The following is a post from our sponsor, Burpee Home Gardens.

Gardening has many benefits. Not only is it great exercise and a stress reliever, it can also improve your family’s health. Many of the best sources for antioxidants come from home gardening favorites such as cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce and peppers.

Take advantage of your garden with these tips for healthy eating:

One builder in Ohio is taking the idea of constructing a green home to a whole new level, by using straw instead of regular building materials. Straw. As in hay. As in "The Three Little Pigs."

But wait a minute -- I thought that the Big Bad Wolf destroyed the straw house, which forced that little pig to move in with the one who used bricks instead? I'm confused. How can a straw house actually stand up against rain, wind, snow, and whatever else Mother Nature may throw at it?

According to the builder, there is nothing to fear, as there is some kind of mud used to effectively pack the straw into the house. He calls it "earth plaster." Yeah -- ok.

A prototype for a new type of zero-energy-consuming house is on display in Los Angeles, and of course it’s very impressive. But you know what I love about it? It’s poofy!

Blah blah blah zero footprint, yadda yadda solar energy. Did I mention it’s poofy?

They also modified an X-Box Kinect so that all you have to do is wave at lights to turn them on and off. It’s like the clapper, but silent.

It’s an award-winning design from students at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and it’s actually an amazing design that I wish I could implement today. Here, let me show you around.

Sigh. When is Gisele Bundchen going to learn that she really needs to think long and hard about her choice of words before opening her (big) mouth?

The supermodel has never been shy about voicing her strong opinions on parenting, which have gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion. From insisting she had a painless childbirth to proclaiming that breastfeeding needs to be a law, Tom Brady's other half seems to spit out whatever happens to be in the front of her brain at any given moment.

Now, she has people all fired up again -- but this time, it's not because of another desperate attempt to be mom of the year. The latest furor is over her claim that the 22,000-square-foot mega-mansion she and Brady are building is actually environmentally friendly (yes, I said 22,000 square feet). She may find herself hiding from attacks on her words in the labyrinth of rooms rather than actually getting to enjoy all that luxury. Bummer.

This is the first year that I’m packing a lunch every day (well, three times a week anyway) for my kid, and I’m a bit depressed about how much garbage we’re suddenly producing. I’m paranoid about germs and food safety, and as a result overuse plastic sandwich bags, snack bags, plastic wrap, and assorted other landfill-filling crap.
 
But enough is enough! The other day, I was perched next to my daughter, Penelope, on a miniature chair, sharing lunch, when I looked around the octagonal table and saw that almost every single kid had some kind of adorable eco-friendly food container in his or her lunchbox.
 
Now I have the lust for these -- they're washable, long-lasting, and in many cases actually better for the flavor of the food.

The East Coast may be in the middle of the floodpocalypse, but the South is still suffering through some of the worst drought conditions on record.

Even when there’s no shortage, saving water is just good policy. As a child, I used to watch my dad shave. Rather than running the water over his razor to rinse it, he would fill the sink with water and swish the razor through at top speed. He said that serving in the Navy taught him how precious water is. 

“Why don’tcha save some for the fish,” he’d mutter, if I was letting the tap run too long.

We could all stand to preserve a few drops this summer. Here are some tips for saving water at home. Some are strange, some are easy, and some will save you buckets of cash on your water bill, for reals.

Red, white, and blue flowerpot for your stoop.Where I used to live in Queens, there was a guy on the corner whose garage was packed to the rafters with neatly organized and labeled boxes containing house decorations for every conceivable holiday -- the guy even sidestepped irony by having big, plastic, unrecyclable Arbor Day decorations. Every few weeks, his beleaguered wife would trail after him to their backyard and he’d bark orders to her, moving the boxes with military precision to rotate out the next batch of abode-bunting. 

I cannot be bothered. I prefer my holiday decorations to be subdued, natural, and storage-free. Which is why I created a cute little red, white, and blue flowerpot for the Fourth of July that’ll fly its colors all summer long!

Do you like it? Here’s some advice if you want to do something similar.

I have this annoying box in my storage area, and it’s full of re-usable party supplies: gift bags, themed paper plates, leftover goody-bag crap/swag, slightly wrinkled wrapping paper, odd lengths of ribbon, and a few banners that, at this point, say something more like HAPY BITHDY.

I am not giving up that box.

But I think there’s a better way -- reusable party decorations and goody bags that don’t instantly add to landfills.

And I think that even if each item is more than I'd pay for the disposable kind, the reuse more than makes up for the initial expense.
 
Would these ideas work for you?