sparrowpost

I had a look at Martha Stewart Living December in the airport earlier this month, and noticed that it had a piece on living wreaths. Sparrowpost had a tutorial on making succulent wreaths back in November 2005. The results aren’t as perfect as Martha’s but the directions are probably more specific and helpful. MS Living has some very cool variations on the living wreaths, including ones made of moss and ferns– I know there are other cool examples out there. My boyfriends’ mother made one out of bromeliads, which are far better suited to southern Florida’s humid environment than the original one I’d made her, and I’d love to try to make one out of living evergreens like this one. Continue Reading »

At the tail end of 2004 I was listening to the news a lot. Anyone familiar with the trajectory of a journalist’s year will know that December is a month whose news includes weekly updates about “consumer spending.” We return home after an afternoon spent Christmas shopping and are greeted with news reports about how we Americans are doing in our important, possibly even patriotic role as consumers.
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As the holiday decorations go up this year, I’ve noticed more and more homes using LED Christmas lights rather than the old incandescent standbys. I can easily pick the LED out because the light color generally hovers closer to the blue/ green end of the spectrum than the red/yellow old-fashioned lights. Seeing LED move into consumer lighting applications is really exciting. Continue Reading »

Boiling your turkey carcass to make a delicious second day turkey soup or stew is hardly a new thing. The main purpose of this entry is to emphasize that this is an easy process… and so much more satisfying that throwing the remainders of the celebratory bird away.
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If there’s one wasteful, materialistic Holiday tradition that I feel I couldn’t be without, it would be the late-Victorian tradition of sending greeting cards. I’ve liked to get and send Holiday Cards since I was a kid, and to this day I’m a little obsessive about this seasonal tradition. Not only does it give me an excuse to try to communicate with all the people I’ve lost touch with over the course of the year, but I like the sheer tangibility of the exercise; choosing the designs, writing the letter, putting stamps on the envelopes and sending them away. Continue Reading »

*Update* check out this NYT article about declining sales of cut trees… and be sure to look at the multimedia slide show!

Though it seems awfully Grinchy to bring up the issue, the question of the environmental cost of the christmas tree tradition is impossible to avoid as this time of year. Interestingly, of all the “problem products” out there, there seem to be few that have been recognized to be problematic by the public at large for so long as the christmas tree.
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