Responsibly Made Flower Girl Dresses

With only four month until our wedding, planning is definitely in full swing, and I am trying to get more and more creative in order to keep our wedding as affordable and responsibly-sourced as possible. 

Dresses for our three flower girls have been throwing me for a bit of a loop -- I didn't want to buy from a big-box-store dress because of the environmental and social/public health implications, but I also needed to find three matching dresses (because apparently you have to buy young sisters the same dress or they will fight over them). And, of course, I'm on a budget.

This is where Etsy, which continually impresses me with its potential for awesomeness, comes in. I love that Etsy gives me access to artists and tradespeople in my larger community that I wouldn't have necessarily found using google or walking around my neighborhood. (They also have lots of "vintage" -- read: "used" -- finds). I think that often times when we need "stuff," it can feel like there are no other options aside from the big-box-stores or Goodwill, but Etsy is just one of many awesome alternative options for more responsibly sourced items.

After a little searching, I found a woman in LA who will make three flower girl dresses for us from a picture I sent her. And her price is more affordable than the original retail price of the pictured dress. So I saved money, supported a local tradeswoman, and did not support the labor shipping practices that I feel strongly against. I'm going to go ahead and call this a win.

Homemade Organic Furniture, Part Two!

I saw this wooden rocker and foot stool at a garage sale this weekend for $50 so I picked it up. The frame is awesome and sturdy, and will make a great base for an organic armchair! I'm pretty excited.

Do-It-Yourself (and Buy Nothing New) Wedding Videography

So weddings are expensive! Really expensive. And I think wedding planning has felt challenging largely because many of the weddings I've seen and read about feel really wasteful (in terms of money and resources). There's probably a whole post I can write about this later. 

Anyway, we decided that we wanted some video of our upcoming wedding, but didn't want to shell out $2,000+ for a videographer, so:

I bought a few used (and cheap!) flipcams to have get video clips throughout the day (which we can then have professionally edited -- this was totally inspired by my awesome friend Kim). As regular readers will know, I have strong feelings about the huge impact of our culture of disposable technology so, not only do I feel good about getting used electronics, which have no further environmental or socially irresponsible impact, but I also just save myself a good $1900+ on videos for our wedding. I call that a win!

Turning an old dress into a new dress!

So the school district that I work for holds a teacher prom every year -- there's dancing, drinks, casino games, food, and (of course!) a prom king and queen. Davey and I went this year and it was 10,000 times better than actual prom was back in the day!

Not being a very fancy person, I needed a dress to wear to teacher prom and at first, I was sure that I didn't have anything in my closet. That is, until I found this dress in the very back corner:

This was the dress that I wore when I went to the Oscars in 8th grade, and while I love the color, it's really not something I would ever wear again. I had mostly just been holding onto it for sentimental reasons, and the off chance that I would need a floor length blue dress some day. Because I wanted to give this dress a second chance, and because of the rules of my "buy nothing new" year, I decided to make this dress above into this dress below:

 Picture of the front coming soon! We had cheesy prom portraits taken so I'll upload those when I get them :)

I hemmed the floor-length skirt into a knee-length skirt, and then used the extra fabric to construct a bodice and sleeves. I had some awesome polka-dot ribbon laying around and decided to use that for a sash. (For the record, I am in no way a professional or even talented seamstress -- I didn't use a pattern or anything, just played around with my sewing machine until the dress looked good!)

I ended up loving this dress so much that I am now totally inspired to alter other clothes that have been hanging in the back of my closet into items that I'll actually wear. For $0 I got a perfectly nice teacher prom dress and gave an old sentimental item new life.

I love the way that this "buy nothing new" year has forced me to become more creative and more resourceful, and find creative solutions that I never would have thought of before!

Happy (Non-Consumer) Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I know some people feel like Valentine's Day is purely a commercial holiday, but when you take all of the commercialism and consumerism out of it, you're left with just another day to celebrate your love :) That is exactly what the Significant Other and I will be doing tonight with homemade cards and a homemade candlelit dinner (no boxes of chocolates, imported roses, or cheesy gifts here! Although cheesy gifts can sometimes be pretty fun).

Above is my homemade card, that I had some fun making. I must say, it's really nice and relaxing not to have to worry about running out to buy gifts and cards and flowers and the whole shebang. I was worried about how I would handle holidays during the "buy nothing new" year, but I'm now thinking that maybe non-consumer holidays are the way to go after all :)

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!)

Freecycle!

I recently joined a freecycle group, and I am loving the generosity, thriftiness, and dedication to waste reduction of the people in these networks! For those who aren't familiar, you basically join a Freecycle network in your area and then can give and get a wide assortment of things for free. 

I don't check it daily, as I'm still trying to de-clutter, but when there is something that I'm looking for, I will definitely stop here first! I'm also planning on listing our old couch on here, so if anyone wants a free couch, check it out :)

http://www.freecycle.org/

Another great site with the same idea:

http://trashnothing.com

Which reminds me, my make-your-own-couch post will be up sometime this week! I'm excited.

A Photo Essay, and Making a Couch

Copyright by Michael Wolf

There is an interesting photo essay circulating the internet called "The Real Toy Story" by Michael Wolf. While the photo essay doesn't really explore the working conditions in these giant productions, it does help to put a more human face on mass production and helps us to remember where all of these cheap products really come from. 

  Copyright by Michael Wolf

See more of the images Here

In other news, I the Significant Other and I have been working on putting together our own couch, rather than buying new or used (more on the reasons for this later). We are almost done and I'm pretty excited about it. I will follow up with a post all about our handmade couch next week, but in the meantime, it really helps reinforce to me that, with a little creativity, you can make it a whole year or longer without buying anything new!

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!

Where will my two cents go this year?

As part of my New Year's resolution to de-clutter my life, I've pledged to buy nothing new this year. (And encouraged by my friend Lisa, I'm going to write about it on this blog -- Lisa, you may be the only person who ends up reading this!)

What does this mean? How will this work? Is this even possible?

Well here is the plan:

• I will not spend any money on new items this year (but I won't refuse gifts from others, because that would just not be nice).
• If there is something I need, I will get it used or make it myself (so, as much as I love Goodwill, there will be no shopping trips just to browse).
• If, for some reason, there is really no other way to purchase something used (or if it would be really disgusting to -- i.e. underwear), I will only buy a needed item that has been made in the USA. More on the reasons for this later.

Of course every good goal has one or two exceptions, and here are mine. These are the things I will be purchasing new this year:

• Food (Yeah, going to need some of that).
• Toilet paper (Because, eew).
• Essential toiletries (Used toothbrush? No thank you).
• Medicines and other things my doctor may prescribe.
• Socks and undergarments (but only ones made in the USA).

Alright, this post is long enough, so I'll end here. I'm actually really excited for my "buy nothing new" year. Tomorrow I'll write more about my reasons for doing this, but for now -- Happy New Year! I hope you (Lisa, my only reader) have a fabulous day.