What is The Green Sisterhood and #greensisters?

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed an avalanche of tweets this weekend with the hashtag #greensisters. I do apologize for the volume of grouped tweets, it should only have happened once. When you see tweets or shares with the hashtag #greensisters, you can know that I am sharing something from another blogger who is a member of The Green Sisterhood with me. You might be asking, "what is The Green Sisterhood?". The short answer is that we're a group of bloggers who blog about green living, the environment, various forms of low impact living, handmade and DIY, and who are all passionate about making positive changes for our future.

What does The Green Sisterhood do?

If you are a blog reader or someone interested in green living, climate change, or environmental advocacy, The Green Sisterhood is a great place to learn! Subscribe to our weekly email to receive summaries of what each sister is blogging about this week. Or, visit the main GS blog on Fridays for a weekly reading list of the best of the sisters' posts each week.

If you are a blogger (green or not), The Green Sisterhood hosts free blogging-related webinars regularly. Today at 12pm CST we'll be hosting Lara Galloway for a webinar entitled "Blogging is NOT a business".

If you are a business or PR professional, The Green Sisterhood is a great way to reach people who are interested in your product, service, or book. With a combined 2 million page views per month, all the green sisters function as a unit to reach a relevant audience through our individual blog voices and social media channels. You can contact us for rates and options by emailing info {at} greensisterhood {dot} com!

What does The Green Sisterhood mean to me?

On a personal level, I feel really privileged to be a part of this group of women. I would not be tweeting out links to these ladies' posts if I wasn't truly interested in what they have to say. They encourage me daily to keep up a greener lifestyle and to advocate for change when I might otherwise be silent. I've found that The Green Sisterhood encourages me when I get discouraged about blogging or making positive changes in my own life and the lives of others. It can be difficult to "be green" when no one around you is doing it. I don't know how many times I've had friends ask me a question about green living that I can answer by passing on a link to a post from one of my green sisters. Some of us are greener than others in various areas. Together, we have experience in nearly every area of sustainable living, or we know someone who does.

I feel like we also serve as sounding boards for each other when it comes to blogging decisions. For example, if I have a question about how to handle the business end of blogging, I ask these ladies. We had a great discussion just last week on working with PR reps, the points which we discussed will likely come up when I speak at BlogHer in Chicago in July. When Google shut it's RSS reader shut down, there was Karen Lee with a post about alternatives to Google Reader. They've recently encouraged me to (reluctantly, awkwardly) embrace Google Plus.

I hope that you love The Green Sisterhood as much as I do and that you'll follow along with us as we move forward for a greener future!

Eco-friendly skin care without phthlates: K6 Skin Care

I'm super excited to tell you all about how I solved my conundrum when it comes to finding eco-friendly skin care without phthalates and toxins! I have been searching for a skin care line that does not contain phthalates, parabens, SLS, artificial colors, chemical fillers, etc., but also keeps my (aging) skin moisturized and blemish-free.

I'm sad to say that all the handmade products or kitchen recipes that I've tried in the past have been terrible for my skin. They have left my skin too dry, too oily, or caused me to break out. I've tried washing with oil, washing with honey, moisturizing with coconut oil, toning with hydrogen peroxide...all of it has been a terrible failure.

The products I've found that work best are, shall we say, usually less than ideal in their ingredients. I've been doing the best I could by at least buying from companies like The Body Shop and Whole Foods who have good fair trade and ethical practices and "probably" don't contain phthalates, but I've let a few other standards slip just to have nice skin.

Recently I met the wife of one of my husbands' coworkers who is a local naturopath. It is all I can do not to ask her 100 questions about that at the dinner parties we have attended! In fact, she has graciously offered to write a guest post for us soon to tell us all about naturopath practice and I can't wait! Aside from that fascinating fact (or perhaps because of it), she has also formulated her very own skin care line. I'll quote her here to explain why:

Early in my practice, I relied on "recipes" [for my clients skin care needs] I developed while working with herbs. I made recommendations to clients that had them in their kitchens throwing together various ingredients to make their own lotions and cleansers. Human error abounded, and the results were less than satisfactory

(sounds like my failed efforts!)

