Elisa's Green Scene

Pet-friendly travel

Hat tip to the simplehuman blog for pointing me towards the site PetFriendlyTravel.com.

I've never traveled with my cat, and I'm not saying she'd like it, but I will admit that concern for her geriatric state makes me reluctant to take long trips away from home. I give her sub-cutaneous fluids every day, so if I'm gone longer than 2 nights I have to arrange with a vet tech from my vet to come help my fiance give her the fluids.

You can search for lodging and dog-friendly parks and beaches. Here's the link to pet-friendly lodging in California. Pickings are kind of slim, but better than somewhere like North Dakota which has one listing for the whole state.

Still, it looks like if you can find a Holiday Inn Express you can find a room for your pet!

Anyway, enjoy...and good luck with the traveling pets!

What those darn laundry symbols mean

Every now and then the simplehuman blog publishes a gem. This time it's a post designed to help us decipher what those symbols on clothing care labels mean. They could be semaphores or heiroglyphics for all I understand them.

I mean, I honestly had no idea about this:

Skim the chart and you'll see there is indeed a method to the madness: the more dots in the symbol, the higher the heat you should wash or dry your clothing at. One line on the bottom always refers to permanent press, while two lines means gentle cycle.

Did you?

I'm going to bookmark the hand chart provided and refer to it...probably never.

But it's nice to know I could, if I ever remembered!

Eco-friendly Scrapbooking

I'm actually not a scrapbooker, but I was intrigued by this post at Worsted Witch about more-eco-friendly scrapbooking. (OK, I admit it, the device of the advice-seeking and advice-giving cats was the draw for me...who can ignore cute cats?)

I can totally relate when the post talks about what a market has grown for scrapbooking, all the gew-gaws now associated with it, and wondering if all the paper being added to the world in service to the scrapbooking gods is worth it!

The post recommends everything from alternative paper sources, to downloading and printing your own scrapbooking gew-gaws on recycled paper at home, to making your own paper!

Bottom line: in almost everything we do, from shopping, to scrapbooking, from cleaning to cooking, we can make little choices that are more hip & zen.

Cool or Lame?

OK, I've had this post from SimpleHuman open in my browser for days, and I really can't decide if this product offering is cool or lame. Basically, you can turn a DVD or video into a flip book...you know the kind that when you flip the pages quickly you see moving pictures?

Pros: it's cheap, it's kind of a cute gimmick, might be a creative gift for grandparents, they deliver a book that's printed on high-quality "archival" paper.

Cons: they only can convert 30 seconds of video into each book, it takes a while to get to you and mostly: when we have cell phones and digital cameras that can actually hold 30-second clips, then why do we need to carry around a book?

What do you think? Cool or Lame?

Crafty, creative re-gifting

I've had the site SuperNaturale bookmarked for a little while, meaning to add it to our hip & zen blog roll, and to write about it.

SuperNatural is a site dedicated to finding crafty, creative things to do to items you already have, so that you are able to re-gift them with a clear conscience. (Not that I feel guilty about re-gifting to begin with, but I know many people do.) Check out the picture in this post. Someone took a teddy bear (with a head about the size of their own head) and made a cute furry hat!

The site also has forums, and it's actually not just about re-gifting...they also have cool DIY instructions, across a wide variety of topics....for example making your own dog biscuits. The bottom line is that the site is about people who like to do things a little differently, a little creatively, a little more hands-on. I freely admit that I only fantasize about being one of those people. All my dreams that started when I bought my house that I was going to be a younger, hipper Martha Stewart didn't take long to fly out the never properly treated window. But I still really like to read about what other cool people do manage to achieve! SuperNaturale is a fun place to do that.

Design consideration I just never considered

Doryn of Doryn's Dish has dashed my childhood hopes and dreams in this post.

OK, that might be a slight exaggeration, so let me explain.

When I was a kid I always wanted one of those girly dream rooms you'd see on TV. I wanted a vanity with a lighted mirror (perhaps also influenced by the fact that my glamourous New York grandma had one in her house.) I wanted a big canopy bed.

