Apartment Therapy Re-Nest

Living With Less, Green Gift Wrapping, & Great Green Gifts
Hot Posts for November 30-December 4, 2009

• Holiday Giveaway 2009
• AT On... Living Happily With Less Stuff
• 9 Ways To Green Your Gift Wrapping
• 4 Bizarre Yet Wonderful Christmas Tree Alternatives
• Goodbye Detergent! Now Available in the US
• 8 Tips To Stay Stress-Free This Holiday Season
• 10 Green Gadget Gifts for the Techie
• Green Gift Wrapping: Divine Twine
• Green Style: A Green Remodel and Tell-All Blog
• Cyber Monday: Eight Products We're Considering
• Inspiration: Wine Bottle Reuse During the Holidays
• How To: Make Homemade Dish Soap and Dishwasher Detergent
• Urban Chickens: A Photo Show by Todd Parsons

More Top Posts from past weeks below

Weekend Meditation: Tradition

This weekend my husband and I will get our Christmas tree (hopefully an organic or sustainably-grown tree) from one of the Greenmarkets in the city. This is one of my favorite parts of the season. When I was little decorating the tree was a family event: we baked cookies and listened to music (Handel's Messiah being a favorite). Our family tree was the hodge-podge kind, all shapes and sizes and colors, a festive mess of memories.

The Straw Balehaus

We shared the BowHaus with you earlier this week, so it seems only right to share the Balehaus with you today. Not exactly what you expect a straw bale house to look like, right?

10 Green Gifts for the Artist, Crafter, or DIY'er
Best Green Gifts 2009

We certainly love and have a huge amount of respect for people who create with their hands: whether it's a painting, a hand-knitted scarf, or a bookshelf built from scratch, we've got a few items we think our favorite artist, crafter, or DIY'er would appreciate.

Stuff Sacks by Molly Mutt
One More Thing to do With Old Clothes!

If your pets our anything like ours, one of their favorite things to do is sit on clothes. It doesn't matter where, if there's a shirt folded somewhere our cat is sure to choose it for a place to snooze. So we found this great idea on the dooce blog to take a "Stuff Sack" from Molly Mutt, fill it with old clothes and make a purposeful clothing-filled pet bed. Click below the jump for more details!

Urban Chickens: A Photo Show by Todd Parsons

We've blogged about raising chickens in New York and Los Angeles but it's still sometimes hard to grasp the idea of having urban backyard chickens. One photographer, Todd Parsons, has documented San Francisco's growing movement for backyard chickens with impressive results.

Pratt Designers Furnish a Home — Part 1
Green Tour

Name: Pratt Institute and Third + Bond
Location: Gowanus / Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
Size: 1,900 square feet, 3-bedroom duplex

While no one lives in these apartments, a lot of thought, preparation, and creativity went into creating these potential homes. Hudson Developers invited Pratt Institute alumni, faculty, and students from the architecture, interior design, industrial design, and fine arts departments to furnish two model apartments in Third + Bond, a new residential development in Brooklyn.

Look! Snow-Like Tree Skirt Made From What?

We put up our three-foot-tall artificial Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving and decked it out with all sorts of random recycled goodies. Not a thing on it is new (repurposed glass beads, hand-me-down ornaments, and recycled paper chains), but what we wanted to point out was our tree skirt. Can you guess what the snow is made from?

Help! My CSA Overloaded Me With Potatoes
Good Questions

Q: This summer, I signed up for organic CSA baskets for the first time. I've decided to continue getting baskets throughout the winter, because I'm trying to source my food more locally. However, I'm currently overloaded with potatoes. I've never been a huge eater of potatoes, so they accumulated throughout the summer months and now I'm receiving them in my winter basket. One of my fridge drawers is full of them and I have one full grocery bag above and beyond that.

I'm looking for recipes! I usually eat oven roasted potatoes for breakfast on the weekend and add potatoes to stews and soups. I'm not a big fan of mashed potatoes. I was able to freeze and can my way through other veggie gluts, but I'm at a loss with what to do with so many potatoes.

Sent by Liette

Making Your Own Ornaments? 4 Places To Look For Ideas

The other night we attended a tree trimming party. The host had boxes of ornaments they'd collected over the years. In our own home we don't have the tradition of collecting or the space to store ornaments, unfortunately, so every year we get creative. We raid the yard, the fridge, the junk mail pile and the junk drawer.

PM Scavenger
New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington DC

Buy second hand and keep stuff alive longer! Lots of great furniture finds New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington DC in today's PM Scavenger.

Win this Chocolates Birdfeeder from Vanishing Creatures!
Holiday Giveaway 2009

To Main Giveaway Page

Name: Chocolates Birdfeeder
Store: Vanishing Creatures
Value: $112

Description: Organic dark chocolates carved to resemble wild life, like a hippo, gorilla, elephant, koala and polar bear. Once eaten the packaging is converted to a bird-feeder complete with birdseed.

How to: Make Homemade Dish Soap and Dishwasher Detergent

Making homemade dish soap—this is something we've been meaning to do for a long time and, now that we've got an easy recipe to follow, we're out of excuses.

23 Handmade Craft Shows

If you're looking to give handmade this season, try hitting up one of the many craft shows taking place all across the country over the next 2 weeks. There's so many handmade goods we just can't even start, but we can tell you where to look &mdash you tell us which one's you'll be attending!

Natural Holiday Decorations

What is glitter made of exactly? And spray-on snow or tinsel? How about some holiday decorations directly from the outdoors? You know exactly what they're made of and they create a nice, natural setting inside.