Many consumers cradling their colorful bouquets don’t realize that close to 70% of cut flowers sold in the USA are grown overseas, where growing conditions are better, but labor is cheaper and pesticide regulation is more lax.
So think about sending organic flowers to your sweetie this Valentine’s Day, or the day after, or for a birthday, etc.
skinnyskinny is happy to announce the arrival of a few new organic and eco-friendly products:
Handmade wood soap dish
This is one of our new soap dishes, made by hand from salvaged and reclaimed hardwoods. Each is unique and one-of-a kind. Get yours here.
Next, we have two new additions to our organic potpourri family. First up is Lemon, Lime and Ginger (which you can buy here):
organic lemon lime and ginger potpourri
And next, we have Organic Orange and Fennel potpourri, available here.
Organic Orange and Fennel potpourri
So, what do you all think?
As the devastation in Haiti continues, we can all pitch in to help. And tomorrow, we can do the same. And the day after that and for every day after that until our help is no longer needed. Just do something.
Okay, so I’m a bit late to this game since the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, already has a follow-up, but maybe there’s still hope to dissuade anyone else from reading this. Memoirs are tricky under the best of circumstances, but I was game to give it a go. Who doesn’t love a story of personal redemption? For those that don’t know about the subject matter, Gilbert got a divorce then spent a year traveling. She spent 4 months in Italy (the ‘eat’ part), 4 months in India (the ‘pray’ part) and 4 months in Indonesia (you got it, the ‘love’ part). To give you an idea of the revelatory depth or lack thereof in this book, Gilbert makes the point that all of these countries start with the letter ‘I’ (and oh my gosh, she writes her memoir in first person, too!!!) as if it was a cosmic sign that this year abroad had a massively higher purpose than mere coincidence could possibly have.
So, I made it through the Italy part and through a few sections of the India part until I could no longer force myself to care. Even in the Italy part, I had extreme misgivings about her, uh, let’s just call it adherence to accuracy. I have clever friends. I have very very smart friends. I have extremely witty and sensitive friends, but the amount of clever quips attributed to her own friends is staggering to me. It was as if each of her friends was a veritable ’self-help’ manual unto him/herself, always ready with just the right anecdote at just the right time to give her just the right amount of comfort. Oh, and then there’s the wisdom that she attributes to strangers, too. I don’t buy it.
My patience wore out in the India section with the introduction of Richard from Texas. He had apparently been praying for years for an open heart. Who could guess that he’d one day have open heart surgery? Wow, I never saw that one coming but thankfully Gilbert included the morality lesson along with it for us all to watch what we pray for because otherwise that insight may have been lost…
This actually brings me to the biggest criticism of the book, well, aside from ultimately not caring so much about the main character which is a shame for a memoir: I kept thinking that Gilbert and anyone who helped with this book just thought that women were not very bright. Or resilient. Or secure. That made me a little sad.
With the new year, I’ve decided that I’m going to start my Rosetta Stone Italian lessons again. I’m still at the beginning of level 1, but it’s been more than a year since I even opened up the program. I will still throw in a random Italian word when I’m talking to my Italian-American husband, but I’ve probably worn out the cuteness of that particular example of my worldiness. Aside from this, I’ve decided to go easier on myself in general but to also be better to/for myself. I, for one, am happy to be rid of 2009. It was a good year for skinnyskinny, but a tough year personally and I still consider myself lucky.
So, without further ado, we are having a contest for the best New Year’s Resolution of 2010! Our judging will be fickle, but there will be 3 winners. Each winner will receive a $25 coupon for our store and/or site. To enter, just email your New Year’s Resolution to us at info@skinnyskinny.com by 5pm EST Thursday, January 7, 2010. That’s it. And then you can use the coupon to get whatever you need to get a fresh clean organic start in 2010.
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