Make it a road trip with PIPs

Grab a map - and download your TravelStorysGPS app (for a few PIPs, of course) - for one last summer adventure or maybe a first-of-fall weekend. TravelStorysGPS works with local organizations to uncover the real stories behind the places we love and to create immersive tour experiences. Bike along the scenic pathways of South Carolina’s Kiawah Island or hike the magical China Creek Trail in North Carolin’s Blue Ridge Mountains while learning about the wildlife, ecology and conservation stories unique to these areas. Journey across the state of Wyoming in the tracks of early pioneers as they made their way to the American West. Or listen to stories of the coal miners and communities who worked the Black Diamond Byway in Sheridan Wyoming around the turn of the 19th century.  Got a storied place you’d like to share, send an email to [email protected].

Farm stay in the Catskills

Looking for a fun family retreat within driving distance of NYC? Cash in just 100 PIPs for 10% Off a 2 night (min.) stay at Stony Creek Farmstead in Walton, NY, the heart of the Catskills. Offering a uniquely immersive farm stay experience, you'll stay in a rustic but luxurious platform tent with canopied ceilings and canvas walls, make your own meals of fresh garden veggies and eggs you collect yourself and meet the farmer to see how cows are milked and cheese gets made. Wake up to the sound of a babbling creek. Hike the trails, swim the crystal clear pond, read under a tree, paint, relax -  it's the perfect place to unplug.

Got wheels, lights, off-the-grid phone chargers?

Maybe it’s the warmer weather or a desire to do some spring cleaning, but I seem to have laundry on my mind. I recently found a very handy downloadable wallet card from an article on caring for your clothes on the NRDC website which outlines some useful tips on cleaning clothes while also being environmentally conscious. Take a look at the great ideas for choosing cleaning option best for you, your clothes, and the planet. Might just tack it up on my fridge for easy reference.

1. Wash at home with professional results

Many of your clothes that say “dry clean only” can actually be spot treated and washed by hand or by using the gentle wash cycle at home. For home care instructions and eco-friendly detergents, see The Laundress at www.pipsrewards.com. You can also take your hand-washed clothes to a dry cleaner for professional pressing only.

2. Professional wet cleaning

Wet cleaning uses water and non toxic solvents to get clothes clean without producing hazardous waste or releasing dangerous gases. Wet cleaning also uses water and electricity very efficiently, making it much preferred to dry cleaning. Also,it leaves no toxic residue on clothes.

3. Liquid carbon dioxide cleaning

This method uses pressurized carbon dioxide as a solvent to clean clothes. While carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas,the gas used in this process is recycled and does not escapeto the environment or contribute to global warming. No toxicresidue is left on clothes. 

Easter is here! Time to decorate eggs and fill baskets and our bellies with treats. It should be fun, right? A little sugar-buzz never hurt anyone.

Well, except when you think about what goes into a lot of candy - the dyes, artificial flavors, preservatives...and don't forget the palm oil, a key ingredient in candy and snack foods.

Don't mean to be a bummer, but did you ever see the first episode of the Showtime series, Years of Living Dangerously? Harrison Ford reported on the loss of precious carbon-sequestering rainforest to grow palm trees for palm oil. There is also concern over displacement and disruption of human and animal populations due to palm oil cultivation.

Ah man, it’s Easter. Can’t we celebrate the coming of spring - the regeneration of the planet - AND get a little sugar fix?

As a matter of fact, yes. Skip the conventional easter treats (marshmallow puffs, creme eggs, you get the drift) and go on a hunt for the “good” stuff - yummy chocolates responsibly grown and jelly beans without dyes and preservatives.

Wondering how you know what makes the candy “good?” Here are some tips from PIPs on what to look for in chocolates and jelly beans:

When you see the Rainforest Alliance Certified™ green frog seal, you know that the product you’re buying is grown and harvested using environmentally and socially responsible practices.  Workers are treated fairly. Responsible crop, soil and waste management procedures are practiced and ecosystem and water conservation are applied.

Another logo we’re PIP’d about is:

The USDA Organic seal certifies that at least 95% of the ingredients in your candies are organically grown – produced without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or food additives.

And another:

The Non-GMO Project seal means your treat is produced according to rigorous best practices of GMO (genetically modified organism) avoidance.

Before those marshmallow puffs sneak into your house for Easter, get a basketful of PIPs by clicking here first to purchase these earth-friendly favorites:

Endangered Species Chocolates

Yummy Earth Sour Beans

Dagoba Organic Chocolate

Sweetriot Jammin’ Jelly Beans

Equal Exchange Chocolates

Annie’s Bunny Fruit

Surf Sweets

Got enough candy? Add a super cute 100% organic stuffed animals through pipsrewards.com.

Bone chilling, that's what it's like outside where I live. It's so bitter cold, one might be inclined to just hole up inside until spring. But don't succumb to that notion. The Arctic Clipper has nothing on cabin fever.

I say embrace the winter - get outside, enjoy it before it's too late. Just be prepared.

The secret to outdoor fun is staying warm, and the key to staying warm is to layer. If you don't have long underwear, you should get some. My husband loves his Patagonia Capilene lightweight long underwear. He puts them on in October, doesn't take them off until April (except to wash them, of course, but as he's got several pairs - of both the tops and the bottoms - he's always got them on).

