All posts by Maria

Gardening in Colorado’s Front Range: fruit trees

Gardening, Sustainable living, , , ,
colorado front range gardening growing fruit trees and berries

Hi folks, this post is region specific to share some of the things what we’ve learned in the 7 years of living and gardening in Colorado’s Front Range. Although we come from a family of gardeners and have had lush gardens in our home country, gardening at this altitude (6,975 ft or 2126 meters) has given us a lot of challenges. But gradually we found what seem to do well and give good results with least effort. And while it does take work and often comes with many heartbreaks (those late Spring 2 foot snowfalls) it is so worth it!

Whether or not you live in Colorado or at another high-altitude (and not very garden-friendly) place on Earth I hope you find this post helpful to you as well.

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Use your end of the season florals for zero-waste decorating

Sustainable living, , ,

Hello, now that it is summer I wanted to share a quick little post about how flowers make the prettiest decorations for gift wrapping. Here I used just some of the roses from our own yard that already finished blooming and dried right on their branches. But you could use any other flowers that are abundant in the region where you live. I also really like using some of the herbs for decorating, such as rosemary, thyme or lavender. Those I just clip fresh and add to the little ribbon I’m tying around the gift. They add loveliest smell to the wrapping making it even more special.

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The midsummer tomte and the little rabbits

For kids,
The Midsummer Tomte and the Little Rabbits

You might remember around Christmas I shared one of my most favorite children’s book — Yule Tomte and the Little Rabbits. It is one of those stories that touches deep into my heart and makes me feel like a little child where everything around me is magical again! And I can read over and over and over again with my boys. And now that it is summer, I wanted to share another book about the very same Tomte and little rabbits, but this time it is about Midsummer, or Summer Solstice, celebration.

Midsummer isn’t something that is celebrated in my home culture or here in America, but ever since I was a child I wished there was some special celebration during the summer when we would decorate everything with beautiful flowers, stay up late playing outside all into the night, eating special foods and listening to live music. Wouldn’t that be so beautiful?!

And then I came across this this lovely story that weaves together magical creatures, animals, traditions and seasons into a wonderful and charming story where they celebrate summer, decorate everything with flowers, sing songs and dance all night! Just like I always dreamed. 🙂

So I hope you read on and fall in love with this book as much as we did!

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Best summer sandals for the little feet

For kids, , , , , ,
pololo children leather sandals nontoxic children footwear

With the long awaited summer being upon us I wanted to do this little post about children’s sandals that are so loved in our family. One of the main reasons for this blog was to share the products for children that are non-toxic, comfortable and sustainably made. I found such items hard to find in US, unfortunately. I think it is sad that craftsmen and boutiques have hard time staying in business due to competition with big corporations that flood the market with cheap, low quality merchandise which is often toxic and was produced at great cost to our environment and people making them. So when I find yet another brand, store, maker who offers us a different choice — I’m particularly excited to get it for my children and to share it with others.

This is not a sponsored post in any way. Just sharing the good things, since they aren’t easy to find in the ocean of the internet.

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Natural rubber rain boots for children

For kids, Sustainable living, , , , , , , ,
children rain shoes review

As always, this is not a sponsored post. The reason for the post is to merely share with other mamas brands that are sustainable and make great things for our little wildlings to help them be comfortable, healthy and spend as much time outdoors as possible.

Jumping in puddles is one of the biggest joys of childhood as I remember it. 🙂 Another one is being able to get really dirty or stump around in wet, slushy, dirty mud. Recently we got both boys their first pair of wellies (rain boots) so they could do exactly that — stump through mud, jump in puddles and any combination of these two beloved activities. 🙂 And they have been a priceless addition to their outdoor gear both in cold and warm weather, in the forest as well as in the garden.

While there are many rain shoes on Amazon and possibly department stores I learned not all are of equal impact on the environment, some are considered toxic and of course there is quality of craftsmanship to take into account. So I wanted to share with you here the shoes we love and recommend; other brands we tried and what we didn’t like about them; some of the information on the natural rubber rain shoes vs PVC ones. Basically all that I learned and discovered so far on the topic of rain shoes to help you find the best ones for your little wild creature at home 🙂

Bisgaard rain shoes review
kids natural rubber rain shoes review
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1001 Things to Spot book series

For kids, , , ,

If you are looking for some fun educational books for your little willings these series are really wonderful. They are among the favorite for both of our boys since their youngest age. What makes these books so great in my option, is that they are reach in content, yet the content is presented in simple ways and easy to grasp portions. And the illustrations are fairly realistic. Each page in one of these books shows an eco-system, such as forest, garden, vegetable patch, ocean, sea shore, desert, etc. And on each page there is a list of creatures that are to be spotted on the page and a number showing how many of them there are.

