Forum dedicated to increasing awareness of green living through beneficial dialogue.

If you are good at making things.. why not try making gifts this year? use recycled Christmas cards from last year to make gift tags... Get some plain photo frames and decorate them yourself with shells, and pretty buttons and bits of couloured glass.. You can personalise the colours depending on who they are for

small gifts for female family, and instead of wrapping them in paper, wrap them in a pretty handkerchief or a headscarf and use a hair scrunchy instead of sticky tape... that way nothing is thrown away.

Dumpster Dive!!!!

I'm not sure what that means, what is a dumpster? is it what we would call a skip or is it a dustbin?

Ahhhh yes you're across the pond aren't you? Yes Deltic over in GB they call it skipping. But it's all the same thing. Check out my posts on what can be found in a Skip (aka Dumpster in the US) I think you will be shocked and awed at what can be found... Dustbins are the kitchen cans we call wastebaskets or garbage cans that we take out to the curb when we don't live in an area that have skips (dumpsters) does that help?

Thanks for that reply. We call the things that we put out to the kerb wheelie bins.I go to our local recycling centre (know as the tip) almost every week, people take some amazing stuff there and you can buy it for pennies. They set it all out in a covered area and I love having a rummage around.

lol..there you go Urban Forager... a convert

If you read the Dumpster tread further down Deltic, you'll be shocked at what he's found on his travels!

Wow, I've got to see if our dump has stuff for sale! I've only been through the drive-thru!
We have a little pine tree that has grown to about five feet tall this year, in our back yard. Rather than buy a cut tree (or a live tree for that matter; no matter what I do they always die) we are going to make our outside tree our Christmas tree. Although we get lots of rainstorms, I'm thinking of putting "ornaments" on the tree that we can replace if they blow off (or get eaten), like popcorn strings and little apples and maybe a foil star or two...We can see our brave little pine out the window, so we'll get to enjoy it from inside.

you can put tinsel up molly... and there are outdoor decorations and lights you can get... we always decorate the huge Fir Tree in our front garden, but recently yobs have taken to bursting all the bulbs as t hey go past, and they cost a fortune to replace so it will just be lights round the windows this years.

Good idea, stav. I don't know if tinsel will stay on the tree during the windstorms, but I could make make a long tinsel with a heavy string...I can see it all taking shape now!.. .
The other year my sister in law bought us all really nice canvas bags for Xmas. They have long handles you can put over your shoulder; very nice for walking groceries home. I thought that was an excellent green Xmas present.