And here is my favorite part and, in my opinion, why K6 products work as well and BETTER than their non-green, non-natural conventional counterparts:

...As an ND, I am dedicated to practicing natural healing modalities, but I am not afraid to use technology safely where it will enhance the action of a natural element. I use this philosophy in every facet of my practice, and it permeates my skin care line as well.

This is a very good point. I don't think it's wrong to use technology to assist natural ingredients. The problem with a lot of the natural products I had been trying was the lack of preservatives, meaning that the containers became breeding grounds for bacteria. Sharon gave me a detailed ingredients sheet for each of the 3 products in the K6 line which explains, line by line, what each ingredient is and it's function in the product (including preservatives and why they were chosen). 

And did you catch that? Only 3 products in the line! Here they are:

Clean

For, um, cleaning. The best feature of this cleanser is that it also removes eye makeup! Yep, no more purchasing an additional product to clean your eyes. I find that it works best to rub a small amount on the closed eye, rinse, and then wash the entire face as usual.

Reveal

A powerful enzyme peel that leaves skin refreshed, not raw. It's extremely gentle but you'll also be amazed to see the amount of dead skin cells it removes (if you are fascinated by peeling things...this might be fun for you!). Never once made my skin raw or irritated. It is actually gentle enough to use on rosacea without exacerbating the condition.

Preserve

Anti-aging moisturizer that is extremely luxurious - you don't need much! Slows the breakdown of collagen, invigorates the production of more collagen, and inhibits the production of melanin.

Ever since I started using the K6 skin care line, I have actually felt guilty for not yet telling my readers about how much I love this skin care system. I wanted to be impartial because -- full disclosure -- they are also an advertiser on my blog. But I also do not advertise anything on this blog that I have not tried for myself or do not believe in. If I had tried this line and it hadn't worked, I wouldn't be writing this post.

A note on cost: you need very little of each of these products. For Clean, probably the size of a pencil eraser for eyes and the size of a dime for the whole face. For Reveal, you only use it once a day and maybe not even every day, I probably use about a quarter size squeeze for my entire face. For Preserve, less than dime size. So you can imagine how long each product will last. I'll probably buy Clean most frequently.

So, there you have it. It's what I am using right now, and I think I'll probably be using it for quite some time in the future. I hope that K6 helps you as much as it helps me. And remember, if you do choose to try the product line, you are supporting this blog!

Green My Routine: cleaning

It's been a while since I did my first Green My Routine, and I admit I've been reluctant to do Part 2 of the series just because it is so labor intensive! There are a lot of links involved and can be a lot of picture taking to illustrate. I solved this reluctance by taking on something that seems like a fairly simple part of my daily routine: cleaning.

It's simple because I really rely on only a few products to get most of my cleaning done. I admit up front and remind you that I do sell Young Living essential oils and products so you will see them featured heavily in my arsenal. I believe in them because they are powerful and effective, and I signed up with them, well, basically to get a discount because I don't make ton of money off of it. I think I break even. That said, you are welcome to buy any of these product from me on my Young Living page if you are so inclined to do so. If not, just read for information!

My cleaning products:

Young Living Thieves household cleaner - Disinfectant that I use on everything: in the kitchen on the counters, the dining table, the kids toys, the kids potty seats, diaper pails, and also in our bathrooms for any surface my son pees on as well as the bathtub and shower. I also put it in my reusable microfiber mop sprayer and mop the floors with it. Ingredients are: Thieves oil and surfactants to allow oil to mix with water. That's it!

White Vinegar - Use this mostly on our microfiber couches for milk spills, but I also clean the windows with it. I often make orange vinegar to mitigate the smell, which my husband hates.

Shaklee Basic H2 Organic Super Cleaning Concentrate - Use this almost exclusively in the kitchen for greasy things like our glass stovetop. I also use it sometimes on the dining table.


Bon Ami Cleanser Powder - this is a simple, natural version of Comet. No bleach.

Baking soda - use this for anything that needs abrasive action, mostly in the kitchen and with dishes, but I have been known to scrub all sorts of things with baking soda!

Steam cleaner - for floor, no cleaning fluid necessary -- just water!

Homemade Lysol alternative - For disinfecting trash cans, large groups of toys, and larger surface areas.

