Green Art, Bags and Paper Too

I am looking at a party invitation sent to me from Art Basel in Miami from a couple of weeks ago. The invitation is for workshops featuring art made of re-cycled paper, step stones with re-cycled concrete, re-cycled fabric and art made of plastic bottles. All I could think about was how green everything has become.

I was out clothes shopping with my daughter last week at all of the tweenager spots; Tilly's, Hollister, American Outfitters to name a few. Sure I had to get over the extra loud dose of the Red Hot Chili Peppers music and overpowering perfume but once I did that, I made it through and even had a bit of fun. I don't like to shop at all and find all of it to be a big pain so this was quite an experience for me. As we made our way through the stores, we used our cool nylon reusable shopping bags from www.reuseablebags.com. Each and may I say every time we bought something and told the cashiers that we had our own bag, they all said how much they appreciated not killing another tree and thanked me, yes thanked me, for being green. The only similarity these store employees had in common was that they were all between 18-21. Is it a generational thing?

So my big dilemma this year is wrapping paper for gifts. How un-green to wrap it up, rip it off and throw it away. Yes, of course I save the bows and big pieces but come on, the paper is hard to reuse. So, what to do. I bundled gifts in the reuseablebags.com bags, I used the last of my stash of paper from years gone by and now I am using anything that can be folded and manipulated ( old Nordstrom bags, colored newspaper, cloth napkins etc. ). It challenges your creativity and makes for an interesting collage of presents.

Bringing green into your home this holiday season is now two-fold. Bring in the greenery and bring on the green movement!!