Natural and Sustainable

If you are like most households, after the gift wrapping and unwrapping is over, what’s the first thing that happens? Many people just pick up those wrapping waste and pitches them all in the trash, even bows that aren’t even damaged. According to Earth 911, Americans alone, produce 25% more garbage from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. Wow! So instead of adding to that percentage try some of these tips to reduce the waste that comes out of your own home during this time.

1. Christmas Tree Waste: Instead of adding your tree to the pile by the curb, mulch it and use those clippings to add to your garden or flowerbed. You can even cut the tree in segments and place them in the bottom of a compost pile or even line a flower bed or walkway with the cuttings.

2. Gift Card Waste: Instead of pitching those holiday cards after the season is over, clip them and use them as gift tags the following year. I found it is neat to receive the card you sent the year before as a gift tag on your package for that current year. It adds a special touch to the receiver’s gift. And try switching your cards envelopes to plain white ones instead of colored ones. The white ones can be recycled over the colored ones that can’t.

3. Extra Gift Waste: If you received a new high-tech blender for Christmas, and you want the other one gone, don’t just throw it out. Recycle it, donate it or post it on a website such as FreeCycle to give to someone who is in need of one. You can use this link for everything and anything that is still functional that you don’t want anymore.

4. Wrapping Paper and Ribbon Waste: You got to pick up that big pile of wrapping paper waste and ribbons, so why not got through them and salvage what you can use again. Ribbons alone have years of life to them and some can’t even be recycled. Instead of using paper for your gifts, consider using newspaper or even cloth to wrap them up.

Consider these tips this year when the holiday season rolls around. You can save the planet and even save you some money in the long run.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Agaves are very drought tolerant and don’t consume as much water as many other plants might and will. Before you head out to purchase a plant of flower that needs a lot of water, consider purchasing a few agaves. You will save yourself money and the expense and waste of water as well.

According to Use Less Stuff, during the gift giving season, December 24th-May 20th, Americans throw away 25-65 percent more trash than usual-or 25-50 million tons of garbage. What’s more, many wrapping materials are not recyclable because they have a high metal content.

There has to be a better way….right? There is. A former yoga teacher Kathryn Hapke was inspired to find a better way to wrap gifts, so she started Wrapsacks, a business that sells hand-dyed batik cotton gift bags-with an added bonus. Wrapsacks are meant to be regifted. Each bag comes with a tracking number so you can see hoe far your bag has traveled . You can even watch the bag’s journey using Track-a-Sack through Google maps, a great activity for the kids to see where exactly their bag has gone after giving it at a birthday party or the like.

In addition to using the cloth bags, you can recycle old wrapping paper or create your own style of decorative and eco-friendly gift wraps. With a little effort, you package will be as big of a hit as the gift your give with the bag.

They these eco-friendly packaging ideas this gift giving time of year.

• Furshiki: is a type of traditional Japanese wrapping using cloth. Take any square of cloth, a bandana, a scarf, or even a cut-up shirt or pair of old jeans-lay it out in a diamond shape, and center the gift on it. Flip the southern corner of fabric up over the gift, tucking the cloth under if necessary, and bring the north corner over the top and let any extra material hang. Then tie the east and west corners at the top of the gift.

• Decorate a paper bag with stencils or crayons.

• Use an out-of-date map or some sheet music.

• Recycle vintage containers such as cigar, shoe, or even hat boxes.

• Incorporate environmentally friendly items, such as raffia, string, or strips of cotton or silk, in lieu of synthetic ribbon,

• Use natural gift-box fillers, such as leaves, straw, pine needles, or shredded recycled paper scented with a few drops of essential oils. (Source: Yoga Journal 2007)

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Start an eco-conversation everywhere you go, even if it’s a quick trip to the supermarket.

Packaging your presents in borwn paper sacks is the most paper-saving alternative to gift wrap. But, there are penty of pettier, eco-options out there this season. Three awesome ideas are:

• Three-Friendly Papers: Try Fish Lips Paper Designs’ recycled-paper gifts wrap and Paporganics’ hemp wrap. Or keep it totally tree-free with Moonrock Paper Company’s uncommonly elegant creations, handmade from cotton scraps discarded by T-shirt and hosiery manufacturers.

• Gift Bags: Endlessly reusable, bags are your best colution for green gifting. Lucky Crow’s super stylish gift bags are machine washable and adorned with sock monkeys and other adorable designs.

• Do-It-Yourself Wrap: Rummage through your closets and cabinets to uncover old paper products such as calendars, newspapers, maps, wallpaper scraps, old magazines and fabirc such as scarves, and bandanas that are destined to be discarded. Tie up your packaging with biodegradeable-cotton ribbon and skip those needlessly wasteful gift tags.

**Over at Wii Rally, Lynn Little reports that Nintendo had record sales during Thanksgiving shopping weekend with more than 653,000 Nintendo DS systems and 350,000 Nintendo Wii consoles were sold in the United States alone. Read the whole story here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Decorate responsibly by purchasing eco-sensitive accessories. Check out Viva Terra for some ideas.