It aligns with my belief of learning through play is the best way. And here they learn both about natural world and numbers in a playful way.

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Zero-waste and non-toxic laundry detergent

Sustainable living, ,

Where to buy: Meliora website

Hi folks, I wanted to share with you this great laundry detergent we’ve been using that comes with absolutely ZERO plastic packaging. Which is a huge deal, considering that plastic pollution is considered one of the most severe and devastating environmental issues our planet is currently facing.

As usual, this is NOT a sponsored post. I have no arrangement with Meliora to post about their products. This is me sharing with others a product that I believe is good for our families as well as gentle on our planet.

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7 things worth knowing about GMO
(Genetically Modified Organisms)

Sustainable living
is GMO safe in food

“Most GMOs have been engineered to withstand the direct application of herbicides and/or to produce an insecticide.” — source nongmoproject.org

Two years ago here in Colorado we had a citizen initiative on our ballots that would require all food to be labeled whether or not it contains GMO. And to my great surprise and deep disappointment the initiative did not pass. Yes, there was a non-stop avalanche of commercials against this initiative, the amount of money poured into our state to fight against this initiative was colossal. But the choice of having a choice, to know what’s in our food seemed like an obvious one to me.

In this post I’m not trying to convince you one way or another. But I do want to share with you those things I have learned about GMOs which helped me to make up my mind on whether or not I consider them safe. Hope you find this information both informative and useful for when you shop for your family.

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Learning about Penguins:
beautiful animated film + books

For kids, , , ,
children books about penguins

Hello, I wanted to share with you a few things we’ve been enjoying and learning about penguins from. It is nothing major, but it is fun, beautiful and educational and is a good introduction into the subject of Antarctica and the fascinating creatures living there.

Our boys’ love for penguins started with a beautiful Russian/Japanese animated film called “Lolo the Penguin”. To parallel their love for Lolo I found them a wonderful little book about penguins that they have been going over and over on their own or with us reading it to them. I also found some good brief videos about penguins on youtube. And lastly we have large Maps book with very beautiful map of Antartica that we reference as well to see where the penguins live and who else live there.

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Our children’s play room

For kids, ,
kids room decor ideas toy storage kids
kids room decor ideas toy storage kids
kids room decor ideas toy storage kids

Hello friends, and Happy New Year! I thought to start the year by sharing with you some of the things from our boys’ play room (our former home office). We all want our kids room being beautiful and Pinterest and Instagram have endless feeds with inspiration. But when I searched for the room decor and organization ideas I came to notice that a lot of those pretty rooms didn’t seem to be designed truly for children, but instead designed by adults for other adults to admire :). For example, the storage is often such that children simply can’t reach many areas on their own, the wall art is abstract, the objects like maps, Earth globes and clocks are too high to be seen well should children feel curious. And then lots and lots of purely decorative little things all over the walls to give mamas extra cleaning to do.

In arranging the boys play room we wanted to make sure that it was most importantly designed for them. That it was organized in a way where they could easily reach what they needed and easily put things in order afterwards. And lastly so that it’d be fairly easy for me to dust, mop, etc. It took few trials to find the furniture and storage we felt worked really well for us, but I think it finally came together really lovely. It is airy, cozy and beautiful. It has lots of storage as well as plenty of play space, reading area and beautiful educational art and objects.

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Our little indoor Monkey Wall

For kids, , ,
kids room decor ideas toy storage kids

Monkey walls like this with much more fun parts to climb on are very common in Russia, and as you might know from my previous post on this topic called “A space for little monkeys to be monkeys” I’ve been really wanting to have one for the boys room. Surprisingly these seem to be nearly impossible to find here in America. And after searching high and low the ones I did find are actually from Russia/Ukraine anyway. 🙂 Ordering one from Russia with all the cool things as I wanted was really expensive due to all the freight charges, but fortunately few months ago I cam across this product and it was very reasonably priced. (This is not a sponsored post.)

