By Kelly Rand •
January 5, 2009
Now that you know what to do with your packing peanuts and greeting cards, what about that wrapping paper? Did you throw it out? No, of course not! But what do you do with it now that the gifts are unwrapped and the holidays are over?
Well hopefully you are a careful unwrapper, like myself. I exude extreme restraint when I denude any gifts. Not only do I want to know what’s inside, but I also want the paper, too. Even if you aren’t as a restrained unwrapper, you can still salvage the paper and reuse it in many many crafty ways.
If your paper is a bit crinkly or has seems from its previously held shape, you can easily flatten the paper out using your iron. Set it on low and place a towel between the paper and the iron. Check it often because you don’t want to burn the house down!
Once you have your flattened paper you can now use it in so many different ways:
By Susie Kim •
September 7, 2008
The buzz word in parenting nowadays seem to be “bonding” and nurturing that bonding can be a lasting effect on having a loving and connected relationship with your child. I am all for bonding; therefore, I am also into baby wearing. Baby wearing has been done for centuries and even dates thousands of years. Hard to know that a carriage or a stroller is a modern invention. The plastic contraption that wheels your baby around is actually counter-productive to this phenomenon called bonding. But I digress, We have a stroller and we happily use it. However, I do notice that we are naturally more connected to our daughter when we baby wear Layla.
So what exactly is baby wearing? Baby wearing is exactly that. Wearing your baby to your body. There are numerous ways to achieve this. A Psling to a long wrap (pictured above) can achieve baby wearing. Many primitive cultures baby wear and scientists have discovered that in those societies, colic is virtually non-existent. Keeping your baby close to you also have great benefits. It frees up your hands so you can get on with your life, WITH the baby in tow. One of the most inspiring thing I heard was from Ergo Baby DVD. A woman worked FULL TIME while keeping her baby in the Ergo Baby. I must say that I was highly impressed with this. Anyone with a newborn knows; there are days when taking a shower is a struggle. So imagine working full time while wearing your baby. This is one of the tenants of attachment style parenting which I am a proponent of. I knew from the beginning that I would baby wear perhaps because It was so common in Korea, seeing halmonies (grandmothers) carrying their grandchildren on their back wearing a podeigi (a korean style wrap). So it was ingrained into my brain that this is what I would be doing when I grew up and had children.
The month of June is filled with weddings, birthdays and anniversaries! During this much celebrated time of year you may find yourself generously giving a great deal but do you consider the environmental impacts of the gifts you give? Here are a few ways you can reduce these impacts:
When choosing a gift, consider buying from a fair trade store. While your gift will probably be imported (which is energy intensive) extra money you spend to buy fair trade allows farmers to produce goods that are more sustainable. According to the Labor-Religion Coalition, buying fair trade protects the environment by “reducing or eliminating pesticide use, increasing composting and maintaining biodiversity.”
For those who would like to avoid the buying option I suggest crafting a gift by hand. Not only are handmade gifts a sincere expression of how much you care for the recipient, since you took the time and effort to create the gift, but if done right you can use virtually no energy. Here are two ideas I have used in the past which also encourage re-use:
- Juice pouch bags- I saw Capri Sun bags being sold commercially and thought, “I can totally make that myself,” so I did. I found this pattern online for my own attempt, pictured above.
- Denim jean pockets- When you are sick of a pair of jeans try making something neat out of them. In one of my teen magazines from way back when they suggested you cut out the back pocket and glue magnets to the back so you can use it to hold pens and pencils on your fridge.
