Stationery Scoop

We're living life and having a good time doing it

Customer Care Manager Toni and I had a hoot yesterday shooting a video for the 2009 Green Gift Guide. We had a LOT of laughs and a many moments of fun - customers coming into the shop (always happy to see them!), staff clunking up the stairs to the washrooms (I never noticed how loud our footsteps are) and a few tongue-twisting word flub-ups. We could put together a funny bloopers reel! The video will be ready for you on Monday.

This week, I've been uplifted and encouraged by so many people around me, from the Women's Fund Giving Circle celebration on Wednesday night to reading this post about a "should-free diet", I am grateful for the friends, family and good people in my life.

With just five weeks until Christmas, I hope that you take the time to enjoy the people in YOUR life. I'm going to be doing just that with breakfast tomorrow with long-time friends and brunch on Sunday with newer friends. All the best to you!

Give Santa a hand with these green gift ideas

We love the new eco-friendly holiday gift-giving guide from Slice.ca. How great to have 10 fantastic ideas for holiday shopping - all green and eco-friendly!

Go check out the list and you'll see that Botanical PaperWorks' 2010 Plantable Eco Calendar made the list at #7. Thanks Slice for including us - we appreciate it!

 

2010 Plantable Eco Calendar, as seen on Slice.ca

I Found Wings art show - Kal Barteski

What could be better than starting the day with a breakfast with two inspiring women with whom I can laugh and dish and get advice on where and how to buy great jeans? So it is with friends Bonnie and Kal and I'm lucky to spend a little time with them each month.

If you're fortunate enough to live in Winnipeg, you MUST COME to Kal's art show on Dec 2 called I Found Wings. Click here for all the details on the art, the birds and the venue - it's sure to be unique and inspiring event with fabulous art for sale (perfect for Christmas gifts...for others AND yourself!).

Today is another sunny day with balmy September-like weather. I promise to enjoy every moment of it and I hope that you do too!

As seen in GardenWise

Our thanks to GardenWise magazine for featuring Botanical PaperWorks' Plantable Holiday Party Favors in their very festive Winter 2009 issue.

Speaking of holiday party favors, my husband and I are hosting a party in December and we're going to order these Plantable Christmas Flat Cards to put at each place setting. I love this favor because when guests plant the tree, they'll grow spruce trees as a lasting memento of the event (each tree is studded with spruce tree seeds).

Hope you have a wonderful Friday!

Doing the Christmas baking

In addition to remembering yesterday, we did a lot of Christmas baking at our house. Gingerbread men and women, butter tart square, soda bread and chocolate cake to be made into a chocolate trifle, aptly called Easy Chocolate Trifle. Speaking of this trifle recipe, I'm not a fan of Cool Whip but the recipe is truly easy and always gets eaten up when we bring it to potlucks. So it's become a holiday season staple in our household.

Have you noticed that I've been putting the Botanical PaperWorks logo on most of my pictures? I experienced one too many cases of PHOTO RIP-OFF and decided to put on our logo in an attempt to make plagiarism a little more difficult. Have you had people take your photos without getting your permission? If you have any tips on how to combat this issue, please share. Thanks!

Remembering

We attended a Remembrance Day service yesterday where my youngest daughter had the privilege of closing out the service by singing Let There Be Peace On Earth. I found this background piece on the song and its powerful lyrics, which were moving and meaningful to everyone in attendance.

As I was preparing this post, I found the above photo that we took in the summer during a photo shoot. It was by chance that the Live Passionately plantable card was on top, and the image now serves as a reminder to me to live each day with passion. It's something that I want to remember during the busy times, the quiet times, the happy and sad times, particularly after remembering the men and women who gave their lives for our country in wars past and present.

How to buy holiday gifts that HELP, not harm, the Earth

As you're buying holiday and Christmas gifts this year, you have an amazing and exciting chance to make choices that HELP, not harm, our Earth. Every time you spend your money on junk, you're telling the manufacturer to make more junk. But every time you spend your money on the good stuff, you're opening the door to more good stuff being designed and produced.

So here's what's on the top of my list of gifts to avoid because they harm the Earth:

• Kids' toys packaged in layer after layer of wasteful plastic and cardboard
• Artificially-scented candles that contain chemicals harmful to people and planet
• Cheaper than dirt t-shirts that were made by low-paid labour working in poor labour conditions, shipped half-way across the globe

Happily, I have lots of options with gifts to enjoy & give because they help the Earth including:

• Boston fern and English ivy plants that add a feeling of coziness to a room and clean the air of pollutants and toxins
• Natural health-care products like lotions and lip balms that contain healthy ingredients
• Good books that will be shared and passed around amongst my friends and family members as part of our informal lending library.
• And of course, plantable paper gifts from my favorite shop Botanical PaperWorks

To help you find Earth-friendly gifts this year, we've put together the 2009 Green Guide Guide featuring our best plantable stationery products.

