About a year ago a mama named Connie Pope from Jack’s Harvest (an organic baby food company) reached out to me as a fellow Atlanta based mama-preneur to share resources and experiences as supreme jugglers of all things life. See, Jack’s Harvest, like Tiny Revolutionary, is focused on producing the best for babies and that kind of makes us partners in crime - the good kind of crime of course. At the time, I was just migrating most of Viv’s food to Organic only options but meeting Connie really connected me to the cause even more intimately. To quote directly from the Jack’s Harvest site:

At this important time when little brains and organs are growing, pound for pound children are more vulnerable to higher concentrations of pesticides than adults. That is why all Jack’s Harvest baby foods are made from the best quality certified organic produce, herbs and spices. And because organic farming is more environmentally friendly, you’re promoting both a healthier lifestyle and a better world for your baby’s future.

Yeah, so basically if you’re not feeding your baby organic products you’re going to hell in a hand basket or, at least, you’re being more than a wee irresponsible. There are so many great organic baby food options now that there’s really no excuse - even Toys R Us has an organic food aisle that’s actually pretty awesome. Yeah, once Toys R Us is carrying organic food you know the band wagon is on the move so hop on!

Embrace organic options - yes, they’re a bit more expensive but instead of spending $30 on some lump of mechanized plastic crap that your kid will get sick of in 10 minutes, spend the extra cash on the stuff that goes in their body - the stuff that matters. No, they won’t jump up and down with glee because you gave them organic pureed Mangoes but that’s not how we make parenting choices. If that was the case, we’d just feed them gummy worms and Dr. Pepper for every meal and let them play with matches all day.

So, in sum, choose organic options for your kids whenever possible and don’t let the pressure for purity make you feel paralyzed. Do what you can . . . buy an organic tee or two instead of the mass-produced stuff from Target and if you can replace 50% of your kids’ diet with organic options, that’s great! That’s a lot more than most parents are doing right now and c’mon, is there anything more satisfying than feeling superior to other parents? Nah! Bon Appetit! :)

Do you have the cutest eco-tot on the whole planet? Do you want to show him/her off to the world? Inhabitots want to showcase all the eco-cuties out there, so enter our cute baby photo contest TODAY!

The winning Eco-Cutey will be featured on Inhabitots and Inhabitat, and will receive an Inhabitat shirt and a $50 gift certificate to the Inhabitat Shop!

http://www.inhabitots.com/2009/06/08/eco-cutey-photo-contest/

To celebrate Earth Day 2009, I videoed our annual organic garden planting. We are shocked year after year that our very tiny backyard can produce as much produce as it does across the course of the summer months. For three months, in fact, I rarely have to purchase tomatoes or peppers at the store. That’s pretty impressive for 40 square feet! If you’re someone struggling to engage with the at-home food movement because you have a small yard, this video should give you plenty of inspiration and confidence that you too can enjoy this new movement in food production!

So, there’s this eco-conscious community called Serenbe that is about 30 miles south of Atlanta and has been a collective Tiny Revolutionary family obsession for a few years. It’s like, the promised land for us - progressive people living out a conscious life in an agrarian setting that is utterly breathtaking. This past Friday, Viv and I decided, on a lark, to take a drive down for the morning and grab a cup of coffee (and a Rice Krispie treat) and walk around the small village shops and play along the nature trails. When we stopped into the Blue Eyed Daisy to get said coffee and treat, the founder, Steve Nygren, came over to us and said, “Stay right there, I’ve got something to show you” and ran across the cobble stone street to his house and came back with a magical prize that Viv and I will never forget:

Hamlet was one pig too many for the mama pig who had just given birth and Steve and his family took Hamlet in to give him the special attention he needed. Thank you to Steve for the best coffee shop experience we’ve EVER had :).

Watch as our new organic “Peace” tee is printed. You’ll learn about our eco-friendly, waterbased inks and the care with which each Tiny Revolutionary tee is brought to life.

Ok, so it’s not available YET but you can get a sneak peak of the sample on my little girl, Vivianne. If you ask me, it’s one of our coolest organic tees yet!

Soon, everyone will be talking about non-phthalate water-based inks due to new CPSIA regulations which require all children’s clothing manufacturers to use them by 2/2010 instead of plastisol inks which contain the softening agent phthalate, known to be toxic if ingested. The great news is that Tiny Revolutionary has been printing with non-phthalate inks since mid-2008! Yep, we were totally ahead of the curve. As soon as our screenprinter shared the new Wilflex waterbased inks with us, we were onboard. They are a bit more expensive to use and require a higher degree of skill from printers but we thought they were worth it to remove even the slightest chance of toxic transfer to the babies and kids who wear our tee’s.