When the time comes to pick a rental-car company at the airport with traveling, you may make your choice one whichever company will save you the most moneu, but keep this in mind when making that choice next time you travel: More than 1.6 million rental cars emit carbon on the road each year. With that knowledge alone and gas prices steadily climbing, why not use this guide to make a more eco-friendly, fuel-efficient decision.

1. Enterprise: 3,999 Toyato Priuses and 41,000 vehiucles that run on E85, a fuel makde of 85 precent ethanol and 15 precent gasoline. $60 million pledged to plant 50 million trees over 50 years.

2. Hertz: 3,400 priuses and 35,000 other hybrids. $1 from each of those rentals goes to the National Park Founation to support environmental preservation and education.

3. Avis & Budget: 1,000 Priuses each in California, Portland, OR; Seatle and Washington, D.C.

If you will be taking a trip with children, give Echo Lake Science Center a try. They offer a hands-on learning environment and teach children everything from eco-friendly ways to help keep the earth safe for many more generations to come.

And Always keep in mind when traveling to leave a lighter footprint every time you travel. Check out Eco.Orbitz. This site offers everything from green hotels to a complete low-impact itinerary for a holiday in the jungles of Belize.

**Arkansas beat LSU 50-48 in triple overtime. Over at University of Arkansas blog here at 451 Press there is a link to the RSS feed to read the whole story. Get the whole scoop by clicking here.**

*Natural and Sustianable Living Tip: Find new uses for old things.

1. Reflect on what’s important: Have a family discussion about what everyone is thankful for this year.

2. Experience Diversity: Incorporate other cultural and religious customs into your holiday celebrations.

3. Valunteer Where Ever You Can: Assist at a soup kitchen, children’s hospital or animal shelter.

4. Pick A Family Cause: Collect loose change and allowance money and donate it together.

5. Give Gifts That Count For Something: Instead of material items, give charitable donations in the names of friends, family, teachers and coaches.

6. Give meaningful gifts: Buy fair trade and ethically-sourced products from retailers such as World of Good Trade as One and Ten Thousand Villages.

7. Share In The Name Of The Holidays: Contribute new or gently used clothes and tous to the Salvation Army, Goodwill, toy drives or families in need.

8. Spread The Joy: Ask you child’s teacher to have students create handmade greeting cards. Then deliver them to a local senior citizen’s home.

9. Spread The Love: Compose a poem, song or testimonial telling someone that they are special. Create an eco keepsake: Write it on recycled paper and put it in a reclaimed wood frame.

10. Spend Time With Family: Cook together, talk with the TV off or just get on the floor and play games.

11. Care For The Earth: Conserve wrapping paper, reuse ribbons and bows, send greetings on recycled paper, or send e-cards online.

12. Celebrate Your Family: Appreciate the gifts that they are just for being themselves.

**Do you have bad habits? Over at Write Anyway, JM jokes about her bad habits, and how bad habits aren’t all that BAD. Read the whole story here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Compact your nonrecyclable trash and use fewer bags when throwing things away.

Nothings more sustainable than using what the earth already provides. Leaves and foliage make a great Thanksgiving center piece as well as wall art. Here are some ideas to get you started.

• Enhance an ordinary wooden tray with a scattering of fallen leaves. Cut a piece of colored art paper to fit the inside of a tray. Using pressed, preserved leaves, plan your design, dot each leaf with craft glue and press onto the paper. Place the paper on the bottom of the tray. To protect the design and the leaves from getting broken, place a piece of glass over the top. You can get a piece of glass cut to fit the tray size at any frame shop.

• Graphic leaf patters put a modern spin on the age-old art of framing pressed botanicals. Select frames of your choice. Take the glass out of the frame and trace outline on a piece of card stock. Arrange leaves as you like on the paper, dot each leaf with craft glue and press gently onto the paper. When throughly dry, put the frame back together and replace the glass. For a wreath pattern, draw and cut a circle from a piece of 1/8-inch thick cardboard, using a large bowl or other round shape as a tehmplate. Set a smaller bowl inside the circle and trace. Cut the inside shape out to a make a ring. Brush a thin layer of craft glue on the leaves and overlap them onto each other. Experiment with background papers in nature’s rich palette of earth tones.

• Give packages a woodsy flair by tying them up with twine or raffia topped with leaves. Try a mix of papers in seasonal hues. For gift boxes, wrap each box with paper and tie with twine, leaving enough for a bow. Make a fan of a few pressed, preserved leaves, and punch a hole where the stem meets the leaf. Thread the twine though, knot and trim the ends. For paper bags, punch holes at the bases of a few leaves, thread the twine through and tie. For bottles, cut a length of parchment paper slightly longer than the circumference of the bottle and as wide as the label you’ll be covering. Wrap the apper around the biottle, tie with twine and tuck the leaves underneath.

