Welcome!

Welcome to austinagrodolce … My family and I garden with more intention and enthusiasm than allocated budget or overall design plan. It shows. Wildlife populations don't seem to notice our lack of cohesive design, they just like the native plants here. It seems by growing local we've thrown out a welcome mat. Occasionally, we're surprised at who (and what) shows up.



Thursday, December 4, 2008

Wrap It Up!

I'm dreaming of a green Christmas. Not in the no-snow sense. It won't snow here in Central Texas for Christmas any more than it will be cool and breezy here in the middle of July.

I mean Green Christmas along the lines of doing whatever we can to make sure our celebration causes as little damage as is possible to the environment.

We are flying a daughter home for winter break from attending law school halfway across the country. Our family is already responsible for at least one polar bear treading water on that count alone. I figure it behooves us to do everything else we can to assure that the rest of our holiday fun is as green as green can be.

Let's start with gift wrapping.A couple of days ago I half-facetiously wrote about using plastic ziplock bags as gift wrap. In our family we moved from gift wrap to using mostly gift bags years ago. Still the bags are paper. Using cloth makes so much more sense than paper. Following that thought to its logical extension, I share with you this video that takes the gift wrapping cake. (Ha! You didn't think I could connect this to food, did you!)

In the spirit of Classy Cross Cultural green wrapping, tada! Check out this tutorial on the Japanese art of Furoshiki Gift Wrapping. Now if I can just find a video on how one person can fold up a fitted sheet and have that come out flat, I am set!

5 comments:

PassivePastry said...

Wow. My friend and I are having craft day and are going to make some ofThese.... Which I was planning on using as wrapping for some gifts.

Yay for green, it IS my favorite color afterall.

Flapjacks said...

the japanese are too smart.

TexasDeb said...

I've watched the video 8 times but don't think this will work for me. I am one of those people who always ends up having to safety pin a wrap skirt. Origami? Puhleeze... I'm a fold-dolt.

bee said...

i love to use roadmaps for giftwrapping. they are study and pretty. and raffia.

TexasDeb said...

Doctors without Borders love to send us world maps (asking for donations). Ive used them to wrap before but like old road maps better. More detail.

I've used maps to line cabinets and drawers too.

Always fun to repurpose something although I have been accused of being pretty easy to amuse.