1. Have the children make daffodil candy cups to welcome guests to the Easter festivities. This quick-and-easy craft project requires card stock, baking cups and jellybeans. Look for card stock, baking cups and jellybeans in colors like orange and yellow.
2. Cut out a daffodil shape from the card stock and repeat this for as many daffodil candy cups as you’d like to make.
3. Have the children fill the baking cups with candy.
4. Glue the bottom of the baking cup to the center of the daffodil cutout.
5. Place on top of countertops, use as table settings, or even use to lead the kids to the next scavenger hunt clue.
6. Alternate Option: Not a fan of daffodils? Make tulips instead. Opt for purple and pink colored card stock and jelly beans in soft, pastel colors.

Eggshell Easter Ornaments

1. Instead of boiling the eggs, empty out the egg yourself by poking a hole in it with a needle. Leave the needle instead the egg – the pearly end of the needle will mark the bottom of the ornament.
2. If you have older children – the eggshells are far to sensitive for small children’s hands – have them dye and embellish the eggshells with ribbon and trimmings.
3. Once decorated, take some ribbon and fold it in half.
4. Poke a pin through the two ends of the ribbon and secure to the top of the egg. This will act as the ornament hook.

Why Bother?
Looking out her kitchen window one day, Libby Scancarello watched as her three kids, two dogs, and one cat all gamboled happily together on her lush, green lawn—and freaked out.

“I just kept thinking that the chemicals we had sprayed on it every year probably weren’t the best thing for them to be playing in,” says Scancarello, who lives in Troy, Ohio. So she decided to do something about it. She fired her lawn-care company and hired PureLawn Organic Lawncare, a Cincinnati-based company that uses only chemical-free fertilizers and biological pest and disease control. “I haven’t looked back since,” says Scancarello, adding that her yard looks as lush as ever.

If the numbers of natural lawn-care services and products hitting the market are any indication, a lot of homeowners would like to do the same. To many of them, a mere glance at the “Keep out of reach of children” labels on most pesticides and herbicides is reason enough. Keep reading to learn the benefits of going chemical-free and see how you can break your lawn’s addiction to synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

The underlying philosophy behind organic lawn care is this: Healthy, chemical-free soil begets robust lawns that can virtually take care of themselves. After years of being inundated by chemicals to fend off grubs, eradicate weeds, and green up the turf, the natural capacity of the soil to perform these tasks itself has ceased operation, practitioners say. Cut it off from the chemicals cold turkey, and you’ll get things running again—naturally. And once the soil’s healthy, you might never have to deal with pesticides, herbicides, even fertilizers again. “That’s the thing about going organic,” says Eileen Gunn of Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group. “Not only do you get a nice, safe, healthy lawn, it is also a more sustainable one over the long term.”

With over 2 billion Energy Star?certified products sold in the U.S. since 1992, energy-saving appliances are becoming the rule, rather than the exception. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency—the program’s creator—is trying to duplicate its success with a new water-conserving campaign called WaterSense. First up is a label for toilets that use less than 1.3 gallons per flush—that’s 20 percent less water than the 1.6 gallons currently required by federal law. It’ll be a few years before WaterSense sets standards for other products, such as washing machines and dishwashers. Until then, follow these five simple steps to make your home more H?0-efficient:

1. Put a pitcher of drinking water in the fridge; letting the faucet run until water gets cold wastes two gallons per minute.

2. Fix leaks pronto. One drip per second adds up to 2,700 gallons a year.

3. Hose down the garden in the early morning or at dusk to avoid losing water to evaporation caused by the hot sun.

4. Don’t use your toilet as a trash bin. Every unnecessary flush equals 1.6 gallons of wasted water.

5. Scrape, rather than rinse, plates when loading the dishwasher.