Hydrogen Peroxide - Food-grade version that I bought from a health food store, I dilute at a 1:11 ratio with water to make the diluted strength we are accustomed to buying in a drug store. I spray hydrogen peroxide on my fabric shower curtain to remove mold stains. I also use hydrogen peroxide to remove pretty much any stains on tile, grout, or even fabric. It does a great job with blood! Often used in lieu of bleach.

I think that pretty much covers my entire cleaning arsenal for the whole house! Not a lot of products, I just keep some of each in every major location on both floors of the house.

Have I missed anything? If you have a question about how I clean various things with these 8 products, please leave it in the comments, on my Facebook page, or tweet me and I'd be happy to answer!

Women in the U.S. and China work together for #green consumer impact

Have you ever stopped to consider the impact that living an ever-greener lifestyle has on our economy? If you have followed this blog for long, I hope that you do consider the impact that your personal consumer behavior has on what kind of products are offered in the marketplace. I hope that you remain aware that each product you buy (or refuse to buy!) is sending a message about what kinds of products we want companies to make (or stop making) in the future.

Since women influence at least 80% of all consumer purchases in the U.S., we are in a position to really influence change in our country. Beyond our own country, the #1 largest importer of goods into the United States is China. It might surprise you to know that women in China, who contribute about half of all household income and influence and make more than half of all purchasing decisions, are equally concerned about consumer decisions and how they impact our shared climate.

It is for this reason that The U.S. - China Greener Consumption Forum is taking place on March 22 in Washington, D.C. Through my membership with the Green Sisterhood, I have met Diane MacEachern of Big Green Purse, a leading green consumer advocate and an award-winning entrepreneur who is both organizing the event and speaking. Together, we are urging all women to get involved in this forum by attending, listening in via social media, and spreading the word.

Why join in?

At first it might all sound very distant and far away, but did you know that you, too, can listen, participate, and benefit from this international forum on conscientious consumerism? If you choose to follow along, whether by attending in person or from home (see "How can you join in?", below), you will learn from the speakers:

• why our purses have so much power to make a difference
• how McMansions, meat-based agriculture, and toxic chemicals in common household problems affect our health (agenda item "The impacts of consumption on the environment and human health") 
• how lack of equality between women and men undermines sustainability
• obstacles that make it difficult for people to shift their spending and habits to greener products and services
• strategies to reduce consumption (focusing on the sharing economy, a really interesting project in China to help communities come up with a mission and vision around sustainable consumption, and energy efficiency)

The afternoon workshops will focus on new green products and services that have been introduced to meet the demand of women and mothers. In the behavior change set, we'll be highlighting campaigns to reduce the use of plastic, helping people to become more energy efficient, and reduce consumption.

The product innovation set will include a group on home renovation and cleaning products, food and drink featuring the VP of Honest Tea, MOM's organic market, Green America, and the CEOs of an organic cosmetics company and an organic skin lotion company (full speaker list).

How can you join in?

If you live in D.C., you might actually consider registering to attend the event. There are fabulous speakers and practical consumer tips throughout the event that will be particularly engaging in person. There will be simultaneous translation for all of the plenary sessions, and on-site translators in the workshops. There will be opportunities throughout the day for Q&A between the audience and presenters, but also among all attendees.

Follow along on Twitter. All of The Green Sisterhood bloggers will be re-tweeting segments and links from the forum with the official hashtag #USChinaGreenForum, but specifically be sure to follow @dianemaceachern and @biggreenpurse. Our Green Sisterhood hashtag for this event is #GSGF13 if you want to follow only Green Sisters tweeting about the forum. Make a special list or stream on Hootsuite for those hashtags in preparation for the day!

Make sure you are following The Green Sisterhood Facebook page and The U.S. - China Greener Consumption Facebook page. If you hover over "Like" and check "Notifications", you'll be sure to get links to great content on the day of the event, allowing you to follow along.

Help us spread the word!

Since you already follow me on Twitter (of course you do, right? Cause you really want to hear about how many times my kids wake up at night or see Instagram photos of my food...), you can just retweet my messages from the forum, or you can click here to tweet a pre-formatted message about the forum! You can also share the things you learn from the Facebook page posts with your Facebook friends.

Most of all, just tell someone one thing you learned about the forum or from the forum!

For today: learn more about how pollution in China affects us here (thanks to ecokaren for the link!).

