10 Tips for Greening an Eco-Friendly St. Patrick’s Day
The “green” holiday is becoming anything but green. Back in the “olden days” when I was a kid, celebrating St. Patrick’s Day was simple. You put on some green clothing, perhaps a “Kiss Me I’m Irish” button, and made sure to down some beer that night. If you truly had the Luck of the Irish, you got to watch or march in a fabulous St. Patrick’s Day parade, like the one in New York City where I marched for years.
But like everything else in our consumerist society, we’re being prompted to buy more “stuff” to celebrate properly. I’ve admitted to loving the tacky, tacky side of Christmas, replete with blow-up inflatables and lighting, but decorating for the holidays is a longstanding tradition. Do we really need more inflatables barely three months later? This year, St. Patrick’s Day inflatables have popped up on suburban lawns, biding their time till they end up in our landfills. (Check it out here). And more and more, the retailers are offering special Cheap Plastic Crap for St. Patrick’s Day. Cheap Plastic Crap is bad enough in kid’s goody bags. Do we really want to encourage it on St. Patrick’s Day too?
Here are 10 tips for celebrating a truly green, eco-friendly St. Patrick’s Day. Have fun! Luck o’ the Irish to you!
1. Wear Green
2. March or Watch a St. Patrick’s Day Parade
3. Enjoy Some Irish Spirits
4. Sing Irish Songs
5. Visit an Irish Pub or Restaurant
6. Bake and Decorate Some Green Cookies or Cupcakes
7. Try Some Corned Beef and Cabbage
8. Say No to Cheap Plastic Crap for St. Patty’s Day
9. Say No to St. Patty’s Lawn Decorations
10. Smile and Say Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Have fun!
— Lynn
Copyright 2008 OrganicMania
Filed under Cheap Plastic Crap, Green Ideas & Stuff, Holidays, Tips | Wordpress Comments (5) |Green Ladies: Send this to your Valentine (Hint, Hint)
If you’re lucky enough to have a Valentine who may be hunting for a special something for you, you just may want to send this post along as a hint.
Completely green, organic, and with proceeds benefiting the wonderful green charity The Nature Conservancy, these organic flowers, e-cards, and gift memberships are the perfect gift for a green woman.
Be sure to click on this link for details on how to order and to benefit the Nature Conservancy!
— Lynn
Filed under Eco-friendly gifts, Green Charities, Holidays, Uncategorized, Valentine's Day | Wordpress Comment (0) |Simple “Green Valentines” for Your Little Kids
It’s hard to believe Valentines Day is next week. Soon it will be time to run out and buy those cutesy Valentine cards so popular with the preschool set. Wait a minute – they’re packaged in boxes shrink wrapped in environmentally unfriendly plastic. Plus, who ever remembers to buy them until your little darling reminds you the day before Valentine’s Day? By then the odds are good that you’ll need to make an extra trip to the store just to pick up the cards – wasting gas.
This Valentine’s Day, get ahead of the curve with an approach that’s cute, eco-friendly, inexpensive, and fun. Go retro and make your own Valentine’s cards!
You can get fancy if you want, but I’ve gotten rave reviews from the preschool teachers with just the simplest of Valentines. Before my son could even cut out a heart shaped valentine, he cut circles, squares, oblong odd shapes – whatever he could muster – from red construction paper. Then I either wrote his name on each one or he stuck a sticker with his name on each Valentine.
The teachers and kids loved the home made Valentines. I loved doing a simple, easy craft with my child from materials that we already had at home. What’s more, I didn’t waste gas, consume unnecessary plastic, or have to spend bucks on silly Valentine’s cards.
C’mon…join me and make your own Valentines. It’s just one simple way to show love to Mother Earth this Valentine’s Day!
— Lynn
Copyright 2008 Organicmania
Filed under Green Ideas & Stuff, Holidays, Uncategorized | Wordpress Comments (4) |Happy New Year!
Turning the page on a new year, especially one that starts off with beautiful weather like today’s, can be a hopeful exercise. All around us are signs of a better tomorrow, especially for those of us with concerns about making our environment a healthier place.
