Less Waste Though the Holidays - Wrapping and Gift Tag Ideas

Hopefully some of my ideas for waste-free gifts in my last post,  inspired you to give an experience  type gift instead of a thing.  Now that you are nearing the final days before Christmas, you may be thinking about how to wrap those presents.

Reuse:  In my family, we don't toss our gift bags.  We have been using the same gift bags for years now.  If one gets too mangled, then it is taken out of the rotation... but we all just save and pack them away until next year.

My kids don't like gift-bags.  They like the idea of opening a present, so here are a few idea for those who prefer to wrap.

Check out your local creative reuse center, or even your waste bin for goodies to create with...

Rudolph here is made from cardboard, some packing foam (antlers) and the rounds donated to ReCreate from a doctor's office.  The snowman   is made from empty drink lids, and a bits of odds and ends for the hat and scarf. these
are great gift toppers.

  
From Martha Stewart, a sparkly, shiny gift wrap idea, that comes from an old Potato chip bag?!  Eat, Wash, Wrap, Repeat.  I love this one!

From one of my favorite blogs to read, A Little Hut, is this beautiful use of.... popsicle sticks?!

This idea from Brit + Co. was originally for place-cards for Thanksgiving, but could be a super cute To/From tag for Christmas.

 Don't toss that old map.  We know you have GPS and your phone for directions, but this is a beautiful use for that old map!  We found this beautiful idea at

For more ideas, Check out my pinterest board.  Get creative and have fun with your wrapping!
Happy holidays!

Happy Green Easter!

I was unplugged for much of this week, hiking the beautiful central coast of California.  Today, my kids and I are catching up on our green crafting for Easter.  Here are some fun projects you might want to try at home. 

Egg Carton Art from Red Ted Art

Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

This image is from MarthaStewart.com

Here is an excellent how to link.  

From the incredibly talented michele made me

Egg Carton Flowers

More green Easter craft ideas can bee seen on my Pinterest Board. All images and links above were sourced from Pinterest.

In honor of Earth Day in April. we will be having some great giveaways, be sure to subscribe to our blog, and you might win a great eco-friendly prize! 

Trash Audit - A.K.A. Does this Trash Make My Bin Look Big?

Happy New Year!

We audited our trash last week, to check in to see how we were doing, in our quest to make less trash.  We hosted many people for both Christmas and New Years, and I am happy to report, that even with the present opening, we still have room in our trash can!  (We forgot to put it our between Christmas and New Years.)  Here is what it looked like:

Trash:
8 plastic bags of assorted food packaging (crackers, bread, cheese, ham)
Three plastic tubs (cottage cheese, dip and spread)
12 candy wrappers.  Mostly paper and foil.
 One kitchen trash bag of paper (from a purge of old paperwork.  This all arrives paperless now, but we still had it from the past.)
Christmas Packaging - fit in one 10" x 10" by 8" box.  This was the rigid plastic around a toy each of my kids got.  There was also tissue paper that was beyond reuse, and had already served us well several times!  Santa wrapped his gifts - so there was a small amount of gift wrap  We were pleased that Santa used eco-friendly printed paper.  
One grocery sized bag of assorted tissues, floss, misc.  bathroom trash - collected from all the bathrooms.
Two paper soda cups that came home from eating out - no lids or straws.
Three pieces of fruit that went bad.
A decent handful of junk mail and envelopes from Christmas cards we received.
12 glass bottles of various types.  Did you know that glass can be recycled forever?  It never goes down in quality like other products. 
13 cans of cat food.   Our elderly cats can't eat dry food very well any more.  
4 soup cans.
Cat waste.

Diverted:
8 cans from soda.  They are being diverted to make soda can art, like this 
4 wine bottles.  Diverted to make these centerpieces.
Loads of gift bags and tissue.  We refold and put these back away for another year.  
Compostable plates from New Year's Eve.  They will go into the worm bin.
5 plastic cups - that were washed out and will be used again.
5 cardboard boxes that will be used for art at reCREATE.
Eco -Packing peanuts - which can be used for to make fun art sculptures, like this.


Not Among Our Trash:
Wasted Food from Christmas Eve.  We carefully calculated how much food was appropriate for our guests.  We replenished food as needed.  Result - virtually no wasted food after hosting 11 people.
Excess Packaging:  Among the adults - almost all gifts were either handmade or "experience" gifts.  I'm thrilled that we will be getting together with other family members to see theater performances, and attending some lovely fundraisers together.  Not only are we helping causes, we now have some dates that we know we will be having fun together.  My sister and her husband are taking our kids to see a show and keeping them overnight.  They can't wait!
Disposable Plates & Cutlery - We did bring out some paper plates for New Year's Eve- but we will compost them.  We used all real plates and cutlery for the rest of the time, and just cleaned up afterwards. 
Shopping Bags - We bring our own when we shop - so we don't have a drawer exploding with one use plastic shopping bags.  
Christmas Decor - I heard a story about a local family that put their Christmas Tree out for the scouts to pick up.  It still had on the lights and ornaments.  I can't imagine that!  Each year as we pull out our ornaments, we revisit memories of Christmas Past.    The result is that we reuse them every year.  We did buy a tree this year... but I know it will be mulched and made into compost. 
Much of the food we bought was placed in our glass containers, significantly reducing the amount of waste we generated.  

We are still learning, but are quite proud of our low waste holidays!  How did you do?

 

Less Trash Doesn't Have To Mean Less Memories

I mentioned in my Overconsumption post, that we are going with a simpler holiday this year.  I have to tell you, my old ways inch back, and sometimes I feel the urge to revert to my habits.  My husband and I agreed that the kids could each get each other one toy.  I took my daughter to get my son's gift, and while I was in the store, I had to resist my urge to buy more.  It was like a magnet was drawing me to the stuff.  I had to keep reminding myself that "stuff" does not equal memories.  It is really hard to break old habits. 

This weekend,  instead of going to the mall, we went to the kitchen.  We whipped up a batch of cookies, that caught my eye in a Whole Foods Market blog post about Gifts in Jars.  These cookies were a hit.  So, I just found my gift for my kids' teachers and we had our cookies for the week.  The added bonus was that our batch of cookies produced giggles, and kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar.  One batch of cookies equaled some sweet memories of my kids who are still young enough to giggle down to their toes, and still young enough to think that making cookies with mom is cool.  Something I couldn't have gotten at the mall!

Advent Calendar

Other greener holiday options we can share with you.  You can make an advent calendar  from toilet paper rolls, like the picture to the right.  Inside are coupons like - Go see Christmas lights, Read a book together, Watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, time, not stuff.

• You can give experiences, like a lesson to try something new.
• You can make something.  I was part of an ornament exchange, and gave these trees made from magazine pages.  My kids and I are as busy as elves making some gifts this year.  No crafty?  
• You can re-gift something - does a younger family member swoon over a piece of family jewelry?  Maybe it is time to pass it down. 

On the lights front - Have you converted to LED lights yet?  In Roseville, we could take back our old lights and trade them in for LED lights - for free!  We also just put up less this year. 

For cards - we cut down the number we are sending out.  I am in touch with so many people on Facebook, so we're just sending our cards out to a smaller number of people. 

For wrapping - We use and reuse gift bags each year.  After all the presents are passed out, we re-fold and stash the bags for next year.  Old gift-tags are also re-stashed for next year. 

I hope you and yours create some wonderful memories this year.  Did you make a gift this year?  I'd love to hear about it.

An update on how much trash we are making.  We have put out our garbage can the last two weeks and it has been less than half full, we could have easily skipped a week!  Our biggest change has been in our grocery shopping.