Handmade fair trade empowering women: Amani ya Juu

You might not want to get out of bed early enough to work out today, but what if you had to get out of bed to carry water from a well to your house before you go to work in the morning or you wouldn't have water for bathing and cooking all day? Here is what a day is like for Esther in Liberia:

Esther, a 39-year-old mother and grandmother, wakes up at 5:30am each morning. “I carry the bucket to the pump. If you cannot carry the bucket soon, you will not get water!” she shares with wide eyes that giving the impression that this lady has had to deal with a dry pump on more than one occasion, and doesn’t plan on letting it happen again.

Esther prepares food for her family and sends her children off to school. Then, she sometimes goes to the market to buy food for her family or her bucket. She runs a micro business from her head---she sells pepper, spices, candies, ground pea candy (peanut brittle), and other treats out of a plastic bucket she carries all over the community.

At [work], Esther cuts cloth or learns to sew. She has only been at Amani for about a month but already feels intense community amongst her coworkers. “We are here together, friendly...if I am not here, I am missing these people,” she says, looking about the room.

After work, Esther often goes to night school, where she is currently completing 9th grade. Her favorite part about school is reading “They got some good stories in it!” she says of her school books, then rattles off the plot of a story she is reading this week about some farmers with a car---“their own car!”---she exclaims.

Esther works during the day at Amani ya Juu (“peace from above” in Swahili). Amani is a sewing and training program for marginalized women based in East Africa. Women from many African nations and cultures are learning to work together through faith in God who provides a higher peace that transcends cultural and ethnic differences. Amani is committed to holistic development. Women gain experience in purchasing, bookkeeping, stitching, quality control, management, and design. As new women enter the program they are mentored in quality workmanship. Emphasis is placed on ethical business practices and harmonious relationships with people of different backgrounds. Amani’s wide selection of high-quality handbags, home and kitchen décor, jewelry, and children’s items are made out of local African materials. The sale of products sold by volunteers and in Amani shops enables each woman to earn consistent income.

I learned about Amani ya Juu from a blog reader here in Dallas -- what a small world! She knew about my heart for empowering women to succeed through hard work and based on an inner peace. When she contacted me, I took a look at the Amani site and there is a little collage of my favorite products from Amani:

Clockwise, starting with the grey bag:

Safari On The Go Bag - $72
Ruffled Glove and Spoon Set - $28
Stuffed Zebra - $10
Kikoy Elephant Mobile - $44
Monrovia Wristlet - $18

I hope these cute products will appeal to you, but most of all that you will consider supporting the ladies of Amani ya Juu with your purchases. I've had a chance to sample one of the Amani cosmetic bags, and I can attest that it is very well-made. The ladies of Amani put care and love into their work.

To help spread the word, I'd like to give away a small cosmetic bag made by Sandra in Uganda:

Please help me spread the word about Amani ya Juu by entering the giveaway, tweeting about Amani and their mission, and following them on Facebook.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Twitter parties: etiquette and unfollowing

It's time to talk internets. Lately, I've seen more and more Twitter parties in my small(ish) group of followers and Twitter friends. Just last night, Dallas Moms Blog hosted one with the hashtag #DMBmoms. Last week, Green Sisterhood co-hosted with Holistic Moms Network, #holisticmoms. On Wednesday nights, Working Mom Journal hosts #workingmomchat. On Monday nights, #clothdiapers talks about, uh...cloth diapers! I used to follow one about essential oils whose hashtag I have now forgotten. These are just the ones that I know about regularly. There are literally thousands of others going on at any given time.

While the essential oils weekly Twitter party was 6 months ago, and #clothdiapers has been going on for at least 2 years,  it seems like only recently that Twitter parties have gotten really popular.

What are Twitter parties?

The most basic form is when a group of people tweet during a set time period (usually 1 hour) with the same hashtag. You use a third party app like Tweetgrid, Tweetdeck, or Hootsuite to track all the tweets with that hashtag so that you can see what everyone is saying and tweet back to them using the party hashtag and sometimes the @ reply to specific participants. Remember that if you reply to an individual using the "@username" as the first word in your tweet, your tweet will not be visible to your Twitter followers in their general Twitter stream. So if you are just @'ing people, your followers will not see those tweets in their Twitter streams.

