Unique, reasonable, sustainable gift idea...

...and it supports an amazing artist. Here's the new San Francisco Bay Area produce calendar by our friend who does letterpress out of her garage.

Not only does it tell you about what to buy in season and what to plant in any given month, it's a perpetual calendar so you never have to throw it away! Use it for planting notes or a birthday calendar.

I think it's gorgeous to boot!

Great for Bay Area residents or even homesick Northern Californians who'd appreciate the happy seasonal memories.

And for more holiday craft presents check out Renegade's Holiday Fair San Francisco. It's at Fort Mason, December 19+20:

Big plug for etsy's alchemy!

I can't be the only one with a growing pile of craft projects I'll get to ... when? And yet I keep feeding it, assuming that the day will come (and in some cases that I'll be magically imbued with new found art skills) to complete the projects. One of these was improving the horrible, drab blackout curtain in my kids' room:

It's a vital, necessary thing, but such a downer to look at. So I imagined sewing on some decals, or cutting out some fabric scraps to liven things up. This was not happening so I decided to try out Alchemy, the new custom order site by Etsy. Etsy is just what it sounds like. OK, so etsy doesn't really sound like anything but what it is is a fabulous online craft source. Alchemy is a place where you can post your craft project and people bid on doing it.

I posted a picture of the curtain and a description of the mural I wanted and within 24 hours I had 3 bids. I picked my favorite Etsy provider based on the links they sent, mailed off the curtain and 2 weeks later got:


The girls adore it... and it had all the elements they'd asked for... a sun, flowers, a tree and a bird. And the price was completely reasonable!

Two sewing thimbles up for Alchemy!

Another reuse for old clothes

We've been doing a lot of painting lately. I took a bunch of my dads worn and stained dress shirts off his hands. In reverse, they make great smocks! They'll work as full body bibs too... Just need to cut the sleeves off rather drastically.

Word of the day: Upcycle

The word upcycle has apparently been around since 2002 - it was coined by the authors of this book. But I've only recently been coming across it and kinda like it so thought I'd pass it on. A basic definition is to use waste products to make useful things. Of course I always thought that using waste products anew was the whole REUSE part of the R-R-R scenario. But I think the subtext of the word upcycle is up(scale)(re)use. I guess "haute reuse" didn't really have that earthy ring.

Here's a Canadian upcycle site with ideas for crafts for kids.

Putting the green in the green and red

As the holidays approach, this is a great list of gift ideas from the blog Green Parenting.

Green Parenting: Green, Socially Responsible Gift Giving

A quick list of some of my favorites:

• Membership to a local museum
• Adopt and track a sea turtle throughout the year at Seaturtle.org
• Help a rural community develop health or social services (or a number of other options) via Seva Foundation
• Send seedlings or windowbox gardening kits – seeds of change or windowbox.com
  

And potential ideas for kids to give to others:

• Compose. Songs, poems, stories, plays, portraits, dances…
• Work. Clean out somebody’s garage, cupboards, paint their porch, weed their garden…

They also have good ideas posted for toys and the like.

Sew sew

I've started doing a little sewing for the girls and a friend passed on these pics of easy kid sewing which I really liked...


















Also, she gave me a heads up on these two websites which have fabulous vintage-style fabrics. Very hip, and happily not the bright, mod, hit-you-over-the-head prints that are really popular these days. It's the traditionalist in me speaking, but those clothes just don't seem baby friendly to me. I'm all for color and patterns, I just like my a little more toned down and, apparently (gasp!) cutesy. The e-stores are Reprodepot and Purl Soho.