The brand’s name, Canary, comes from the phrase “canary in a coal mine” (an early warning of danger). And, as Luke reminds us, the seemingly small items we use in our homes daily (toothpaste tubes, hand soap bottles, floss containers) end up wrecking major havoc on our environment.

Below, the passionate dad of three (August, 10, Avery, 7, and Emmeline, 2), shares more about Canary and his other company, Bloop—a healthier laundry soap that replaces the typical hormone-disrupting and other toxic ingredients with clean ingredients.

What was the impetus for starting Canary? “Sustainability and natural health ideologies are things that were instilled in me from my mother since I was born. I grew up on a small self-sustaining farm in Texas and my wonderful mother owned a vegetarian restaurant in Colorado before I was born and then later owned a small health food and wellness store in my hometown. After earning an MBA in sustainability and then working for more than a decade for larger brands, the same entrepreneurial spirit (that my mother had) called me to create a brand where the entire mission was based on sustainability.”

“Now, as parents of three young kids, we wanted the business to focus on creating a cleaner world for our children. After looking around the house and bathroom, it was disturbing how much plastic was in our daily rituals, and that the majority of it wasn’t truly recyclable. We don’t want our children to live in a world of plastic trash from our generation.”

What facts about waste caused by common household items can you share? “It has been well studied and documented recently that only 5% of plastic actually gets recycled. In regards to toothpaste in particular, globally 1.5 billion toothpaste tubes are tossed annually—that’s enough to fill up 50 Empire State Buildings. Similarly, think about all of the wasted plastic floss containers (estimated 700M in the U.S. alone) and millions of miles of floss, most of it plastic. And for all of those single use plastic hand soap bottles and even the refill containers (yes, more plastic), an estimated 5 billion single use hand soap bottles are thrown away every year. With all of the recent medical buzz about how much plastic is getting into every organ and tissue in the human body, we believe this is a much bigger problem than most people realize. So we want to do better, and be a part of the change.”

How do your products help combat this waste? “Other than the small hand soap pumps (that are made for a long life of use) that are in our foaming hand soap kits, we are a completely plastic-free company. Our toothpaste tablets come in refillable (and recyclable) glass jars with metal lids. Our new dental floss comes in a tiny cardboard box and is made with biodegradable PLA (corn starch), and our novel foaming hand soap systems are packaged in cardboard and our bottles are glass. And most of our products are also designed to be compact and without excessive water (which is impactful to ship around too). The customer adds water to the hand soap, as well as our highly concentrated mouthwash (which comes in a glass bottle). Our product offering and branding is also intended to ‘provoke the purge of plastic’ and inspire everyone to try to think differently about these everyday products and how we can create and use more closed-loop and less environmentally impactful products and daily rituals.”

Tell us about how Bloop came to be. “Bloop is a little less focused on the plastic issue (our cartons do have a plastic liner currently, although they do reduce plastic by 80% or more (vs. typical plastic laundry jugs), but is more focused on healthier laundry products. Typical laundry detergent uses many hormone-disrupting and other toxic ingredients and we are aiming to address and challenge this. We founded Bloop with another couple (Trevor and Katie Young, close friends of ours) who approached us to help them create better laundry products after Katie survived breast cancer. Since breast cancer and other cancers have impacted our family as well (my mother passed away a few years ago from cancer), we were also motivated by this cause.”

What would you love for folks to know about Canary—and Bloop? “We just hope that folks will think about all of the plastic around their home, and consider all of the ingredients used in everyday products, and inspire them to try our brands or even similar brands that are striving to leave a better impact on the world.”

Find more about Canary at canarycleanco.com (and @canarycleanco on Instagram), and Bloop at heybloop.com (and @bloop.stuff on Instagram).

The post Meet Canary & Bloop—Earth-Friendly Products, Created By Parents appeared first on MOTHER.

For more stellar kids’ book roundups, check out these 80+ Black children’s authors and 30 incredible Black illustrators, children’s books that spotlight LGBTQ+ characters, Latinx books for kids, books by and about Indigenous peoples, great books to give as gifts, titles that boost self-esteem and empathy, and 20 awesome picture books without words.

The post 100+ Black History Books For Kids appeared first on MOTHER.

(Want to keep reflecting all year long? Check out these 25+ guided journals for 2025!)

10 Questions for a New Year’s Reflection Exercise:

What 2024 accomplishments am I most proud of?

In which areas did I struggle most in 2024?

Which friends supported me most this year? And which friendships shifted?

Name 3-5 (or more!) positive memory-making experiences from 2024.

Name a few negative memory-making experiences.

In which areas did I see the most personal growth and change?

What am I most grateful for in 2024?

What do I want more of in 2025?

What do I want less of in 2025?

What are my 2025 goals and/or intentions? (Feel free to add a “word of the year”).