In 2008, Organicmania looks forward to helping you make informed decisions about when it makes sense to go organic, and to sharing more simple steps to make the environment healthier for us all.
Happy New Year, Everyone!
— Lynn
Filed under Holidays | Wordpress Comment (0) |The Last Word on Green Tacky, Tacky
It’s been two weeks since I wrote about Green Tacky, Tacky and asked my dear readers for tips on where to find tacky “green” LED lights like choo choo trains, reindeer, Santa and the like. Guess what? No luck. Not a tip. Nada. Zilch. I even called upon my dear friend Karen, who works as an “elf” at her family’s business, Santa’s World, one of America’s largest importers of Christmas decorations. Not even she had heard of tacky green outdoor decorations.
What’s more, our one remaining tacky item, the 8 foot tall towering Santa, died – or deflated or something. What a sad sight. The neighborhood kids are beside themselves.
So now in a single season, our house has gone from being the talk of the neighborhood to simply another boring tastefully decorated house with LED lights.
To make matters worse, some of my friends in the “real world” have suggested that tacky and green don’t go together. Are you either green and tasteful, or non-environmentally friendly and tacky?
And if I don’t find tacky green outdoor decorations? What will I say to the neighborhood kids, as they gaze at the deflated Santa on my lawn? Will I commit an eco-sin and buy the non-environmentally friendly outside decorations? Well, I don’t confess sins but every Mother in America knows what I’ll do next.
— Lynn
Filed under Green Ideas & Stuff, Holidays | Wordpress Comment (0) |An LED Rant, Warning and Recommendation
Here at the Green Tacky, Tacky home front, we were quite content with our new environmentally friendly LED lights procured from Target Friday evening. However, upon trying to install them this weekend, we realized that the lights were designed for built-in obsolescence. If one light blows, there’s no way to remove it to replace the bulb. Riddle me this: why are products only half-way green? You see it all the time: organic food served on Styrofoam plates or plastic cards in a food co-op. It just is crazy.
So off we set to our neighborhood hardware store, Strosniders, where they tend to carry the very finest of everything. (They also happen to be 100% wind-powered, isn’t that cool?) For about $3 more a box than the cheap environmentally unfriendly LEDs we bought at Target, we purchased replacement LEDs that came complete with two spare bulbs in the packaging. Check out Good Tidings brand Ultimate Indoor / Outdoor LED lights.
— Lynn
Filed under Green Ideas & Stuff, Holidays, Product Recommendations | Wordpress Comments (2) |Green Tacky, Tacky
I left small town New Jersey years ago to fashion myself a Washington DC sophisticate. Prior to kids, I had largely succeeded, at least until the Christmas season rolled around and my true roots were revealed: New Jersey through and through. You see, in Jersey, Christmas means Christmas lights. Not the tasteful white lights that women who read “Southern Living” string up alongside beautiful displays of greenery. Christmas means big, honking, obnoxious, “tacky,” as my British DH would say, BIG LIGHTS like at the “Elvis House” in Mahwah, New Jersey and the Koenig Christmas House in Lodi, New Jersey, which features 43,000 lights synchronized to music and a bowling Santa scene.
I tried to explain to DH that next to those crazy light shows, our display of a towering eight foot tall inflatable Santa, blinking choo choo train, miniature lighted Santas up the front walk, and Rudolph (of course), accented by tasteful Southern Living-esque white icicle lights along the front of the house was positively modest.
What I never realized as I amassed that amazing collection of Christmas lights at various post Christmas close-out sales was that unlike the fine New Jersey lights of my youth, these were designed for built-in obsolesence. There’s no way to replace the bulbs, and besides, now that I’m more energy-aware, I felt a bit guilty of an eco-sin.
So tonight we trudged out to Target to get some energy-efficient LED Christmas lights. Regrettably, LEDs are seriously lacking in the tacky department. We did manage to find some multi-colored big bulby looking lights for the house and a rounded Merry Christmas sign, but I had to pass on a replacement choo choo train, Rudolph, and mini-Santa lights because they were none available in the LED section. What’s more, the multi-colored LEDs were nearly sold out. There were plenty of those bright blue LEDs that hurt your eyes when you look at them.
