holidays

set of 5 blank Happy New Year cards, letterpress printed by hand by Maggie Campbell of brooklynbookbinder.etsy.com

Happy New Year to all of you! I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year’s Eve celebration tonight, and I hope that your 2009 is a fabulous year!

2008 was a mixed bag for me… The year started off with my mom being diagnosed with breast cancer, plus multiple other cancer scares among friends & family. 2008 was also a bad year for hurricanes here along the Gulf Coast. But I also had some pretty fun experiences this year, including the Worn Again fashion show, going skydiving for the first time, and a wonderful snowfall in New Orleans!

I’m hoping to start of 2009 with a fresh new look here at MissMalaprop.  You might have noticed that the layout here has changed in recent weeks, and I’m planning to finish tweaking things over the long holiday weekend.  Let me know how you like the new look, or if you absolutely hate it, let me know that too!   What would you like to see more of, or less of, here in 2009?  I’m excited about the new year, and I hope you are too!

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Happy Holidays everyone! I hope you have a great holiday, whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or just a secular day off of work!

My gift to you: a donation in your name of 136 pounds worth of carbon offsets courtesy of Brighter Planet.

They’re doing this in order to promote conservation of resources this holiday season. There are a limited number of these available, but all you have to do is go to their website and claim your offsets, and then you can pass on the gift to your friends & family as well. If you still have some last minute gift giving to do, they also offer gift offsets of different varieties.

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I’m sad I had to work on Monday when my boyfriend and the Noisician Coalition filmed the 2008 Flanagan’s Pub Christmas Special - Good King Wenceslas.  It sucks that I couldn’t be a part of all the fun, but I think the video came out great!

And check out last year’s holiday special, Little Drummer Boy:

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If you’re in New Orleans, be sure to come check out the annual New Orleans Craft Mafia tradition tonight — it’s The Last Stop Shop at The Big Top!

Get great last-minute handmade goods for everyone on your list and support local artists.  This event is more than just an art market: we’ll have snacks, live holiday music by ukulele crooner Littler Richard, plus a reprise of our annual Handmade Holiday Ornament & Tree Raffle, with the proceeds benefiting Recycle For the Arts.

There’s also a cash bar and free parking across the street at Fleet Tire.  We’ll be there at The Big Top Gallery, located at 1638 Clio Street between St. Charles Avenue & Carondolet Street, from 6-10pm.  Stop by and say hi!

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I never cease to be amazed by the generosity and good hearts of the people within the online community. I got a message yesterday from Susan of IndieSmiles about a campaign to help raise funds for a liver transplant for Carole Stites-Luka, who worked as a crossing guard for 22 years and was once badly injured when she jumped in front of an oncoming car to save the life of a child.

Carole had to quit the job she loved when she was recently diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer that is not treatable, and she will need a very expensive liver transplant (even with health insurance she’ll need approximately $50,000 just to cover short term medical expenses). Even if you can’t afford to donate, you can still help out by spreading the word. There is a blog set up at liver4carole.blogspot.com with more info on how to donate and her friends and family have also set up a Twitter account to help get the message out.

Marine conservation charities are also very special to me. When I was a kid I wanted to be a marine biologist and study river dolphins. It broke my heart when they finally announced that the Yangtze river dolphins are now extinct. I’ve had plans brewing for awhile now for a sleeve tattoo I want to get of an octopus & seahorse, and when I do, I want to match the cost of the tattoo with a donation to a marine conservation group. I’m pretty sure when I do, I’ll be giving that money to Oceana, a great non-profit that specializes in advocacy for our oceans and marine conservation.

Oceana has some really great gift options for the holidays: you can “adopt” a sea turtle, polar bear, hammerhead shark, penguin, dolphin, seal, killler whale, or my personal favorite, the octopus! Each adoption comes with a personalized adoption certificate, and you can choose from different gift packages to receive a cookie cutter or stuffed animal with your donation in the shape of your adopted animal.

If you place your order by midnight tomorrow, Thursday December 18 you’ll also get free shipping. I think the stuff animal adoptions would be a great way to help educate kids about the importance of preserving biodiversity in the oceans, and I wouldn’t mind making some octopus and penguin shaped cookies either! (My boyfriend’s nickname is Penguin, so it’s perfect!)