While our monkey wall is very basic it nonetheless given our boys a lot of opportunities to try themselves at new physical challenges, experience a bit of risk and acquire new skills. All of which are so good for their development both physical and mental. In this post I cover some more details about it, where you can buy it if you are interested and share a very cool video of a 3 year old girl doing all sorts of amazing fits of acrobatics on a similar equipment at her home. Hoper you enjoy 🙂

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The Yule Tomte and the Little Rabbits

For kids, , ,
children Christmas story winter books Yuletide story

Here is a post on one of my personal favorite Christmas-themed books of all times! To be perfectly honest, the story is still a bit long for my boys who are 3.5 and 1.5 years old. I tired reading it with Alexandros by breaking it down into parts, but somehow couldn’t quite get him into the story. Part of the thing, he is really into snakes, dinosaurs and maps right now. Currently on his Charismas gift list is a cobra. He understand Santa can’t bring him a real one from India as a cobra just wouldn’t like it, so he says he is OK with that, just wants a toy cobra that is very realistic! Earlier our Christmas list had a live tarantula and an anaconda. 🙂 So…. the cute bunnies aren’t quite cutting it for him as far as the story goes 🙂

But in any case, this story is so good and the illustrations are so wonderful that I think this book is one of those classic ones you can read over and over again throughout your entire childhood and later. I re-read it every winter. So here it is.

children Christmas story winter books Yuletide story
children Christmas story winter books Yuletide story
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Bisgaard — real winter shoes for kids

For kids, , ,
Bisgaard winter shoes for kids in America

Hello, friends! It’s been long time since I got a chance to get to my blog to share with you some of our latest finds for the little ones and our ways to make our home and lifestyle more sustainable and healthy. We have new and very exciting project in the making here that has been taking all of our free time for the past couple months. I’m looking forward to share it with you very soon, but if you follow me on Instagram you probably already know what it is 😉

So, here is a very short post to share with you my latest find that I’m very excited about — the real winter shoes for children. Having warm and comfortable winter shoes for the winter is so essential to getting the kids out no matter the weather, but strangely finding shoes that are really warm (like, actually warm!), flexible and comfortable has been a real challenge here in America, at least in my experience. Last winter I found these shoes from Bogs which are great and this year we bought another pair of those shoes. We still use those shoes most of the days as it hasn’t been that cold here in Colorado yet and we had very little snow. So I still highly recommend the Bogs shoes for not very cold weather. But when the temperature drops to -10C/14F and below these are the shoes to keep little feet warm — the Bisgaard Tex boot.

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Children’s snow suits:
non-toxic + made from recycled plastic bottles

For kids, Sustainable living, , ,
non-toxic children snowsuits design fashion slow fashion children brands

I wanted to share with you a quick post about these beautiful snow suits I got for both boys from our beloved Lea and Jojo. You might have seen this blog post on a rain jacket we have that is made from recycled plastic bottles. And just like their wonderful rain jackets the snowsuits are also made from 100% recycled plastic bottles as well as being certified non-tofus, thus free of formaldehyde and other harmful chemicals.

I highly recommend their products, and here few reasons what makes them so special.

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Room on the Broom this Halloween!

DIY, For kids
Room on the broom book

This year Ale unexpectedly got very excited about Halloween. All the way back in August. He patiently waited till October and till the leaves would start turning color. But when first leaves turned red and yellow there was no holding him back! And it is amazing how children bring back the magic into grown up lives as all of us, even my mom who is not into any of the Halloween themed things, got excited with him and got busy crafting skeletons and witch hats, baking ghost cookies, carving pumpkins and making all sorts of things to make Ale’s Halloween dreams come true. 🙂

My boys are very young, so when it came to Halloween themed books I was very fortunate to have come across this most lovely book. It is so perfect for children. The story is short and told in catchy rhymes, the characters and endearing and the story is very positive. And because it is told as a rhyme it is fun to remember and play out. And turns out there are so many beautiful online resources accompanying this book, so you could make coloring pages, puppet theater and much more.

And last, but not least, we were delighted to discover that there is actually an incredibly beautiful animated film created based on this book and is available on iTunes. Needless to say we watched it a million times over laughing and enjoying every little bit of it.

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