Each product in the Gift Guide was made with 100% post-consumer waste, is embedded with wildflower or herb seeds, will grow a colorful plant AND is packaged in reusable or compostable packaging.

Click here to read the 2009 Green Gift Guide.

As you shop for your loved ones, remember that with each gift you buy, you have the chance to make choices that help, not harm, our Earth. Best wishes to you this season!

Press in Best Health magazine

Thank you to the editors of Best Health magazine for this feature in the November/December 2009 issue. Shown below are our Plantable Christmas Cards (red and brown), Plantable Holiday Cards (blue and gray) and Plantable Holiday Gift Tags. 

 

Here's the page with the product feature. And check out on the smoothie recipe on the right - it's simple and yummy and I think I'll give it a try this week.

There are 7 1/2 weeks until Christmas - just enough time to shop now for plantable Christmas Cards and stationery gifts. Enjoy!

November is here - check out the bulletin board

November is here and what a delicious feast of sites and smells. From the luscious red leaves to my favorite Pumpkin Spice Lattes, there is delight every which way I turn.

Thanks for your nice comments (via the blog, Facebook and in person) about the picture that I posted Friday. It certainly was fun working with Ruth Bonneville; local Free Press readers will recognize her lovely pictures in the newspaper on a regular basis.

Have you checked out the 2010 Plantable Eco Calendar yet? I'm getting ready to place my order for Christmas gifts. It's my gift of choice for my kids' teachers.

Treat yourself to something nice this evening - it feels like the perfect night to do it!

Photo shoot sneak peek

I received the contact sheet from Ruth last night and the photos are awesome. We've selected six to send to the Toronto Star and a few others to use as head shots. Here's a peek at one of the set-ups in the kitchen. Clothes are from Poppy Clothing in Winnipeg, selected with the help of savvy owner Cecily. The necklace belonged to my great-grandmother. I'd been meaning to untangle and repair it for months now, but the photo shoot gave me the kick-in-the-rear to get it done.

Just a reminder to you that Christmas is just around the corner and if you haven't ordered your Holiday Cards yet, now's the time. Check out the selection of plantable eco-friendly holiday cards here. All the best to you!

Grey day but it's okay

We're just finishing up the photo shoot for the Toronto Star piece and I'm loving what I see so far. It's such a grey day out there that we delayed the start by 45 minutes hoping that the sun would come out, but guess what - it just got greyer!

I took the above photo at the cottage on the [Canadian] Thanksgiving long weekend. I loved the stark lines of the majestic tree with the grey background. It's an image that seems to fit with today.

My prescription for a grey day - pick up something warm and creamy from Starbucks, get into a pair of comfy leggings and curl up with a satisfying book. I may just go do that now....

Ready, set, photo shoot!

I'm delighted that Ruth Bonneville (remember her from my late-summer photo shoot?) is coming to my home tomorrow to take photos for an upcoming feature in the Toronto Star. After hearing the great news about this feature, my husband John and I went into high gear making the place photo-ready. Believe me - you look at your house very differently when looking through the eye of a camera.

In the end, the photo shoot provided us with the much-needed motivation to finish up those last things after moving in three years ago. Things like getting some art framed, replacing the aging TV with a more compact flat-screen and resetting the bookshelf so that books aren't piled two-rows deep.

I came downstairs this morning and looked around and felt satisfied. The place looks gooood. And ready for a party. Let's party!

Don't take no bull

Good Monday morning to you! This week promises to be an exciting-interesting-adventurous week with a little bit of everything. Designing. Interviewing. Planning. Teeth cleaning. Nothing like going to the dentist in the middle of a jam-packed week, but at least my teeth with be sparkling white and plaque-free.

The less-than friendly fellow in my photo lives at Boonstra Farms, the petting zoo/corn maze/family farm that we visited yesterday as a family. He was a really magnificent creature and I'm officially making him my Animal Of The Week. Feel free to make him yours too.

Hang on for the ride. It's going to be a wild one!

Montreal Fashion week - Soia & Kyo

We did a cool plantable gift tag job for Soia & Kyo, an eco-friendly fashion line that showed at Montreal Fashion Week October 13-15, 2009. The tags were attached to the show gift bags. Check out the photos above and visit their website at www.soiakyo.com.

Here's a close-up of the plantable hang tag:

It was wonderful to partner with a company like Soia & Kyo who share Botanical PaperWorks' values of creating stylish products while caring for the environment.

Video Hello

Hello! We prepared this "Welcome" video last week. Enjoy!