Do you sell eco-friendly products or services we can rave about on TV, radio, in print or on line? We welcome submissions in most green categories: home, garden, baby, body, clothes & accessories, travel, pet and more. Email Lynn AT CelebrateGreen.net with all the details.
Audi’s “Green Police” Super Bowl TV commercial is creating quite a buzz! If you haven’t seen what all the LOL’ing is about, check it out here and then let us know what YOU think by adding your comment below.
As you may know know, Corey and Safeway have partnered* to share tips for easy, fun, budget-savvy entertaining.
Here are some of those tips for celebrating this weekend’s big game.
Touch Down Tips for Hosting a Super Bowl Bash
Throw a Spiral—For some real fun, get creative and give your drinks, appetizers & deserts themed team names and colors. Also, serve your treats from a vendor’s tray. Decorate a cardboard storage box lid, punch a hole on either side, and tie on a wide ribbon that’s long enough so you can hang the tray around your neck.
Quick Tip- Line those serving trays with (compostable) parchment paper for easy cleanup.
Avoid Those Running Backs—No hostess wants to run out of food or back to the store. Plan ahead, take advantage of sales and buy chips and paper goods in bulk when possible. It’s great to stock up on cleaning supplies at your local Safeway- they offer one-stop shopping and thousands of everyday low prices on EVERYTHING a hostess needs… from made to order deli platters and sandwiches at Safeway’s Signature café, to snacks, dips, recycled-content paper towels, … and even non-toxic cleaners for messes created during exciting plays!
Digital Discounts- A lot of great deals come through online promotions. Many local businesses send coupons and special deals and offers via email. The digital era has even found ways to cut down on coupon clipping time! When you visit Safeway.com, you can download digital coupons right onto your Club Card through the CouponLink program. Simply find the coupons you want to use, shop the store and swipe your card at checkout—all of your coupons are automatically redeemed! No fumbling with pieces of paper.
Be a Team Player - When attending a Super Bowl party ask the host if they would like you to arrive early to help set up and what they would like you to bring. Also, make sure to assist with the clean up as well. This will surely score you an invite back next year!
Make sure you use your Safeway club card and download their coupons.Go to Safeway.com.
* Corey is proud to be a spokesperson for Safeway’s Northwest region
For some more of Corey & Lynn’s eco-friendly Super Bowl party tips, click here or listen to their interview with Rose Scott on NPR (if story isn’t up yet, please check back soon).
When the family gathers for the big game on Sunday, will your kids get bored? Planning a few simple activities will keep everyone happy–until your team loses, of course!
Whether it’s as guests are gathering for the kick off or during half-time or commercials, playing a game or two can add no cost fun to the day.
The activities below qualify as “green or eco-friendly” because you don’t need to purchase anything to play. You can use what you already own and enjoying the games will leave little trash. What’s leftover can always be recycled.
Make up cheers to perform before the game. Break into teams if you have enough people. Spend five or ten minutes making up the cheers, then take turns showing them off. During breaks in the action, kids can rush from sidelines to do them again!
Quick words. Set a timer for five minutes. Divide into teams. Choose either of the team names (New Orleans Saints or Indianapolis Colts), and see how many words–of four letters or more–can be made my mixing up the letters in the name. Adding an “s” to make a word plural is not allowed.
Pass the football. Put on some music. Everyone sits in a circle. When the music stops, the person holding the football is out. Continue until there is only one person left. To add to the fun, have everyone close their eyes or use blindfolds.
Huh? Write words having to do with football on small strips of reused paper. Put the strips in a helmet if you have one, a bowl if you don’t. Have one child pull out a slip and describe the word, trying to get someone to guess it. They can use anything to describe it but cannot use the word itself in any form. They can speak, sing or act. The person who guesses goes next.
Riddles. Have each child take a turn saying a football-related riddle with everyone else guessing the answer. We discovered this one on the internet where you’ll find many more:
Why did the coach go to the bank?
To get his quarterback!
Recycle football. Set up a bin on one side of a room and tape a recycle sign to it. Stand across the room from the bin (be sure there are no breakables around–come to think of it this might be better played outside!). Divide into two teams. One person from Team A tries to make a touchdown by throwing a piece of trash into the bin. But a person from Team B stands between the one tossing and the bin. This person can jump in place or move sideways, but not back and forth. Each person gets three turns at throwing.
Are there other games your family plays on Super Bowl Sunday? Let us know.
With Equal Exchange’s Coffee & Chocolate Pairing Gift Bag
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and we’ve got one more great, green gift idea for you: The Coffee & Chocolate Pairing Bag from Equal Exchange.
