Monthly Archives: September 2009

I discovered a whole new world of kids music the other day thanks to Organic Girl’s blog.  Visit Putumayo for upbeat songs from a variety of cultures throughout the world.  There’s no way your kids can help but to get their groove on while listening to this music in a wide range of languages.  It’s like taking a mini-vacation right from your stereo!!

They have a variety of cultures represented from South Africa to Euroope to Russia to Palestine.  They’ve got one CD that just does different songs of Sesame Street shows throughout the world.  Fantastic!!  My toddler is dancing to it right now…  She’s always dancing to something.

Thanks to Organic Girl for offering a review of the different CD’s available from Putumayo.  She’s also doing a give-away right now of four of Putumayo’s different albums that would make a fantastic Christmas gift for any kid or kid at heart.  I’m telling you, there’s no way the kids could cry while listening to this stuff.  It’s just so different, lively and upbeat.  I even have a hard time sitting still while I’m listening to it!

It’s important to teach children about different cultures while teaching them a love for the environment.  It’s just as important for kids to develop a love of all kinds of people, beliefs and cultures.  After all, people and the plants and animals inhabiting the earth are some of the main reasons for trying to save the planet, right?

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Designer Home Furniture can be attained while living within your boundaries of eco-friendly living.  The trick is to shop carefully!  Only buy pieces that are actually green and research to ensure that the product doesn’t just appear to be green.  Many companies are jumping on the eco-friendly living bandwagon by greenwashing products to appeal to those of us who care about the sustainability of our lifestyles.

Bamboo is a good example of this.  It’s an inherently green resource because it is so fast growing, requires no pesticides or harmful chemicals during it’s growing period.  However, many furniture companies will build something out of bamboo and then stain it or seal it with a toxic compound.  Technically, whatever they’ve constructed is still “green” but is it green enough for you?

Look for pieces like this tetris inspired bamboo shelf by Brave Space Design.  It’s finished with an organic herbal oil and then treated with a non-toxic durable water based finish.  This piece would look amazing in almost any space with the shapes harkening back to the good old days of the 80′s.  You can look backwards in time while protecting the future!  Beautiful and sustainable do not have to be opposing terms.

This is a sponsored post with 100% real opinions.

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Ouono Design is a 100% Canadian design house out of Vancouver that specializes in upcycling vintage materials.  They make a huge range of products out of items that have found their way to “rag houses”.  Things only generally end up at these rag warehouses after they have failed to sell at a used goods store such as Value Village.  Ouono looks for high quality, vintage materials that can be upcycled into a variety of products such as pillows, covers, throws and bags.

These trench coat bags are not only good looking and easy to match, they’re ultra practical because of the weather resistant material that trench coats are usually made of.  Ouono design uses only the best quality trench coats to construct a three sizes of bags fittingly named The Agent 99, The Sam Spade and the Raymond Chandler.  The preferred brands used by the design company when sourcing the trench coats are Burberry, London Fog, Aquascutum and Bentley’s.  The bags are all unique because the design of the bag is dictated somewhat by the design of the trenchcoat.

The coat’s belt becomes the sturdy handle of the bag.  The lining of the unisex yet startlingly sexy bag is made from the lining of the trenchcoat itself.  The inside of the bag has assorted pockets and compartments made up of various elements of the trench coat as well that makes the interior of the bag as green and practical as the outside of the bag.  I hope Santa’s reading this post because this bag would make an awesome gift for me!!  They sell these bags on Etsy as well as their own site in a variety of colours.  The colour variety is, of course, limited by the variety of colours of the trench coats they get.  It looks like khaki, taupe, sand, cream, darker khaki, navy green, navy blue and brown are the main colours.  I’ll definitely be focusing in on this company again in future posts.  Love both the idea and execution behind this company!

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There are tons of eco-friendly websites starting up in the big green web out there and that’s great news for everyone.  But how do you make your green site even greener???  You look for a green web host to run your green web site because it only makes sense, right?

The problem is that green has become the new black.  Everyone thinks it’s fashionable or chic to go green and those materialistic corporations and the people behind them are cashing in on this trend.  Many things that look eco-friendly on the surface turn out to be nothing by green-washed when you really look into it.  People really need to research where they are spending their money if they really truly care about the environment.  The truth is that people and companies will only do what they can get away with.  If green washing no longer becomes something that a company can get away with and make money, they will stop doing it.