If you need to replace your old energy-hogging incandescent lights with energy efficient LEDs, you better get right to it, because the stores are selling out of them. Here are a few online sources for LEDs: Mr.Light.com, Holidayleds.com, and Christmaslightsetc.com. And here’s a cool site that sells solar powered lights – Solarsanta.com.
By the way, if you see any tacky, tacky LED lights, PLEASE let me know where to find them!
–Lynn
Filed under Green Ideas & Stuff, Holidays | Wordpress Comments (10) |The Best Gifts for the Holidays
It’s not even December yet, and already my in-box is clogged with solicitations from toy makers, clothing retailers, and seemingly just about everyone selling anything!
This year, more than ever before, parents are concerned about buying safe presents for their children. And increasingly, they’re concerned about the environment too.
This is one reason experiential gifts are a good idea. Experiential gifts are gifts of experiences. They’re not plastic, they’re not lead and they’re not breakable! What they are is memorable.
When I was a young girl, I gave my father a book of coupons I made. I colored each of 10 coupons and bound them into a little pink package. Inside were pages redeemable for a mix of chores and sweet nothings: a hug, a car wash, a home made dinner or cookies, and more. Of course it’s been 30 years or so since I gave my father that book, and I’ve forgotten all that was in it. In fact, I thought he had forgotten it too, because oddly enough, he never redeemed the coupons. Periodically I would ask him about it, and he would just laugh a little and smile, then change the topic. It wasn’t until after he died years later that I found the coupon book. It was carefully wrapped and laid in a file with my name on it, next to childhood drawings and photos.
I still think the coupon book is a great holiday gift idea. Clearly, my father cherished it, even if he never did redeem those coupons! A markedly more upscale version of my coupon book is available through Excitations, a company focused on “gift experiences.” The Parent Bloggers Network asked me to blog about Excitations, which ironically I was planning to do anyway since they have a store nearby at DC’s Union Station.
Excitations offers a variety of experiences, including “green experiences.” You can do such things as dine at an organic farm restaurant, take a guided bike tour around the city, sail down a river on a schooner, or even learn archery. Check it out!
Copyright Organicmania 2007
Filed under Eco-friendly gifts, Holidays | Wordpress Comment (1) |The Green Grinch Who Stole Christmas?
The New York Times today writes about environmentalists who are driving their families nutty with boring green gifts. It’s an interesting piece, and reminds me of all the requests I’ve received to write about eco-friendly gifts for the holidays. Hmm…I think there are ways to be green and festive at the same time, don’t you?
Filed under Holidays | Wordpress Comment (0) |“Green Halloween”– A Bust in DC
Now that Halloween is past, we can take a look at the push for green and see if it had any impact. As posted on Halloween eve, organic chocolate’s day has not dawned. But what about the other initiatives? Eco-friendly give-aways, home made costumes, etc?
Sadly, I saw very little of that. In fact, for the first time, my child came home with Cheap Plastic Crap! It’s not enough that CPC comes home from birthday parties and school fairs, but now we need to worry about Halloween as well? Sure enough, deep in the recesses of my kindergartner’s trick-or-treat bag were several non-recyclable plastic gems, including a skeleton, a plastic rope of some kind, a skeleton straw, a snake, a spider, and a few other odds and ends. What’s more, at several parties he was given more CPC! Isn’t candy a big enough treat on Halloween? Why do adults think kids need Cheap Plastic Crap too? This is one trend we should nip in the bud. Think about all of the landfill waste if “trick or treat for plastic” catches on!
What did you see in your neighborhood? Please leave a comment and share.
Halloween Treats: Cheap Plastic Crap
Copyright 2007, Organicmania
Filed under Cheap Plastic Crap, Holidays, Parenting | Wordpress Comments (3) |
My StumbleUpon Page
