The Green Parent
Raising kids with conscience
Blog
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Feb 22 2009
New Moon in Pisces
The New Moon is a time of rebirth—a time when we are given a chance to start fresh. On Wednesday 25th February the New Moon is in the altruistic, receptive, and dreamy sign of Pisces. So what does this mean? Well, it is a good time to commit to personal goals that express positive and creative energies.
You might choose to:
• take a leap of faith – believe in something that you always wanted to believe in, but were too afraid to put your trust in,
• accept imperfections in yourself and in others,
• start a creative or imaginative project,
• consciously put aside time for peaceful, rejuvenating activities – these can include yoga and meditation, but can be as simple as recognizing your need for “down time” on a regular basis (a cup of tea and five minutes silence every afternoon for example),
• practice putting yourself into others’ shoes, and let some things go (such as judgments and frustrations),
• energize yourself through new experiences that require your imagination and compassion,
• connect or re-connect with a lover on a romantic level; share a dream with a friend.One of the “lessons” brought by Pisces is to release some of the anxiety that takes control of our everyday lives. As an example if someone takes your place in a queue, tell that person, “Go ahead”, and mean it! If that feels sarcastic, don’t say it out loud, but think it instead. You might “lose” a minute of your time because that person jumped ahead of you, but you will have saved yourself the stress and negativity that comes from allowing yourself to get annoyed and impatient. Same goes for when you are driving. Let small grievances go. Smile at other drivers, or at least, smile to yourself. There is no need to get worked up. These are “little things” that, if practiced often, will help us to understand and apply Pisces lessons in far-reaching ways.
It can seem that the fishes are the easy going, romantic sign of the Zodiac but still waters run deep and we only see the part that’s visible. Pisces swim in deep waters and what happens deep within requires a level of solitude to understand. This is an ideal new moon to find your own way of diving within. One way to do this is through meditation, but you may have another method for accessing that deep private place. For me, it’s yoga. You might prefer surfing, chanting, or walking in the woods. Going deep within is the alternative to catching up on the latest news bulletins, and riding the waves of fear. This is the time to choose another path, and turn inward to find what you need to sustain you through hard times. Since Pisces is the natural artist, this diving inward is also a path to greater personal creativity, too. So unleash your creative side, bake a cake, paint a picture, make something. Do it just for you and enjoy yourself!
So this new moon is a portal to choosing love or fear. We are more powerful than we realize; what’s cultivated within is reflected by the kind of world we live in. This new Moon is a chance to re-create the world, one that is a mirror of who we are, at our most compassionate, unique, colorful, visionary and hopeful.
Today’s painting is by the incredibly talented Josephine Wall. With many thanks to her for her inspiring work.
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Feb 20 2009
Cloth from pineapples!
Following on from our exciting natural textile discoveries in the latest edition of The Green Parent magazine, in which we showed beautiful clothing made from nettles, hemp and bamboo, I have just learnt about a cloth made from the fibre of pineapple leaves. How cool is that!
Produced entirely from the leaves of the pineapple plant, Pina Cloth is gossamer thin yet strong enough to construct light, airy garments. It makes a fantastic animal-friendly alternative to silk, is fair trade and is still made using the age-old traditions that have been used to produce it for hundreds of years. Weaving the fibres from the plant’s leaves is an age-old tradition which was recently revived in the past 20 years. History records suggest that Kalibo’s Pina cloth was traded during the Pre-Hispanic times and reached as far as Greece and Egypt during it’s heyday.
At Boutique Ethique, Pina cloth produced by a fair trade family-run company in the Philippines features is used to make items for the Spring/Summer 09 Collection, like this beautiful blouse, £130 (pictured). The company employs 85 weavers and insists on maintaining the traditional techniques, such as manual extraction of fibre, and preserving the cultural heritage of the weaving industry.
For more info on natural fibres see issue 27 of The Green Parent magazine.Tagged as:Bookmark: -
Feb 06 2009
On the buses
My email inbox is full to bursting with press releases containing statistics on everything from what most people want for Valentine’s day (dinner, apparently) to the number of people who find their washing machine too noisy (33%). I don’t hold much truck with surveys but this one I couldn’t resist.
Remember that chewing gum ad with the rocking soundtrack by Free and the implausible love story? Well, new survey results have demonstrated that it could be closer to truth than fiction. Buses are now recognised as one of the best places to find romance! A poll by First Bus, which surveyed 3,000 people in the UK, has found that in many UK cities more people find love on the bus than through online dating sites or on holiday. Topping the lists of places where a bus ride is likely to lead to love is Wolverhampton with 13% of people finding a partner on public transport. Passengers on the buses in Belfast, Newcastle, Brighton and Bristol are also likely to get lucky.
