“I’m a working mom taking a stand against yucky stuff in my food, cosmetics, etc. and gradually turning my family towards more eco-friendly, natural choices. I’m learning, so this is about our journey towards going green. There may be a few stumbles so hopefully you can laugh with me not at me!”

With that, Shannon Hoffman Hinderberger burst into the blogosphere on Working Mom Goes Green. She wrote about Practically Green earlier this month, and subsequently posted on adding “10 points to my Practically Green profile by drinking locally brewed beer.” Of course, we wanted to know her story!

Shannon grew up in Nebraska, where her “mom fed us as best she could….   on corn-fed beef, Kool-aid and Velveeta cheese.” She describes her green journey as a series of steps over several years:

Let’s just say I discovered veggies when I arrived in Bend, Oregon, seven years ago. I started getting Martha’s Stewart’s little magazine Everyday Food. There’s a website [and an iphone app], too. I use that as my bible.

Oregon is green, recycling is a big deal, and they rolled out these comingle bins at the same time we bought a house, four years ago. That was the next step. Then I got pregnant. I started to watch what I was eating. I was trying to eat more organic food. Then my son came. [Huge sigh] I had big aspirations. I wanted to breastfeed, use cloth diapers, make my own baby food. I went back to work and everything fell by the wayside. The day-care woman wouldn’t do cloth diapers. There was only one person in town who would, and she was booked.

Hubby's shaving-cream label

Anyhow, I started to look at the labels on household products, food, baby products. One day I picked up my husband’s shaving cream and I read the label. I told him, There’s propane in this! He said, I don’t want to put that on my face any more! I thought, I have to do something: I’m going to blog about this.

Sound bites from a few recent posts:

If you don’t have any idea what to do with a certain veggie, ask your friends. I often use Facebook to poll my friends on what to do. You’ll get some amazing results from folks that have tried the veggies.

Announcing her Summer Hair "No-product, No-blowdry" Challenge

I’m not going to hide it. I like Wal-Mart. And I like Wal-Mart even more now that they’ve partnered with Seventh Generation….

If you could only keep 100 items? What would they be? I think this would be easy to do if children weren’t involved. My son alone has more than 100 pieces to his Thomas the Train set!

Son Ben at age Two

Shannon has joined Practically Green’s Motherboard. We hope you’ve enjoyed meeting her as much as we have!

Find her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/shanlee?ref=ts

Twitter @shanlee

email her: Shannon@workingmomgoesgreen.com

Subscribe to http://www.workingmomgoesgreen.com/

See all Shannon’s links here: http://flavors.me/shanlee – _