Nothing says love like cards from kids - my grandmother used to frame her favorite cards from her grandchildren, and I’m already following in her footsteps. My girls love to make pictures and give them out as birthday cards, thank yous, or just to say ‘I love you’. How thrilled was I when I found Stubby Pencil Studio’s eco-friendly stationery and art supplies for kids! Check out these adorable Valentine’s Day ‘color ‘n kids’ 12 pack of cards - perfect for sending to family and BFFs!

Stubby Pencil Studio’s cards and envelopes are both made from 100% post-consumer recycled card stock, and right now are the only eco-stationery line exclusively for kids. Pair them with a set of soy crayons or other eco-friendly supplies and you have yourself a true green Valentine’s that you can keep forever. No need for recycling - a card from the heart is a true gift!

Ever break a plate and wonder what to do with the pieces? Kids knocked over your favorite vase and can’t bear to throw it away? New mom and crafter extraordinaire Juliet has taken reincarnating dinnerware it to a new, super-crafty level. An all-around crafter (she was the brains behind the Junk Mail Love project), Juliet and her alter ego, fittingly called The Broken Plate, takes everything from vintage and antique finds to trendy Anthropologie plates and breaks them to make beautiful pendants, rings, and brooches. After a bit of smoothing and soldering magic, Juliet’s pendants are transformed into a work of broken-art. She’ll even take broken wedding plates or other custom work (family china, anyone?) and give them new life as jewelry!

This Valentine’s day, two winners can accessorize with their own Broken Plate Pendant necklace! Juliet has graciously created a classic Valentine’s day red and pink leaf pattern plate pendant, as well as a vibrant turquoise Japanese plate pendant. Please leave a comment here with an answer to the following question - which is your favorite Broken Plate Pendant? It’s a tough call, but take your time - it’s worth a look (and planning which necklace will go with which outfit!) You have until Valentine’s Day, Thursday February 14th at midnight PST. Good luck!

This contest is now closed.  Thanks SO MUCH to everyone for entering!  Congrats to Vida and Laura S for winning! 

It’s no surprise how smart the chocolate industry is - we love chocolate, we always love chocolate, and Valentine’s Day is not an excuse to be eating chocolate. Except for tradition, that is. That being said, there is always a big push for our favorite indulgence this time of year. Here’s something chocolaty you can without all the calories (ok, some of the calories). Sustainable Harvest International, a non-profit agency that helps plant trees in Central and South America, as well as provides long-term assistance to communities for sustainable practices, wants to help keep the organic chocolate industry to thrive. They estimate that over 150,000 cacao trees have been planted over the past two years, providing much needed additional income to the families that harvest the trees, as well as providing shelter for wildlife and reforest hard hit areas.

Their latest newsletter, fittingly named ‘For the Love of Chocolate,’ talks about the wonders of the cacao tree and the benefits of planting new cacao forests. For a $40 donation, an acre of cacao trees will be planted in a select community, along with providing the tools and training to help plant and harvest the trees. In return, you get a special Valentine-themed gift card and a sinfully organic jar of Robin’s Chocolate Sauce. Just the name alone and I’m almost up for an ice-cream sundae…

If you (yes YOU) can’t get enough of chocolate, please try to make your chocolate of choice natural, organic, and free trade. Here is a list of chocolate companies that strive to make quality, sustainable chocolaty goodness. You can find most of these brands in local markets, so feel free to test them all out!

Dagoba Organic Chocolate - ‘chocolate alchemy’ at it’s best!
Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates - check out their Valentine gifts, including chocolate hearts!
Green and Black’s - rich, Fair Trade Certified chocolate products.
Rapunzel - the ‘world’s first’ 100% organic chocolate bar.
Newman’s Own Organics - fair labor-practiced from Central and South America.
Endangered Species Chocolate - 10% of profits help support endangered animals. Shop with a ‘green heart’ this V-day!
Divvies - if you have kids with allergies, give them some good, old-fashioned Valentine cupcakes that are dairy, egg, and peanut and treenut free!

