How to make your own balance bike - take the pedals off!

These days training wheels equipped bikes are being cast off for the new balance bike philosophy. So while balance bikes are hard to find online and expensive even if used, the traditional training wheels variety is plentiful.

I'd strongly suggest getting one of the free or cheap training wheel bikes and turning it into a balance bike yourself by removing the pedals. One of the benefits of this is that you actually have a bike that can be used either way. I set out on this path for green reasons ($ and enviro), but it turns out one of my twins only wanted to ride with training wheels and the other only wanted a balance bike set up. I was able to deliver them what they wanted.

I promise that is was VERY easy. I followed the directions here. The only real challenge is if you want to get the chain off you need to find someone with a tool to pop it off. That might mean your local friendly bike store, or in our case a friend who is into cycling (thank Joe!).

Oh and I found this site is a great resource for thinking about teaching your child the bike skills.

Lead in kids snacks

I'm back! Been focusing on my podcast for young 'uns - Podaroo - in my spare time. You can dowload it from iTunes here. But I'm back to blog. My twins are about to start preschool this fall, so I have a feeling there will be a bunch more kid, budget, and ecoLiving revelations on the school front to come.

So I've been hearing about lead in kids drinks and wanted to look up the brands for myself. The PDF with the list is linked to in this Seventh Generation post. I'm assuming they're talking about big bottles of juice, not juice boxes but I couldn't figure that out for sure. Interesting question in all this about WHERE the lead is coming from... manufacturing? the apple growers?

I also happened to get into a discussion last night with our scientist neighbor about BPA in canned tomatoes. So I gave subject another google this AM and here is the result. If you are looking to avoid canned tomatoes since the acidic food seems more prone than others to leach the BPA out of the resin liner, Berkeley Bowl currently has organic diced tomatoes in 25.5 oz. GLASS JARS on special for $2.99. No bargain but given they're organic and packed in glass I may stock up - in the winter we do LOADS of cooking with canned tomatoes.

Interesting post about separating twins for Kindergarten

Silicon Valley Mom's Blog has a piece about one twin mom's experience separating her twins in school. I found it illuminating. And I'm glad we don't have to face those issue in preschool!

A fun green gadget competition

These are some forward thinking green energy products. You can vote or just browse. For kids... check out Rocco!

Nice and simple: Families with Purpose

Just a plug for an interesting site I found over on the Brighter Planet blog: it's called Families with Purpose and they have some good ideas for fun, simple crafts, volunteer opportunities and activities that families can do together. I'm bookmarking it for those times when I just feel all out of ideas!

Great cookie gift bag

Happy New Year! If your resolutions formal or informal for 2010 involve more reuse or all the stuff around us... here's a great idea from a friend. If you buy whole bean coffee, wipe out the insides of the bags and then they make great gift sacs for cookies or other baked goods.

And if you tie a ribbon around it the look is complete.