Even MORE Accessories!

Hello again!
So today I am writing to give some of my ideas on accessories made from things you find in your house! They aren't really specifically related to greening your b'nei mitzvot but that's okay!
(I will put in photos later)
So my first shot at this was using buttons! You may not necessarily have blank earring studs at your house, but if you do, this is a good and quick project. You pretty much take a button or stone or something and hot glue it to the earring stud and you've got a REALLY cute earring! You can string buttons on a string and tie knots around them into a necklace.
And then, my new favorite, safety pins!
I found a bag of safety pins in a drawer at my house and, since they were all different sizes, that I would try layering them on a silver ring! I used pliers to make it so the pins can't open. I had the big pins in the back and layered up and a teensy tiny gold pin right in front! I loved it so much that I made another and made earrings (they were originally meant to be a necklace)!



So please post with more and if you do, so will I!

<3
GQ

Bamboozle your centerpiece!

My friend Carina did a really great job making her bat mitzvah eco-conscious...at the party she took it up a notch with bamboo centerpieces, buffet table decorations and tall teepees of bamboo wrapped with lights around the dance floor. For the centerpieces, she used varied sizes of bamboo, cut and nailed together. There is a natural platform in bamboo where the ridges are so she cut them just above it to make a shelf for candles and flowers.





Don't forget to send me your green ideas and I'll post them on my blog!
<3
The GQ

Part 3: Hair

In this photo you can see a flower in my hair! This is a tin flower made out of a Sprite can! These surprisingly un-sharp hair piece looks great and works very well as party favor! Here's how to do it: Using an X-acto knife, make 2 parallel slits at both ends of the flat part of a Sprite can (or any soda can, really). Then, use scissors to cut in a circle around the can on the X-acto marks. Then, cut a square from that cylinder(HINT: Children's scissors work perfectly with soda cans!). With your scissors, cut the tin so that you have 5 skinny strips still connected at the bottom with less than a centimeter of tin. Those will be the petals. Curve the petals inward so the blank side of the can in facing inward. Using a round, skinny object (pencils are handy) wrap the un-cut part of the can around the object and tape securely. Now that you have your flower, take a bobby pin and slide the flower onto it and VIOLA! You have an elegant recycled hair ornament!



Also note that my earrings are made of recycled buttons! Just glue them to metal posts that you can buy at your local craft stores.

Paperless Post:

Hey-
I wanted to share with you an AMaZING resource for invitations!
Check out www.paperlesspost.com and see for yourself!
To see the site you have to make an account but it's free.
Go ahead!

<3 The Green Queen

Limmud:

Hey everyone,
Over this past weekend, my parents and I lead a workshop at the Limmud conference in Atlanta, GA. It was really fun and a great experience hearing everyone's ideas! And soon, I will be posting it all on my new website-in-progress, www.mygreenbatmitzvah.com .

To all who attended,
THANK YOU!

<3 The Green Queen

More Gifts:

On February 14th, dos-mil-diez (2010), I received what I think was my favorite gift: a snowboarding trip with Guy and two other BFFs of mine! An ultimate green gift... the gift of time out in nature.

It was AMAZING! Thank you guys! I love you all!

<3
The Green Queen

What Goes Around Comes Around

It seems like "planting" these green ideas in my community has really had a positive effect. I have been asked numerous times if someone could borrow my centerpieces or another one of the green things! Thank you all so much for being so supportive.

But going back to the title, I've seen many examples of that:
How people have been inspired by my green stuff and taken that way of thinking and just run with it!
Jamil, the owner of the local Med. Deli and caterer of my luncheon, was so touched by my speech that he donated everything he made from that lunch to the Scrap Exchange in Durham. They are one of my favorite organizations... they collect trash from various businesses and help people turn it into art and other fun things.

My friend Carina has decided to make an evite with her own art! She showed it to me and it was GORGEOUS! Great job, Carina!

My friend Sophie collected florist vases from her mom's friends to use for her centerpieces instead of buying new ones. They looked so amazing and were also very green!


The ideas keep coming...I will tell you about more of them later!

-The Green Queen

P.S. Oh, and just to let you all know, I have been invited to the Limmud conference in Atlanta, GA in March to lead a workshop on "greening" your b'nei mitzvot!

YOU'RE INVITED! (to share your green ideas about invitations)

This post is all about invitations. To make mine green, I made a piece of artwork that was relevant to my Torah portion and scanned it, added the text and sent it to our friends and family as a PDF attachment to an email. In the email we gave all the details about hotel reservations and the weekend schedule.

