I Can’t Remember

Remember Halloween parties when you were a kid? Do you also remember all the bags of trash your dad carried out to the curb the nest? How about those cheap party favors and Halloween decorations that soon ended up broken and in the trash? There’s no reason that your Halloween party has to be an environmental disaster! You can have the coolest Halloween party on the block and still be responsible!

INVITATIONS & DECORATIONS

Start out right: Halloween party invitations can be made out of recycled paper. Make your own and save the printing. Better yet, email invitations! Continue by decorating in an eco-friendly manner: consider how much waste each item produces. Decorations should be re-useable. Buy a Halloween flag to hang up outside instead of balloons. Get decorations that can be used for more than one holiday: scarecrows and pumpkins are good for Thanksgiving as well as Halloween. Those giant lollipops for Christmas can be covered with white cloth and moonlight as ghosts. Be creative.
Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: activities, activity, decorate, decorations, Food, Halloween, party, recipe

Last year I advised against buying live animals for Easter, and instead advocated giving to charity (see There are better places to put bunnies than in Easter baskets. )

This year I will reiterate my “no cute chicks” advice, with a link to a cautionary (if funny) tale:
Easter Chickens Gone Bad

When my daughter was born, waay back when I was a brand new mother, I decreed that she would have: no plastic toys, no disney or cartoon characters, no media tie-ins, nothing branded, nothing with batteries, nothing made overseas by children in sweatshops…

And then people started buying my darling toys. And I started seeing very cute, tempting toys.

Probably 70% of the toys in my house are plastic, 10% take batteries, and 60% are “Made in China.”
So I’m doing better than most, but I’m still cringing as my inner idealistic new mother shrieks “I told you so!”
We all knew better, and now we’re scrambling to buy toys that are safe for our children.

So here’s my round-up of American-made toys:
Americans at Work has a great list of toy sites here,
as does the Made in America site here,
and zebulonUSA’s list here.
At Fat Brain Toys, you can search their hundreds of American made toys.
For all sorts of adorable stuffed animals and accessories, go see Stuffington Bear Factory’s website.
Hearthsong is one of my favorite places to get toys, and while they don’t have a lot this year that are made in America, you can see what they have here.

You can’t buy from this list of American-made plastic toys, but it relieved my mind about a couple that the kids already had.

And as Dan Mosqueda states on his Gifts for Guys - Made in the USA blog post: (which I highly recommend)
“Well, let’s say you can’t find the perfect gift made in the USA, than what? How about looking at countries not actively involved in planning our doom?”

To that end, let’s avoid “Made in China.”
Power of Peace has a fab list of “not made in China” toys,
or go to the Not Made in China Toy Store.

My daughter, who is no longer a baby, wanted a watch this Christmas. I had problems finding an American-made watch for a little girl, so she’s getting a Swatch. Other than that, I’ve tried to find as many American-made products as I can.

Technorati Tags: christmas presents, gifts, holiday, made in USA, made in USA toys, toys

I’m feeling rather Grinch-y this year. And proud of it!

What is Dr. Suess’s classic about? The fact that the holidays are about love, not stuff. A simple message, yet radical.

I am chastised for criticizing the “good cheer” in the malls and grocery stores and drug stores and gas stations this time of year.
But here’s the ugly truth folks: those “holiday displays” are all about displaying merchandise, not the holidays, and they are designed to take our money, not give us good cheer. So if being offended by marketers’ attempts to capitalize on a holiday that’s supposed to be about love makes me a Grinch, then color me green!

To that end, I want to see a movie. Normally I don’t have time, or want to waste the money, but this one looks good: What Would Jesus Buy? Here’s a review. And another from the NYT

It might be horribly offensive, but then, it can’t be any worse than the holidays have become..

Technorati Tags: Christmas, movie, shopping, WWJD

Planning a Holiday party?

Don’t forget to consume thoughtfully–consider how much waste each item produces.

For Inspiration, go look at Sew Green’s entry on a composted party.

Technorati Tags: holiday, party

“Black Thursday” was a day when the stock market crashed, millions of millions were lost, and people’s retirement funds and even some of their lives were ruined. So gee, why is the biggest shopping day of the year called “Black Friday”? Feel free to draw the parallels here.

For those of you who haven’t spent your paycheck through next July but still want to, consider gifts that might help the world, or at least hurt less.

First, see my suggestions about green holiday gifts.

And consider these ideas:

Heifer International buys cute little farm animals for cute little impoverished children around the world, helping them and their families get out of poverty. You buy an flock of ducks for a kid in China for $20 (which provide pest control for rice fields and a source of protein and income from eggs) and give it in honor of your sister-in-law, and she gets less junk to dust and that good feeling you get when you help others, as well as a cute mental picture of some cute kid trying to keep track of ducks in a rice paddy. There are animals and gifts of all sizes, all the way up to the $5000 Ark that provides 15 , you guessed it, pairs of animals.

Oxfarm International has a similar program called “Oxfarm Unwrapped” because “Choosing gifts for some people can be quite an ordeal” Isn’t that the truth! You can plant 50 trees for $30, or provide school uniforms for needy kids for $20, or sheep for families for $45–and that’s just in the U.S.

Give donations in people’s names to charities.
Book lover? Try Room to Read. Animal lover? Donate to the Humane Society or buy a gift through their site. Nature lover? Donate to the Sierra Club or buy a fabulous gift from the National Wildlife Federation.
Be creative, everyone loves something.

Or pledge to Buy Handmade.
Or Buy Local, Organic, Fair Made.

Whatever you do, avoid the mall. Those people are just trying to ruin you and the earth.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, enviro, gift ideas, holiday, shopping

The winter holidays are about shopping and getting stuff, right?

At least that is what people who sell stuff would have us believe!

Remember: don’t trust anyone who acts like they’re doing you a favor and then charges you!

Not only is there a magazine about shopping, called “Lucky“–as in “gee, aren’t I so lucky to be buying a collection of ads so I can then know what the people who want my money want me to buy and how much it’ll cost me!”
but there is also blogs about shopping, like ShoppingAddicted. At least they admit that shopping for some is an addiction, similar to a gambling addition in it’s self-destructive pattern. And the first step is admitting you have a problem.

I’m serious, here! I could not be more appalled!