• Make pillar candles embellished with leaves the highlight of your tabel. Or arrange them on the mantel. Plan the leaf pattern on a flat surface. Brush a thin layer of craft glue onto each leaf and press onto pillar candles of various heights. Arrange the candles on a tray and surround with loose leaves.

• Nothing could be easier, or prettier, than setting a table dressed up for the season. Place leaves in a pattern for each plate, arrange a ring of leaves around the rim or dot the leaves across the plate as desired. Carfully place a glass plate of the same size as the bottom plate on top snadwishing the leaves between the two plates. Try colored glass plates, instead of clear, for an entirely different look.

•Instead of decorating with traditional greens, drape a favorite mirror, mantel or banister with a garland of leaves. Cut a piece of brown twine to desired length (6 feet gives you a good length to work with) and lay straight on a flat surface. Working form one end and using a hot-glue gun, sandwich the twine in between two leaves and secure with a dot of glue. Continue adding “leaf sandwiches” on the twine until the entire length of twine is covered. Vary color and variety of leaves. Secure the garland to a mirror or banister with glue dots. Glue dots are best so they won’t leave a mark when the garland of leaves are removed.

**Need tips on how to entertain a crowd of people? Over at Household Tips, Stephanie gives tips on how to achieve the perfect setting this holiday without going insane. Read her tips here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: If your shelves are overstuffed with books you have already read, check out Book Mooch, it’s a free service that helps you trade books with othes around the globe. You rack up points for each book you give away. Make a wish list and redeem your points when a book you want becomes available. And here’s the cool thing; Book Mooch has a list of charities it works with, so you can donate your points and share the literay wealth with someone in need.

Get your crafty on with the natural Christmas gifts. They are quick and painless to make and they are a lot better to give than gifts that are mass-producted.

• Festive Fire: Show your appreciation for the little deeds neighbors and others have done with a bundle of kindling. For a pretty presentation wrap a ribbon and greenery or a fragrant sprig of willow-leaf peppermint. Slide ribbon through a matchbox wrapped in festive paper for an all-in-one gift.

• Picture-Perfect Mailer: Treat relatives to an easy-to-mail album that recaps the year in photos. Layer and staple small sheets of paper along one edge of card stock. Fold over stapled edge twice; flip paper to inside, creating aflap. Crease card stock; insert opposite edge under flap. Use photo corners to attach photos to paper.

•Sparkling Towels: Embellished tea towels are a gem of a stocking stuffer. Just bejewel and be done. Iron a rhinstone transfer for decorating jens onto a smooth-texture towel. Following manufacturer’s instructions, such as a twig design resembleing a Christmas tree, but the towel is still versatile enough to use year-round.

• Snowy Village Ornaments: Replicate a friend’s house or build an entire village with paper abodes. Use patterns you hae made out of cardboard and transfer onto card stock. Create a wintry scene by sprinkling glitter on crafts glue spread on the roof and base of the houses. Or attach icicles formed from hardened hot glue. Decorate with a miniature tree and a wreath made from chenille stem (pip-cleaner). Hot-glue a clothespin or candle clip to the base to attach the ornament to a tree. Pick up patterns here.

• Snow Globe Centerpieces: Snow globes are a Christmas classic. With an oversize spheres put on an impressive display. You can use 7-8 inch flower aquariums with magnifying qualities that give the contents added pop. Look for the aquariums, which include a globe, rubber base, and plastic stand, at floral shops or online. Use epoxy to attach ceramic or plastic ornaments and figurines to the rubber base, which also serve as the lid. Fill the globe with distilled water to just below the opening; add about 1 tbs. of liquid glycerin (found in the soap-making sections of hobby stores) to thicken the water. Sprinkle with glitter. Working over a sink, slowly invert the decorated portion of the rubber base into the water. Stretch the seal of the rubber base over the lid of the globe. Attach the plastic stand, turn the globe upright, and watch the snow fall. FOr extra sparkle, stand the snow globe in a silver wine bottle coaster.

•Merry Paperweights: Glass paperweights decked out for the holidays make a practical and gender-neutral gift. Idal for co-workers and teachers to organize paper. The super-simple project starts with a glass paperweight kit, availiable at crafts and hobby stores or online. Decorate the paperweight with scrapbooking paper gift wrap, or an old Christmas card. Thin foam letters glued on one paper sends glad tidings.

**Arkansas is getting ready to head to South Carolina in an SEC game that is talked about as ‘big news.’ Read the rest of the story here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: This winter if you plan on using a wood-burning fireplace, consider an eco-friendly one or eco-friendly buring options. Ones that are earth-friendly options include fireplaces that use clean-burning ethanol; no chimney required, such as the ones from EcoGreen Fire and crackling logs that burn for three hours; made from coffee waste and vegetable oil, and packaged in recycled materials from Java-Log Fireplace Logs. You can also opt for ones like Duraflame that use petroleum-free logs that burn for three hours and use 80% fewer resources than regular firewood.. Either one you choose is great for the earth-conscious consumer that wants toasty hands and feet this season.

