preserve products: everyday tableware line

For more than 13 years, Preserve Products has been a leader in recycling plastics to use in their hygene like toothbrushes and razors. After years spent making personal care products, Preserve surveyed its customers to find out where else they'd like to see their products, and expanded its offerings to include a line of kitchen products. Their Everyday Tableware line, which was recently launched in Target as part of its back-to-college promotion, was designed in partnership with Evo Design and addresses a unique challenge for the affordable tableware market: It's made from recycled plastic yet sturdy enough to withstand years of everyday use.

There are many rea sons that people do not reuse tableware such as aesthetic concerns or marks left by cutlery, the shape looks too manufactured or they simply are not durable enought. Preserve has given these 100% post industrial dishware certain colors, textures and shapes to address these concerns. Objects don't last forever though, when finished using Preserve's dishware, you can send them back to the company to be recyclabled.

fabio zanino: deconstructed and reassembled signage

Artist Fabio Zanino created these amazing assemblage pieces by deconstructing sign advertising. The resulting abstract forms of reassembled warning and prohibited signage becomes a new aesthetic of street abstraction.

heather heron: travel bags

Repurposed Weekender Nomad Travel bag by Heather Heron constructed from recycled army fabric.

strode college: cardboard catwalk: recycled costumes

I wish I had found these magnificent costumes before Halloween, but...ce la vie. Students from Strode College's Creative and Art & Design department created costume and fashion by recycling cardboard packaging. The project was celebrated in a catwalk show where students could model their creations. The cardboard creations included an Octopus, Shark, Warrior and ornate evening gowns.

dan phillips: utilizing recycled building materials

Dan Phillips is a true humanitarian, attempting to help as many families as he can build their own homes affordably. Phillips helps them to construct low cost housing primarily out of reclaimed building materials or interesting discarded things.

For local sources for reclaimed building materials go to Resource Yard, Hillen Corporation or these other national links.

stewart & brown: winter giveway winner

The latest winner for one of HauteNature's HAIKU GIVEAWAYS -hosted by Stewart & Brown is.......Gracie!! Congratulations, you will be receiving your lovely Hilde hat soon.

top 10 things about living in boulder county colorado

1. Hiking from town
2. Gorgeous sunny days, even in the middle of winter.
3. Access to wilderness (skiing and recreation)
4. Clean air and clean water
5. A coffee shop at every stones throw
6. Fresh, local & organic foods grown here.
7. Sheer number of physicists, attorneys and psychiatrists amongst the population.
8. Community focus on green, natural & sustainable practices in all arenas.
9. Most everything within walking or biking distances.
10. Restaurants and all of the natural food stores.

call 2 recycle: mobile devices

Call2Recycle is a great resource if you need to find out where a nearby recycling area is. For example, cell phones can be recycled at your local Radio Shack or Office Depot. The average America gets a new cell phone every 18-24 months, making old phones many which contain hazardous materials like lead mercury cadmium, the fastest growing type of manufactured garbags in the nation. Americans discard 125 million phones each year creating 65,000 tons of waste. Collective Good takes used cellphones refurbishes them and then resells them to distributors and carries in develoing countries. Recellular reuses and recycles mobile phones.

devils thumb ranch: colorado

Colorado's Devil's Thumb Ranch offers a wonderful eco setting for a rustic mountain vacation 10 minutes from Winter Park. This luxury wilderness resort, sits on 5,000 forested acres 65 miles west of Denver near the continental divide. Devil's Thumb Ranch has earned a place on Travel & Leisure’s list of Top-20 Eco-friendly Resorts in the World. Among its earth-friendly attributes is the resort’s heating system. Each of the ranch’s cabins and buildings are heated using naturally occurring geothermal energy, greatly reducing the property’s carbon footprint. Devil’s Thumb Ranch also employs a custom-built water-sand filtration system, removing the need for chemically treated water. The pool and hot tubs are also heated with geothermal energy. The ranch won a 2004 award from the EPA for environmentally sensitive remodeling, it's special events center is a reclaimed 1850's barn and all chimneys are epa approved to reduce wood burning emissions. The Ranch creek Restaurant at Devil's Thumb Ranch serves organic cuisine grown on local farms that employ sustainable growth practices and raise hormone-free animals. Time for a wintry vacation!

recycled skateboard & snowboard decks

Harumaki and Hirosher began as jewelry designers in 2003, but now also create accessories, artwork and sculpture primarily with recycled skateboard decks. The latest addition to their fantastic line of recycled artworks is a helicopter art piece constructed from snowboard decks. 100 snowboard decks were re-used for the sculpture.

samhain: paganism

Samhain, a Celtic holiday translates to 'summers end', in gaelic cultures was a pagan harvest holiday. Samhain ends the lighter half of the year and begins the darker half. Many scholars believe that it was the beginning of the Celtic year. The Gaels believed that the border between this world and the otherworld became thin on Samhain. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities with people and their livestock often walking between two bonfires as a cleansing ritual, casting slaughtered livestock bones into its flames.

