Green Options

We sure are excited about the upcoming Halloween holiday here at Crafting a Green World. Do you have your costume ready? What about decorations?

Ready Made Magazine has this great refresher course on pumpkin-carving how to; including a clever CFL template to carve into your pumpkin! What a perfect idea to not only make your own costume for Halloween, but carve your green ideals for all [...]

Because I love encouraging my kids to be creative, Halloween becomes another excuse to get them to make some great artwork that I will invariably want to put on display for the rest of the year. Best of all, there is more than enough in the way of recycled materials to use as raw materials for their artwork.

Welcome to the seventh Carnival of Green Crafts!

This one had an extra day to percolate while I was on my way home from Colorado, the state where my environmental consciousness was born when I was in high school.

And though that means the Carnival is a day late, is by no means a dollar short.  So sit back and enjoy this collection of green and crafty goodness.

Before we begin, a few administrative notes: The eighth Carnival will be hosted at Things We Make, which is part of the Hallmark Magazine website! Send in your posts via the carnival submission form. The Carnival of Green Crafts home page has background info.

Now on to the carnival!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love thinking about what my costume is going to be and how to create my perfect look for that year. I think I’ve only purchased a complete costume maybe once or twice in my life. Half of the fun of Halloween is making your own costume.

You too can make your own costume and make it more environmentally friendly with the resources that we here at Crafting a Green World have given you throughout our blog posts. It’s not that scary, just remember these three tips:

• Use what you have first
• If you don’t have the perfect item to create your outfit, then Thrift it.
• If the first two tips have not produced all the items needed for your ghoulish garb, use eco-friendly items such as yarn or fabric to create your monster personality.

[photo by Becky Striepe]

Halloween is probably my very favorite holiday. I just love carving a pumpkin, putting on a costume, and playing make believe. Of course, this meant I was overjoyed to stumble upon Green Halloween, an organization aimed at promoting what they call “The Three G’s:

I must admit I get consumer google eyes around Halloween time. Those pre-made brand new costumes from Pottery Barn, Target, or any other retailer for babies and toddlers are tempting. They are cute. They require no sewing (yes, I have no skill in that department). But they are expensive and more of the consumer glut that I have a goal of avoiding (or at least limiting).

So, what does a non-crafty, super busy parent to do try and to have a Green Halloween?

*Think Simple: The costume does not have to be huge and extraordinary. Kids will just love dressing up. Find your dress up bin, or old clothes bin, and see what you have.

A wand, poofy skirt, and a leotard? You have a fairy. Just add some sort of crown (throw colorful ribbon on a headband–even I can do this!), sparkles in her hair, and layers of frothy, gauzy, magical clothes. Do you have a hardhat, tool belt and a small toy tool? There’s your builder. Grab a striped shirt, eye patch, and make a hook out of foil for your little pirate. Check out what already exists in your house. Better yet, do it with your child and have them pick out what they want to be. The ideas are endless.

Crafty green Halloween décor may be lurking in the most unusual places…like your trash can or recycling bin.

You can create cute favor boxes crafted from cardboard toilet paper rolls and bejeweled black cats from empty plastic laundry detergent bottles. Old scraps of fabric can become ghastly ghosts and discarded pieces of wood can be transformed into a creepy cemetery in your yard. Empty Styrofoam containers and leftover Styrofoam packaging can also be transformed in reusable tombstones.

You don’t have to spend a fortune on new mass produced stuff at the Halloween store to have a frightfully fun Halloween. Instead you can go green and reuse everyday objects and implement natural elements to turn your home into a Halloween haunt.

I know it’s over a month away, but with the cooler weather that has set in, my kids and their friends are suddenly all a buzz about Halloween.

I usually don’t buy my Halloween candy until Halloween morning. If I buy it any earlier, it doesn’t last until October 31st and I end up buying more that day anyway. But this year, I just ordered my first bunch of Halloween candy. This won’t be candy that I’ll be handing to the kids who knock on my door. It’s candy that my boys will be handing out as they go door to door.

They will be taking part in Reverse Trick-or-Treat, a program that Global Exchange is sponsoring. From their website:

This year, Trick-or-Treaters across the US will unite to help end poverty among cocoa farmers and promote Fair Trade as an alternative by giving Fair Trade chocolate back to adults while Trick-or-Treating door-to-door in their communities. Each chocolate is attached to a card with information about problems in the cocoa industry and how Fair Trade provides a solution.

What is so special about Fair Trade chocolate? For chocolate to be Fair Trade Certified, the farmers who grow the cocoa beans must be paid a fair wage for their crop. Some of the other criteria for Fair Trade Certification include using sustainable growing practices, providing workers with safe and healthy working conditions, and making sure that no abuse of child labor occurs.

The honey bees are dying off around the world, and yet still many people have never heard of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This week the Italian government banned several pesticides that are thought to be linked to the honey bee decline. More research (funding) is required to find out exactly what is causing the disappearance.

During Honey Week on our sister site, Meridith Melnick wrote:

“One-third of the food we consume comes from pollinators. Bees are responsible for pollinating almonds, apples, soft fruit, and berries among other crops. Without them, we will lose more than honey (a tragedy in its own right!), we will lose a large portion of the biodiversity we now enjoy on our plates.”

Halloween is one week away, and the blogosphere has erupted in green Halloween posts. From The Green Guide to Eco Child’s Play, everyone is writing about having an eco-friendly, ghoulish good time. Green Halloween has also been a hot topic lately on Green Options:

• Daily Tip: Halloween with Less Waste,
• Green Style How-To: Supermarket and No-Sew Halloween Costumes,
• Five Super-Simple Steps to Green Trick-or-Treating,
• Daily

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It’s that time of year again: eight-pound bags of "fun-size" candy fill whole aisles at the grocery store and houses in the neighborhood are sprouting plastic pumpkins, foam headstones and other ghoulish decor. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans are expected to spend more than $5 billion on Halloween costumes, candy and decorations this year. But there are ways to celebrate without doling out much cash for stuff that,

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