Seattle Mom Blogs

This week I dove into my review copy of Gorgeously Green by Sophie Uliano and I love it! I feel like there’s so much hype, misunderstanding and fear around the green movement. No two people seem to define “green” the same way and very few of us have identical goals and motivations for making better choices for our families and the world. Often we can’t even agree on what choices are “better.”

I often see fear and guilt used as a motivator to make people want to live more responsible sustainable lives and those tactics don’t work on me. They just make me mad because I feel like I’m being manipulated and if someone needs to work that hard to manipulate me then there must not be much truth to their message.

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Gorgeously Green could really be several different books. It’s a comprehensive guide to earth-friendly living that doesn’t scare you or try to make you feel guilty and it certainly doesn’t suggest that you have to sacrifice your quality of life as you make these changes.

Sophie Uliano is a yoga teacher and convert to the world of green. She outlines great tips for beauty, home, fitness, travel and gardening. She even has an at-home yoga program with pictures and instructions included in the book. Her shopping section gives down-to-earth advice about curbing consumption and paying a little more for quality sustainable goods, rather than falling prey to the media call to buy buy buy more more more.

If you’ve been thinking about jumping on this consciousness bandwagon that’s not going away, Gorgeously Green is a great place to start. Everyone from greeny novices to nature goddesses will learn something from this book. You can choose which steps you want to take and don’t feel overwhelmed by all the things you’re not doing. Ooo, and for all you tech-saavy ladies, she lists tons of great websites to find out more about things like which companies are the worst offenders for using sweatshops and slave labor to where you can go and type in all your beauty products to find out which ones are the least toxic and why.

I carried the book with me like a compass at Whole Foods this week, using her list of toxic ingredients to decide which brands of sunscreen and baby shampoo to purchase. Many of the brands she lists are quite a bit more expensive than I’m used to buying so in some cases I held my breath, plunked them in my cart and vowed not to purchase anything else this week. Other times I used her ingredients list to guide me in buying the least expensive healthy alternative and then quickly hid the book in my bag before I got to the checkout so I wouldn’t be called out by the other shoppers for using a granola cheat sheet. It’s a good cheat sheet though, and one I highly recommend.

Two lucky readers will win copies of this fabulous book that was just released this month. Leave a comment if you want to be entered. Grab some banner code, blog green with it, and leave a link to your post below in the Mr. Linky if you want to be entered twice. Good Luck!

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