Notably, of those surveyed, 59% of men (34% women) said they’d previously spotted someone they fancied on a bus, with 36% of men (19% women) saying they had flirted with a member of the opposite sex during a journey (that figure can also be taken as 15% of women getting cheesed off at unwanted attention from the opposite sex). And for those who went on to ask someone out (23% men, 9% women) 4% of those tentative travelling enquiries led to marriage. Marriage hotspots (percentage of people who married following a meeting on a bus/at a bus stop) are: Aberystwyth, Norwich, Glasgow, Oxford and Wolverhampton.
So if you are looking for love, take the environment into consideration, get on the bus and you might just meet the fellow greenie of your dreams. Happy travelling!
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Feb 02 2009
Sizzling seduction tips!
Are you looking to energise your love life? Follow these seven saucy steps to seduction and you could discover a greener side to romance!
Get the body of Adonis/Aphrodite
Ripple those muscles, firm those thighs and wow your partner with your fantastic physique… by cycling to work. Walking or cycling all journeys that don’t need to be driven will tone your body, improve your fitness and will boost your stamina, not to mention cutting your carbon emissions. 25% of all carbon emissions in the UK come from transport.The perfect icebreaker
For that special someone at work who you really fancy, car-sharing journeys each morning and night could be the ideal way to get up close and personal. It is also a great way of cutting your commuting emissions in two.Wine and Dine
Sharing romantic candlelit dinners is relationship friendly and ecofriendly too. Cooking for two or more generates fewer emissions than individually prepared meals.Salad of Love
The lettuce species Lactura virosa has an aphrodisiac quality, a fact discovered by the Ancient Egyptians. You won’t find it stocked in supermarkets so why not grow it at home and add it to salads to boost your romantic desires. Homegrown produce reduces emissions because none are generated either by transport or from the machinery used in industrial scale food production.Get Lathered Up
Sharing a bath with your partner can be a most intimate and loving act so, turn on the taps and start bonding. 40% of your energy bill is generated from heating and hot water. Sharing a bath will save you money and cut your carbon emissions.007 Heaven
It would seem that James Bond is a keen advocate of energy efficiency. He has often wooed Russian agents by insisting “We must use bodily warmth to make it through to morning“. So why don’t you turn the heating down and snuggle up. By turning your thermostat down by one degree you could make a 10% saving on heating bills.No Lights Please, we’re British
It may be a little unadventurous to turn the lights off on intimacy but it can add a touch of intrigue and mystery. Lighting your home makes up 15% of your electricity bill so switching them off will save you cash and reduce CO2.Have fun!!
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Feb 02 2009
Celebrating Imbolc
I just wanted to post a short note on Imbolc, the feast of the Goddess Brigid, which takes place tomorrow. It’s a time to celebrate the rebirth of the sun, an opportunity for new beginnings and purification using fire. Today’s snowfall has created a beautiful setting for this ancient celebration.
We have celebrated in various ways over the years from dressing all in white and going for a woodland walk to taking it in turns to wear a crown of candles. We tend to have a celebration meal with lots of candles and circular food like pancakes to represent the sun and lengthening days. When everyone else is in bed I will pull my cards and do a spiral spread for Imbolc and the coming months for a greater insight on what I have to work on in my life.
No matter how you celebrate Imbolc, the focus for this time of year is new beginnings (both literal and metaphorical), the blessing of hearth, home and crops and purification (by means of fire). As well as a chance to honour the rebirth of the sun, it is a favourable time to celebrate creativity, ignite passions, and to harness the power that is created in the turn of the season.
Hope and anticipation abound and and encourage us to gather our thoughts and prepare for new creative projects and activities. If you haven’t started a journal this year or created goals for the months ahead now is the time to focus upon your hopes and dreams for the coming year. They may be physical, spiritual or emotional, but you can be assured that now is the time to lay the foundation stones of your dreams. This needn’t be a new dream, it may be something that has been a longheld desire. Be safe in the knowledge that in beginning this process you will be communing with, and at one with the universal force, limitless potential and bounty of nature. As the earth is awakening, so can we harness this period of aspiration, fulfilment and creativity that lies ahead.
A candle ritual is particularly appropriate as Imbolc is a fire festival. Take a white candle and carve into it a picture or word symbolising your goal for the year ahead. Place the candle in a heatproof dish and light it. Allow the candle to burn right down. You can do this in three or four sittings so as not to leave it unattended.
Happy creating!
NOTE: This beautiful painting was created by Wendy Andrews – you can view more of her inspirational art at Painting Dreams
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Welcome to the new blog from the Green Parent office. Here we'll talk about what's going on in the small and quite leafy headquarters of the UK's leading green lifestyle magazine. We'll share news that interests us and talk about green issues and natural parenting. We'll share advice and information from our own experiences of living a green lifestyle. And we'll even tell you what we are reading, eating, drinking and thinking. Hope you get plenty of food for thought here.
The Green Parent is the UK's leading green lifestyle and natural parenting magazine. A truly inspiring read, TGP is like nothing else on the newsstand, with insightful intelligent journalism covering topics from babywearing and attachment parenting to home-education and alternative medicine. Each issue features regular columns on Organic Gardening, Seasonal Food and Drink, Green Travel, Ethical Fashion and lots more.