Please enjoy my Oldies But Goodies while I take a break from the computer and enjoy my family and other things that I’m THANKFUL for this year.  New content will return next week!

I know you want to learn how to make this cute upcycled Christmas Tree from magazines and mail catalogs….

…but you’ll have to visit The Mommy Blog for complete directions.  I’m a featured guest blogger over there…thanks to the kind invitation from Cinella.  Please visit and leave comments both here and there about your ideas on turning trash into useful Holiday decorations. 

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 2009.

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Do you have an eco-junkie to buy for this year?  

Know someone who doesn’t like stuff?  

Looking for something non-toxic to get a special child?  

Here are my top eco-holiday quick picks – with something special for everyone on your list.  

1. Itsabelly Guide to Going Green With Baby - By Melissa Moog & Jennifer Lo Prete  

2.  aden + anais Organic Muslin Swaddlers – Lil’s blankie of choice is now available in even more varieties and colors. 

3.  Global Green Pals - These eco-friendly dolls will become your child’s new best friend.  

4.  Piggy Paint – Project Earth - Safe nail polish for that tween in your life – now is Glow in the Dark too!  Use coupon code ECO10L to save 10% on anything at Piggy Paint through December 31, 2010.

5.  One Life Jewelry - A personal favorite homemade from a friend down the street from me whom I don’t talk to enough. XOXO! 

6.  Recycled Koby Jewelry - Made special for TerraCycle from 100% recycled silver by Canadian jeweler, Arthur Koby.  

7.  Blue Line PowerCost Monitor for Microsoft hohm -  Find out how much energy your home is using right now!     

Who’s your eco-junkie and what will you be getting for them? 

Disclosure:  All items featured in this gift guide have been personally reviewed by me and were provided to me by the companies.  I’m still trying to configure our PowerCost monitor and will follow up with you on our personal experience with that system soon.     

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Every year our family gathers together to take some photos that we’ll use on our Christmas cards.  I’m usually a last minute person and don’t get them done until long after Thanksgiving has past.  This year I was provided an opportunity to use tinyprints to order our Christmas cards as part of a blog partnership.  I’ve seen their ad in magazines and drooled over their stylish cards for years but like I said I usually run out of time.  With a little incentive from tinyprints I dressed my kids up in their Sunday best and after church one Sunday we stayed on the grounds and took some photos. 

I like to pretend that I have some photography skills and I usually end up with a few photos that look really nice.  Out of about 50 pictures I found a few that I loved and decided to play around with PhotoShop.  I’m still learning that too.  Finally I sat down one evening and started looking through the thousands (yes, really – over 2,000 designs) of card styles that tinyprints offers.  I didn’t have any restrictions placed upon me so I simply searched until I found the perfect card for our family.  It was no easy decision either.  You can make your cards using one photo or a collage of photos – the possibilities were practically endless.  It was very easy to navigate and narrow down your selection based on price (starting as low as .69 ea), number of photos, or colors. 

Once I found the card style that I liked it was time to play with the photos.  I’m sure if you are good with your photo editing and have plenty of time to spare you could do just about anything with your photos and cards.  With just about an hour left before my eyes slammed shut I imported pictures, cropped, played with colors, etc.  Once I was happy with my selection I woke up the hubby to get his thoughts on my hard work – thankfully he approved! 

I was even able to have the envelopes pre-printed with our return address.  If I had more time and had been even more prepared I could have had the addresses to all my recipients pre-printed.  After reviewing my proof I pushed ORDER and away they went to the printers!  The processing time was very quick and I had a proof to review within 24 hrs.  Within the first 48 hrs my cards were proofed, printed, and shipped – arriving just a few short days later.  I even think thattinyprints would have worked in years past with my normal procrastination. 

Once the package arrived I was excited to see just how perfect our Christmas cards were going to be for the year.  I’m very pleased with the results and I’m sure this year our family and friends will be keeping our cards in their photo albums instead of the trash. 

