Parties · Eco-Chick

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Tin Parade Vintage Party Goods for Your Perfect Holiday Fete

Tin Parade offers custom-designed, all-inclusive packaged parties for dinners, adult and children’s birthdays, baby and bridal showers. It is the inspiration of two women with a similar love of great design, fun events and good, old-fashioned attention to detail. Kristen and Ryan met at the mom’s version of a single’ s club—the local park.

They soon realized they had a lot in common, not least of which being children of about the same age. Besides being devoted moms and avid runners, they both had jobs in creative fields. Kristen was an accomplished advertising art director, where she produced print and television ads for high-profile clients.

Ryan is a celebrated wedding and event designer, and owner of Savoir Flair Weddings in Los Angeles. With plenty of birthday parties and baby showers on the horizon, they found themselves commiserating on the lack of beautiful, stylish, cartoon-character-free party décor on the market. As they created Tin Parade they realized that their mutual love of vintage style and detail came with a fabulous side benefit: a lot less of the paper products that pervade modern-day parties.
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biodegradable, decor, entertaining, green recyclable, parties

Be a Green Lush: Eco-Chic Fall and Holiday Cocktails!

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by Stephanie Rogers · 10/28/09

It’s a great time to be an eco-conscious drinker. There’s never been a bigger or tastier selection of organic, fair trade and otherwise earth-friendly liquor and mixers on the market, and the possibilities for seasonal cocktails are practically endless, from spiked cider to pomegranate cosmopolitans.

Fair Vodka is the world’s first fair-trade certified vodka, and is made with quinoa from the South American Andes. TRU vodka and gin is actually carbon negative, made with organic ingredients that are responsibly farmed and bottled in lightweight recycled glass. Organic Nation gin is made at Oregon’s first organic distillery, using locally grown organic botanicals.

Mixers, recipes and more after the jump!
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alcohol, fall, liquor, parties

Style, Naturally: Summer Rayne Oakes' Guide to Green Fashion and Beauty for Every Woman (Not Just Greenies!)

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by Starre Vartan · 02/16/09

Summer Rayne Oakes (in Stella McCartney) at the launch of Style, Naturally

Summer Rayne Oakes’ own life is a study in how to make ethical choices work in the real world. She’s a model (for ecofriendly fashion labels), environmental activist, and resident expert on Discovery Channel’s Planet Green- jobs which challenge both body and mind, so she knows what busy women want (to look great while doing no harm). She delivers the goods in her first book, Style, Naturally.

Jill Danyelle, a featured ‘girl on the street’ in the book (in one of her own upcycled creations), Jill Fehrenbacher, editor of green design blog Inhabitat (with baby Petey in tow) and Bahar Shahpar, ecofashion designer (in one of her own designs), at the Style, Naturally launch party

The totally friendly (open it anywhere and start reading!) and colorful book is packed to its chubby gills (it clocks in at over 500 pages) with photos and descriptions of ecofriendly and sustainable party dresses, pants, purses and every thing else one would want to wear (so you can see exactly how un-hemp-sack-like these togs really are), and includes “where to find it” info, magazine-style so you don’t have to be an expert google searcher to track down a designer you love. Jewelry, shoes and accessories each have their own sections and a story behind why to choose ethical versions like those included.

Starre Vartan (in vintage) author of The Eco Chick Guide to Life, and Summer Rayne Oakes at the Style, Naturally book party.

Beauty products, from shampoos to sunscreen to makeup take up the second half of the book, and Summer said she tried hundreds of products before deciding what would make the cut. “I looked at overall brand practices and specific product ingredients and I only highlighted the ones that I really liked,” she says. There is also tons of information on labels, certifications, events, stores and sites for further exploration.

Michael Schwarz, writer and animal advocate, and Dan Shapely, editor at The Daily Green.

Besides being a veritable compendium of great clothes from designers known and loved (and worn!) by ecofashionistas (like Bahar Shahpar, Doie, Lara Miller, Loomstate and Alabama Chanin) there are profiles of “girls on the street” which details how savvy ladies incorporate planet-respecting choices into their wardrobes. This was my favorite part of the book, as I go for vintage, and prefer old-fashioned silhouettes and funky prints in silks, bamboos and organic wools. But it’s so fun to see how other girls work the green in, from organic- and fair-trade cotton dance-wear for conscious urban chicks to more classic cuts in super-modern (but still sustainable) silhouettes.

Sara Brancato of The Four Hundred Ecofashion showroom (right) and friend Ashley Watson (left).

