The Green Familia » Recycle Now

Eco-Friendly Gift Wrapping Ideas

Brenda — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:00:07 +0000

I am busy sorting out a few birthday gifts for the coming weeks, so I thought I would share with you a few of the eco-friendly gift wrapping ideas I have found on my internet searches.

Organic Cotton Gift Wrapper Bags – available from Organic-Ally with prices starting from £2.80 for the CD size gift bag.

Recycled Decorative Wrapping Paper – available from Ethical Superstore, price is £2.50.

Gloss White 1 piece gift box - available from Tiny Box Company, price is 37p each.

Furoshiki Gift Wrapping Style – check out the video and information on this Japanese technique from recycle now.

Gift bags - available from Eco Products UK with prices starting from £4.50 for 5 bags.

If you have any eco-friendly gift wrapping ideas you wish to share, then get in touch with us.

Aluminium Picture Frame

Brenda — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:21:01 +0000

Today is the last day of our recycled gifts to celebrate Recycle Now’s pledge week. I hope you have enjoyed reading my personal pledge posts and the range of wonderful gifts from recycled materials this week.

Those close to me and regular readers will know I have a penchant for all things photos! Whether it be a photo frame, photo album or frames to house my collages I do tend to zoom into these head on, so I could not resist ending this week with this gorgeous, colourful, recycled aluminium picture frame.

It is part of a range of colourful recycled aluminium objects for the house. It measures 22.5 x 1.5 x 18cm. It is available from Planet Trash for £13.99.

Flat Bottle Champagne Clocks

Brenda — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:10:53 +0000

Day 4′s recycled gift to help celebrate Recycle Now’s pledge week. This would make a fab recycled gift for the champagne lovers amongst you. Made from a recycled bottle of champagne in the UK, by fab recycled gift ideas company, Jaxsons Gifts.

You can choose the bottle from one of five champagne makes, it comes with a hook for you to hang the clock on the wall, great if you have a little bar area!

Available from Jaxsons Gifts for £24.95 plus £5 p & p.

OOP’S MAJOR APOLOGY, JUST NOTICED THIS DID NOT GO OUT YESTERDAY…

Recycled Cotton Photo Frame

Brenda — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:00:48 +0000

Continuing on our recycled gifts for this week as we help promote Recycle Now´s recycle week. Todays gift would make a lovely new home gift or thank you for dinner gift.

Made in the rural outskirts of Dehli and imported under fair trade terms, these good looking frames are made from recycled cotton waste from the garment industry. Available in either, cherry, brown or black, and can hold a picture size of 7 x 5.

Available from Biome Lifestyle for £19.

Angelina Urth Bag

Brenda — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:00:05 +0000

Each day this week I am highlighting a great recycling gift to celebrate Recycle Now’s recycle week. Todays gift I think would be perfect for a girly teenager.

Made from recycled magazines, each bag features different magazine images, hence you get unique bags. It is waterproof and has a zipper closure.

Available from Cool Green Attitude for £66.

Recycle Week: Great Gift Ideas

Brenda — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:28:59 +0000

Last week saw me posting daily about my pledge for Recycle Week. This week I thought I would highlight some great gift ideas made from recycled products.

I have a set of theses Champagne Flutes and when I used them this weekend (am still feeling a bit groggy from all the entertaining this weekend!) they created a great stir with my guests with people wanting to know where to get them.

Made from recycled Spanish Glass these stylish looking flutes would make a great housewarming gift or wedding present. You can get them from Ecotopia now for only £4 each. The RRP is £5.99 each.

Do not forget you can sign up and make your pledge for recycle week at www.recyclenow.com

Recycle Now – Day five

Brenda — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:24:43 +0000

WOW! A whole week is nearly over again and we have been busy bees recycling all the clothes that I sorted out on Monday, now we have the last pile of clothes waiting in a bag for us to decide what we should do with them. We have had a couple of suggestions – thanks for the ideas that came in.

In the end I let my little eco-warrier decide as she has been having major fun this week and so we are heading off to a friends house tomorrow to a swishing party that she has organised for charity. We will all pay 3 euros on the door and then will swish the clothes that we are bringing for some others. My friend has organised for the leftover clothes to go to the womens refuge which is in the next village which is great so I will not be needing to bring them all back home!

I would like to thank the team at Recycle Now for all their work and support in promoting this great idea and letting us bloggers have freedom to be writing up our pledges. I hope you all have made a pledge for recycle week!