Here are simple wasy to celebrate the season in a more sustainable way.

You wake up on January 1st with piles of crumpled wrapping paper, tissue paper everywhere in every color imaginable and gift bags laying all around filled with gifts of uselessness that you may only use once or twice before it ends up in a yardsale or donation box the following year. Not only the gifts lay about but also mounds of leftovers. All of this means, mind-boggling amounts of waste.

Americans toss away an extra 2 billion pounds of garbage weekly between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. From an environmental prespective, consumption, wheather of matiureal goods or energy, poses the greatest threat of anything we do on the environment.

Being environmentally conscious also reduces your holiday stress. Cutting back on the overdoing and overspending helps keep your immune system strong and winter-cold-resistance. It also brings more personal value to a celebration. Environment consciousness as taking a step back and focusing on the season. You have all your friends and family around, so take advantage of that and spend time with people rather than focusing on gift giving. Do yourself and the earth a favor: Before you decorate your home, wrap your gifts, and set out your buffet, consider these paths to a happier holiday.

• Decorate Your Tree With Sustainability: Every year, roughly 35 million Christmas trees are cut down and sold, serving a major source of holiday waste. First of all, don’t feel guilty about buying a tree. Trees are grown as a sustainable crop. In fact, 1 acre of Christmas trees produces enough oxygen to support 18 people, and provides habitiats for birds and wildlife. Buying an artifical-tree isn’t a better choice, since most faux foliage is made from earth-toxic PVC. The very best thing you can do is buy a live tree, with a root-ball, not a cut one. Live tress can be found at most nurseries and some tree lots. When the season ends you can plant it in your yard or a park. Whether you go cut or live be sure and always recycle your trees. Being a live one to your garden or a cut one to a local tree recycler. To find one in your own area go to Earth 911 or call you city’s public works department.

• Decorate With The Earth In Mind: Decorating for the holidays is a way to show personal expression, yet so many people fall back on petroleum-based products like tinsel, and plastic lawn ornaments. People not only use these products they also use the old fashion lights that blaze forth waste. We waste 40 precent more energy during the holidays than during the rest of the year by burning lights and doing extra driving.

Look for energy-eicient LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs, which burn just as brightly as regular tree lights by use 5 precent of the energy and last up to 100 precent longer.

Rather than filling the house with store-purchased decorations, which typically are mass-produced, easily broken and destined for landfills, make your decorations personal or biodegradeable such as winter squash and pomegrantes accented with fragrant cinnamon sticks and nutmeg into wreaths and centerpieces. Or buy a biodegradeable wreath made from birdseed for your front door. Let meaningful souvenirs and phtographs take the place of glass and aluminum ornaments on your tree as well.

• Put Some Sustainability Thought Into Gift Giving: Most of the precents you buy in December will be discarded by January. Skipping gifts altogether ay beem Scrooge’ish, but some meaningfullness can be put into the gift other than something “throw away”. First, don’t shop the mall on the day after Thanksgiving, which is the busiest shopping day of the year, by observing Internation Buy Nothig Day. Then consider ways to avoid the shopping ills while coming up with ideas for gifts that mioght actually be appreciated. Handmade gifts are the ones more cherished.

Back in the earlier gift-giving days, manufactured goods become more and more available to the masses, the idea of a store-bought gifts gained ascendant, but that era is now coming full circle. For many, a return to handmade gifts has put the fun back into the holidays. People use and keep nomemade gifts because there’s a memory associated with them. As an alternative, gifts of service such as: Car washing, dog walking, foot massaging, have no environmental impact and plenty of personal significance.

Rather than asking friends and family members wha they want, ask them what they want to do. We often give tickets to shows or concerts, it has a certain intimacy.

•Wrap It Up Earth-Friendly Ways: If you take the time to come up with personalized gifts, it’s a shame to not use better wrapping paper to wrap it up with, pasticularly when you are trying to think more green. The paper industry has one of the largest ecological footprints in the world. Using recycled paper is very, very important to do during the holidays. You not only reduce forestry waste, you also reduce water, energy and global warming impacts.

Americans waste more paper during the holidays during any other time. Christmas card waste could be cut back by a 10 precent reduction in the already 750 million greeting cards sent anually. This cut back could save 30,000 trees. And if every household in America reused just 2 feet of ribbon this year, the result would be 38,000 miles saved could be used to tie a ribbon around the Earth. Try to reuse and create your own wrapping paper by using old magazines or newspaper.

**If you need to catch up on what’s happening on Law and Order Criminal Intent, why not read all about the latest on the show over at Crime Drama TV here at 451 Press. Read the latest on L&O Criminal Intent by clicking here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Always recycle your old print cartridges. HP has an offer for a prepaid envelope to use when you purchase new cartridges to send back to the company your old cartridges for recycling.