Are they eco-friendly?  Unfortunately tinyprints doesn’t have any advertised eco-friendly options for paper or ink.  Even their shipping seemed to be a bit wasteful – the box they arrived in was oversized for the cards – however the cards were an unusual dimension.  Our families Christmas cards never have been printed eco-friendly though.  We treat them as we would our family photos and hope that our friends and family will treasure them for years to come.  After all it’s usually the only time some of our friends and family get to see our growing family and that’s worth the environmental impact to me. 

Tiny Prints provides simple, modern and unique stationery from Christmas cards to personalized greeting cards to thank you cards and even business cards. Offering exclusive designs from the nation’s top designers, easy card personalization, a powerful preview engine and top-notch customer service and paper quality, their designs have been lauded by numerous television networks, publications and celebrities. With Tiny Prints by your side the Holidays will be a cinch! They offer perfect party invitations for every occasion and memorable personalized photo-gifts like notebooks, photo-books and calendars.

Are you a blogger?  Would you like to review the tinyprints holiday collection? They will be giving out 60 cards to selected bloggers who apply!

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I know you want to learn how to make this cute upcycled Christmas Tree from magazines and mail catalogs….

…but you’ll have to visit The Mommy Blogfor complete directions.  I’m a featured guest blogger over there…thanks to the kind invitation from Cinella.  Please visit and leave comments both here and there about your ideas on turning trash into useful Holiday decorations. 

I’ll be featuring more trash to treasure ideas here in the next few days so be sure to subscribe or follow The Eco Chic blog so you don’t miss a single post!

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Tonight, after a very hectic day, we finally decorated the tree! 

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Tis’ the season for our children to WANT, WANT, WANT!  I struggle each year around this time to remind my 6 year old that it’s not all about presents and Santa.  He had a homework project this week to talk about the holiday that we celebrate (Christmas) and why it’s important to him.  His teacher is including Winter Holidays in her lesson plan and each child gets to contribute with the holiday that they celebrate.  While working on his project I realized that he still doesn’t ‘get it’ with the reason we celebrate Christmas. 

Christmas of course is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ in the Christian religion.  One way that people help celebrate the holiday is with Advent Calendars.  You can find them in most retail stores filled with candy hiding behind little cardboard doors.  The last two years I’ve made our Advent Calendar.  Last year I had a different part of the Christmas Story from the bible to read each day…leading up to the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day.  I really enjoyed that version because in addition to counting down to the big day Big B got to learn a little each day. 

This year I finally broke down and purchased an actual Advent Calendar (I fell in love with one shaped like Mickey Mouse from Disney World) but I still want to make it special.  I just caught up reading some of my favorite blogs and I just had to share these ideas with you all.  One of our family friends is Genie who writes a great family and Christian blog The Blazi Gang had a wonderful idea on how to make the Advent Calendar a little more special.  She decided to make a list of 24 activities for her family to complete like 2) Build a fort and have dinner in it, Make a Christmas craft, and 22) Go downtown and look at lights.  You can see the full list on her blog or you can make up your own list.  I’m going to try to start this tomorrow because I think it’s a fabulous idea to show that giving is not only about giving gifts….but also about giving of yourself and your time. 

Another blog I like to skim each day is the Crafty Crowbecause they collect great craft ideas from around the blogosphere and share them.  They always have great holiday ideas and I found one today from a blog called Maya Made on making an Advent Calendar from toilet tissue tubes.  Last year Maya made a similar Advent Calendar and she had a ticket in each tube with a special activity for the family members. 

So then I decided to search the web for some other Advent Calendar ideas using scraps and trash.  How about these:

Cookie Sheet Advent Calendar

Mini Muffin Tin Advent Calendar

Bottle Cap Advent Calendar Magnets

Recycle Bin Advent Calendar

Altoid Tin Advent Calendar

I could probably search all night but the truth is I don’t have a ton of time to make something new for this year AND Lil’ B just woke up with a horrible hacking cough.  I guess I’ll go snuggle up to her before I drift off to sleep.  What are your family traditions around the holidays?  Do you have an Advent Calendar that is unique…I’d love for you to share it with me.

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I think I’m in denial, is Thanksgiving really next week?  Where has 2009 gone?  It was just yesterday that I was on bed rest with Lil’ B unsure of what was going to happen next.  She ended up being born on January 4th, 2009. 

