Stack it up

Using old wood crates never looked this good! Stack up a unique design to give you more storage in a room. I really love the use of white accents, bringing a clean sleek look against the rustic look of storage crates. A great re-purposed DIY project!  Image and product from LBrandt Terraria Etsy shop.

Art Smart ~ Recycled Art Finder

P4D found this great site that is a one stop shop for finding eco-friendly products for your home, including some great pieces of art! Pristine Planet offers price comparisons on your green shopping needs.

My favorite wall art piece-
Organic Leaf Wall Collection

Art Smart (4.29.10): Eco-friendly design is all in the Family

Rustic in build and modern in style,Modern Rust is a family owned and operated small business located in Virginia. The furniture they build is of their own design and it is made in small batches from recycled/waste lumber. Their designs often evolve, depending on their inventory of materials. Modern Rust pieces are solid wood, sturdy and very easy to move and re-assemble. Everything is made locally and from local materials. Co-owner of Modern Rust stated, "We love what we do, because we give new life to waste/recycled materials. We do most of the work ourselves in order to keep the cost down and to keep our green furniture affordable."

Modern Rust's Dining Room table design (you can have benches made for it too!)


Check out their online design gallery to see their collection of console tables, benches, coffee tables, and other great accent pieces.

Our Faves (4.7.10): Its Flippy Floppy Time

The warm weather has hit DC in full force, a nice 90 degrees....time to break out the Flip Flops! Or keep them out all year round with this Flip Flop Door Mat from VivaTerra. Made from the leftover flip flop rubber, its cushy and colorful! They come in all different sizes, runners too and start at $24.

Friday Finds ~ Save the Whales

The Maine Float-Rope Company re-purposes float-rope, which is no longer allowable in the fishing trade as it is a harm to marine life, and makes these wonderful and colorful doormats. These doormats are durable and support a good cause!

Friday Finds ~ Timber!

P4D readers enter to win your free (and signed!) copy of The Comfortable Home. Just click here and follow the contest rules. Good luck!! Here are our Friday Finds ~
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Feel like a lump on a log? How about a bowl in a log? Well do we have a log for you! Designer Doha Chebib creates these eco-friendly bowls by using reclaimed logs from fallen trees! These are available at GoodEgg Industries.

Design Tip of the Week (8.24.09): Going Green and SAVING Green

Since green became mainstream, one of the benefits of its popularity is that affordable mainstream options are out there.

JCPenney teamed up with Danny Seo, an environment lifestyle expert to create the Simply Green line that brings eco-friendly design to your home at an affordable price. The products at JCPenney with the Simply Green designation have all been approved as fitting into one of three categories: organic, renewable, or recycled.

Here is an affordable shag rug made from recycled plastics. This rug was recently showcased in Lucky Magazine and scored some trendy points!


Target has a huge selection of green products that you can find in all of their different departments. So after you go buy your energy saving light bulbs, take a trip down to the dining section and pick up recycled glass dinnerware by Luigi Bormioli (a well known glassware manufacturing company from Italy who is known for their high quality and design).


Another purveyor of green goods is Walmart, who also carries a wide variety of eco-friendly products and has made many efforts to further green their image with building stores with eco-friendly design in mind and working on a sustainability index to rank and label their eco-friendly products. Here are some eco-friendly, quick drying towels. They are made with 100% natural and low-twist cotton so they require 20% less drying time. They are affordable and come in fun colors (seen below in Sorrell).


Buyer BEWARE! Not all products labeled as organic or eco-friendly meet those standards. So do your homework and try to understand what makes the products your interested in actually green.

Friday Finds ~ Spare Parts

I recently received the cutest cheese name tags and measuring spoons from Beehive Kitchenware Co. as a gift. In addition to the fact that they are adorable, after doing some reading on this company there is even more reason to run out and support them. All of their products are made of re-built sheet metal tools rescued from the junk pile. Reduce, reuse, recycle! The company designs their products with the idea that they will be handed down for generations and say that the best way to care for their products is use them often. You just don't hear that enough!

Friday Finds ~ Clean the Green Way!

GONE are the days of Clorox, Ajax, Windex (anything ending in an "x" really) and many other harmful, harmful products to you, your household and the earth. I have personally always hated those products, well...and cleaning, but that's another story :). You have to open a window so you don't pass out and inhale harmful fumes! Yucky. Give them all a Mr. Yuck sticker!

We would like to close out the week with some eco-friendly, human-friendly, cruelty-free household products. While sometimes they may be a bit pricier, we can vouch it is worth the $1.00-3.00 extra. Also, some of the websites have coupon offers:


Mrs. Meyers Clean Day Aromatheraputic Household Cleaners are to DIE for (especially the lavender scented products here.) They are made from natural ingredients, biodegradable, chemical free, cruelty-free, and great for anyone with allergies. You can read more here about their environmental and safety information.




Seventh Generation Products are wonderful also, our fave is the Natural All Purpose Cleaner- it smells great and works in the kitchen and bathroom. The Seventh Generation Free & Clear Products are great for anyone with allergies.





Dr. Bronners Magic "All-One!" Products are really wonderful. The Liquid Soaps are great because they are multi-purpose. Gentle enough to clean you body with them, but you can also scrub the tub with them. Our fave is the Almond Liquid Soap & Peppermint Liquid Soap. They are also great to add a few drops while taking a bath.