Take one great wrapping paper and yse it in three distinctly different ways.

1. Stackables: A paper with both patterned and solid sections allows variety when wrapping stacked bopxes. Unify boxes with a common ribbon.

2. Gift tag: Use the solid section of the paper to wrap the gift, cut a piece of patterned section for the tag.

3. Paper ribbon: Eke out the last bit of paper by cutting strips of the patterned section to use as ribbon. To make the casual bow, hold each of tha strip and twist until it coils. Tape the ends to each other; tape coil to gifts.

Little Ribbons:

Tiny rolls of barrow “Bobbin” ribbon available in dozens of colors and patters caost usually about $1 each. Keep bunches of them on hand to creat many gift-wrap loos with ajust a few papers. And an even better earth-friendly option is to save all dicarded ribbon from the previous year or even at birthdays and other holidays and reuse and repurpose those ribbons.

Stylish tree garland:

1. Old-Time Garland: Get the look of vintage ornaments strung together. Shop antique stores and pay less for old-fashioned glass ornaments. String them together and use as garland for your mantel, tree or even your door-frame.

2. Metal Spiral: This dynamic shape is super fun to use. Try using aluminum foil and cut in a circle and hang on your tree after unraveling it.

3. Hand-Felted Pows: So adorable and fuzzy you could practically wear them as a scarf. By in a fabric store, needle and thread them together and hang. You can even pick up older pow pows at vintage stores or second hand stores.

Garland isn’t just for a tree as stated above, you can use it in many ways, such as:

• Coil inside a clear glass bowl
•Swag across a bed footboard or over a head board of a guest bedroom.
• Use as a drapery tie-back
•Drape across a kitchen window
•Wind amont accessories on a shelf or mantel
•Wind along a handrail going upstairs or downstairs
•Drape across a door frame or archway into the sitting room

**Looking for somethings new for your wedding? Try fitting in some dance lessons and wow your guests. Over at Wedding Tactics, Stacy Ochsman talks about a Boston company that offers lessons for bridal couples. Read the whole story here.**

**Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: If you currently hold a major credit card why not think about switching your current balance over to a credit card that gives you more than just an interest rate each month. You’re going to buy stuff anyway. Might as well earn carbon offsets or monetary donations while you’re at it; they’re small (usually around 1% of spending), but they add up. Some cards offer personal rewards as well as giving to charities or CO2 offsetters, and all are affiliated with major card companies like Visa. Less worry about whether or not your rewards points are gonna expire, since the points go straight to the good cause. Try: Earth Rewards Mastercard, World Wildlife Fund Visa, or Working Assets Visa. And if you have a credit card issued by a bank, check its website to see if you can earn rewards for good causes.

The single best thing you can do to keep the flu out of your home is to get vaccinated. There should be plenty of vaccine to go around, so don’t feel like you will be taking away from someone else. Two-thirds of the population are recommended to get one. That two-thirds includes people 50 and over, children between six months and their 5th birthday, anyone in close contact with young children, anyone with chronic disease of heart, liver, lungs, or kidneys, people with diabetes, and health care workers.

If shots give you the willies, there is another option. A vaccine in the form of nasal mist has been approaved since last year and is approved for use in healthy people between the ages of 5 and 50. The nasal spray is made from live, but weakened virus (whereas the traditional shot is made from killed virus).

Whichever vaccine you choose, remember that neither is 100 precent effective because the virus that causes flu can mutate very quickly. So make sure you also practice good winter hygiene. Wash you hands whenever you come in from any contact with the outside world and carry some baby wipes or anti-bacterial wipes in your purse or handbag or car so that you can wash up even when you are away from water.

**Into cars? Movies? How about horror flicks involving cars? Over at Automotive Blogger, M. Mayder talks about all the great horror movies involving cars. And just in time for Halloween too.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Take your lunch to work or school in reuseable containers and have a no-garbage lunch. Which in turn creates zero waste for the landfill.

“Winter Wellness Guide” 16 through 20 of 20

16. Keep Your Sinuses Clear: This is an especially challenging time of the year for the mucous membranes because of cold outdoor temperatures, indoor air pollution (heaters are on and windows closed, trapping pollutants), and dryness caused by forced hot-air heating systems. Mucous membranes thrive and maintain a strong degfense against viruses when the air is clean, moist, warm (65 to 85 degrees), oxygen-rich, and filled with negative ions. We breathe on a average of 23,000 times a day, and if the air we’re breathing itself creates cronic irritation to the mucous membreanse and makes us more susceptible to viruses. Use a botanical saline nasal spray, such as Sinus Survival Spray, which contians saline, aloe vera, godlseal extract, and grapefruit seed extract. It keeps mucous membranes moist, washes out inhaled particles, and has anti-bacterial and anti-fungal prperties. Use the spray every two to three hours throughout the day, especially in heavily polluted and dry conditions. Also try medicinal eucalyptus oil, which you can inhale from a tissue held over your noise and through a steam inhaler.