And here we are again, almost a year later!  We now have a toothless little 6 yr old boy and a crawling and clapping (our newest talent) 10 month old girl.  Thanksgiving will be spent with hubbies family and Christmas will be spent with mine.  I really love all the decorations and food and time off of work.  I love trying to find just the right gift for the special people in my life and this year I’m going to try to make it as green as possible. 

This year I have put together a list of my favorite environmentally friendly gift items.  I’m so excited that in addition to the gift guide many of the companies have offered up giveaways and coupons for my readers.  So cuddle up with me and start making your shopping list! 

One part of the gift guide that I’m most excited about is the Homemade for the Holidays section.  I have a great Etsy store that I’m featuring along with some unique ideas to make this season more about Love and People than about Things!  After all, we need to all remember what Christmas is all about…the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ!  We tend to get caught up looking for the perfect gifts that we forget that we can give our time and ourselves for people as well.  But there will be more on that later on! 

Over the next few days you will see the Gift Guide growing larger and larger!  Be sure to subscribe to receive The Eco Chic in your email so you don’t miss a minute of The Eco Chic’s Holiday!

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Well Christmas has come and gone!  I am actually quite excited that today was the first trash pick up since then and we only had our average one trash can full.  We only had one bag of wrapping paper trash and the rest of the stuff (packaging) is going to the recycle center in the morning.  I had tried to keep all the wrapping paper and reuse it for my sons craft projects but it was too difficult to take off the tape.  Nevermind the fact that a four year old rips the paper into a million pieces when he opens it. 

I did go shopping the day after and I’m faced with a new dilema…what to do with old ornaments.  I found some great new ornaments that I want to switch to next year but now I have all these old faded, chipped ornaments that need a home.  I’m thinking of giving them to his school so they can use them next year in the classroom.  Other than that I guess my only option is Goodwill.  I refuse to throw them in the trash. 

So how much waste did you have this Christmas?  What could you have done differently to reduce the amount of trash? 

Coming up next…New Years Green Resolutions.  I’m going to make a few resolutions that will help decrease our footprint on this planet. 

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I searched online for craft projects using gift wrap that you can save from Christmas (or any other occassion).  www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/papercrafts had some great ideas; I’ll share some of my favorite.

• Use old gift wrap to make one of a kind envelopes.  They provide the template for folding and cutting on their site.
• Origami.  This one is for older kids but origami paper can be quite expensive at the craft stores.  Why not cut your old wrapping paper into squares and follow the directions listed on their site to create some cute origami paper crafts.
• Woven placemats are always an easy projects for the younger kids.  Cut the paper into stips about one inch wide by any desired length (for placemans about 12 inches) and weave the different colored paper together. 
• Pinwheels.  Again another easy project for the younger kids.  And you can always take them outside when you are done and see how pretty they blow in the wind. 

Like I told my son last night; one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.  Have fun.

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Wow, I’ve been quiet for several weeks.  I guess it’s time to give you some ideas for reducing and reusing waste during the holidays.  I was packing up some gifts to be mailed the other day and was trying to reduce the cost at the post office.  I reused an old box to pack up the gifts instead of buying a box…if you are like me your garage is full of boxes.  For packing material I used some plastic grocery bags and newspaper that had been put through a paper shredder.  Another thing we did last Christmas was not wrapping the Santa gifts for our son.  It was really cute to see his face when he walked into the room…he didn’t know what to play with first.  Another reason not to wrap presents, you end up assemblying the gifts ahead of time so the kids can play with them immediately instead of waiting for you to assemble. 

How can you reuse during the holidays?  Gift bags…I love them.  I always save my gift bags and reuse them for other gifts.  What can you do with all that gift wrap, ribbons and bows?  Why not save them and donate them to a school.  I know my sons school would love craft supplies; they can use them for collages, they can draw or paint on the backside of the gift wrap, they can make necklaces from the ribbon.  There are so many uses for kids crafts for these items that normally end up in the trash.  So instead of wadding up that gift wrap on Christmas morning; fold it up and give it to a youth center, day care, school or artist. 

What ways can you think to reduce and reuse waste at the Holidays?  Join me tomorrow for another Trashy Thursday for another craft project with holiday waste.   

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