Green Christmas Part 3 The Tree

The dilemma of the Christmas tree is one we faced this year and have yet to really decide what to do. Artificial Christmas trees are one of the most toxic things you can bring into your home. They are coated in fire retardant which off gases something horrible! Most are made of PVC which is another terrible thing to bring in doors. A great article from Ecotality Life further discusses the pro's and con's of artificial vs real.

Listed in that article is a link to an Ontario Christmas tree farm that has some wonderful Treecycling Ideas.

So this year we attempted to sell our 4' Artificial tree but no luck. Maybe better planning for next year will work better. We ended up purchasing a real tree from our local feed store. And I intend to utilize that tree for many things. One the branches make great bedding in the chicken coop. Also the stump will work well as a hanging suet holder. There is some discussion between my parents and I about jointly purchasing a shredder/grinder. Something that can handle up to 2' branch sizes would work well for the both of us. Not only for the Christmas tree shredding but for other tree pruning as well.

I will do some research into a live tree that gets brought in doors for Christmas, but I don't want to shock the poor thing to death.

The jury is still out as to what we will do next year. If we get a grinder we will probably go with a real tree again. I don't feel bad in cutting it down if every last bit of it gets used. For mulch, bedding, or what ever. As long as people are not trashing the perfectly good tree, many places accept trees for free or for a small fee.

Green Christmas Part 2 The Wrap

In our homemade pledge we also wanted to have gifts given in recyclable ways. Using recycled paper or craft paper. I know it doesn't have the shiny appeal and I am working on that. I think I may have found the solution to that but more about that later. This year we wrapped all our gifts in craft paper brown "paper bag" like paper and then adorned it with stamps and colored pencils. For the ribbon we used recycled twine and sometimes shiny ribbon as well. All of the bows were recycled from last year and we intend to do that again until we use the whole bag up that I got 2 years ago.

Mary Jo, Jacob's mom gave me a wonderful idea about old Christmas cards. Cut up the picture and use it as a gift tag! How wonderfully simple but still a great form of recycling. I really struggle with the gift tag because I don't want to purchase the self sticking kind and I don't want to use (fresh paper) for the tags when really that is such a small part of the gift. Really it is the most important part since it lets you know who it is for! I went to Value Village for a completely different reason but happened by there Christmas stuff. They had a bundle of miss matched beaten up Christmas cards for .50 cents. I bought it, and intend to utilize most of it for gift tags next year along with the Christmas cards I was given.

So about earlier comment on wrapping paper. I really like the idea of furoshiki a Japanese way of wrapping with cloth. Here is a video that demos some of the way's of wrapping gifts.

Another way I have just discovered is from this ingenious lady named Joell A. Jacob, I just happened to stumble upon her blog today. She makes cloth gift wrap with ribbon attached. Beautiful design and very crafty. This is the video she posted about her reusable giftwrap in action.



Some very wonderful ideas for birthdays and next Christmas. I will most certainly be making/buying these for gift giving in the future.

Green Christmas

Our goal this year was to make Christmas green. In order to do that we had some major thinking to do about what to get for family or what to make for family. Much of what we did this year was made, or purchased locally. The only thing we had to outsource was the flax seed (more on that later) that had to come from Iowa.

We asked that all our gifts be made, purchased second hand, traded for or internet based. This is the run down of what we got from others.

Mary Jo and Windy gave us some wickedly fun stuff! Jacob and I each got a green to the core scarf hand made, an earth friendly message sweatshirt that was traded for, a fabulous crystal (made by the earth thank you very much!) And an Eckhart Tolle 2 cd The Realization of Being. MJ gave me some great gift tag ideas that I'll post about later!

Jason, Jacob's brother gave us an Amazon gift card that is delivered electronically, no waste! Perfect!

My parents got me a tortilla kit for making home made tortillas! I have wanted to do this for a while now since I make my own bread I thought this would be a good venture to step into. Jacob got several jigsaw puzzles which help distract him during his upcoming surgery and recovery.

For each other we went with 1 want and the rest was home made or needed like gifts. For example Jacob's "want" gift was Tomb Raider Anniversary for Mac. I was a horrible to buy for girl because I couldn't come up with a want gift. I really didn't need or want anything. But I did get a new blanket that I now that I think about desperately needed. I was using 2 skinny wimpy blankets and my robe for a cover at night. Plus 2 new spatulas since mine had wimped out on me. Jacob made me a necklace holder and I made him a photo collage with updated pictures that he could take to work.

A pretty simple Christmas for us.

*Gift Spoilers ahead.... if you haven't gotten your gifts yet*

We made therapy bean bags, pieced together from multiple websites. Our chosen "bean" of bean bag is actually flax seed. Apparently flax keeps it's heat for longer there for less microwaving. We referenced these sites:Sew mama sew and, And sew it is.

Other gifts included the bees wax candles from Tahuya River Apiaries plus votives made by Mary Jo at Raven Rocks Studio. We also gave out our home made suet, see earlier post about how to make that. We also sent out dried fruit (that we dried this summer), cookies, breads and russian tea.

I know there is a ton of links in there, but I wanted to document where we got the ideas from. Thanks to everyone for a wonderful Christmas. Thanks for making it green and homemade with and for us.

Teddy bear toss 2008

Considering it has been forever since I posted something I figured I should get my act in gear. I've been really busy lately making our christmas gifts. My goal was to not purchase anything, I failed however because I couldn't come up with anything to make Jacob so I settled for something that would take his mind of the up coming surgery. Much crafty has been going on in the Oxrieder household, plus wrapping, boxing and shipping gifts has been a project, and of course I can't post any of it here because the family will see what they are getting. Do you see my dilemma? Still no excuse not to post something heh?

Last night we went out and had Thai food (first time for the parents). They did splendidly, according to dad's friend Ron, dad "grew tits and pussied out".... ( he had sweet and sour chicken ). He was told to have Thai Peanut noodle by Ron's wife..... ah he was ribbed for that one. Anyway, after our Thai food adventures we went to a hockey game. My parents being season ticket holders they let us know when the "teddy bear toss" was. Everyone brings teddy's/ stuffed animals of some sort, when the Chiefs score a goal everyone throws the "teddy's" onto the ice. They toys are then collected by toys for tots and given to kids and hospitals etc... I forgot my camera but some lovely person remembered there's and I am going to use there video to show you what it looks like. It really is very cool, and inspiring that so many people donate toys.