There are many ways that a web hosting service can go green.  Alternative energy sources, carbon credits, waste recycling, tree planting and renewable energy sources all go into making a web hosting service “green”.  However, these practices are followed differently by each company so you really need to look into what you are buying into.  Comapnies like web hosting geeks can really help you to figure out what your best options are for web site hosting by giving you a look into what different services offer, what their bonus features are, how users rate their services, and just how “green” that host provider may or may not be.  I’d definitely recommend that people look into what “shade” of green their web site host is before they choose.

This is a sponsored post with 100% real opinions.

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Now you can make sure every holiday is “green” with these eco-friendly designs from dreaminggiggles on Etsy.  This designer calls these creations “wreath cycles” as opposed to re-cycling.  Clever and super funky at the same time!  She has a Masters in Art Education and absolutely loves to create.  More of her creations can be seen at her blog site dreaminggigglesdesign.com.  She does a ton of custom painting and hand lettering of signs and plaques that are absolutely gorgeous!

These eco-friendly wreaths are made from old sweaters cut up into squares and strung together.  The Halloween wreath is made out of black and gray sweater squares and then draped in gruesome spider webs.  Grosgrain ribbon is added to as a hanger and as an accent bow on the bottom.  The Christmas wreath is made out of red and green sweaters and accented in the same manner with grosgrain ribbon.

These wreaths feel totally retro and hip at the same time.  Very folksy, funky and fashionable!  She makes them in full wreath size (approx 11 inches) as well as in smaller diameter sizes (approx 4.5 inches) for ornaments that would look outstanding on any tree.  I think these would be fantastic as an ornament exchange or a teacher’s gift as well.  Check out her Etsy site for info on what’s available before she’s all out!

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September is the busiest, craziest month for families which is closely followed by the fast approaching month of December.  It seems like I’m just running from one thing to another from the second I get up to the time I go to bed!  My son has just started his first year of high school.  Now he has to take the bus every morning, there’s more homework and more travel time.  He’s also in fencing lessons twice a week and volunteering at the local Food Bank once every two weeks.  It’s hard to keep his schedule organized never mind him!

My daughter has just started her first year of preschool (huge age difference, I know).  She needs a snack, a ride there and back, hair done, battle over the clothes, volunteering at the preschool from time to time, etc. etc.  She’s also got ballet and gymnastics both starting this week…yikes!

With busy kids, a full time job, a hubby and a dog, the house keeping seems to be the first thing to fall by the wayside.  I can’t imagine what my house would look like without the modern conveniences that make things a little faster.  My favorite, by far, is the central vacuum.  I can’t imagine having to lug a vacuum up and down two sets of stairs to clean up after the dog, the kids and, let’s face it, my husband! lol  Having a built in vacuum makes life much easier because of the ease and accessibility of the vacuum on all three floors of the house.  I especially love the vacuum dustpan in the kitchen so that you can sweep up messes quickly and easily without having to bend down or find anything except the broom!

My other favorite quick cleaning tools are my steam mop and array of chemical free, eco-friendly cleaners.  My daughter has asthma so that makes getting rid of dusts and germs essential in our house.  I am committed to lively as green-ly as possible so eco, chem-free cleaners are the only way to go for me.  With kids and a dog as well, I really think that more traditional cleaners can be harmful.  You never know what might be licked (everything!) or gotten into (okay, everything there too!).  Better safe than sorry!!  Plus, the added benefit of a cleaner planet for our children to inherit makes all the difference.

I better run and get cleaning!!  *sigh*

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Imagine being able to see a light out of a pile of trash!  That’s the gift one French artist, Angele Riguidel, has.  Her art consists mainly of various pieces of trash being turned into lamps that are not only useful but great conversation pieces.  Her lamps show a rich sense of humour in the variety and use of the bulbs interspersed with the upcycled pieces of garbage.

Her work encompasses a huge range of upcycled items from automobile parts to household appliances.  In her portfolio, you’ll recognize blenders, tail lights, fenders, pop cans, painted metal boxes, toys, jam jars, cake pans, milk crates, fans, cameras, pipe, a bingo ball machine, a mop bucket, cotton and hose.  You’ll probably also see a ton of other items that will make you wonder just what the heck it is!!  Break out your French to English dictionary because the entire site is en francais.