What makes this a great gift for your love? Well, aside from the obvious fact that the bag is filled with coffee and chocolate (be still Corey’s beating heart), the items are Earth and people-friendly, too. Hooray!
Earth friendly: Conventional coffee and chocolate production utilizes a great deal of pesticides and other chemicals, which seep into ground water and contaminate the soil. Contamination also affects wildlife and habitat.
People friendly: Organic farming is not only better for the planet, it’s better for people, too. On the front end, farmers who grow organic coffee/cacao are not exposed to the toxins (mentioned above) and the people living in the communities surrounding the plantations and farms are protected as well. Consumers drinking/eating organics are not exposed to pesticide residue. Fair Trade is people friendly because it means farmers are treated and paid fairly and ethically. Certification is done by a third-party to ensure standards.
By choosing Equal Exchange fairly traded chocolate, you help provide small-scale farmers the resources and opportunities they need to build a better future for their families and communities.
What the gift bag includes. This kit includes a variety of organic, Fair Trade coffee and chocolates and packaged in a 100% Recycled Printed Gift Bag and raffia ribbon. Plus, the one-page Guide to Chocolate & Coffee Pairing so your love can know what-the-heck he’s doing when you help him co-host a Fair Trade chocolate & coffee soiree on V-Day (hint-hint) Price: $34.95
FREE shipping and special offer: Equal Exchange chocolate bars on sale until February 14th. A “free shipping” code runs until February 14th as well. The code is “chocolatelove”. Free shipping is for UPS ground within the contingent USA only. Click here for more.
When it’s a shoe or a pair of glasses or a tea cup.
Who made the law that says a greeting card must be made from paper or card stock?
Not us, that’s for sure. It’s not that we don’t love receiving an “old-fashioned” card, if it’s printed on 100% recycled paper or plantable seed stock. It’s just that greetings can be so imaginative and fun when you create them yourself from re-purposed items.
At least that’s the way I think when I head into my studio to make Valentine’s cards.
OK, I admit it. I collect…stuff…bottle caps, slips of paper, tickets from events or bus rides, string, wire, corks, tiny toys, pen caps…well, you get the picture. But even I occasionally toss out what seems in the moment, unusable.
Last week, for instance, I put a pair of red shoes into the waste basket. The soles had worn clear through and they couldn’t be re-soled. I’d checked. I felt guilty every time I walked by that basket. I’d lovingly worn them to death and now they were destined for the dump. Luckily, I didn’t take the time to empty the can and one day it hit me…Valentine’s Day…red! Those shoes went from the basket to my studio where I turned them into this:
When it comes to celebrating green, there’s no better way to do it than to grab whatever is handy and use your imagination to re-purpose it into something eco-fabulous or at least eco-funny to give or keep.
Don’t consider yourself creative? Try this exercise. Pick up an object, any object. Set a timer to five minutes. During that time try to come up with some Valentine’s “sayings” you could incorporate into a greeting “card” using the object. For instance:
Pair of eye glasses or frame: Clearly I love you
Hanger: I’m hung up on you
Fake apple (or real, then it’s an edible Valentine’s card!): You’re the apple of my eye
Lock and key: You’ve got the key to my heart
Ruler or tape measure: My love for you is immeasurable
Broken watch: I’ll love you til the end of time
Tea cup: You suit me to a T
Socks: You warm my heart
Admittedly these won’t win me the poetry Pulitzer, and you probably can come up with better ones yourself, but the point is not to impress with poetic prowess, it’s to give a gift from the heart, the hands and yes (if you’ve cleaned it) rescued from the trash.
Why not make some unique re-purposed Valentines and share them with us.
While driving to a meeting yesterday (which, it turns out I was one week early for – yes, it’s been that kind of week) and listening to NPR, I heard an interview with author Gretchen Rubin, of the NY Times bestselling book, The Happiness Project. The Happiness Project is a memoir of the year Gretchen spent “test-driving” wisdom and advice from gurus across time and space to see if she might capture the secret (or secrets) of living a truly happy life.
During the interview, the NPR host asked something to the effect of, “Isn’t a book such as this a rather narcissistic pursuit? Is happiness just about one’s self?” To which the author had a somewhat-to-the-effect-of reply,”One of the most pernicious [word of the day: Pernicious- adjective: injurious/hurtful] myths about happiness is that it’s selfish to want to be happy. In fact, happy people donate more money, are more altruistic and do more for the good of others. The desire to be happy gives you the resources to make other people happy too.”
