There are mothers who wear their fingers to the bone making needlepoint pegasus costumes that actually take flight while their kids trick-or-treat. We, on the other hand, advocate a full slacker approach to costuming kids that combines resourcefulness, creativity, and humor. Pictured below are a real life “swimming bear” and “cold weather bandit,” obviously the offspring of genius parents!

If you have spent months crafting a paper mache dinosaur costume for your two year old, more power to you! If you are scrambling around the house for a costume in the few hours before the big event, fear not! We at Green Baby Guide have loads of ideas. Here are some brilliant DIY costume ideas contributed from Rebecca in a past post:

• Hobo. This is a DIY classic, and easy to pull off using Dad’s beloved pilled sweaters and garish ties from 7th grade. With a little ingenuity, “hobo baby” could also be accomplished with the contents of his or her own wardrobe.
• Ragamuffin. Variation of hobo, above.
• Hippie. Another classic. “Hippie baby” would be especially funny if you could find some miniature John Lennon glasses to complete the look. Try tie-dying some baby’s old white onesies using grape juice. (Note: I have not actually tried this, but I am only partially kidding.)
• Swimming bear. All you need for this ensemble is a bear hat and swimming suit, which can be pulled over several layers of warm clothing. My cousin thought this one up herself in her younger years.
• Cold-weather bandit. As you can see from the photo, you will need a parka, some patterned pants, a Zorro mask, and a cape.
• Robot. Dress your child in gray clothes and affix a metal colander or sieve on his head. Voila!
• Glad bag. This same ingenious cousin who invented the “swimming bear” decided to masquerade as a garbage bag one year. In this day and age, it may be better to go as a canvas bag instead.

We also have family costume ideas, Last minute DIY costume ideas for babies and kids, and last minute maternity costume ideas.

But perhaps our favorite green, diaper-less costume of all time is utterly simple, utterly adorable, and utterly impractical. Just toss your naked baby into a carved pumpkin! It’s a compostable diaper that’s really quite festive… Happy Halloween!

Cloth Diapering Kits usually help parents save money by buying in bulk, but are they worth it? It depends. I would never recommend buying a kit without the chance to actually hold the diapers and see how they work on your baby. Every brand is unique and each child’s body wears a diaper differently. Still, if you have tried a company’s cloth diapering system and absolutely love it, cloth diapering starter kits are a good way to save money while stocking up.

Bummis Organic Cotton Diaper Kit is currently on sale for $152.10 and comes in either the infant or the baby size. The baby size includes 18 organic cotton prefold diapers, two Super Whisper Wraps and many more handy pieces of cloth diapering gear.

Grovia’s Hybrid Diapering System Starter Kit is about $200 and includes six cloth diapers along with 150 eco-friendly disposable inserts. It’s a nice choice for a family that wants a greener option than disposables but doesn’t want to exclusively use cloth.

The Trend Lab Cloth Diaper Starter Pack for boys comes in at just under a hundred dollars and is one of the top selling cloth diapering kits. It includes five cloth diaper shells with liners along with an additional pack of blue diaper liners, a matching changing pad, and a “dirty duds” zippered pouch.

CuteyBaby’s Modern Cloth Diaper Starter Kit is just $139 and offers diapers that adjust for babies between 20 and 40 pounds. The kit includes six diapers, two rolls of flushable diaper liners, and a magnetic closure to keep velcro tabs safe while you launder the diapers.

The Sprout Change Cloth Diaper Super Saver Starter Kit isn’t exactly a kit, since it just includes one diaper, but it is incredibly reasonable at just 37 bucks. Not a bad baby shower gift! It includes just one diaper that fits babies from five to 40 pounds with an organic cotton sleeve and an organic hemp/cotton fleece insert.

Did you end up investing in a cloth diapering kit? How satisfied were you with the product? Would you do it again?

By the way, if you find yourself completely lost in cloth diaper lingo, check out our book The Eco-nomical Baby Guide. It includes plenty of visuals, cost comparisons, and references to guide you through the vast vocabulary of greener diapering options.

We welcomed herds of relatives all weekend for reunions in our new home. The next day we found out that one of my cousins had gotten lice. A few days later we heard that five other family members were carrying little colonies on their heads as well. Yuck!