It was hard to pick out a few examples of her work which encompasses so much.  I liked the hub cap lamp because it looks very useable as a desktop lamp while still maintaining the original texture of being a hub cap from a Mercedes.  This would be great in a mechanic’s shop or backyard garage but still also very good looking for home use.  Many upcycled art pieces are more “art pieces” than functional pieces but this lamp rises above that.

The turn signal lamp has great bright colours that would be a cool accent piece in a little boy’s car themed room.  Great use of creativity and ingenuity that really might set some serious DIY’ers into action.

I love the cookie tin because it’s creepy and funny at the same time.  It’s not truly functional as an actual lamp but would look kinda neat on the bookshelf.  I love that she chose the model’s eyes for the light bulb placement.  This one too would make a great DIY project.

The shower head light is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.  It would fit right in with clean modern lines of a minimalist bedroom with two mounted as reading lights on either side of the bed.  Viewers would have to get a close look at it to realize the lamp’s previous life as a shower head.

The vacuum light is hysterically kooky.  This piece, more than any of the others I’ve featured here, really show off the artist’s personality as well as her creativity.  It resembles an alien more than a light fixture, really and I’m sure kids would absolutely love this one.

The clock light enables one to bring the artist’s creativity on the road.  The travelling alarm clock light would make a cute and weird piece to bring a little art and life into some of the boring business trips people seem to be taking more and more of lately.

Angele’s work really shows what can be done with one person’s trash when it’s viewed as a treasure, a never-ending resource of raw materials from which to produce art.  These pieces truly define the term “upcycled art” and add a neat twist of making the art into a usable form.  In this way, garbage can again be “consumed” adding a magnificient second life to an item instead of piling up our overflowing landfills with ever more things.

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This picture from flickr user amandabhslater shows a sign in South Australia along a particularly long and boring stretch of road that says “Drowsy Drivers Die”.  The sign also illustrates that there is a rest stop in 1 km.  Signs like this should be used more often as the sagging economy and dragging recession are forcing more and more people to work multiple jobs.  An entire new category of disorder called Shift Work Disorder has cropped up because people’s sleep schedules have been disrupted by working long or unusual hours.

The sleep shortage and sleep disruptions can seriously effect the way that people drive.  Drowsy driving has been shown to effect drivers in many of the same serious and impairing ways as using alcohol or drugs and getting behind the wheel.  Some studies have shown that short naps, sometimes as short as 20 minutes, can readily improve a driver’s ability to react appropriately behind the wheel.

If you, your co-workers or your family members are getting behind the wheel while tired, try to find time to take a short nap.  Try to stick to a sleep schedule that your body can adjust to over time.  It just may save someone’s life…maybe even your own!

This is a sponsored post with 100% real opinions.

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Christmas is but 77 shopping days away!! If you’re planning on getting everything done on time, I’d definitely suggest that you start right now. Decorating is a huge part of the holiday season for many people, regardless of religion. Christmas did start out though as a strictly Catholic holiday so nativity sets are still a very popular form of decoration to signify the belief of the birth of baby Jesus.

The nativity scene can come in a variety of sizes but the lifesize sets seem to be very popular. Whether you are planning on placing the scene outside of your home, church or business, a lifesize nativity set definitely makes a huge statement. It can act as a conversation starter to share ideas of faith, love and devotion throughout the holiday season.

The most common pieces that are included in a nativity scene are baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the 3 wise men and a variety of animals. This deluxe 14 piece set includes all of that and more — a shooting star, an angel, two sleeping lambs, a colorfully saddled camel, a brown ox and a gray donkey round out the figures of the key players in the story of Jesus’ birth. The baby itself is snuggled craddled in hay and blankets and seriously makes me want to start singing the Christmas carol “Away in a Manager”. You’ll have loads of carollers and Christmas spirit if you have this set in your front yard this year!

Ensure that any outdoor ornaments, including nativity sets, are strong and durable enough to withstand the harsh elements of the winter season. Fiberglass is a good example of a strong material from which figures such as these should be made so that they will not have to be replaced for many years to come. The fiberglass is then expertly painted to bring the figures to life in a variety of colors and hues. Happy holidays everyone!

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