So happiness is a circle with no end and no beginning. Self happiness leads to happy others; making others happy leads to a happy self (we explored the later part of this argument in a post earlier this week). On and on it goes…
Makes sense.
But this got me thinking – with all our talk of showing our love for others this Valentine’s Day- does love work the same way? Does loving ourselves open the door for loving others more fully and completely?
A hunch tells me it does.
Yet as an admitted Type A, always on the go, on-to-the-next-thing mom/woman/friend/business owner/volunteer, I admit: it can be very, very hard to make the time for taking care of (e.g. loving) oneself. It’s hard enough not to arrive for meetings one week early. And yet, I know how very important self nurturing is. I’ve seen with my own over-achieving eyes how when I get more sleep, take a yoga glass, write in my journal, or read a great memoir that I have more energy and enthusiasm for encircling those around me in the love I feel for them. It’s cliche, but it’s true: We can’t take care of others if we don’t take care of ourselves. I know this and yet, it can be so very hard to do! Especially when it’s so very easy to convince myself that “there’s no time/money/energy/need” to nurture my own precious garden.
Okay, so what’s the key?
Of course, the actions of loving one’s self is different from one person to the next, but I’m guessing it all comes down to what could be called “The Platinum Rule”: Treat ourselves as we would treat other people.
(Or, if that feels sacrilege: “The Be Nice to Everyone (& Don’t Forget You Are an Everyone) Rule.”)
What a concept, eh?
While The Golden Rule is ingrained in young minds to encourage compassion and empathy, somewhere along the way, for some certain people (no finger pointing here, but if you have a vowel in your name and you have a habit of answering to the names Mommy, Mom or Mummy), The Golden Rule may lead to not treating “you” as good as one should. The pendulum swings too far in the other direction.
It seems like a middle ground approach might be the best bet, and might give the eternal circle of happiness and love the most momentum.
I don’t have all the answers, but I’m thinking this might carry some nuggets of truth.
So for me, Type A as I may be, if I were to take this approach I might just draw my inspiration from mothering my own children (striving to mother myself a bit): perhaps taking care of my boo-boos (rather than ignoring them), reading myself a nighttime story, drawing for no reason other than to experience the sheer creative bliss of it, asking for a hug when I need one, or laughing with pure abandon when the mood strikes even if I have food in my teeth or am waiting in line at the DMV.
What I’m trying to say, dear readers, is that what makes us feel happy, loved and cared for is uniquely individual and yet the end result is so entirely universal. But we can’t gain full access this amazing and endless circle unless we are able to love ourselves.
So, I come full circle…
Happy, loved people give happiness and love. Those who give love and happiness receive it. And, as much as Type A’s may deny that the laws of physics, time and sleep apply to them, the laws of love and happiness are, indeed, the same for everyone.
You + Love = You, loved.
You + Happiness = You, happy.
You + happy = Happier others.
Happier + others = Happier world.
What makes you happy? How do you nurture yourself? What ways do you show and give love to others? As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts…
We’re thrilled to be included in the newest issue of Viva La Moda magazine! Check out our article here or click on the image above and flip to page 44.
“With vibrant blooms, velveteen petals and a primordial perfume, roses transcend mere floral status and seem to spring from the realm of the divine.” – TheFoodPaper.com
In yesterday’s post, I shared some of my favorite rose products: rose oil, rose soap, rose tea and real roses that benefit a worthy cause.
But why do I love roses so?
Because they make me happy!
But why?
In today’s post, I thought I’ll share with you some of roses’ incredible benefits – for mind, body and soul. Perhaps you’ll discover your own rose obsession is lying in wait…
The benefits of rose:
Medical
Antiseptic
Astringent
Antispasmodic
Sedative
Anti-insomnia
Sooth sore throat
Treating cold and flu
Digestive balance
Defend against cancer and cardiovascular disease (high in vitamin C and antioxidants)
I just want to drink them in using all of my senses – sight, feeling, smell, taste. (I have yet to hear them, but I’m open!)
Fortunately, and right in time for Valentine’s Day, there are tons of organic and all natural products to sip, sniff, rub and enjoy; all infused with the luxurious smell of roses.
Was one of your new year’s resolutions for 2010 to craft more of your holiday items? If so, it’s not too early to start on your Valentine’s cards. We just posted some ideas over at The Green Girls.
But be warned, these aren’t your mother’s Valentine’s cards.
Wait a minute! I’m the mom and they are so my cards. Hmmm. Well, let’s just say they aren’t your usual cards.
Are you making Valentine’s cards this year? Let us know about them if they’re made from recycled and/or repurposed items.
