Greeny Crafter 3 - Chic Envelopements

Gosh, January is coming to an end already! Where did all that time go to?  This week's Greeny Crafter is Beth of Chic Envelopements.

What's Wrong with My Veggies?

We were planning on having a little garden of our own but I think I fail as a gardener. The tomatoes and chillies I planted in August have just shrivelled up. First they started to sprout up really quickly and then the leaves turned a little light green and a bit furry. And now, all the leaves have gone. I have no idea what's happened. My neighbour thinks that the seeds weren't old enough to be planted. But it can't be the same reason for both the chillies and the tomatoes!!! Any ideas?

Rustic Decorations

This is a great craft for kids. My son (who's 6) enjoyed helping out with the cutting, rolling and sticking, and eventually he was really happy to see the decoration go up in the hallway.  All you need is an old cardboard box, cookie cutters, scissors, pencil, a biro that's not working, a roller with spikes (the ones for clothes making - sorry, I just can't remember the name!!), ribbon or string, glue and aluminium foil.

The CNY Celebrations!

Just thought I'd share the Chinese New Year pics I took today. We were invited to a friend's place for lunch and it was an opportunity to wear our finest! Even wore the snowflake dress I made during the Christmas hols! :-)  Not sure why we're looking so serious here...

Goodies galore - yum.

Watermelon seeds snack - tough on the teeth
but yummy once you've got rid of the shell!

Nuts & figs!

Pineapple tarts - pineapple paste
wrapped with buttery pastry. 

My friend preparing the raw fish salad.

Greeny Crafter - Charity Shop Chic

Happy Chinese New Year! It's bye bye to the year of the Rabbit, and hello year of the Dragon!!! I'm ushering in the year with our second Greeny Crafter, Sally from Charity Shop Chic.  Sally is from London and she has a flair for creating new clothes from old.  What I love  is that she's able to find pre-loved items at charity shops, chops them up and has creates something chic.  Sally says "I got into refashioning as an easier way of making new clothes than starting from scratch. It's so easy to buy something with the buttonholes and zip and sleeves already made and just tweak it to get it the way you want! Since then I have been doing more 'extreme' refashions, cutting things up so they are totally unrecognisable from the original. I started a blog because I had been reading a lot of other blogs and found them inspirational, and had the idea that maybe my work could inspire others in the same way."

Sally of Charity Shop Chic in her snood & mitts!
Photo : Charity Shop Chic

I love the snood and mittens that she refashioned from an old jumper from a charity shop. It may be hot over here in Singapore, but if I have to fly over to a cold country for a holiday or for a business trip, buying a new pair of mits and a snood would be very wasteful indeed!!!


I'm also a fan of her refashion of a skirt into this classy dress:

Photo: Charity Shop Chic

Sally has had lots of compliments and the nicest one she got was when she made a dress from old T-shirts based on a Stella McCartney design recently and a lot of commenters said it looked like the original! Find out how Sally does it over at her blog, Charity Shop Chic!!! 


If you would like to be featured in the Greeny Crafters, drop me an email @ greenissuessg@gmail.com.


Happy crafting!

Belt or necklace?

Hellooooo!!! Chinese New Year is in 4 days!!!  It's a Chinese tradition to buy new clothes and wear them on the first day of Chinese New Year (this Sunday).  This time, we've decided that we won't be buying anything new so long as what we will wear is not dark and dreary but bright and cheerful!!


So can you guess what I have made to compliment my clothes? Is it a belt? A necklace? It's made from the seams of old jeans and it's easy as pie!  Best of all, no sewing machine is needed!!!

Are You a Greeny Crafter?

• Do you love recycling old things into something new?
• Do you jump at the chance to refashion your old clothes?
• Do you think twice before you purchase something from the shop?

If you answered "yes" to all of the above, then I would love to feature you on my blog.  I'll be featuring greeny crafters every week so if you're interested in sharing your ideas, please drop me a line at greenissuessg@gmail.com .  I'm looking for originality and creativity!!  My first feature was Jill from Jembellish


Remember to grab one of my buttons on the side bar!!


Some rules:
a) Only blogs with a greeny element to it (upcycling, recycling, refashioning etc) with easy to follow tutorials will be featured.  No commercial sites please. 


b) I love honest greeny crafters. Sorry, I don't feature crafters who pass off crafts as being theirs. I think it is only fair that we acknowledge the rightful creators!


c) I love clear and colourful photos but I won't feature those that are copyrighted. Please ensure that the photos that you would like me to use are yours and not someone else's :-)

Jean Pocket Pot Holders

I've finally decided to venture into featuring greeny and crafty people! Spent this evening coming up with my buttons!!!


Since I've been recrafting my hubby's jeans into almost anything, I was excited when I saw that Jill from Creating my way to Success come up with a lovely way of reusing old jeans.  I've turned mine into a wristlet but pot holders can brighten up a kitchen and are way more useful than wristlets!!! To add extra padding to the potholders, I'm planning to add in old towels - don't want to burn our crafty fingers!

Jill's jean pocket pot holders!!

Sheng Shiong - no ban on sharks fin?

