Elisa's Green Scene

Carnival of the Green #12 is up at UrbanEco

Rather than the Dirty Dozen, this makes a clean, green dozen of Carnival of the Greens!

I'm pleased and proud that my post on Supply & Demand for Green Products is the very first one listed, and that Urban Eco "couldn't agree more."

But don't stop at my post, check out the ever-growing Carnival and the number of other bloggers who are writing about all things green.

I found two posts, in particular that piqued my interest: #1 is a quick sign post to a short article about Bono trying to encourage ethical consumerism by getting in bed with big brands. This speaks to my "supply & demand" ssues directly, I think. #2 is this post from the Dirty Greek about when it's really worth it to splurge on organic, and when conventionally farmed versions are probably just as good. (Which actually probably means that the organic versions are just as bad as the conventional.)

I learn something every week from the Carnival of the Green, so don't forget to check this week's Carnival out.

Go Vegan? Eco-friendly Auto? Why not both?

Lloyd at Treehugger sent me a link to GroovyGreen.com, discussing an article in New Scientist magazine (jeez, how many hat tips are really required to be properly attributing?)

The gist: going vegan saves the environment more than driving an eco-friendly car.

Now, come on, why would you imply that people ought to choose one or the other? Seriously, the article's headline is: It's better to green your diet than your car.

In my book either one is good, both is better.

And since I currently do none, being only a Saturn-driving vegetarian, not a hybrid-driving vegan, I'd like to feel pretty proud if I take either step!

Carnival of Healing #27 is up at Spiral Visions

Spiral Visions hosts this week's Carnival of Healing, and tries to stay on her theme of the kitchen as a "sacred space."

I think our host was hoping to get submissions that were about nurture and comfort, including recipes, but this is why I don't try to pre-determine themes when I host a carnival...to quote the Rolling Stone, you can't always get what you want!

(Especially if people use the Carnival Submissions forms found at either BlogCarnival.com or ConservativeCat...because then they may not even know there's supposed to be a theme.)

So, she got one recipe, and a bunch of us going off on tangents...including me talking about my daily Martha Stewart break.

But in the tangents you find lots of interesting stuff, and Jodie at Intuitive innovations has been talking a lot about food, eating, body image etc. lately, so make sure to check out all the Healing posts in this week's Carnival of Healing.

hip & zen reader does it!

Perhaps you followed a conversation we had in comments here at the hip & zen pen on my post pointing you to my Treehugger.com guest post. (Yes, that did seem like an unnecessarily long sentence to me too.) A hip & zen reader talked about considering shifting to vegetarianism...something she had long toyed with, but felt more inspired to do after reading my Treehugger post.

Well, Laura has gone and done it. She has become a vegetarian, and I'm very excited to welcome her to my world!

I hope Laura will occasionally blog about her experiences as a new vegetarian.

Call for submissions to the Carnival of Healing

Hey all you hip & zen bloggers out there: we're hosting the Carnival of Healing here at hip & zen on Saturday February 4th, and we could sure use your submissions!

Email me your submissions by Friday February 3rd at noon (Pacific time.)

And if you want more info on the Carnival, check out the uber-host's info on it here. The basic description:N

Carnival of Healing is a weekly round-up of personal Web sites and blogs on the topics of holistic health, wellness, spirituality, and self empowerment.

Look forward to your posts. And come on by on the 11th to check them all out!

We're hot and InStyle

It's been a banner month for magazine mentions of hip & zen.

Not only do the airlines love us. So does InStyle Magazine.

We're listed as one of their Hot Sites in the February issue (and online.) We're number 7 of 8 in their little Hot Site slide show online, featuring none other than our favorite "Statement Scarf" by Deborah Lindquist.

Thank you Martha Stewart

No, really.

See, I've gotten myself into this rut. I get up at about 7AM, after what is inevitably too little sleep. I work and work and work and work, sitting in my little corner of the dinning room. I make breakfast at around 10:30 usually...bowl of cereal and some coffee. And then I work and work and work some more. And 3PM rolls around. So, it's already an 8 hour day, but I'm nowhere near feeling I've accomplished what I need to. And I know my S.O. won't be getting home for hours either, so there's no good reason to stop working. Except, I really need to stop.

So the last few days I've decided to take a break at around 3PM and watch Martha Stewart's daily show on my TiVo. (And with a TiVo it takes a much more efficient 30 minutes or so, since I can skip commercials and when she's cooking meat products!)

I find her very relaxing. She's slightly odd and slightly ill-at-ease. And she always shows me things that the alternate-universe-me would totally do...if I had talent and skill and time and motivation and money.

And she has guests, and I get to watch their often-off banter. Like when Fran Drescher got Martha to admit she was seeing someone, and they discussed the virtues of younger men. Odd.

But what it mostly is is completely different than what I'm doing the other 12 hours of my work day. Look I don't eat a meal I can't microwave. My organizational style is many different piles...definitely not labeled with a P-touch machine. I find it soothing and relaxing that someone out there has found things to obsess over that I don't obsess over!

So, thanks Martha.

Can I confess...I don't like some eco-design :(

There is always tons of good stuff coming out of hip & zen blog Eco-friend, and I hate to be negative, but I have to share that I sometimes find that not all eco-design is, how shall I say, attractive.

Take the recycled-rag-chair in this post. (I don't even want to link to it and mess up our bee-yoo-tiful site here.) Now, Irani, really, do you think that's pretty? It looks like exactly what it is...a chair made out of rags.

On the other hand, Eco-friend also points us to eco-friendly convertible furniture, called Futabas, in this post, and I could imagine this in my home.

So, my dirty secret is out. I need equal measures of hip and zen, and that's just how it is!

UPDATED: We're hip & zen, fly us

If you travel Southwest Airlines, you might see us on board this month. hip & zen is one of the resources featured in a story in their on board Magazine, Spirit about "eco-chic."

Although I knew this was in the works, I was actually reminded by a blog post at a wonderful blog One/Change. Their tagline is making one change at a time, and I've written so often, in my Metro column, in that guest post at Treehugger and elsewhere, that we just gotta keep trying to take more steps to live by our beliefs, and that our lack of perfection shouldn't stop us! One/Change was given the article by her sister and blogged it, including listing all the other eco-chic resources mentioned. I plan to check them all out, as should you.

In the meantime, One/Change is on our hip & zen blog roll.

UPDATED: Karen tells me that coincidentally we are also in this month's Alaska Airlines InFlight Magazine. (I have a link, but it's been broken all day...tsk, tsk, tsk Alaskan Airlines!) Anyway, unlike the Southwest Airlines article, the Alaskan Airlines article features a picture of one of our best-selling items, the recycled confetti vase (made from recycled shredded newspapers.) You can see that vase in the righthand side bar as a Featured Product. Cool. And only $40.

Organic babies

Another great idea in keeping the next generation healthy is Bohemian Baby, a company making completely natural and organic food for babies.  According to the EPA's "Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment", children receive 50% of their lifetime cancer risk in the first 2 years.  Blood samples from children aged 2-4 measured 6 times higher in pesticides in those children eating conventionally farmed foods compared to children eating organic foods.

I couldn't find pricing info, but the way it works is that they deliver food to your door twice a week.  They have a handy Bohemian Baby cooler that you place outside your door for delivery days, and they leave your order in it.  They update their menus weekly, with a few different choices each week, lest baby gets bored.

I'm sure the community would love to hear feedback from people who have tried the service.