I understand that the idea of an emailed invitation could be viewed as impersonal or even a rude way of addressing people, but we made it special by using original artwork and explained the green reasons behind it. In the end, people seemed to really like it. We saved some money on stamps and another upside was instant RSVPs!!

Please post your thoughts and feelings on whether it is or is not acceptable to use electronic invitations and why. Also if you have other ideas for green invitations, please share them.

GQ

Creative gifts:

Hello again, green peoples!
This blog is about creatively green gifts!
Some people have thought of giving a re-gift, or something that they had of value that they thought I could put to use!(books are a very good and popular one!)
And my family friend Hunter Levinson sewed me a drawstring bag and put the gift indside (part of what was inside was a string-bound notebook made of recycled printed/marbled paper).

Please comment and share if you have ever received a green gift or one that was just greenly wrapped!

Thanks!
The Green Queen

P.S. There has been some talk of making "My Green Bat Mitzvah" it's own website, and yea, we are looking into branching out, so to speak, and making it more personal and unique.
:)

Newest dose of publicity:

Hey everyone!
I wanted to tell you that the story of my bat mitzvah was featured in the Independent. The title was "A Bat Mitzvah Fished from the Recycling Bin".
I hope that you locals had the chance to read it!
And I hope you all had nice breaks and a happy New Years!

-The GQ

Rethinking thanks.

I wanted to tell you all about my green thank-you "notes"!
As you may know, instead of writing everyone a letter, I am either calling people or sending personal video-thank-yous. My experience has been that people are quite surprised to hear from me at first, but then they appreciate what I'm doing and it gives me the opportunity to really express how much I like their gift.

Please comment and share your ideas on alternative thank-you notes!

Hospitality:

I am SO thankful to have such a big family!
They gave me JUST ANOTHER opportunity to be creative!
We had the majority of my family stay at the Carolina Inn for the weekend. We (of course) wanted to have hospitality bags for them when we checked in! That made us think: we don't want to waste plastic or anything, but if we buy those reusable bags, we still have to have them shipped...
It took us a while but we finally came up with an idea: we can use old cereal boxes to put the snacks in!
Here is a "before and after" shot:

Publicity:

I just wanted to say that if you have the chance, pick up a copy of this week's Carrboro Citizen. They intervewed me over the phone and put my picture on the front page! You can view the story online: http://www.carrborocitizen.com/main/2009/12/17/crafting-new-green-traditions/

And you may have heard me live on WCHL this past Thursday around 7:40 AM. I had about a 90 second interview and then I've heard that they used clips of it and turned it into a real news story!

(P.S. I was also interviewed for the Independent and I am pretty sure that it is coming out sometime in late December!)

Time to Relax!

Hey everyone!
Just wanted to say that my bat mitzvah weekend is over. It was TONS of fun and I am SO grateful to all of those who helped out!
But don't worry; I am keeping the blog going because we all know that there is ALWAYS more that we can do.

Pass it on:

Hey everyone:
thanks so much to all of you for commenting and all the encouraging feedback!
Great idea about reusing the centerpieces! People could add to and improve them as they get passed around. After this weekend, email me your date and we will work it all out!: Sadie.B.Rapp@gmail.com
4 more days!

Thanks but No Thanks:

For the rest of the week*, I want you to think green and share your ideas about INVITATIONS and THANK YOU NOTES. Do you think there are greener ways to do them? Do some go overboard with paper, or maybe you don't see why invitations and thank you notes could be wasteful. Let's see if we can think of more eco friendly ways to do this.



*The week ends on Shabbat, but please still post after that!

Flowers:

For our centerpieces on the tables, we made flowers out of soda cans, bottle caps, and bottle tabs. Not only were we using trash that would've ended up in a landfill, but we also avoided the negative impact that shipping cut flowers(that only last a day or so) have on our planet. Maybe someone will reuse these "bouquets" for another event...

More silkscreening

I have more photos of the silkscreening:

List of Honors:

For the service, in each player book there is usually a piece of paper that says who in the b'nei mitzvah's family is dong what prayer or honor.
I REALLY didn't want to waste all those sheets of paper, so we decided on something MUCH more resourceful:
We cut cereal boxes into strips and silk-screened the honors onto that! My dad got a video of me making some:

Instead of buying new kippot, we reused some from other family events. We made a linoleum stamp for my bat mitzvah and stamped them with Speedball ink. We collected the old ones from various friends and family and in this way we are remembering the past while celebrating today. We had one from my uncle Paul's bar mitzvah in 1956!