That was eight days ago. Since we found out late last week, we’ve neurotically done head checks every day–and luckily, we haven’t contracted it. Yet. We’ve lathered up with tea tree oil shampoo, sprayed our furniture with tea tree oil and water, and sat under shower caps while our hair was saturated with Lysterine and vinegar. (Tea tree oil is supposedly a natural deterrent for lice. Let’s hope it’s working!) In the meantime we’ve been crawling with paranoia about every little tingle on our scalps.

The above picture captures just how alluring I felt with my shower cap on and minty-pickle scented Lysterine/vinegar mixed on my head.

Although the Lysterine and vinegar remedy is somewhat homemade, it still smelled utterly toxic. I’ve also read you can sleep with your head saturated in mayonnaise or olive oil, with a shower cap on top so that the bugs actually suffocate. Still, the thought of trying to sleep with my head saturating in mayonnaise made me feel nauseous–maybe even more nauseous than the idea of a head lice infestation!

Instead I prophylactically treated me and the kids with LiceMD. It’s pesticide free, odorless, kills lice and nits, and works in just ten minutes. (And because it’s non-toxic, you can reapply it as many times as you like.) It also comes with a nit comb which helped convince me to shell out a whopping ten bucks on the purchase. I wanted real evidence if I did have lice, and the ability to individually comb every hair on my head if I didn’t.

I don’t! Yahoo! One four ounce bottle was enough for my medium length hair and my son and daughter’s little heads as well. Does it work? I’ll tell you in a few more days if we’re still lice-free!

What else did we do to limit the family reunion lice epidemic? We put all bedding in sealed plastic bags for two weeks or threw it into the dryer for at least 20 minutes on high heat. We vacuumed throughly and deposited the contents directly into the trash. The room where my poor relatives passed it to each other is off limits to the kids, although I’m typing this post from there at this very moment. Ew….

Have you encountered lice in your family? What remedies did you try? Did you also feel just a little more grossed out about it than you logically should? (Why is there a weird stigma about something that affects all people equally? ) Did you know that lice are especially attracted to clean hair?

Do you really need a whole slew of products to successfully breastfeed your baby? Absolutely not! But what items are a good support to breastfeeding women?

Some moms and babies gracefully make it through the first few months of breastfeeding without a hitch, but many of us suffer from cracked skin and even bleeding in the early weeks. The purple tube of Lansinoh Lanolin that my midwife brought on her first visit was a huge help. Between feedings it eased sore skin and I didn’t worry about my baby consuming it since it’s an all natural product. (I suppose if you have wool allergies in your family you may want to consider an alternative.) You can also later use it as a diaper cream for baby or an ointment for cuts or abrasions.

Many women swear by their Boppy Pillows, but I can honestly say that I didn’t use mine all that often. I wadded up nearby bedding or couch pillows most of the time. Later on my son loved sitting up in his Boppy, but it wasn’t an essential piece of breastfeeding gear for me.

When me sister-in-law gave me a Hooter Hider, I thought it was an extravagance I didn’t really need. It ended up being one of my favorite pieces of gear! For early breastfeeding, the Hooter Hider had a wire in the top that arced out from my chest, allowing me to see well enough to get her latched on without feeling so stressed out that my milk wouldn’t come down. It was especially handy when my eight-month-old started pulling every single blanket off while nursing in public.

Since I worked with both of my babies, our breast pump was an essential piece of gear that served me well. I borrowed a Medela Pump from relatives, but would have bought a Hygeia Pump if I didn’t have that option.

I bought just a few Born Free glass bottles for my babies, but they each had their own opinions about which nipples they liked best. In the end, they both drank from BPA-free plastic baby bottles simply because they refused all other brands. In the end I spent a tremendous amount of money on bottles they never used!

When my milk supply suddenly plummeted during stressful transitions to work with both babies, I depended on Fenugreek to help get my production back up. The very nice side effect is that I smelled slightly like maple syrup for weeks!

What are your favorite pieces of breastfeeding gear? Have we missed something that hadn’t even been invented a few years ago? Thanks for sharing your comments with other breastfeeding moms!

