Shower the New Year with Bio-Fetti

Between party plans and holiday gifts, you probably haven't finished your list of New Year's resolutions. Maybe you have, but allow me to make one suggestion: Go Green. Here's how:

• Resolve to recycle.
  
• Commit to composting.
  
• Lock your feet to the pedals and bike to work.
• Ditch the styrofoam - use dishes.

I'm sure you can add numerous ideas to the list on your own.

But before we get too serious about this resolution thing, let's party! - with biodegradable confetti! Yes, they really do make such a thing as biodegradable confetti. And it makes good sense, too. Who wants to spend hours sweeping and picking up teeny tiny flecks all over nature's finest gifts (trees, grass, flowers, etc.), or even on cement for that matter.

Colorful, lightweight, and water-soluble, ecofetti may be the only option permitted for weddings or other celebrations at certain locations. You can by it in bulk and fill your own containers, or purchase individual poppers that spew fun confetti just at the right moment.

Here are some online sources for biodegradable confetti:

Brides' Village
FavorCreative
EcoParti
BeauCoup


Now you can ring in the new year with a joyful shower outdoors and not feel bad about leaving a mess in the environment! Rain or a hose is all you'll need to dissolve the confetti and wash it away. Happy New Year!

Camping in Winter

Whenever I enter the world of hypothetical, why is it that everyone knows I'm talking about a real person? As if my brain capacity can't accommodate a genuine hypothetical situation, but can only handle real ones.

What's the point? Well, let's say I have this friend, a crazy in short, who equates negative temperatures with the desire to go camping. Wind-chapped cheeks, strange survival dances around a fire, and burrowing inside snow caves make a short list of things he's eager to enjoy on his impending winter camping outing.

So I ask myself, really, what is it that would possess someone to incur the risks of frost bite and hypothermia to challenge the beasts of winter? Maybe it's something primal, like an instinct: feel cold on skin = must go camping. Or maybe, like bears and elk and all sorts of animals that live in arctic conditions, it's just a matter of existence.

I've spoken of this idea before that to truly love a landscape, you have to experience it. Think of spending a day in the loess hills in Iowa to help your human consciousness "remember" what prairie was like. You've never seen a real prairie. You've only read about it in books, but then you go and you know why you want it to be there.

Perhaps the same is true for winter fascinations. It's easy to love rolling green hills of grass spotted with cloud shadows, but how attractive are they in a blizzard? How well do you love several feet of hardened snow in North Dakota, -34 degrees near Billings yesterday, and wind plucking the wool right off your chest. It's just like a long-term dating relationship where you purposely experience the other person in every mood, every situation, among all sorts of people to see if you can love the climate, not just weather the spring.