So, after NTUC Fairprice decided to stop selling sharks fin, most of us were wondering whether the other supermarket players would join in too.  Cold Storage was the first to implement a "no sharks fin" policy (well, it was in Oct 2011) but Giant and Shop N Save, which are under the same parent company still sell sharks fin products.

This was what was on Sheng Shiong's Facebook page:

"Hi All,

Thanks for your patience with regards to the sales of shark's fin at Sheng Siong.

We've reviewed the matter extensively and decided that there is no plans currently to stop selling shark's fin. 

However Sheng Siong will scrutinize its future supplies of shark's fin products to ensure that the sources are not from inappropriate shark finning. 

With regards to some concerns about the sales of mola mola meat, Sheng Siong is currently not selling this item and do not plan to do so in future. 

We appreciate all the feedback that has been given."

I honestly don't understand what "ensure that the sources are not from in appropriate shark finning" is? Do you?

Chinese New Year - Poon Choy 盆菜

What's poon choy 盆菜 (or pen cai in hanyu pinyin)? It's a traditional Hong Kong Northern Territories village dish that has now become very popular and is eaten on special occasions such as the Winter Solstice, and now Chinese New Year.   In fact, it's become so popular that we even have it here in Singapore.  It contains layer upon layer of precooked ingredients like roast pork, steamed chicken, fish maw, ducks feet, vegetables, oysters, prawns, abalone etc etc. Everyone digs in with their chopsticks!!

So, you can imagine how big (not to mention how expensive) that pot  is going to be.

I've tried it before in Hong Kong and it's very yummy. But, there are a few things to watch out for for:

   

• Does it have sharks fin? Because it's such a big dish, it's highly likely you're going to be buying this from a restaurant. Ask if you can have it without the sharks fin.

Fat choy or fa cai

• Does it have  髮菜 fat choy (fa cai in hanyu pinyin)?  It's a type of moss which is found in the Gobi desert. It is eaten during Chinese New Year because it is a homonym in Chinese for "get rich".  Over harvesting has intensified erosion and desertification. In fact, Chinese desertification experts say facai harvesting is the chief cause of desertification in Inner Mongolia (Source: Beijing US Embassy report 1998).

• Do you really need such a big pot of poon choy? If you know you're not going to finish it on the first day, plan ahead before buying so that you know it won't end up in your bin!!Yes, we all know that with the Chinese it's always about face, but Mum always says not to waste food!!!

• Make sure you cook it thoroughly - yes, seriously, get a food thermometer and stick it into the poon choy to ensure that it is piping hot before serving it.  But do ensure that you get it from a reputable restaurant - poon choy dishes should be cooled quickly and kept below 4C (to minimise bacterial growth) if it is not served immediately.  Did you know that you can get Bacillus cereus food poisoning leading to vomiting and diarrhoea if the poon choy is not handled properly?

So, if you're going to buy poon cai for your Chinese New Year reunion dinner, keep these 4 things in mind!! 

Natural Disasters

What will Mother Nature (or man) give us this year? 


To name just a few, in 2011, we saw:

Photo: Tim Musson

Earthquakes in Argentina, Chile, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Tonga, Burma, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Sulawesi, Fiji, Turkey, New Zealand, with the one in Japan resulting in a catastrophic tsunami.

Floods in the US, Australia, Philippines, Thailand and even in Singapore.


Droughts in East Africa, Texas (US) and the Danube River being at its lowest levels in 60 years!


According to an article in Nature, the 2011 natural disasters around the world caused a record US$380 billion in economic losses.  This is double that of 2010!  Furthermore,  weather (causing floods & droughts) "accounted for about 90% of the year’s 820 recorded natural disasters, which caused at least 27,000 deaths".   Based on IPCC's report in Nov last year, I think we can expect even more weird and extreme weather in the future - "It is “virtually certain” — meaning 99–100% probability in IPCC terminology — that the twenty-first century will see an increase in the frequency and magnitude of warm temperature extremes and a decrease in cold extremes."

Getting things in order!

Phew! Finally found the time to sort my blog out and group my refashions and recyclable crafts together.  Hope it is easier to navigate around now! :-)

NTUC FairPrice Takes Sharks Fin Off the Shelves

Our largest supermarket chain, NTUC FairPrice, has decided to pull sharks fin products off its shelves within the first quarter of 2012, but this was only after public outcry towards a supplier who announced its sharks fin product launch at NTUC with the words "screw the divers".  I think it would have been better of NTUC FairPrice had been more pro-active about the issue.

Jeans into Reversible Bag

Taking a whole week off to spend time with family .... and also do some crafts!  This time I did a reversible bag from an old pair of jeans and two old belts.  I love it - 2 bags in one! :-)  
There aren't any measurements in the tute below as I feel everyone's preference for the size of bag is different!

Happy New Year !!!

Time flies by so quickly! My little boy will now be going to big boy school on Tuesday. It's been very exciting and hubs has been trying to pack his holidays with lots of activities but I was rather dismayed that one of them was playing computer games - ugh, it's my nightmare! They're hooked ...... why can't we stick to board games? Reminds me of the time when we created our own board game from an old calendar ..... hope we can get to do it again before school starts!