The post A New Year Reflection Exercise appeared first on MOTHER.

Our 20+ favorite modern dollhouses are in the slideshow below!

Need more holiday gift ideas for children? Check out our gift guides for Babies & Toddlers, New & Expecting Mamas, Big Kids, Tweens & Teens, and The Homebody Mom!

The post 20+ Modern Dollhouses We Love appeared first on MOTHER.

Decorate an Outdoor Edible Tree for the Animals
As an alternative (or in addition to) a traditional indoor holiday tree, decorating a live outdoor tree with biodegradable, edible ornaments for local birds and other creatures makes for a fun project with kids. We love all these edible ornament ideas from around the web, such as citrus bird feeders, peanut butter pinecones, seed ornaments, and classic popcorn and cranberry garlands. Trim the tree and watch the critters come by and enjoy their treats!

Make Happy Winter Solstice Art + Lanterns
Our favorite winter solstice art project is making lanterns—one of the most popular winter solstice symbols of adding light to the darkest day of the year. There are dozens of DIY-lantern projects out there, and it’s really about finding one that works with what you already have at home. We tend to have an abundance of glass Mason jars, so we use colored tissue paper, cut-out sun, moon, and star shapes, and foraged leaves, and adhere them to the outside of a jar using modpodge or white school glue and paint brushes. Once the final decorations are in place, apply one last thin coat of glue on the outside of the lantern, and let it dry for about an hour. Remember to only decorate the outside of the jar, as once it’s all dry you drop a tea light into it and enjoy the warm glow!

Read Winter Solstice Books
What better time to snuggle up under a blanket and read through a stack of wintery-themed books than the shortest (and likely one of the chilliest) days of the year? The winter solstice book The Shortest Day, written by Newbury Medal–winner Susan Cooper and illustrated by one of our favorite mamas, Carson Ellis, is at the top of our family reading list these days. It moves through times to show how the winter solstice traditions and celebrations have carried on and evolved over centuries—from the earliest pagan traditions. It includes the most beautiful winter solstice images and pictures that you’ll want to pour over again and again.

Recite Winter Solstice Quotes, Poems, or Blessings
The book The Shortest Day utilizes the beautiful 1977 winter solstice poem by Susan Cooper of the same name. Take turns reciting different parts of this beloved winter solstice quote or another winter solstice blessing and spiritual winter solstice quotes found online—including the winter solstice poem Mary Oliver wrote, Snowy Night, and pagan winter solstice quotes—with your children. Our favorite is listed below:

The Shortest Day, by Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome, Yule!

Incorporate Celtic and Pagan Symbols Of Yule Time
Do some research with your little ones on specific pagan yule time and celtic winter solstice traditions. This might include incorporating a pagan winter solstice symbol—like Candles (Winter Sun), Pine (Healing), Holly (The God), Mistletoe (The Goddess) and the Yule Tree (Renewal)—into your home.

Make A Winter Solstice Food or Craft, Such As Orange Pomanders
This is a simple winter solstice food craft that’s easy to do with kids and one that you will actually want to keep around the house afterwards. Start with firm oranges and a jar of whole cloves. Use a citrus zester to create patterns in the fruit peel and a small toothpick or skinny nail to make holes where you want the cloves to go (the pre-poked holes make it easier for kids to stick in the cloves). Stick the cloves in the fruit and you’re all set. Place a few in a bowl as a fragrant solstice centerpiece, or hang smaller fruit as ornaments on the tree. They also make sweet winter solstice gifts!

Spend The Night By Spiritual Candlelight
Switching off all the electric lights and doing dinner, homework, bath, story time, and more by the light of flickering candles and warm lantern light makes even mundane activities extra special and spiritual, and also makes the long, dark night more real. It also helps everyone appreciate the modern conveniences we take for granted!

Strike Some Winter Solstice Yoga Moves
Welcome the shortest day of the year with a graceful winter solstice yoga sequence. Here is one great 12-step yoga winter solstice practice to get started.

Experience Winter Solstice At Stonehenge (Virtually)
Stonehenge was specifically created to align with the sun on the winter solstice and summer solstice. On the morning of December 22 (not December 21), the 2022 winter solstice sunrise at Stonehenge  will be live-streamed via Stonehenge Winter Solstice on YouTube.

Make Some Wassail
This traditional warming drink is perfect for sipping during a  solstice celebration (and it makes the house smell incredible). For this traditional winter solstice drink, simply combine 2 quarts apple cider, 1 1/2 cups orange juice, 3/4 cup pineapple juice, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, 2 cinnamon sticks, a dash of ground cinnamon, and a dash of ground cloves in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Discard the cinnamon sticks, pour into mugs, and serve. And for the grown-ups, a splash of rum or cinnamon whisky doesn’t hurt. Combine with other winter solstice food for an over-the-top spread. (For an easy hack, just heat up some pre-mixed Trader Joe’s Wassail!)

