A Review of Celebrate Green

Celebrate Green by mother daughter team Lynn Colwell and Corey Colwell-Lipson is the green book to have because it covers aspects of greening pretty much every holiday and celebration and it has some great ideas for the holidays -any and all of them.

There's always a holiday or special occassion coming up- why not celebrate them in green style?

4th of July, summer fun celebrations...do them all in an eco way.

Celebrate Green has a lot to say about greening Halloween including some crafty things you can do yourself like make your own face paints, create fun costumes and decorations, even turn everyday ordinary objects into candy buckets and containers.

It’s also full of yummy recipes and fun ideas for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The apple pie recipe for Thanksgiving, yummy and the suggestions for setting a sustainable table are great. Though I have to admit I have never seen a free range turkey or even a tofurkey in my local grocery stores and no I don’t have a Whole Foods near me. So I’ll just have to opt for going local and organic on the other foods because I am not giving up my turkey.

I really do love the Christmas ideas in Celebrate Green, the basics being reduce, reuse and recycle and then going DIY. Now that’s something I can do. I am the DIY momma. I think my motto is why pay for it when you can do it yourself?

Simple, fun old fashioned Christmas ideas are encouraged like popcorn strands for the tree, collecting pieces of nature for decor – twigs, pine cones, and live greenery.

One really great thing in the Christmas chapter is an extensive list of eco-friendly gift ideas. I found some ideas I might follow through on.

There was just one thing I was surprised by was the lack of crafts. I really expected there to be crafts. They have them on the website and often showcase them with articles and ideas about celebrating green so I figured there would be more how-tos in the book.

Nope.

Plenty of ideas and suggestions but only a few actual how to directions.

That’s OK though because the book is chock full of advice and ideas for turning your celebrations green.

The Big Green Book of Recycled Crafts ( Leisure Arts #4802) is a collection of fun and fabulous crafts made from all kinds of trashy, upcycled products.

I see quite a few old favorites in this Leisure Arts publication from other Leisure Arts books including the Trash to Treasurebooks.

I also see a few new crafts and one that I am thrilled to have found the instructions for.
The Big Green Book of Recycled Crafts is full of gifts, home decor and crafty garden projects all made from discarded items you probably have lying around the house right now.

How about the bird bungalows made from plastic laundry soap bottles? Or photo frames made from old clear CD and DVD cases. And then there’s the Gardener’s Carryall made with a plastic bucket, twist ties, a vinyl tablecloth and some pretty buttons.

The recycled bag keeper made from the sleeve of an old shirt is a classic, as are the bottle lamps, the two liter bottle gift baskets, and the wine cork message board.

An ingenious project is the dryer vent hose turned into adorable pumpkins for Halloween/Autumn decor. This project is just so damn cute I can’t help loving it. Now I am looking for excess dryer vent hose to make them. I know we had some after we installed the dryer but I think hubby may have thrown it out. (How dare he throw something away).
I love the old window crafts. An old window frame becomes faux stained glass, a 6 paned window becomes a work of art, and a three paned window becomes a fun message station with a chalk board and cork board added into the paned sections.

The global lamp would be a super charming addition to an office, den or library and the drawer ottoman is so stylish. I’ve seen this done before with an old suitcase but not with a drawer. I think the drawer idea is superb. So much easier to find an old drawer than a suitcase that fits your style. Plus you can paint, stain, or finish the drawer in so many ways while the suitcase leaves you kinda stuck as to how it will look. I think the drawer would be much sturdier which is a major plus in my rough on furniture family.

There are even two fun projects for my gear-head, car loving son, a License Plate Headboard and a Wheely Neat Nightstand.

But the one project that thrilled me the most is the one they call the Nursery Rhyme Tuffet. To me this project has been the juice can footstool. My grandma used to make these little footstools back in the 60′s and 70′s, maybe earlier for all I know. She would sell them and also give them as gifts. After she passed away I found one in the house and really wanted to know how to make it. But never found any directions and my mom wasn’t sure.

Now that little footstool has been misplaced. I think it is in my mother’s attic, we’ve done so much remodeling over the years things have been moved from one place to another and buried in boxes.

Anyway, I have always wanted to learn how to make these little footstools…and now on page 113 of The Big Green Book of Recycled Crafts I found the basic directions. Now I would use different material because the old bedspread fabrics pictured have never been my thing but my grandma’s crafty projects are and I am going to make at least one of footstool. My kids better start drinking some juice though because I need 7 46 ounce juice cans.

For that project alone this book is a must have for me, but I love so many of the other cool projects I can’t wait to get crafting. Christmas will be here before you know it (it’s already August for Craft’s sake) and I can use the ideas to make gifts for friends and family.

Eco-Friendly Crafts- Yogurt Cup Creations

My family goes through a lot of yogurt, mainly my little guy- he eats a lot of yogurt.

He’s on this thing where just about all he eats is yogurt and he’s picky about it. Wants it straight from the little containers not in a regular old bowl.

So we end up with a lot of yogurt cups which aren’t accepted for recycling at the local drop off site.

So I have come up with easy and fun ways to use the yogurt cups for crafts with my kids.

So far we have created cats, bats, pumpkins, skeletons and more for Halloween, Christmas bells and penguins for the winter holidays, turtles and frogs for spring and bunnies for Easter. The cast of yogurt cup characters keeps growing. I am thinking butterflies for this weekend.

They are simple to create. I paint them outside with spray paint (I know, probably not the most eco-craft supply but it works) and then we use craft foam for heads, legs, wings or whatever the creation calls for. Sometimes we use google eyes, sometimes we just paint them on. Sometimes we add pipecleaners or whatever else we may find in the craft boxes.

It all started with me just searching through my craft box to see what I could create. I have tons of craft supplies so that was no problem.
Now it’s a regular thing for my daughter and I to add another yogurt cup critter to our menagerie.

It’s a fun and relatively green craft. We save yogurt cups from the landfill and have fun using our creativity to create new creatures.