Happy New Year!

Kristel and me on New Year's Eve

Hope all of you had a great New Years Eve/Day!  I can't believe it's 2011 already...

I've never been much of a New Years Resolution type of girl, but here are my goals for 2011

• Read more books.
• Travel.
• Work out more frequently... which means buying an unlimited gym class pass.  (Yay yoga!)
• Take more pictures.
• Buy fewer items.  I have so much stuff that it's hard to believe that I really need anything else.  This will probably be my hardest resolution!

Hope you had a great New Year's celebration!

Christmas Wrapping

Last minute have-to-do's!

Regardless of the fact that I haven't started wrapping any of my presents (save this one), I thought I'd share one of my favorite eco-tricks for wrapping gifts.

While sometimes I'll snag some wrapping paper from my parents, or even buy some recyclable gift wrap (Earth Presents, a company I work with occasionally, creates recyclable gift wrap from 100% post-consumer content - because most gift wrap can NOT be recycled due to the shine and sparkle in it), I'll wrap my smaller gifts in old magazine sheets.

I hate the look of gifts wrapped in newspaper, but magazines have such pretty pictures and end up looking really great covering a gift.  This gift doesn't yet have ribbon or a tag, but the addition of that will make this gift presentable (hahahaha, sorry).

To wrap your gift in 100% post consumer content:
Items needed:
- magazine
- tape, double-sided if you want to get all Martha Stewart-esque
- scissors
- gift
Time: 3 minutes
Cost: $0 - I save magazines from years ago... I still have my YM magazines.  Yes, they stopped publishing that in 2004... I know.
Instructions:
1) find a page or spread that you think would look good as wrapping
2) rip out the pages (or cut them out if you are more patient than I am)
3) tape the pages together if there are two pages (because I ripped my pages out, I fold them over to make the seam prettier)
4) wrap like you would a regular gift

And now you have perfectly functional gift wrap.  It does work best for smaller items, so I'll have to get a little more creative for the larger gifts.

With Love from Greece

I even liked the light blue - a color I probably would never have bought on my own!

Sephora has this amazing eyeliner holiday set by my favorite makeup company, Korres.

It comes with 10 eye pencils: two black (one soft, one regular), one gold, one silver, one grey, one lavender, one navy, one light blue, one brown, and one green.  These eye pencils normally retail for $16, and prior to this purchase I've had my soft black and brown eye pencils for a few months, but this set is $32.50 at Sephora and comes with colors I'd wanted to try (like gold!) but couldn't justify spending $16 dollars for.  So a $160-valued set for $32.50 makes for ridiculous savings of $127.50!

Korres is a beauty company based in Greece that works only with natural ingredients.  They don't use mineral oils, silicones, or other non-biodegradable ingredients, nor do they test on animals.

This exclusive holiday gift set is a real steal, so treat yourself (like I did) to some great eye pencils.  I even got my friend, Katie, to convert and she loves these eye pencils now (her favorite is the soft black).

More about the ingredients after the jump:

A Very Indie Christmas

Let it snow!

With 12 days of Christmas left to go, I present to you some of my favorite Christmas tunes.

• Just Like Christmas by Low
• Christmas Is Coming Soon by Blitzen Trapper
• All My Bells Are Ringing by Lenka
• Santa Claus Is Coming To Town by Mason Jennings
• Fallen Snow by Au Revoir Simone
• Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses

Add a playlist to your page using iLike

Some faves that didn't make the list, because they weren't available on iLike, are:

• "Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto" off of Belle and Sebastian's John Peel Christmas Album
• "It's Christmas, Let's Be Glad" off of Sufjan Stevens' Songs for Christmas Singalong
• "Blue Christmas" by Bright Eyes off of Saddle Creek Christmas
• "Plastic Christmas Trees" off of Summer Cats' Christmas Cats

Plastic Christmas Wreaths

To get into the winter spirit, I made this cute wreath for our house.  True, on the inside our house might be a mess of half-written term papers and Solo cups, but on the outside, we're slowly getting into the spirit.

The best part is I made it using household items that would have just gone to the bin - plastic bags and a wire hanger.  I used ones that my newspaper came in, but I could imagine a cute wreath made out of multicolored bags.  I finished this while watching two episodes of Law & Order and an episode of the Office.

To make your own plastic bag wreath:
Items needed:
- wire hanger
- plastic bags
- scissors
Time: 2.5 hours
Cost: $0 - all bags were saved and the wire hanger was from my roommate (thanks, Laurel!)
Instructions:
1) bend wire hanger to an approximate circle
2) cut up plastic bags into strips: I folded mine up and then cut straight across, but you may need to play around to see how thick you want your wreath to be
3) tie the strips around the hanger until the hanger is covered
4) hang on your door

A free and adorable craft - especially for those who can't bear to throw out any plastic bags.  Ours is currently hanging on the inside of our front door because of the crazy wind but hopefully when it gets calmer I'll hang it outside.

Paperless Check In

Continental Airlines (which has a major hub at my home-airport) has just started doing mobile boarding passes for people with smartphones.  I was a little worried coming home, what with all the new regulations and all, but I tried it going back to school.  I went to security without a hitch - they have a special scanner for these passes, but it didn't scan when I was boarding.

I'm sure they save a ton of paper with these and it was super convenient to not have to go print out paper and to walk straight to security... but can they stop my flight from being delayed?

Hope everyone had safe travels,

Happy Thanksgiving

Things that I'm thankful for
1) To have had my friend, Drew, be a part of my life
2) My family, who loves me and whom I love
3) My friends, who put up with me
4) My roommates, whom I'm thankful to be able to say are also my friends

Now by way of introduction, my name is Kristin and I'm a student at Georgetown University.  I am a semi-avid blogger (Renewable Energy Turns Me On) and semi-avid environmentalist.  I've struggled with living my life in what I deem to be a sustainable fashion, while... you know, actually living my life.

For example, I love Diet Coke and can drink several cans of it in a day.  But Coca-Cola is one of the most environmentally irresponsible corporations in the world, with their vast bottled water operations.  I love buying new clothes, but I know that I don't really need them nor can I afford to buy strictly organic/fair-trade/locally made clothing - nor are those exactly my style.  I like smelling nice, but I know that conventional deodorant has all sorts of potentially environmentally unfriendly chemicals.

Which is how this blog has come to existence.  It is a personal blog at its core (so yes, I will have personal pictures, pictures of my dogs/cat... lots of them, and chat about movies I've seen recently), but I will address sustainable living in an urban environment while trying to keep it stylish.

Have a happy thanksgiving, please hug someone you haven't hugged in a while.