One thing you MUST know about me is, I’m OBSESSED with all things paper - notebooks, stationery, you name it, I’m all over it. I could do a whole blog on paper - but for teensygreen, we’ll stick with the sustainable stuff. One paper and ecofab goods designer is blissen, by Jill Bliss. Bliss gets her inspiration from all things nature - right now, she’s featuring beautiful water and forest motifs in her paper line, with rich details inside and out. Of course, using veggie inks and recycled, post consumer paper makes the whole blissen line that much more special, but I guarantee you will be enamored as much as I am with her beautiful drawings.

Instead of the usual chocolate Valentine’s Day giveaway you might have expected, I thought blissen’s limited-edition ‘Kissy Kissy’ pocket pouch might be more appropriate. There are only a few of these left, so enter and get your Vday on with a little something for yourself. Or, if you have any daughters like mine who collect seashells or hairbands or pennies or anything they find on the sidewalk, give it to a little one who will always appreciate one more bag in their collection. This is a quick giveaway - please enter your comment with an answer to the follow question by Thursday night at midnight, PST. What is your favorite blissen notecard collection? (My fav is ‘tidepools’.) Good luck!

This contest is now closed!  Congrats to Carrie, and thanks for entering!

Do you know what ‘vicissitude’ means? If you guessed right, how great does it feel to be sending lunch to a hungry child? What do I mean, you ask? I’m talking about FreeRice, a nonprofit poverty-fighting organization, allows you to sharpen your vocabulary skills while sending much needed rice to countries within the United Nations World Food Program network. For each word you define correctly, FreeRice will donate 20 grains of rice through the UN. Don’t worry about getting a word wrong - the FreeRice program adjusts to your vocab level, and you can even save the setting on your computer to allow FreeRice to keep track of how much you’ve donated.

You may not think about where your next meal is coming from, and 20 grains of rice sounds like rice in a bucket, right? Think about it global terms. Just yesterday, FreeRice reports over 91 million grains of rice have been donated - that’s 91,009,660. Since FreeRice began in October 2007, over 17 billion grains in total have been sent out. Spend a minute playing, learning, and giving. If you have teenagers (especially ones taking the SATs!) sit them down for vocab practice. And be sure to pass FreeRice along to everyone!

Stuck at home? The weather has been horrible in many parts of the country this week, so I’ve been searching for good crafting sites for some old fashioned, arts and crafts fun with the kids. Here are a couple of the most inventive, user-friendly places out there…

If you want to take a trip down crafty memory lane, head over to scrumdilly-do! Kid-craft maven Jessica Wilson has simple yet totally fun projects kids of any age can accomplish - no altering the project for little ones. I remember making these black scratchboards when I was in sleepaway camp - they’re gooey, colorful, and like magic for kids! A great project for using the nubs of crayons, or utilizing funky, recycled ones you can make at home as well…

Speaking of recycled crayons, the diy network has a great post on recycling crayons using muffin tins or molds. We’ve only made round, flat crayons at home, but how fun would it be to make letters?

Crafting a Green World is a new crafting website from model/environmentalist/overall green maven Victoria E. The newest site in the Green Options family of websites, CAGW focuses on everything from knitting to notebooks. My favorite post so far is called Junk Mail Love - if you’re like me and have magazines laying around from, well, forever ago, try this instead of recycling the old-fashioned way. CAGW shows you how to many super cool beads (see above) from junk mail to old issues of Nick Jr. Make them as chunky or delicate as you like - great for working on fine motor skills as well as green-fashionista training!

For kids who love making figures, try Paper Critters, the online paper toy creator. Get your post-consumer recycled paper out for hours of critter creating - choose from an almost endless database of cute and creepy characters!

There’s lots more out there - send me your favorite crafting websites, and I may just make this a weekly post! Hope everyone stays warm and dry this weekend…happy crafting!

Photos courtesy of Junk Mail Gems.  Thanks so much!