Organic Holidays

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Here we are again. Nearing the end of 2009, getting ready to launch into 2010 and, hoping against hope that the economy improves, jobs get more plentiful, and our uneasy feelings are pushed aside and replaced with peace and goodwill.

I love almost all things organic, and I want to share this website www.organicholidays.co.uk and book with you, Organic Places to Stay by Linda Moss, a comprehensive guide to organic and sustainable holidays. It details places to visit (and stay) around the world that are eco-friendly and organic.

Enjoy the Inn at Valley Farms, a bed and breakfast in Walpole, New Hampshire, which is situated on 105 acres of certified organic farmland. Or, try a Macrocruise experience. Macrocruise is a sailing yacht charter with certified organic products on board. Macrocruise charters yachts from several bases along the Croatian coast, from Istria and the island of Krk in Northern Adriatic to Sibenik, Primosten, or Dubrovnik down south. They promote a lifestyle that includes the use of organic and environmentally friendly products for nutrition and households, as well as vegetarianism. When you arrive, you will find the fridge and shelves of your onboard kitchen stocked with organic groceries.

In addition to places to stay around the world, you’ll find a Marketplace listing tours, workshops, restaurants, green weddings, organic beer and, of course, a tractor driving lesson at the Gwarmacwydd Farm in Pembrokeshire. Even if you can’t find the time and money this year for a much needed vacation, maybe you’ll find it next year. This is a very worthwhile website to peruse when thinking of your next vacation.


Happy Holidays from Cypriana,
Susan Thomas

Visit Cypriana online for great gift ideas ~ natural and organic products for baby, bed & bath!

Start a New Holiday Tradition - Eliminate the Usual Gift Giving

We are so accustomed to giving gifts to one another during the holidays that it seems automatic or obligatory. I'd like to see each of us look at gift giving in a different context this year.

The gifts of Christmas should be the togetherness and love of family and friends, good food and music. My family - 2 sons and their wives and my son's father and his wife - decided to stop the Christmas gifts several years ago. We always ended up giving gift certificates to each other because none of us needed anything special at that particular time of year. We have always given to each other all year long when important or meaningful items would appear.

The gift giving has so much more meaning when it's directed to those who have very little or nothing: the gift of a new coat or shoes to a foster child, food to the food banks, money to the local mission for meals for the homeless and volunteering your preciouis time to help those in need.

As the years have passed, both daughters-in-law and their families have stopped the gift giving. And, as we all tell our friends and they tell their friends the movement to stop the meaningless gift giving has started. We still give to the children, but once they graduate from college, they know the stress of gift giving ends. If we teach our children at a very young age how truly special the gift of time and giving of our ourselves can be, we will find that "Peace and Goodwill to All" is not just a Christmas story. You might be surprised how many giving ideas your children can think of, a really special Christmas tradition could begin this year.

Happy Holidays!
Susan Thomas
Cypriana

Largest Crib Recall in U.S. History - Stork Craft Cribs

Another Crib Recall –

You would think the manufacturers would get it right by now. But not so. How can we change the course of what types of products manufacturers send to the stores? We either buy the product or we don’t buy the product. We as consumers make or break a sale. If we don’t like something, we don’t buy it and it goes away.

A baby crib is where our precious baby sleeps for several years. How can we ever think that it might also kill our precious child? The manufacturers of cribs need to be told to get it right and stop endangering our children. Mothers have a huge voice when it comes to protecting our children. We need to use this voice now.

We need to stop buying the drop side crib. Buy the crib with the stationary sides. If you buy a crib, and after assembly you think the crib is not safe, then take it back to the store and tell them the problem. It may be a hassle to take it back, but it could save the life of your child. If you buy a second hand crib, remember your child’s safety first. There are lots of dangerous drop side cribs sitting in someone’s garage waiting to be sold.

Largest crib recall in U.S. history announced
Suffocation danger tied to 2.1 million drop-side cribs made by Stork Craft.

Crib recall largest in history
Nov. 23: The Consumer Products Safety Commission is planning to announce the largest ever recall of more than 2 million baby cribs with dropdown sides. NBC's Tom Costello reports.
Nightly News

Government safety regulators say more than 2.1 million drop-side cribs by Stork Craft Manufacturing are being recalled, the biggest crib recall in U.S. history.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says the recall involves 1.2 million cribs in the United States and almost 1 million in Canada, where Stork Craft is based.

Nearly 150,000 of the cribs on recall carry the Fisher-Price logo.

The agency is aware of four deaths of young children who suffocated in the cribs, which have a side that moves up and down to allow parents to lift children from the cribs more easily.

The Stork Craft cribs have had problems with their hardware, which can break, or with assembly mistakes by the crib owner.

The danger is that a child's head can get caught between the mattress and the side railing, if it separates from the crib.

This is not the first time cribs have been recalled due to such fears. Nearly 5 million cribs by several manufacturers have been recalled over the past two years, including half a million from Stork Craft earlier this year, and the CPSC has considered banning drop-down sides altogether.
"Drop-side cribs, because of the amount of hardware that's involved, because it weakens the structure of the crib itself have been involved in numerous deaths and injuries, crib failures where the side may come loose or come off," said Nancy Cowles, of the advocacy group Kids in Danger.

Stork Craft is one of the most widely purchased brand names in baby cribs , with products sold at some of the biggest retailers in the country, including Target, WalMart, Sears and Kmart.
CPSC urges parents and caregivers to immediately stop using the recalled cribs, wait for the free repair kit and avoid attempting to fix the cribs without the kit. They should find an alternative, safe sleeping environment for their baby. Consumers should contact Stork Craft to receive a free repair kit that converts the drop-side on these cribs to a fixed side.

The cribs, which were manufactured and distributed between January 1993 and October 2009, sold for between $100 and $400, and were made in Canada, China and Indonesia.
The manufacture date, model number, crib name, country of origin, and the firm's name, address and contact information are located on the assembly instruction sheet attached to the mattress support board. The firm's insignia "storkcraft baby" or "storkling" is inscribed on the drop-side teething rail of some cribs.















The cribs’ drop-side plastic hardware can break or deform, or parts can become missing. In addition, the drop-side can be installed upside-down, which can result in broken or disengaged plastic parts. All of these problems can cause the drop-side to detach in one or more corners. When the drop-side detaches, it creates space between the drop-side and the crib mattress. The bodies of infants and toddlers can become entrapped in the space, which can lead to suffocation. Complete detachment of drop-sides also can lead to falls from the crib.

CPSC, Health Canada and Stork Craft are aware of 110 incidents of drop-side detachment; 67 incidents occurred in the United States and 43 in Canada. The incidents include 15 entrapments, 12 in the U.S. and three in Canada. Four of the entrapments resulted in suffocation: a 7-month-old in Gouverneur, N.Y.; a 7-month-old in New Iberia, La.; a 6-month-old in Summersville, W.Va.; and a 9-month-old in Bronx, N.Y. Another 20 babies have fallen from their cribs.

Meanwhile, safety experts caution that cribs often stay in homes for generations. If you have one of the cribs in your basement that's been recalled in recent years, fix it or get rid of it. The full list of crib recalls is on the CPSC Web site.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Original story is from MSNBC.

Cypriana ~ natural and organic products for baby, bed & bath