Packing up everything we own and shlepping it to a new address isn’t usually an orderly process for us, and it will be less so now that we’re moving with kids. It can become hugely wasteful as we could end up buying items that we can’t find, eating meals on paper plates, and just feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of stuff we have acquired over the years. We’re now four weeks away from our actual moving day and I think I should probably get packing soon. Do you have any tips that make moving with kids easier and maybe even greener? Have you been able to stay rooted in one spot for the last several years? If so, do you dread the potential of a future move?

A friend of ours is in the thick of early parenthood.  The sleeplessness, the stress, the wonder, the trauma and the sheer depth of love.  There is really no way to describe it to those on the brink of this huge shift, so I always feel such compassion for new parents.  My advice?

• Laugh at yourself.  Because minor failures can seem so catastrophic in those early days.   Errors won’t be so powerful if you can manage a chuckle now and then.
• Progress not perfection.  (I had to repeat that at certain challenging points–like when I dropped a poopy diaper face down on the carpet at 3am.)
• Also, each day is a new ride on a roller coaster that will have huge shifts.  They may seem endless but it will be gone before you know it.  (I know that everyone says this to new moms–and I know it can be annoying, but it is so amazingly true! )
• Hmmm..  On a less philosophical and more practical plane, request meals from everyone you know.
• Beg favors for free babysitting so that you can take showers and maybe even venture out to the grocery store on your own now and then.

What would your best advice be to new parents?  What do you wish you would have known when you started in this humbling and rewarding career?

The bad news is that only one of you will win the lucky copy of The Eco-nomical Baby Guide.  The great news is that you can pick up a copy for less than fifteen bucks on Amazon or read it for free at your local library!

Why should you buy a copy of our green, thrifty treatise on raising a green baby?

Maybe it’s our five star rating on Amazon, or our glowing reviews on Goodreads, or the fact that investing less than twenty bucks on this little gem can save you thousands on your baby’s first year alone.  We don’t mean to sound like an infomercial, but we really, truly believe that The Eco-nomical Baby Guide is worth reading.  It’s the book we wish we would have had back in those early days of parenting when cloth diapering, buying used, and buying less were all tricky concepts.

The good news is that one of you will have our book in your mailbox in a matter of days!  The Eco-nomical Baby Guide giveaway ends at midnight tonight, so be sure to enter.  If you don’t win, put the book on your baby registry.  You deserve a copy!

I wish I could claim a higher number, but I think mine is about 10-20 percent.  In the next few weeks I may be joining a grower’s market to help boost our intake of organic produce without skyrocketing our grocery costs.  I’ll keep you posted.  In the meantime, how much of your overall food bill is invested in organics?

Too tired to haul yourself out into the shopping scene this year? If you’re lugging small children or a baby bump, you may want to pick out some thoughtful items online and save yourself time, hassle, and a few gallons of gas. (Not to mention the temper tantrums that can be avoided.)

Melissa and Doug wooden toys are great quality and undeniably green. Our house is filled with puzzles, blocks, and even wooden food that have stood up to years of active play. I would heartily recommend any of their products and you’ll save nearly fifty percent off by buying them online!

We love My True Nature baby eco-friendly baby bath products, and their holiday gift set bag is no exception. I can attest that plentiful bubbles and lovely smells are produced from these small bottles.

Green Toys has created quite an assortment of inexpensive, aesthetically pleasing playthings that are crafted from 100% recycled milk jugs. My son adores his recycling truck and it holds up to his daily play extremely well.

Check out The Daily Green’s Gift List for much more inspiration beyond toys.  Perhaps you’ll be buying from local boutiques in an effort to support local companies instead of buying online.  Whatever you do, I hope you find just what you’re looking for in this last pre-holiday scramble!  If you have already smugly crossed every name off your list, please share your recommendations for great green gifts with the rest of us!

Yes, you’re in the right spot!  We have just redone our banner and layout for a fresh new look.  We were searching for something a bit friendlier with some space for product advertising.  (We have been blogging for three years and just now realized that with our sizable monthly traffic, we could benefit from having a few supporters.  Yahoo for edging out even a tiny profit in our writing endeavors!)

Do you like our new image?  Do you miss the old layout?  We’re still trouble shooting and realize that our search bar awkwardly hangs over our text.  It shall be corrected this week!  Are there other glitches that you’ve noticed?  Hopefully we’ll be settled into our new look soon.