Eastside GreenGroup Meeting Roundup

A huge thank you goes out to Hope for agreeing to organize our Eastside GreenGroup. We've had tons of moms interested, but a hard time fixing a meeting time and place to get this off the ground. Our first meeting was on Friday, and Heather and I really appreciated all those who came out to the Urban Grind on such a soggy day to share and discuss green parenting ideas. Thanks also to Hope, who summarized our discussion, which I'll include here:

I just wanted to take a minute to thank all of you for participating in the first Eastside GreenGroup meeting!  It was a pleasure to meet all of you and share concerns and information.  And for those of you who came late or left early, here is a little summary of some of the things we discussed:

Traditional Christmas tree alternatives -- Living Christmas Trees provides potted Christmas trees for rent which are then sold at discount to other organizations (schools, churches, etc.) for planting.  Another suggestion was citrus trees.

Becoming a "killjoy" -- In our attempts at becoming "greener," worrying that loved-ones will label us as "killjoys."  You know, the kid who grows up and complains that he was never allowed to have birthday parties or holiday celebrations with presents.

Birthday parties -- Ever amazed at the excess involved in some birthday parties?  Check out Birthdays without Pressures.  Or there were a lot of alternative ideas thrown around - craft, cookie decorating, book swap, toy swap birthday parties.

Christmas wrapping paper alternatives -- Use or make cloth Christmas bags for presents.  SCRAP is a great resource for fabric. 

The Plastics Roundup -- Check out the Master Recycler program for all those plastics you can't put out at the curb.

Great playgrounds -- River Play Discovery Playground in Eugene, OR and a great one in  Lake Oswego.

And for those of you who missed it, Rebecca shared with us that they converted their oil furnace to a furnace that runs on 99% vegetable oil.  Pretty amazing.

We're hoping to meet about once a month (does the second Friday of the month sound good?).  I'd like to get some feedback as to whether Urban Grind worked well and if not, other meeting place suggestions.

And a big thank you to Heather and Renee of Enviromom for organizing this meeting.  And a big thank you to Rebecca of Portland Green Parenting for inviting her group as well.  We had a great turnout and I am very excited about future meetings.

Please let us know if you have any feedback on this or for future meetings of the EastSide GreenGroup. It was exciting to have 12 eastside moms with kids come out for this meeting!!