Share Funny Winter Solstice Greetings Or Meme
Search the web for winter solstice jokes, winter solstice greetings, and winter solstice funny memes to share with loved ones. (Here’s one to get them started: Knock, knock! // Who’s there? // Yule log. // Yule log who? // Yule log the door after you let me in, won’t you?)

Reflect, Release, Let Go, and Set Intentions For The New Season
The winter solstice is considered the seasonal dark night of the soul. Spiritually, it’s a time to honor both the light and the darkness that resides within each of us. Take small scraps of paper and write down the things that you would like to let go of. When everyone has finished, throw them in the yule log fire, transforming darkness into light. After “letting go,” set intentions for the new season ahead—speak aloud a thing, idea, habit, or practice that you would like to bring into your life.

Happy Winter Solstice!

For more winter family activity ideas, read all about the Danish concept of Hygge, otherwise known as cozy together time!

The post How To Celebrate The Winter Solstice appeared first on MOTHER.

Slowing down long enough to make a habit of soulfully attending to life’s details might seem hard to do in our busy lives, but journaling is a compelling way to come home to ourselves in the deepest way possible. Journaling can be one of the simplest daily practices that help remind us why we’re here—a spacious reflection that allows us to soften, open, and arrive at the very depth of our spirituality, depths that can’t be reached from behind the walls we build. When engaged as a self-care practice, journaling enables us to acknowledge our feelings without interfering with them, and it’s in this process of noticing, of plunging ourselves into this experience no matter how tender and difficult, that we get moved closer to home, healing, greater intuition, and better communication.

Even research suggests that journaling is good for our health. University of Texas at Austin psychologist and researcher James Pennebaker contends that regular journaling strengthens immune cells, called T-lymphocytes, as well as decreases the symptoms of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. Writing about stressful events helps you come to terms with them, thus reducing the impact of these stressors on your physical health. Writing our hearts, our issues, and our fears helps to move them a bit farther away from us, onto the page, giving us perspective and range with which to manage those seemingly deep-seated emotional states. We’re able to leave a mark for ourselves, almost like we’re leaving a trail, so when we go back to it—in a week, in a month, in a year, in a decade—there will be wisdom there waiting for us. We can travel through time, we can handle that person, we can heal that person, and we can help that person bring forth into right this moment more solace and more confidence.

The other vantage point attained through journaling is one of “witness” consciousness, or a state of self-observation that is palpable in moments of meditation—those moments when we’re just breathing, listening, and noticing. Journaling can also give us access to our own innermost teacher, the wisdom that for years seemed unattainable and inaccessible. We can see in our own words that we can integrate our studies and our understandings to navigate the daily confusions, coincidences, and celebrations of this life in a whole way, a loving way.

The self-care practice of journaling can also be considered an altruistic act. As a parent, self-care is particularly highlighted because if we don’t take care of ourselves, if we don’t do the little things that we do to help ourselves be this steady beacon for our family, we’re of no use. We can become frustrated, volatile, and temperamental. When we do take care of ourselves though, it feels like we’re doing something. It’s not just generous for us, but it’s altruistic for our family. When the moment comes and the hard edge would normally be thrown up into the space, we can actually stay quite soft, yet hold our ground. It’s important momentum to be offering to our loved ones.

Taking care of oneself is actually the most important generosity that we can express not just to ourselves; it’s really very selfless, and it helps everybody who loves us, everybody near us. It radiates out from family to our friends, to the folks we serve in our work, our students, our teachers. When we’re taking care of ourselves, we’re also able to serve well and nourish others. When in the absence of self-care, we can’t. The confluence from us happens where our good work, our best work, is able to come forth when we’re caring about ourselves the most. When we get six to seven hours of sleep, when we workout, meditate, go for a walk, keep an appointment to go to therapy or acupuncture, or whatever it may be that nourishes us, those are all acts of self-care that actually serve.

There is the value of the practices that we do, and whether we’re journaling, reading, meditating, studying, or practicing yoga, the value of all these little practices is that they each allow us to gain and to gather insights into our own minds—our own patterns—behaviors that aren’t helpful. Through journaling and these other practices, we can learn to refine our own voice and vision, and recognize what makes our hearts happy. We can learn to invite the circumstances, insights, and energetic connections that will help us to be of service, and help to heal ourselves and the world around us.

The post Try It: Journaling As A Healing Practice appeared first on MOTHER.

This article was originally published in 2015.

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Want more Valentines Day gifts for men ideas? Check out 50 more rad gifts for your favorite fellas.

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Want more ideas for sweet Valentines Day gifts for women? Peep our past gift guides for New & Expecting Mamas, The Homebody, Food Lovers, The Hostess, and Self-Care Gifts!

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