Lactate Support, a product near and dear to my heart. For me, it wasn’t a silver bullet, but it definitely helped. If you’re struggling with your milk supply, I wouldn’t hesitate to give this product a try.

It looks like much of the internet is thinking about back to school right now, and many blogs are discussing, in one form or another, lunches with less waste.

There is a fantastic post at Want Not right now covering all of the options I was going to post here. Conservation counts on the web, too, so hop on over to the lovely Mir’s site and check out the original question, her suggestions, and the bountiful comments. Ask Moxie also covered the topic with amazing detail and insightful comments last September.

Two Green Chickens posts a pattern from the Small Object, I see how this could be done easily with tablecloths and fabric sourced at tag sales and thrift stores. Time to finally get that new sewing machine! And the Etsy Spotlight today is on all sorts of mama-made and vintage lunch items, too.

So now that you have the perfect bento box for your grade schooler, what are you to do when they’d rather eat the standard (and pretty unexceptional) school lunch fare? I’ll gather up links for greening your school lunch program and post on that soon!

Ooh, some organic grocery coupons! Dealicious Mom shares this survey from Naturally Savvy which promises

FREE samples and/or coupons from the following natural and organic companies:

Nature’s Path
Quantum
Dr. Ken’s
Blue Diamond Growers

It’s early and I have to get our older son to the dentist, so this is all I’m seeing out there right now. I’ll update later

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Evening update…

Everyone *has* to check this out! Mom is Broke has posted a comprehensive list of healthy and organic coupons today for Web Coupon Wednesday. There are at least 20 coupons, several I’ve never seen before. In addition, she’s hosting her first giveaway, which in this case is 53 “earth conscious” coupons. I know a lot of those would come in handy around here.

It’s been a great day for natural grocery coupons!

Living Cheap and Green has a freecycle plug up. I follow our area’s freecycle via email but haven’t participated in awhile. For me, it’s more an opportunity to declutter to someone who will really get use out of an item, rather than to accumulate more items at no cost. Either way, we all win.

Michelle’s post today at Leaving Excess hit close to home. I am definitely still finding my balance as a new mom-to-four.

Plum Pudding has a cool project to reuse cereal boxes. The envelope min-tutorial is a great idea for sending photos so they won’t get bent.

Some great freebies for your Tuesday…

Need some Post It notes? Might as well get some made from recycled paper, and certainly might as well get them free…

Medela is offering a BPA-free bottle for free! I am not clear on if this is a storage or feeding bottle, but I know either will come in handy for any pumping or breastfeeding family.

Edited to add:

Not free, but Baby Steals has organic BabyLegs for $7.50, or about half off retail. They seem to have this offer every few weeks or so with different patterns (I like the plain cranberry available today, they’ll go with almost anything), and they invariably sell out since BabyLegs are so useful. If only I had any girls…

Ohdeeoh pointed me towards a fun project at good + happy day, a mail kit for preschoolers to create notes for friends and family members. My 3.5 year old is an avid stamper and we have lots of out-of-town family, plus I love the idea of cutting up packinging or magazines for him to resuse. Maybe I’ll make two, one for his cousin in the Mountain states who would be on the receiving end of a lot of his notes.

Mommy Making Money did a good write-up of Once a Month Cooking. When I go back to work (soon!), this is definitely something I am going to do, especially since it is very compatible with fall/winter eating. Right now, I don’t want anything made ahead and frozen when there is so much fresh and wonderful around us.

Surely You Nest takes on school fundraisers and provides a wealth of greener options. As a first time school parent this year, I’m betting this is going to be a new issue for us. Exciting to know there are better options than magazines and reams of wrapping paper!

Organic Mania is offering a Twitter feed in case you want to hear where she’s spotting low cost organic groceries as it happens. I have yet to sign up for Twitter, but this is making me consider giving it a shot…

A rundown of green school supplies was posted over the weekend at Green Mom Finds. We start pre-K in a few weeks (at a public Montesorri school our city… how cool is that?) so I need to find the list and see if I can get any of these items locally before turning to online resources.

This week Target also has “Green Gear” school supplies on sale:

• Maped 5 ct recycled pencils $1
• Recycled 500 sheet multipurpose paper $3
• 1″ recycled 3 ring binder $3
• 15% off recycled portfolios and composition books

Based on the deals I’m seeing at Hy-Vee HealthMarket, I wish we had one near us!

Earthbound Farms Organic Romaine Salad is on sale for $2.88. Click here for a $1/1 coupon.

Cascadian Farms Cereal, Granola, or Granola Bars are on sale for $3.00. Click here to print an unlimited number of $1/1 coupons!

As usual, the coupons will work at Whole Foods or any other store, if you don’t happen to have this store near you, either.

Online surveys usually don’t pay off in terms of what you get for your time, but it looks like the CVS Advisor program, which pays in ExtraCare Bucks, might be an exception, according to Dealicious Mom:

Sign up here to become a CVS Advisor. If you haven’t done this already, this is a good way to earn approximately 10-15 dollars in ECBs every couple of weeks for taking short surveys. I have taken 3-4 surveys and I have been paid 10 or 15 dollars each time. The ECBs have printed out a few weeks later from the scanner in the store.

It’s Sunday. Thinking about buying the paper to see what kind of coupons there are? Before you go that often wasteful route, check the Taylortown Coupon Preview to see if there are any coupons you would actually use.

I couldn’t find anything that made me run out for a paper today, but I was reminded as I was meal planning of a coupon for Muir Glen Organic Tomatoes that has been around for awhile, in a few locations (HERE, HERE, HERE, or HERE, meaning you can print plenty to use in the future). Since I’m planning on going to Whole Foods tomorrow, I also looked at the coupons in their “whole deal” flyer (PDF). A lot of canned tomatoes available at a good price, but by the size of the tomato plants in my yard, I’m guessing I’ll be stockpiling to the basement at this price instead of using the cans now!

Thanks for stopping by! Sage is moving to a new location this week.

Check out sage-parenting.com or switch your feed here!

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I made out well at the rummage sales today, so I thought to myself if people can post their victory shots from CVS, why not from thrifting or yard saling, too?

Here is my bounty:

• Anne Klein driving moccasins, soles appear unworn, in my size, $2
• Converse One Star sneakers, soles appear unworn, also in my size, $3 (I will be swapping out the laces, though!)
• 6 books including 2 Eric Carle, 1 Richard Scary, and 1 Sesame Street, $2.25
• 1 Old Navy lounge set, $2
• 1 Pottery Barn throw pillow with down insert, $3
• 5 Lamaze baby toys, including 2 desperately needed carseat clip-on toys, $5

I spent more than I usually do, but these were all things we definitely needed. Except maybe the pillow which, like picture frames, is a weakness for me. Oddly, I encountered no boys clothes, which is generally the bulk of my purchases, making it a really unusual week for sure. I never buy more for myself than for my boys!

I conservatively estimate the retail price of these items around $180 ($40 for the green shoes, $30 for the sneakers, $30 for the books, $20 for the clothes, $25 for the pillow, $35 for the toys). I paid $17.25. Not too shabby. I just tossed all of the Lamaze toys into our frontloader with a drop of method free & clear laundry detergent and a bunch of white vinegar, and now they’re drip drying in our bathroom, good as new!