In more formal Twitter parties -- usually the ones involving prizes and corporate or celebrity hosts -- you have to RSVP to the host separately beforehand. In the course of these parties, participants who registered ahead of time will win prizes, with prize and winners being announced during the course of the party. The host will direct the Twitter party by asking questions that everyone following the hashtag will answer. Answers and questions will be tweeted and retweeted, sometimes with reply @ and sometimes just to the participants' regular Twitter streams.

A problem

This is where it gets annoying for the participants' followers who are not interested in joining the party. Let's say this is my usual Twitter timeline over the course of 2 days (it is):

Random tweets throughout the day, in fairly evenly spaced intervals (around 10 tweets in 2 days). That's fine if you follow me, I'm mixed in with everyone else in your Twitter stream throughout the day with all of us talking and looking like this:

But what if I am currently attending a Twitter party? Here is my timeline less than a full hour:

And here is what you see in YOUR Twitter feed when when you go to check what's up on Twitter right now:

Yep. JUST ME. Like you really want to see that much of me. This party was for Dallas moms. A lot of my Twitter followers don't live in Dallas and are not moms. What do they do?
UNFOLLOW.

Or do they?

More and more of my friends are attending Twitter parties. Just today at noon, my Twitter feed was completely taken over by a party that two of my friends attended. I don't unfollow them because, well, they are my friends in real life! I can't unfollow them!

Then my husband comes home later tonight and says something like, "Did you see that funny thing I tweeted?". And I have to answer no, I didn't, because it got lost in the Twitter party. Especially depressing when he's home with the kids tweeting cute pics while I'm out somewhere and I miss the cute pictures entirely due to someone's Twitter party (this has happened to me).

Two solutions

One is to open a new Twitter account specifically for Twitter parties with a different email address, in order to avoid annoying my regular followers. Unfortunately, some of the Twitter parties I attend are to represent myself as a blogger. In those cases, I want to use my blogging persona, which is @_conscientious.

The other is to attend Twitter parties but always just @ reply the host or another participant, thereby hiding the majority of my tweets during the hour from my Twitter followers as a whole. I had picked up just from attending parties that this is not a very professional practice because it kind of slams the host with Mentions. I Googled all over for "Twitter party etiquette" and came up with no answer to this question.

So I'd like to ask you: What do you think about Twitter parties? What do you think when someone in your Twitter stream is attending one -- do you Unfollow? How do you attend parties without annoying your own followers?

7 Quick Takes Friday #48

--- 1 ---

The weather last week was warm and sunny for a few days, so of course I started planting things. Because I have such a great record of success with gardens. Of course, this week it's been in the 30's at night. So I've probably already killed everything.

--- 2 ---

I almost did an "All the Drama on the Internets" about Marissa Meyer eliminating working from home at Yahoo, but there wasn't much drama in that there weren't many differences of opinion, that I could tell. Everyone was pretty united in thinking that what she did was a bad idea and sets us all back as women in the workplace.

--- 3---

You might have noticed that I frequently run advertising for ThredUp, which is a way to buy used children's clothing online that is similar to a consignment sale or shop, only online so you don't have to leave your house. You can also sell your used children's clothing the same way, they send a bag to your house and you fill it up and get credit for clothing in the future. It is a very green thing to do, and you know I love consignment sales. I've heard really good feedback from others, but I'd actually never tried it myself. Last night I placed my first order. I'll be letting you know how it goes, I am excited to receive my first box!

--- 4 ---

Speaking of advertising, now is the time to purchase advertising on this blog! If you purchase an ad now, you can get 10% off the cost by purchasing 3 months at a time using the promo code 3MonthsOfFun. If you are a fellow blogger, consider purchasing a 125x125 spot to run during Blissdom! Here's the size of a 125x125:

--- 5 ---

Are you on Vine yet? I am, but let me tell you: I am terrible at it. Terrible. I like the people who do stop-animation with Vine. Super cool!

--- 6 ---

Blissdom is next month but I'm probably not going to conference because it costs money. However, I do live 45 minutes away so if you're a blogger who is attending and would like to get together at a local restaurant, I bet we could get a group together! Email me!

--- 7 ---

I have noticed that Facebook click through rates for this blog are pretty terrible. I'm not going to close down the FB page, but if you're looking for me, I'm mostly on Twitter. Or you can subscribe to receive my blog posts via email or RSS.

~~~
Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.