All this variety is the point. As anyone who knows a thing about style can tell you, fashion is not about following trends, it’s about creating your own personal look. That’s what was on Summer ‘s mind when she dreamed up Style, Naturally: “I wrote this for any woman who cares about what she wears and how that connects to the larger world. It’s not necessarily a green guide, it’s a style guide.”

And the book itself? As green as can be. “It’s on recycled paper, [printed with] vegetable-based ink and it is 1% for the Planet to Energy Action, which is a group near and dear to me,” says Summer.

And for anyone who decries thinking about fashion and beauty in the current economic climate, Summer says the truth is that dedicating time and energy to define your own look- and doing it responsibly- will end up saving you money. “Take a look at your closet, and figure out how to make what you already have look new. Be considerate about what you buy and make the more responsible purchase.” Thinking about what we buy, assessing its impact and making long-term choices that have a smaller footprint (and actually work for our own bodies and lifestyles) will go further to mitigate the clothing and beauty industries’ wasteful ways than business as (cheaper) than usual.

ecofashion, Events, parties, Summer Rayne Oakes

Nuclear Is No Option

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by Courtney Tenz · 04/01/08

A few months ago, I posted here a compendium of reasons why I live in Germany. Though I’d intended the post as an answer to all those who’ve asked in the past, writing it also helped me to see through the myths I’d taken too seriously (i.e. all Germans are green) and helped me better understand myself in the political landscape here. Because like it or not, politics are a necessity in getting environmentalism to have the greatest impact.

As I reread the post, I realized that many of the things I wrote about had more to do with Germany’s social democracy and less with its green principles – which for an American like me seemed like two sides of the same coin but which for Germans are two very very different political stances. Up until three years ago, however, the two political parties (the Greens and the Social Democrats) were ruling bedfellows, maintaining control of the parliament and pushing through some of the legislation that appealed to me most, including the requirement that all nuclear power plants go off-line by 2020. It was, by most accounts, a Green party measure. But it also benefited the social democrats’ legislative ideas in many ways; most notably, it allowed them to battle long-time unemployment through the creation of thousands of “green collar jobs”.

In the comments to the post, however, someone named Richard said, “I was loving everything you were saying up until you rejoiced at the fact that nuclear power plants were being taken offline. That told me you hadn’t actually done your homework.” In fact I had, and I responded to that, but still, the comment got me wondering: since when did environmentalists start agreeing with nuclear? And then this article, “Atomic Dreams” from The Earth Island Journal fell into my lap:

According to a 2005 ABC News survey, only one-third of Americans approved of “building more nuclear plants at this time.” Nuclear proponents needed a way of convincing people that atomic energy deserved a second shot. Enter climate change. While nuclear power generation isn’t entirely carbon neutral—uranium mining and enrichment require vast amounts of fossil fuel energy—atomic plants are cleaner from a carbon standpoint than natural gas or coal-fired power stations. Posing nuclear energy as a response to global warming seemed a useful way to reintroduce nuclear power to a public that hadn’t been forced to think about it for years.

It’s an interesting read, especially for those interested in learning how a cause du jour can sway public opinion, for better and for worse.

cape, car, carbon, climate change, coal, Eco-Chick, employment, Energy, gas, Germany, Global Warming, green collar, Home, News, nuclear, nuclear power, opinion, parties, party, Plants, Politics

Happy Green New Year!

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by Katie Kish · 12/30/07

I get more excited about New Years Eve than I do about Christmas or my birthday combined, seriously. So I always throw a party, and my parties always singlehandedly undo every environmental effort I put forth the entire year before. Invitations, garbage, lights, tons of food… etc. So this year, I changed it! The top things I did to make it a more eco-friendly New Years Eve party:

~ internet invites; usually I’d go a little nutty and make invitations with pictures on the front from the year and the whole shibang, this year I did e-cards
~ location; I’ve always lived in the outskirts of town, so people would have to take the their cars or a taxi to get to my house – this time, we moved the party to my friend’s loft downtown so everyone could take public transit
~ good china; I don’t really own good china, but I’m allowing people to use my regular glass cups instead of busting out good old plastics, and there will be no plates
~ local eats; everything we bought food wise is from the local market, which is dwindling since it’s winter, but we still managed to get enough food to do the trick
~ group eats; we’ve opened up the party as a potluck! Everyone can bring their own, and we’ve restricted it to vegan only food.
~ lighting; we changed all of the light bulbs to CFLs… my entire house already is, and I even bought the light bulbs just for him, to encourage the switch
~ dummy proof; we have made recycling bins that can be seen from across the room, and added “yellow let it mellow” signs to the washroom doors – although we’re not sure that one will float
~ entertainment; didgeridoos, guitars, drums and organic painting! no movies or electronic music for us!