We hope you've learned some new things this week about eco-friendless in home decor and beyond! Happy Friday! :)

Art Smart ~ Vintage Fun

Check out this beautiful photo of a vintage bike in front of a bright yellow background (from ScarletBeautiful2's etsy shop).



This Sunkist California Dream Vintage Tin (from violetsandgrace's etsy shop) would look nice on your bedroom dresser near the bicycle photo.



And this 20" pillow made with a vintage Buffalo Brand grass seed grain sack (from lesliejanson's etsy shop) would look great on a chair near the tin and bicyle photo.

The great thing about vintage (ahem...besides being eco-friendly), is that you don't have to feel like you have to match home decor items exactly. A great thing to keep in mind when buying more than one vintage item is color. Note how all 3 items above have some form of yellow and black in them-which will help tie them all together in one room. They all also have a bit of a worn feel to them, which goes with the whole vintage theme. Again, don't be "matchy-matchy" when it comes to vintage-just find one element (color, worn feel, etc.) that ties the items together and people will think you're a pro!

P.S. 100 Days Until Our one Year Blogoversary on August 1st!!! Contests & more fun new features to come!

Our Faves! Going Green-Salvaged Wood Home Decor

Happy Earth Day!!! In celebration, we wanted to showcase some great eco-friendly home decor. Salvaged wood is beautiful, durable, unique AND by take the extras from other wood products to produce something beautiful, less trees are cut down in the long run.


Check out this serving tray made from 100% salvaged urban forestry. You can be stylish and feel good about the environment.



This Mahogany Spice Dish is reclaimed from a window manufacturer that disposes of hundreds of pounds of wood each year.



And last, but certainly not least is this 12 inch square wooden panel from bgreendesign. With every purchase, 50 trees are planted in Honduras through Trees for the Future organization!!!! How wonderful?! It also comes with a tree planting certificate.

Also, check out this excerpt from A Washington Post Article about how Clean Air where you live leads to a longer life! Doing little things will make a difference.

Design Tip of the Week (4.20.09): Put a CORK in it!

As our culture becomes more aware of our environment, the choices for alternative, eco-friendly home materials begin to become overwhelming. P4D would like to take one material at a time and bring you some information so you can select one that is right for your home. Today we focus on CORK flooring options!

Cork Floors
*Cork is reasonably priced, starting at around $4 per tile for flooring.

*There are many texture and color options for cork. You can find a good selection here at Natural Cork & More, along with the classic cork style.

*Green Is In - Today's average consumer is interested in healthy living and looks for products that support this ideal. Cork is one of those products. You can buy cork flooring created from post-industrial by-products of the wine bottle-stopper industry. Read more about the process here.

*Cork is anti-microbial, will not spread flame, and is inherently resistant to molds, mildews, and common pests. I'm sold! :)

*Cork is scratch resistant and durable. However, you can't keep heavy objects stationary on it without it slightly denting.

Check out these cork floors that look nothing like what you would imagine cork would look like!

{New Dimensions - Wide Tiles - Slate}



{New Dimensions - Narrow Plank - Galicia}



{Eco Cork - Luna}

Art Smart~Spring Decorating

{Magnolia Dreams 5x7 inch Print, from OrangeWillow}


Hello everyone! We wanted to add some fun to ArtSmart Thursday's. We will select an art piece we adore (and think you will also) like we have been, but will also select a few home decor/accessories that we feel would look great with the art piece.

Here are some creative & vintage finds for spring decorating that we think go well with the art above:


{Recycled Tin Ceiling Tile Picture Frame 4 x 6, from Recycled Relics}



{Two Blue Print Pillow Covers 16x16, from PillowMio}



{Robert Blightman's Moss Terrarium, from Greenbriar}

DIY Tips & Tricks: Ikea your way

When I heard about this blog I thought it was GENIUS. How many pieces of disposable Ikea furniture do we all have lurking in our homes? I'm sure at least one. Now don't get me wrong, Ikea is a great resource, especially for the creative. This blog really demonstrates what you can do with Ikea furniture to save money and create your own unique furniture. Ikea Hacker is a fun and creative resource for DIY projects. Here is a sample.

A Decoupaged Chest

Visit the blog to also see a very cool bulletin board (made using an Ikea picture frame, fabric and cork board) and a fun way to create bar storage from a simple shelf unit (mirrors and a disco ball are used...that is all I have to say).

Design Tip of the Week (12.8.08): A Green Holiday Season

While you are preparing your homes for the holidays think about the ways in which you can save electricity and be more friendly to the environment. Here are some tips to help you make your holiday season a little more green.


*Use LED string lights for the tree, they are energy efficient as well as safe (they do not give off any heat).




*Make your own ornaments! P4D will bring you some DIY ornament projects over the next few weeks.




*Use beeswax candles instead of paraffin wax. Beeswax burns cleaner, longer and they have a natural scent.




*Use solar lights for your outside decorating. Solar holiday lights are available in many different styles and colors.




*Opt for a real tree versus a fake one. Tree farms are harvested for this specific reason while fake trees although re-usable, are made of plastic and metal which are not biodegradable.

For more tips on being green this holiday season, please visit www.easygreenlivingtips.org

DIY Tips & Tricks: Eight Green-Building Myths

{Photo by cityflickr}


We think its really important when building or remodeling to be aware of all that you can do to help save the planet. This article here from HGTVPro sets the record straight on Green-Building.

Check it out if you are building or remodeling!