17. Eat Dark Chocolate: As October progresses, many women start to feel moody and depressed and experience intensified PMS. Craving for choclate goes through the roof. Make sure you have high-quality dark choclate available; 90 percent cocoa is too much, but 70 percent should be about right. Seasonal affective disorder is closely linked with PMS being worse during the winter, so borrowed light from windows and sky lights in your home and office can make a powerful difference.

18. Lighten Up: At least 30 minutes exposure to natural light outdoors, in addition to using a light box indoors, helps combat seasonal affective disorder. Natural light seems to have certain ingredients that just can’t be duplicated by an indoor light box. A common problem for people with seasonal affective dsiorder is serotonin deficiency. St. John’s wort (600 to 900 mg per day), 5_HTO ( 50 -200 mg per day), or SAM-e (400 to 1,2000 mg per day in enteric-coated tablets) can be quite helpful in rasing serotonin levels.

19. Eat Your Vitamins: Fresh thyme and rosemary in your cooking during the winter is a great addition. Thyme is an antiseptic and a digestive aid, while rosemary promotes circulation. Make sure to eat fruits and vegetables high in antioxidants, including clementines, kiwi, oranges, dark-green vegetables, peppers, escarole, spinach, and broccoli. Add roasted red peppers to sandwiches and salads, too. Also have 1 tbs. of flaxmeal a day, usually in cereal or yogurt or even oatmeal in the morning, This assures that you will be getting a good balance of omega-3 fats, which help boost the immune system.

20. Drink A Warming Ginger Tea: Ginger boosts the immune system, clears the lungs, aids in digestion, and tastes yummy. Make a winter homemade brew: Mix 1 tbs. fresh grated organic gingerroot, 1 tsp. fresh organic lemon juice, and 1 tsp. honey in a 12-to16-ounce cup of very hot purified water, and let steep for five to 10 minutes before drinking. The honey, if locally farmed and pesticide-free, is also stimulating to the immune system.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Always turn off a light when you leave a room, you will not only see the changes on your energy bill you will also be helping conserve wasted energy that coal-producing power plants have to keep producing. Why leave the light on anyway?

“Winter Wellness Guide” 11 through 15 of 20

11. Have A Bowl Of Qi Soup: A thousand years ago, the Chinese started their tradition of eating a festive soup on the eighth day of the last lunar month (known as la ba) to bring about winter wellness. They beleive that winter is the time for the body to store nutrients and that eating well will bring improved health for the upcoming year, La Ba Rice Soup usually includes rice, red beans, soybeans, peanuts, walnuts, chestnuts, red dates, or lotus seeds. In chinese medical theory, these ingredients are potent anti-aging foods. Red dates, chestnuts, and lotus seeds tonify qi, the vital energy of the human body. To make the soup:
1. Choose any combination of the ingredients mentioned above.
2. Place two-thirds rice and one-third nuts, beans, dates, and/or seeds in a saucepan.
3. Add enough water to cover all the ingredients, then soak overnight. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer until the beans and rice are very soft. Take one small bowl a day.

12. Save Your Skin: When the weather cools, we turn on our heaters, drying out the air and consequently our skin. Change to a mild cleanser, like Cetaphil, Aveeno, or just a natural glycerin soap, and use it only on those areas that require washing: generally just the folds in the skin, or where skin touches skin. After washing, be sure and moisturize those areas that are prone to dryness-lower legs, hands, and forearms, and upper back-with cream-based moisturizers; the lotion based moisturizers, tend to dry the skin rather than emilliate them. These basic steps can prevent developing dry, cracked, itchy skin later.

13. Spruce Up Your Shower: After your done washing, turn off the water and put seven to 10 drops of black spruce oil in your hands. Black spruce oil is anti-bacterial and anti-infectious, and it supports the adrenal glands, which suffer when we get tired from the winter weather and lack of light. Spread the oil all over your skin from head to toe, except the mucous membrans. Always make sure to rub the oil on your abdomen, since there’s a lot of lymphatic tissue in that area. Then do 30 seconds of deep breathing and rinse off with cool water. When people follow this regimen every morning in the witner, it’s extremely rare that they get sick in any way.

14. Say “Good Day Sunshine!”: Start the day with a sunshine ritual. Get yourself a set of flatware that is bright. Like ones with yellow handles, bright yellow bowls, plates, cups and a matching teapot. Make a pot of warming ginger tea and have a steaming cup with your yellow bowl of cereal and bananas. If you rise before it’s light out and it’s dark, try eating by candlelight. Play music in the morning with a sunshine theme, like “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles. The feel is similar to that at the time of the winter solstice. Bringing light from the darkness, and warmth and positive energy as well.

