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| Lavender Festival |
When dads and grandparents as well as moms stop by to share stories about simple living, it makes for a diversely successful Green Momma Party!
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| Christie Noe Helps Children Plant Pumpkins at The Ferrell Shop's Children's Table |
East Tennessee folks enjoyed last weekend's sunshine and came out for the 14th annual Lavender Festival in historic Oak Ridge. Under the children's activity tent graciously provided by The Ferrell Shop, kids could plant a pumpkin, then stamp and fill a fabric bag with fragrant dried lavender.
Other free activities included a coloring station from Stonyfield Organic with extra floral coloring pages from Sow True Seed. More dried lavender and fabric from The Ferrell Shop made possible another free sewing craft for kids and their families who filled and stitched cotton sachets along with me from FlourSackMama.com.
Parents with young children got the chance to try a frugal and all-natural diaper wipe recipe at the Green Momma Party table. Several people shared their experiences with making homemade laundry soap, while the table featured the recipe I had mixed up for less than 10-cents per load. The homemade bug repellent was also an interesting conversation starter.
Several moms were amazed, just as I once was, to find out that cleaning with vinegar and a few other low-cost ingredients can often take the place of toxic chlorine bleach and certain antibacterial products. Others didn't know that the term "fragrance" on a product label can hide harmful ingredients, and that we have natural alternatives in essential oils. The free recipes available through Women's Voices for the Earth are great tools for saving money as well as minimizing toxins in our homes. WVE has dozens of tips for what it calls "creating a non-toxic home for you and baby." I was happy to send home some of those free recipes.
For those times when we need the convenience of buying a cleaning product off the shelf, the Safe Chemicals Act would give us more information to make informed choices. It would also eliminate the worst chemicals of concern that scientists are finding in our household products. Several East Tennesseans have signed the petition asking US Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker to support the Safe Chemicals Act in order to protect the most vulnerable consumers: our children.
If you're interested in hosting a Green Momma Party and would like co-hosting help from Anne at FlourSackMama.com or another of the Women of WVE, you can contact me at floursackmama@gmail.com to get started.