Unstuffed: The Urban Homestead Series: My Own Hallmark

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Urban Homestead Series: My Own Hallmark

This is my collection of cards and card making supplies. Thrift stores, church bazaars and charity shops are great places to find all kinds of unused, stationary items. I love my card supply because it means that I never have to buy a new, expensive card. I save money, reduce waste and I always have something on hand for every occasion. I store everything in a box that I keep on my desk. It's neat and tidy, yet easily accessible when I need it.

I celebrated a friend's birthday on the weekend and since he's a lover of fine food and drink, I gifted him with a bottle of my homemade, plum infused brandy. The bottle came from a consignment shop near my house.

I wrapped it in this pretty piece of linen purchased at a church bazaar and tied it with a drawstring separated from some random item a long time ago, that I had saved. From my card collection, I chose this old postcard from Spain. It kinda looks like the birthday boy and his awesome dudette and they visited Spain last summer. I skipped the envelope, since, unless you're mailing it, just seems superfluous to me.

Olé!

Update: Just adding some links with information on the environmental impact of the greeting card industry.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: Ya know, I have all kinds of card making supplies, but just don't seem to ever get around to it. Maybe this year!; January 20, 2010 at 3:15 PM
Amber said...: Hi Local Cook! Yeah, I used to spend a lot of time making my own cards, but more often than not I find myself using up my thrift store card supplies. Which is why I always keep an eye out for unused, second hand cards. Very handy and time saving, but I still avoid buying new!; January 21, 2010 at 9:45 AM
Sherry said...: I love old cards too Amber. I search them out at yard sales etc. Sometimes I find antique ones too! I still but the rare card that is usually hand painted or quilted etc; February 10, 2010 at 4:41 PM
Amber said...: Sherry, quilted cards sound lovely!; February 11, 2010 at 11:00 AM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali