Buy Nothing New Wedding!

As my real life friends already know, I got engaged this past weekend and I'm getting married in September of this year. Yay!

Since I have no intention of compromising on my "buy nothing new" year, I guess my upcoming wedding has just turned into a "buy nothing new" wedding!

Oooh, this just got interesting.

We Made an Organic Couch!

Our organic, carcinogen-free, super hippie couch is finally done, and now I get to post about it! So here it is, how to make an organic sofa:

The Significant Other on the new couch!

So first here is a little background on why we wanted a new couch in the first place -- the couch we had before was a great find from a thrift store that I've had for a few years, but it was too short so we had been thinking about an upgrade for a while now. What really motivated the change, though, was a cancer scare a few months back that got us thinking about all the carcinogens in our houses -- particularly the toxic flame retardants that are in all furniture made in the last few decades and have been  shown lately to be relatively dangerous (Here's a good summarizing article that also touches on the shifting policies around flame retardants). Between the flame retardants and the toxic off-gassing, we knew we didn't want to get just any new or used couch. Unfortunately, organic couches start at $2,500 and only get more expensive from there, so that left us with one option -- construct our own!

So with off-gassing, flame retardants, environmental impact, and labor practices (and cost!) in mind, here are the materials we gathered to put together our new organic sofa:

• Wooden futon frame, used (Craigslist)
• 100% natural latex foam block, returned (used) and re-cut to our dimensions
• Organic cotton batting (new, made in USA)
• Upholstery fabric (new, made in USA)
• Natural bamboo fiber for pillow stuffing (new, made in USA)

Assembling the frame

We assembled the frame, and the significant other made a few structural adjustments:

 The finished frame

The wood is great because of it's visual appeal and because of the vast difference in off-gassing, etc. versus a plastic, metal, or composite frame. Also, the foam works best on slats so that it can "breathe".

Next we got the natural latex foam -- I found a nearby store that sells 100% natural latex foam that is completely free from chemical additives and flame retardants and was able to buy a large block of foam from them for a discount because it had originally been custom cut for another customer and then returned because the size didn't work. So it was never really used, but it's purchase didn't initiate the production of a new item, which is kind of the best of both worlds. The company was able to re-cut the giant foam block into six smaller blocks, which we wrapped in organic cotton batting and covered in muslin to use as the cushions:

Frame + Cushions!

The Significant Other picked out some upholstery fabric that was Made in the USA (woohoo!) and we then got to work on covering all the cushions:

By the way, I did do work on this, too, but just made the S.O. pose for the pictures :)

See, here I am sewing!

Covered cushions!

Once the cushions were covered, the last step was to make pillows for the arms (to make it more comfortable and "couch-y" versus "futon-y") and a couple of throw pillows. I again used "Made in USA" fabric as well as domestically produced 100% natural bamboo fiber:

Here's what the arms look like now (a couple more pillows are coming soon):

I don't have a final picture of the whole couch because I ran out of stuffing for the last pillows (but didn't want to wait to post this!), but you can tell by that smile how much the Significant Other likes it already haha:

So that's our new couch! It's actually really comfortable, and ended up costing us less than a new couch from a department store would. It was somewhat challenging to find foam and batting that wasn't treated with flame retardants and other toxic additives, but I hope that that will all change soon as California continues to re-evaluate the necessity of these chemical additives in furniture.

Anyway, you may not be that impressed, but I am super excited about our responsibly made (by us!), environmentally friendly, non-toxic sofa. Next up, putting together an organic/non-toxic armchair!

(Also, this was our first time putting together anything like this, so I would love any feedback/suggestions/comments you may have!)

Temptation

I received a catalog in the mail on Friday that I had forgotten to cancel. Of course it was the one and only catalog that I've received in the last few months that actually advertised things I wanted -- cute and colorful work-appropriate clothing. 

I let myself look through the magazine and admire the clothes and definitely felt a few pangs of temptation, but as I reached the last page I thought of all the clothing I already own, and the faces of the workers who were producing this clothing in poor conditions for almost no pay, and the low quality of cheap clothing, and the environmental impact...

And after letting that all sink in for a minute, I hopped on the computer to remove my name from their mailing list and promptly threw the catalog in the recycling. 

It felt good :)

Challenge #1: Gifts

One of the biggest challenges I anticipate facing this year is the question of what to do about gifts. 

I love giving gifts and try to do it as much as possible, but there are some things that bother me about gift-giving culture these days:

1. First, I am really uncomfortable with "obligatory" gifts, where you feel you must get a person something for a holiday or event and end up buying them random junk because you don't know what to get them and can't show up with nothing. In high school, this obligatory present was often manifested in Bath & Body Works lotion gift sets (I think I still have a few of those lying around my parents' house).

2. I really don't like registries. Really, really don't like them. I understand that they are very commonplace these days, and that people put out registries with the absolute best of intentions in order to help out their guests, but they still make me really uncomfortable. (Sorry to those of you who love registries -- I know for some guests and celebrants they just make everything easier!). Partly this is because I think the best part of a present is the surprise aspect and the thought put into it, which you don't necessarily get with a gift off of a registry, and the other part is just feeling really uncomfortable with the idea of giving someone else my shopping list to have them go out and buy a specific item and wrap it up for me. It just doesn't feel genuine.  So yes, no judgement whatsoever to those who are fans of registries, but I personally really don't like them.

(Above, my solution to my first gift-giving dilemma of 2013)

So this past weekend we had a family baby shower to go to, and I wanted to bring something that was more a little more personalized than a registry item, yet not something totally useless or random (like a re-gifted lotion gift set :) ). We knew we wanted to give them a gift certificate to a local hot tub spot (as the mommy-to-be has been sincerely missing her ability to sit in a hot tub for the past 8 months!), but wanted to bring something else tangible for them to open at the shower. 

My solution was this diaper cake. I found a beautiful platter at goodwill, put a bottle of homemade wine in the middle (the significant other is an excellent vintner), and surrounded the bottle with approximately 80 eco-friendly diapers (well, as eco-friendly as disposables can be!). I then purchased a few baby bath items (sponges, wash cloths) and the Ernie cake topper (they love muppets) new. 

Thus the present was part used, part homemade, and part new, which I felt was a good compromise. And the parents-to-be loved it, which made me happy.

I think that gifts are going to have to be somewhat of an exception to my rules this year. I will definitely try to utilize used and homemade items, but when used or homemade is not appropriate, or when I find something new that is perfect for the recipient, I'm not going to restrict myself, because I love giving presents and seeing the smiles on people's faces when they receive them :)

Basically this was just a really long post about a diaper cake, but I hope you enjoyed!