15. Brighten Up: If you live in a climate that gets very gray in winter, without a lot of sunlight, create a feeling of sunlight in what you wear. The first piece of clothing you reach for in the monring, whether it’s a cozy robe or your running gear, it should be in a vibrant color like orange. It will embrace you in warmth and raise your energy level.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Support your local economy and cut fossil-fuel consumption by keeping your shopping and errand trips local. If you have to drive a ways to purchase something or to pick something up several times a week, try grouping all of those trips into one. If you drive a great distance to work, take up carpooling and cut fossil-fuel waste by half.

“Winter Wellness Guide” 6 through 10 of 20

6. Plant A Winter Herb Garden: Try indoor winter gardening with full-spectrum lamps and lightbulbs. Gardening is meditative and connects us to the eart. It can really make a different in our mood, especially at a time when we tend toward psychological hibernation. You can geow your own St. John’s wort, or rosemary for its antioxidants, or sleep-enhancing herbs like valerian and hops. The seeds are widely available, and you can plant them in a box that can be transported outside once spring arrives.

7. Stop Winter Dryness: Vaginal dryness is an issue for menopausal women and can be more of problem during the holidays, when increased alcohol consumption leads to dehydration. Earth’s Botanical Harvest vaginal suppositories, available by prescription, work wonderfully; they contain vitamin E, black cohosh, and wild yam, and are very norishing, safe, and healing to the vaginal tissue. Use them four to five nights a week for two weeks, then every other night for one week, and then two nights a week.

8. Move Your Body: In the winter, when it gets dark out at 4 p.m., it’s harder to motivate yourself to go outside and exercise. Make a pact with a friend that you’ll take a walk every day. A winter walk, even at night, can be rejuvenating and wonderful. Make it your reward to come home to a nice fire. Winter is also the time when many new dance classes start up. Sign up for a tango or a salsa class-or just dance around your house for fun. It’s festive, and it can help lighten your mood and provide a good opportunity for socializing.

9. Fly Healthy: Prevent airborne illnesses when traveling by lubricating the nostriles and the inside of the ear with raw (unsalted) sesame oil. Olive oil is a decent substitute by does not possess the same anti-fungal, anti-bacterial properties as sesame. Protecting yourself from food-borne illness is simple: Don’t eat the standard plane fare! Try fasting on hot herbal teas such as chamomile and mint or on hot water with lemon and honey, or call the airline ahead of time to request an East Asian vegetarian meal. The regular vegetarian meal tends to be loaded with poor-quality dairy that can depress the immune system, but the East Asian selection is more likely to be vegan. They can’t really mess that up too much.

10. Relax From Head To toe: The people who get sick in the winter are the ones who are stressed out. To stay healthy, make and effort to activate the relaxation response every single day. Try this exercise:
1. Sit or lie in a comfortable and quiet place with your body fully supported by a chair or the floor. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths, deep inhale, deep exhale.
2. Bring your attention to the top of your head. Focus on your scalp and your forehead, noticing wheather there’s any tension there. Give it permission to just let go.
3. Progressively move your attention down through yor body, from head to toe, assessing each of the muscles alone the way and then mentally releasing any tension you find. Move from your head to your neck, shoulders, upper arms, lower arms, and fingers, your back all the way down your spinal column, around to you belly , your hips, buttocks, thighs, knees, calves, the arches of your feet, and your toes. The idea is to let go of the tension in your mind.
4. Take all the time you need. If there are places that still seem to holding tension after you finish, return there. Give that place permission to let go. Only when you feel completely relaxed should you slowly bring your attention back to the present.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Always wash your clothes on a full load or adjust the water level to accomadate the load size that you are washing. The less water wasted during that time will show up on your water bill later as well as show up in the amount of water wasted over all. Don’t be an addition, be a solution.

“Winter Wellness Guide” First 5 of 20.

If you are always looking for new ideas to help you feel your best, especially during the rigors of the winter season, here are ideas to help you think past the chicken soup and echinacea with hints to stay healthy, happy, and energetic through the holidays and beyond.

1. Spice Up Your Stir-Fry: Use lots of fresh gingerroot and fresh garlic in your cooking to boost your immune system and protect agasint viruses. Hot peppers are good for enhancing circulation ahd keeping you warm. Toss plenty of these into your next stir-fry. Ginseng has a stimulating, immune-enhancing effect. Get a black ginseng paste extract at natural-foods stores, put a spoonful in hot water, add honey, and drink. If you do wind up getting sick, try the chinese herb Andrographis paniculatea. It’s one of the mose potent cold fighting herbs on earth, its’ cheap, and the World Health Organization recommends it. Take two capsules of 250mg twice daily. It’s a pretty powerful herb and should get rid of your cold quickly. Another herb to try is Umcka. A syrup that knocks out colds quickly.

2. Soak Your Feet: At the first sign of a cold or flu, soak your feet up to the ankles in hot water. As hot as you can stand it without scalding. Do this for 20 minutes before going to bed. Also take 5,000 milligrams of vitamin C a day for five days.

