UsedEverywhere.com

Porch Day: helping others from the comfort of your (warm!) home

Toys, check. Snowsuit, hat, scarf, mitts and boots, check. Hey wait – is that the Ikea monkey?

If you’re like me, the lead-up to the holidays can incur a weird mix of emotions:

• Excitement. “Hooray, Christmas is coming!”

• Stress. “How am I going to get all this shopping, wrapping, visiting and entertaining done?”

• Guilt. “How can I spend so much money while others live in poverty?”

• Dread. “Sigh. Another year, more stuff to cram into my closet/basement.”

How can you enjoy the “most wonderful time of the year” when you’re feeling so…confused? Well, I know a way you can help your community, free up space, and feel good about it…all without barely lifting a finger. Introducing Porch Day.

The concept of a Porch Day is simple: basically, it lets you help your community from the comfort of your own (warm!) home. Got a basement or closet full of stuff that you’ve been meaning to give to goodwill? Put it out on your porch…and somebody will pick it up and deliver it to folks in need, on your behalf. No need to abandon your Christmas baking or squeeze in an extra hour to support your community: someone will do the work for you.

Porch Day coming to Ottawa! How you can help others.

On Saturday, December 15, UsedOttawa.com will pick up donations of the following from any address in Ottawa/Gatineau:

• new toys—to be delivered to Salvation Army’s Toy Mountain;

• gently used toys—to be donated directly to Salvation Army, but not as part of the Toy Mountain program; and

• children’s or adults’ snowsuits (also including hats, mitts, and boots)—to be taken to the Snowsuit Fund.

To participate, please e-mail your address to porchday@usedeverywhere.com and leave your items ready for pickup by 10 a.m. on December 15.

Want more information?

Green wedding: something old, something borrowed, something used

On August 18, our very own “green bride” Lisa Higgs married Rolf Campbell in their beautiful Kanata backyard.

This gorgeous wedding gave a whole new meaning to the “something old…something borrowed” tradition – thanks in large part to Lisa’s efforts to make their special day as environmentally-friendly as possible.

And we have the photos to prove it. Check it out!

The happy couple. Congrats, guys! And thanks for letting us be part of your special day

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The dinner table

 
We first heard about Lisa when she reached out to folks in the Free category of UsedOttawa.com, asking for donations of dinner plates. Lisa and Rolf combined a bunch of mismatched dishes together for a lovely vintage-eclectic look!

They also tried a whole new spin on centrepieces. They made a pile of old books, stacked mason jars (with  candles) on top, added an oil lamp, and surrounded it all with fun origami shapes made out of 100% recyclable paper —yes, that is a bunny! And why buy or rent boring cloth napkins when you can make your own out of old bedsheets with fun prints? Add some paper fortune cookies (also made from 100% recyclable paper) as wedding favours and have one memorable table setting.

Information for guests

 

Flowers

There were no fresh flowers at this wedding! Unless by fresh, you mean fresh pages taken from used encyclopedias. And while you might think paper flowers would look strange as wedding decor, the end result was quite beautiful. For the bridesmaids’ bouquets, Lisa added a bit of blue paper (also recyclable). Hey, is this the “something blue”? Meanwhile, the groom and groomsmen looked rather dapper wearing their unique boutonnieres.

And just for fun…

To the stars, young lovers!

 

You never know what you can find online! Lisa scored this free moon – yes, moon! – originally made and used for a school play. This photo backdrop was huge at a whopping 10-by-10 feet.

Thanks to Lisa and Rolf for allowing us to be part of their special day. All the best in your new life together!

Meanwhile, stay tuned for a DIY article over the next couple of weeks, when I’ll show you how to create your own wedding flowers and wedding favours.

“Green” with wedding envy

I loved my wedding four years ago. Seriously, every part of it was awesome.

But then I met Ottawa bride-to-be Lisa Higgs.

Now, I’m sort of regretting that I can’t do my big day all over again to emulate hers.

That’s because Lisa is coordinating perhaps the coolest and most creative, cost-effective and community-conscious wedding I’ve ever heard of.

Budget was always the top consideration for Lisa and her fiancé Rolf Campbell—but they also wanted a backyard wedding that wouldn’t put a toll on the environment.

“To us, being green and not creating waste is the only logical choice—and that means we wanted to avoid purchasing all those single-use items that normally end up in the landfill or in the back of a closet,” says Lisa.

Some of the green and cost-efficient (often free!) things Lisa and Rolf have done in preparation for their August 18^th “Home Sweet Wedding” include:

• Sending e-invites instead of paper invitations, and creating a website for RSVPs and general wedding information.
• Choosing “non-wedding” clothing, allowing the entire wedding party to self-select their own cocktail dresses and suits that can be worn again.
• Borrowing (from friends and family members) instead of renting equipment (from vendors) like BBQs, coffeemakers and a bar.
• Collecting donated table settings (among many, many other things) from UsedOttawa.com. Lisa and Rolf opted for 100 vintage-eclectic place settings of used dinner and dessert plates, wine and drinking glasses, and cutlery because “…rental companies often replace their dishes with new ones too often, so this was a greener option.”
• Not driving long distances, or making car trips for the sole purpose of picking up donated items.
• Repurposing their own household items, such as using Lisa’s grandmother’s vintage suitcase as a card box; and old paned windows from her mother’s farmhouse for displaying the seating chart.
• Making paper bouquets and boutonnieres using the pages of 30 books—bought for a whole $1 at a used book sale—which can be recycled after the wedding. Or, if kept for sentimental value, the flowers will be more easily maintained than fresh flowers.
• Creating fortune cookie wedding favours out of 100% recyclable origami paper.

Lisa has many, many more creative, budget- and environmentally-friendly wedding décor DIY ideas that we plan to share with the UsedEverywhere audience over the next few weeks.

Stay tuned for more, including a recap of her and Rolf’s big day!