Recycle Now – Day four

Brenda — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:26:21 +0000

Day four of my recycle pledge to reuse or find a way to recycle our old/unwanted clothes for Recycle Now.

So far we have managed to have a mega sort out, much to the disgust of some members of my family! We then recycled the really old clothes that could not be given away into dusters and rag cloths to use when cleaning the house. Then my daughter and I yesterday spent some time trying to make clothes for her dolls/teddies, which was fun but not sure how successful I was, but hey you can’t be good at everything…

Number two son has a day off today from school so we got the pile of clothes that had to be delivered to the local childrens home and headed off there this morning. We got to meet a couple of the kids that live there when we dropped off the black sack of clothes and were told that they would be greatly appreciated. I was kinda proud of the kids as not only did we take the clothes, but they had also donated some of their old toys to the home.

Tomorrow is the last official day of this pledge and I am wondering what I can do with the last pile of clothes lying here. If you have any suggestions, let me know and I will pick one to use.

Right off we go, if you still have not made a pledge, it is not too late, go to www.recyclenow.com and do it NOW!!!

Recycle Now – Day three

Brenda — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:38:05 +0000

Those that know me, will know I am the hostess with the mostess!! I love to cook and entertain for our friends and family in our home. I can also clean as well as the best can, iron not so bad, but other womanly chores like sewing, knitting etc are not really my forte. So deciding that we would recycle some of my daughters old clothes into mini me outfits for her dolls and teddies is a big deal for me…secretly I have been dreading it, whilst my eco-warrior daughter has been in her element planning it all out for us!So we sat down with the pile of clothes she had chosen, the models, some scissors, thread, needles (I do have a sewing box! just never use it!) and a mini sewing machine that her nan had bought for her to use one birthday.

Getting the machine set up was difficult enough! Then we got the clothes laid out and chose each doll/teddy an outfit, took the measurements, highlighted these in a felt tip pen, then got the scissors out and cut out the pattern we had made. Then my eco warrior sat herself down at the sewing machine and had a go. Unfortunately I think missy is as able in this department as her sad old ma as the attempts were not brilliant, but at least she had a go.

I then had a go by hand on the second outfit, hemming it with needle and thread, keeping the stitches level in size until running out of thread as I had under measured!! But we eventually got it done not brilliantly and you could see it had an amateur look to it but hey we had achieved!!!

After that I needed to take a break, thank god a friend had arrived and had brought with her some yummy Green & Black chocolates…mmm just what the doctor ordered, anyway I digress, so with two down and several more to do, I managed to escape and let my cleaner take over, she is a whizz and does all my alterations and in no time her and missy had finished off the others and now the dolls/teddies have a brand new collection of clothes for summer and not a penny was spent!.

For more ideas on creating mini me clothes for the dolls/teddies, check out Doll clothes patterns.

The other two fantastic bloggers taking part in Recycle Now´s bloggers challenge are The Rubbish Diet and Be More Eco.

Check out day two post here if you missed it yesterday.

Recycle Now – Day two

Brenda — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:00:36 +0000

Well, I think I have just about survived the clear out!! Hubby was annoyed I had thrown away a couple of his “favourite” sleeping shirts, just because they had holes in it!! I mean this is the man who has nearly 18 tees for sleeping in!! I hastened to remind him you can only wear one at a time. Anyway number one son said since I had depleted his wardrobe, I owed him some new clothes…even though the clothes I cleared out, were all screwed up in a ball and miles too small. Number two son had a moan that I had thrown out all his odd socks, apparently he likes to wear odd socks! Number three daughter was only concerned that the clothes were being recycled in the proper way, she is the only one to embrace this pledge, she is my eco-warrier.

So today my daughter and I sorted out the clothes that were in a tatty way and had a pow wow over what we were going to do with them. Below are two of the ideas:

The odd holey socks we decided to make into hand puppets that my daughter and her friends could play with in future. So we darned the holes and created faces with her arts and crafts kit. This is a great activity for kids, they love it.

We then got the raggy clothes and cut them into squares to use as cleaning rags, so that we do not have to buy any for a long time.

Tomorrow we are going to have a go at making some clothes for my daughters teddies and dolls from her clothes.

If you missed my day one recycle now post, you can have a look now.

Other great bloggers taking part in this challenge are:

A Modern Mother and My Zero Waste, great blogs to read if you have not yet come across them.

For more info on how to make a sock puppet check out Danny and Kim´s tutorial.