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What a neat idea: a Christmas tree made in the USA from recycled cardboard:

This is a cool alternative for people who like something a little different than the traditional tree.  In addition to being recyclable when you’re done using it, for every cardboard tree sold a contribution is made to the Arbor Day Foundation’s reforestation program, Trees for America.

These trees would also be great for crafty types.  There are examples on their website of different ways you could paint and decorate these 3 foot tall trees.  It would be a great project to get kids involved with.  Let your imagination run wild!

You can get your own from TheCardboardTree.com for $22.95.

Found via OZOlife.

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Eco-Libris, a green-minded business that helps book lovers plant a tree for every book they read, has just come out with their Green Collar Holiday Gift Guide for Book Lovers. The guide includes 50 recommendations on great green-themed books, all from different people.

Each recommendation also includes a little background info on the person who suggested the book, so you get to find out more about some amazing people who are involved in trying to make the world a greener place. The first 2 installments of this guide were published last week, here and here on their blog. Check back later this week for the final 3. A lot of great books are already on this list - I can’t wait to see what else they recommend!

Someone Spoil Me is a cool gift guide site where you can sign up and create your own easy-to-share wishlist (you can add items from anywhere on the web to your list!), and you can keep up with birthdays and special occasions via their social calendar tool.

Even if you don’t care about making a wishlist, check out all of their great gift guides, which are organized by occasion, gift category and price. Just check out all of their great eco-friendly recommendations for gifts under $50! They’ve currently got a holiday promotion where you’ll get 20% off any item found on the site: all you have to do is enter the code STYLEWATCH during checkout at the retailer’s site. Plus, if you sign up now you’ll also be entered to win a J.J. Winters clutch.

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These recycled fur teddy bears by Bella Bear Company are such a neat idea.  Julie Lamarre started creating handmade heirloom teddy bears over 15 years ago, by recycling vintage fur coats.

I’m as much against the production of new fur coats as the next guy, and so is Julie, but what to do about all of those vintage coats that might be sitting in the back of your grandmother’s attic?  Fur takes years to decompose, and most people today don’t want to wear fur products, even if they are vintage.

Julie is a single mother who has turned Bella Bear Company into a family affair — her own young daughter Isabella is already involved in helping out and is used to speaking to the media about her mom’s business.  Julie’s business has grown so much since she first launched it that she now employs seven other seamstresses who all work from home so that they can spend more time with their own families.  Bella Bear Company also recently created their first-ever angel bear, dubbed Serendipity — $25 from the sale of each Serendipity Bear will be donated to children’s hospitals.

Bella Bear Company offers a unique solution to the problem of vintage furs by creating something that can build bonds between families: one grandmother, for instance, had bears made from her own mom’s coat and she gave these to her granddaughters.  Now, this grandmother hosts a yearly birthday teddy bear tea party for her granddaughters. I think that recycling vintage furs in this way could also give some families a way to explain the history and problems of fur practices to kids.  It’s definitely not for everyone, but for families who already own vintage furs it’s a unique way tackle this issue.

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I recently got to try out some awesome lip balm samples from Anti-Body (that’s short for “anti-poverty, beautiful body”). They sent me their peppermint lip balm, which I’m always a sucker for. It’s no wonder why this balm is one of their best-sellers. It’s full of nothing but ingredients you actually know and can pronounce, including fair trade shea butter and fair trade coconut oil.

I’d been hooked on the C.G. Bigelow mentha lip balm before, but upon second glance, there’s a lot of ingredients in that balm with long, chemical sounding names that I’m not really sure what they are. And though the Anti-Body balm doesn’t have quite the tingly pepperminty kick of the C.G. Bigelow balm, I’ve found it’s left my lips feeling a lot softer for a lot longer.

I made my boyfriend try out the chocolate hazelnut balm from their Nutcracker Sweet set, and I’ve gotta admit that when I kissed it off of him, it was pretty tasty stuff. My friend Gwen from Sigh Co. Graphics tested the sugar plum flavor for me and she really enjoyed it as well.

Every Anti-Body product features one or more fair trade ingredients, and as more fair trade ingredients come onto the market, their goal is manufacture 100% fair trade body care products. All of their products currently feature recyclable packaging (with most of it being made from recycled materials), they are free from parabens and are never tested on animals.

While you’re busy scoring all those Cyber Monday shopping deals, check out Anti-Body’s online store and use the coupon code MissMalaprop for 10% off your total order, good now through December 31st, 2008.

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