The Gaelic custom of wearing costumes and masks, was an attempt to copy the spirits or appease them. In Scotland the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white. Samhnag were turnips which were hollowed out and carved with faces to make lanterns, meant to ward off harmful spirits. The Gaelic festival became associated with the Christian All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, and has hugely influenced the secular customs now connected with Halloween. It continues to be celebrated as a religious festival by some Neopagans.

the cake walk: a halloween carnival activity

In many Elementary Schools around the US, a cake walk coinciding with a school carnival is organized for the Halloween holiday. For any elementary schools that do not do this activity I have a word of advice, Start!
This celebration can also be done with the entire neighborhood or other community facility or group. The Cake Walk can be turned into a fundraiser for a worthy cause as well. It is very similar to musical chairs. Each cake comes from parents or group members who volunteer to bake or buy a cake and donate it to the game.

To organize one, put numbers on the floor or carpet with masking tape, forming a circle. Maybe 20 perhaps more if it is a big school. Participants purchase tickets and when they want to play, hand in their tickets, they each choose a number/position, and when all the spots are pretty much filled, you begin. Using a tape recorder or record player, put some fun dance music on, and encourage the walkers to move around the circle, in rhythm to the music. After several rounds of this, the Leader stops the music, and everyone claims the spot nearest his/her feet. The leader pulls a number out of a fishbowl (there is a number in the bowl for every number in the circle). That chosen number wins the cake for that round, choosing from all the cakes available, donated by participating families. The others are given some sort of small door prize, and a "thanks for playing!"...and may, of course, try again with another ticket. Repeat until all cakes have new homes.

Bakers or Buyers of cakes will need advance notification of the event and the need, so you'll be distributing flyers and/or making phone calls. You need a chairperson/Leader to be responsible for set-up, and ideally one or two enthusiastic Helpers to keep it running smoothly. Someone has to be available to Receive the cakes as they are brought in, store them safely, set up, clean up...etc..

For the love of German Chocolate cake, please bring this activity back people!!!

I was completely unaware as to the true history of the Cake Walk, that you can read about here. I guess the cake walk is as good as Jazz baby-it sure tastes like it.
photo source

flat pack prototype chicken coop

The University of Colorado, Boulder has created an Urban Chicken Coop Project to focus on the current backyard chicken raising trend happening in Boulder County. The city has seen an upsurge in its community garden project and 360,000 visitors to the Boulder County Farmers' Market each year. Many local restaurants incorporate the locavore movement so the local food movement and production is a huge priority. The citizens of Boulder are propelled to natural living, outdoor activities such as, biking, hiking, skiing and now gardening and farming have become the latest path to follow. A nationwide dialogue has begun proving that a chicken coop can be maintained in a backyard urban environment.

Two University of Colorado professors-Richard Saxton in the Art and Art History department and Rob Pyatt in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning have challenged their students to revisit the age old debate; can urban exist in the rural and can the rural exist in the urban. The "Chicken Shack Village" installation explores rural aesthetics and farming in an urban environment.

College of Architecture and Urban Planning instructor Rob Pyatt's design and build class to complete the first model for the easy-to-build chicken coop kit for homeowners. The most successful seems to be Jeff Troutman's flat pack chicken coop design (in black). Jeff's affordable design is an easy to assemble coop utilizing digital fabrication methods to cut FSC certified plywood sheeting with minimal hardware into 4'X4' sections, ultimately housing up to 6 chickens when constructed. The design includes a chicken run and is meant to be set up next to a backyard fence, still allowing for easy access to collect eggs.

Currently, in Boulder, there is an exhibit of Troutman and others designs for the chicken coops at the BMOCA Museum.

In addition to "Chicken Shack Village," symposiums have been set up to allow speakers such as the Urban Hens organization to address topics of collaborative art, raising chickens in the urban setting, environmental responsibility, healthy living, building and maintaining coops, as well as local farming and gardening.

More information available on this project at CO &
AB.