Now Doryn has pointed out something I never had thought of: if you have allergies (and I do) then things like canopies and fabric headboards collect dust and generally create problems for we immuno-response challenged folks.

I have long ago given up; my childish canopy fetish, but I do always like it when they create fabric headboards on various design shows. Double disappointment.

But good to know, and since Doryn does provide a couple tips on how to replicate the look of such headboards and canopies, she isn't leaving us only with despair, but also with hope and potential solutions.

Cool widget: cheapest gas in your area

Last month Karen pointed us all to a site where you can check on gas prices. This month I've found something even better. OK, perhaps the urgency isn't as high as it was when I first bookmarked this site and meant to blog about it (you should see, really, I have folders full of cool things that I need to blog about some day) but still, who doesn't want to save a little money on gas?

So, if you're a Mac user like I am you can download this Gas Widget for your dashboard and be notified where to find the lowest prices in your immediate area.

Hat tip: Lifehacker.com

Now I might add that Lifehacker didn't do it, but I went and looked to see if I could find a Windows-compatible version of this widget. And while it may not be exactly the same, there are a number of gas price widgets available via Yahoo's Widgets, formerly known as Konfabulator.

Go forth and buy gas cheaply.

One for all you hip & zen parents: BabyGadget.net

I'm not a Mom, but I get second-hand insight by observing my siblings and their children. I also have to buy gifties for the nieces and nephews, and being the cool Auntie that I am, I need to keep up on the latest. Lastly, I follow the work of BlogHer Mia from PopGadget, so I was thrilled to see her expanding her blogging empire by starting this new site: BabyGadget.net. Now some of the products featured so far are just cute tschotkes like the animal keychains into which you insert your child's beaming face...cute!!!

But they also feature actual gadgets, fancy breathing monitors, fancy night lights, even something that claims to be a "crying analyzer"! (Hey, do you think they can come out with a feline version?)

Anyway, if PopGadget is any indicator, then BabyGadget is sure to become a must-read for hip & zen parents everywhere. Welcome to the blogosphere little BabyGadget.

The Zen of PowerPoint?

One of the beauty parts of blogging (and in my case, writing 9 blogs) is finding the unexpected. Like when you read a post you think will apply to one part of your life (the techie, webby, bloggy side) and discover that you find content that applies to another part of your life (the hip & zen side.)

So it was with this post by a blogger who focuses on presentation design, Garr Reynolds. My first tip-off was the title of the post: "Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic."

Reynolds proceeds to compare recent presentations given by Microsoft's Bill Gates and Apple's Steve Jobs, and to explore how they align with some key aesthetic concepts found in zen. Why does he bother to do this? Because, he explains, he "believes we can use many of the concepts in Zen and Zen aesthetics to help us compare their presentation visuals as well as help us improve our own visuals."

Reynolds proceeds to not only compare the two presenters, their presentations and their physicality and style while speaking, he also defines a few zen principles. These include:

-kanso or simplicity
- shizen or naturalness
-miegakure or a suggestive mode of expression (rather than expressing the "whole")

It's a fascinating read.

I am going to subscribe to this feed because I expect to regularly get good advice for my business life. I don't know if it will ever again qualify as a hip & zen blog, but this post certainly does. Showing how zen principles can be applied to even the most business-focused parts of our lives is a reminder that we don't have to be two separate people...our personal selves and our business selves...we can try to integrate our principles into our one self.

Treehugger's Holiday Gift Guide

Thanks to Treehugger.com for including hip & zen in its 2005 Holiday Gift Guide.

What a great list! (All modesty aside.)

I am famous in my family for being an efficient holiday shopper. The joke is that I'm usually done by Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest retail day of the year.) As I've gotten older and apparently more streched for time I've let go somewhat of my lofty goal to be done by that day. But I still do pretty well.

Here's an extra special bonus. Along with the Treehugger.com list, I will give you my fabulous personal blog post: The Secrets of a Savvy Seasonal Shopper. I re-post this post every holiday season to try to help my fellow humns who may not be quite so into the holiday shopping as I am.

Consider it a public service!