3. Try A Homeopathic Cure: For people interested in flu prevention, the homeopathic medicine influenzinum 9C is great. Although no studies have confirmed its success, it’s widely used throughout Europe by doctors and the public with reportedly good results. Take one does per week for four weeks, and then take one does 30 days later. For the very first stage of a cold, Aconitum 30C, and consider Allium cepa (onion) 30C if your symptoms resemble exposure to chopped onions-i.e. water eyes and a profuse, watery nasal discharge that tends to irritate the nostrils. If you have a cold with a thick, stringy nasal discharge, take Kali bichromicum 30C. The does schedule for the previous three remedies is four times a day for up to two days. If you’re not over a cold after two days, it’s not the correct remedy for you and a more accurate homeopathic medicine needs to be taken.

4. Take A Breath Break: The best way to keep healthy is to keep breathing. Just as not putting oxygen into an aquarium causes the water to turn thick and murky, not getting oxygen into the blood lowers immnity and prevents the release of endorphins. We should all go outside to take a breath break the same way smokers take cigarette breaks. Hwen you notive that you are not breathing deeply, you should consciously take a full, long inhalation. Here’s one exercise to do every day. Stand with your feet a little wider than hip-width, slap each hand onto the opposite shoulder, and twist side to side, aligning your breath with the movement and inahling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth. Do this for 20 to 30 breaths. It’s a quick and energixing exercise. and it really get the spinal fluid moving. There’s no one right way to breathe, but people who breathe through the nose are less likely to get colds and coughs. On a plane, when the people around you are coughing, be especially careful to breaht through your nose. It helps filter out cold germs.

5. Rub Your Feet To Sleep: If you are prone to insomnia, get your sweetie to rub jojoba oil onto the soles of your feet, then put aon a pair of cozy socks you don’t mind ruining and rest with a water bottle on your abdomen until you check out. Invest in a soft, cozy designer cover for your hot-water bottles as well and throw out your electric blanket.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: The plastic bags that come from Wal Mart and places like wise are a problem for the earth. Some people reuse them for trash liners for the bathroom trash cans and bedroom cans, etc. But, the plastic on those bags are not biodegradeable. Instead opt for recycled plastic trash bags or better yet paper bags. When you are getting your items at Wal Mart or the grocery store bagged ask for paper, ALWAYS!

1. Solar radiation doubles every 6,5000 feet of altitude. Boost your in-flight UV protection by drinking water with Emer’gen-C it contains vitamin C, and antioxidant that studies have shown to protect cells from sun induced DNA damage.

2. After deplanning, eat and sleep on local time to stave off jet lag. Or take one tablet of homeopathic treatment like No Jet-Lag, which contains Arnica montana, Bellius operennis, and Chamomilla, at takeoff and landing.

3. Too much caffeine can lead to dehydration, so skip the coffee and tea on your flight. For an added measure of safety, pack plenty of your own bottled water, such as volcano-derived Volvic or Fiji water, which comes from the island of Fiji. The Environmental Protection Agency recently found that tap water on 15 percent of aircrafts contained harmful bacteria. But, be sure and buy your water after passing through the security checkpoint. Otherwise you will have to place the water in a sealed zip-lock baggie and it will take longer to get through the checkpoint, it is easier just to buy it after the security x-ray point.

4. Ward off plane-spread colds and flu with Budda Nose immune Booster Spray and Salve an aromatherapy prophylactic that contains lemon, clove, cinnamon and ravensara essential oil to fight airborne viruses and germs.

5. Whether you’re suffering from motion sickness or too much road-trip fare, sweetened ginger slices, like Reed’s Crystallized ginger can alleviate queasiness. Also, a study in Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine found that taking slow, deep breaths reduces the symptoms of motion sickness.

6. Recyled air can leave you with a dull and haggard complexion. To moisturize and refresh your skin go for a spray. Spritizing your face and hands with rose water (10 drops of rose essential oil in 1.8 ounces of water) throughout the flight can help drasticly.

7. Crowds and close quarters can bring on a tension headache. To keep you body relaxed, rotate your shoulders and roll your head in each direction. hwen snoozing, cradle your neck in a supportive pillow. Try the buckwheat-filled Bucky U-shaped travel pillow.

8. Long flights and car rides can lead to blood clots in your legs, also known as deep bein thrombrosis. To keep your blood flowing, wear below-the-knee elastic stockings on long journeys. That way you’ll be six times less likely to suffer DVT.

9. Don’t forget to pack you aromnatherapy needs with Soothings Sol’s Traveler Tote. It’s loaded with five essential oil belnds that fight germs, calm your skin, keep you energized, relieves tension headaches, and settle a queasy stomach. All are contained in a space-saving zippered pouch.

10. And keep all your holistic travel needs in a zippered, clear, see-through plastic bag. It makes it easier to go through the security-checkpoint at the airport as well.