Next layer on a Patagonia Down Sweater made with 100% recycled ripstop shell. This down sweater delivers featherweight, compressible warmth for your cold-weather outdoor activities.

Need some better walking shoes? Check out these great Oboz.

You can earn PIPs reward points buying all these items at pipsrewards.com. Why? Because like all products in the PIPs catalog, we've made sure they're responsibly made. If your choices are smarter, we think your reward points should be too.

Yeah, I know. Plunging temperatures have turned sidewalks into ice rinks. But check out that sunlight. Since the winter solstice on Dec. 21st, when the sunset occurred around 4:31 in the afternoon, we’ve added 1 hour and 15 additional minutes of daylight!

And we’re only just getting started. The days get longer faster in February and March than in any other month of the year.

That’s just brilliant. Makes me beam.

Being appreciative of little things is part of my new ‘gratitude practice.’ Instead of fixating on the rain and the sleet, I’m choosing to revel in the fact the sun is up well past 5pm.

I’ve been reading Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book “The How of Happiness” (earn PIPs downloading it from iTunes). A research psychologist and University of California professor, Lyubomirsky has found that happy people share some common traits:

·      They are comfortable expressing gratitude for all they have.

·      They savor life’s pleasures and try to live in the present moment.

·      They make physical exercise a weekly and even daily habit.

·      They are often the first to offer helping hands to coworkers and passerby.

I hate my clothes dryer. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a terrific dryer – energy efficient and all that. I just don’t love what it does to my clothes. Too many times in the dryer can take the life out of them.

For my clothes, I prefer to hang dry them. I live in a small apartment with no yard and no porch, but have set up the equivalent of a backyard clothesline in the spare bathroom. In fact, I redeemed a few hundred Positive Impact Points (or PIPs Rewards) for a DUO Small Item Drying Accessory and the Robbins HomeGoods Family sized wooden drying rack from our very cool partner, the Climate Store.

The rack is in the bathtub, the DUO hangs from the shower rod. It’s amazing. I dry all my clothes and some of my husband’s without going near the dryer. It’s great on my clothes, and an additional perk is the sizable bite it’s taken out of our energy bill. I hadn’t realized this, but according to  Saving Electricity “a clothes dryer accounts for a whopping 12% of electricity use in a typical household.”

So what about jeans, you ask? I machine wash and dry those, right? Nope, I put them in the freezer! That’s right. I hate what the washing machine can do to a nice pair of jeans almost as much as I hate what the dryer does to all my other clothes.

In low-income households, children end up forgetting almost 3.5 months of learning during the summer months. When they return to school, teachers spend an average of 1.5 months re-teaching curriculum. This is called summer learning loss, and it’s a growing concern among lower income urban communities.

Enter Practice Makes Perfect, a summer program that creates life enriching learning experiences for inner-city youth from grade one to college graduation by providing mentorship and resources that are otherwise not available to students in inner-city public schools.

So how does it work? PIPs spoke with Practice Makes Perfect founder and CEO Karim Abouelnaga who explained:

“Through a unique multi-relational approach, Practice Makes Perfect pairs academically struggling elementary and middle school students with older, higher achieving mentor peers from the same inner-city neighborhoods, all under the instruction of trained college interns and supervision of certified teachers for a six-week, full-day academic experience. Now with three programs completed, we know this works."

By providing 200 hours of remedial instruction and enrichment in math, reading, and writing, Practice Makes Perfect helps kids return to school in the fall one month ahead, instead of three months behind. And because all of the mentors in the program come from the same inner-city neighborhoods as the program participants, kids feel comfortable problem solving alongside members of their immediate communities.

Karim continued, “Where I grew up, most poor and minority children forfeit their dreams because they have difficulty marshaling resources to succeed in the classroom. My path was different.

Fortunately, I benefitted from non-profits, such as New York Needs You and Rewarding Achievement, which gave me the chance to work with college graduate mentors and role models. In large part, their belief in me and investment in my success allowed me to escape a dead-end life.”

Over the last three years, Practice Makes Perfect has directly impacted 400 students and indirectly impacted thousands more through it’s positive involvement in community service efforts.

Got a summer break coming? Looking forward to laying back with a great book or maybe a few? Pack a stack, but go light by stocking up on e-books.

The popular ones below and more come with a pile of PIPs as well when you start your shopping at the pipsrewards.com e-book portal. 

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver  A celebration of human nature and wilderness, Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch is a "stay-up-all-night-and-tell-your-friends" triumph. Goldfinch follows the story of a boy whose mother is killed in a terrorist attack and the one thing that reminds him of her, a captivating painting that ultimately draws him into a criminal underworld.

I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You: A Novel By Courtney Maum  Set in Paris and London, this “reverse love story” of a failed monogamist attempting to win back his wife through art begs the question: Is it really possible to fall back in love with your spouse?

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn  The New York Times bestselling author Gillian Flynn has penned a suspenseful masterpiece about a marriage gone terrible wrong, grippingly told from alternating perspectives of both spouses.