Own, and save! a piece of history...

Landreth Seed Company, one of the oldest American companies, and THE oldest seed company, is in grave danger of closing soon.  Despite a huge resurgence in gardening from seeds in recent years (thanks, economy), Landreth is about to go under.  In an effort to make a last gasp for air, they are taking orders for their 2012 BEAUTIFUL catalog now, to be shipped in time for Christmas presents. 

A catalog for a gift?  Why yes!  The catalogs contain engravings of original hand-drawings of heirloom seeds and plants.  Historical tidbits of info and tips are included, and the whole thing makes for a beautiful gift for any gardener or lover of botanical drawings.  Or anyone that values centuries-old, family-owned companies.  The catalogs are $5, and despite their own desperation, they are committed to printing everything here in the US, rather than sending it overseas for a fraction of the price.

 
Heck, while you're at it, order a few gift cards for your favorite gardeners!  Besides heirloom seeds, they have bulbs of all varieties, historical weather instruments for your favorite weather geek, and a lovely little library of beautiful books for sale.  Now go shop!  Even if it's only that gorgeous, special catalog.

Also, Monday...I'll have two tickets to the Wedding Extravaganza of the Year to give away!  You want these!

The Royal Blooms!

A great video describing the process, origin, and design of the pretty, pretty royal wedding flowers!  I love this modern couple.  Besides the fact that Kate chose to have her dress made by one of my two very favorite designers (the AMAZING Sarah Burton who had the near impossible task of carrying on the Alexander McQueen label after his untimely death last year...and who is miraculously performing the task to perfection), they sourced ALL of their flowers from the various royal properties.  Nothing was imported.  The resulting designs reflected their heritage, kingdom, natural beauty, and commitment to sustainable practices. The video is gorgeous...tons of lily-of-the-valley, white lilac, and euphorbia.  I would have given almost anything just to be part of the giant floral team that pulled this off.  It would have been fascinating just to be their water girl or floor sweeper and watch the process! 

Kate's bouquet?  Petite and elegant, very tasteful and traditional.  The bouquet almost echoed the French lace overlay on her dress, being composed of a collection of meaningful but tiny blooms.  Love how the small scale of each bloom produced the overall lace effect.

I highly doubt that the meaning behind the floral varieties in the bouquet escaped the detailed princess.  Together, the meanings seem to really sum up what we know about William and Kate:

• Myrtle:  love, joy
• Lily-of-the-valley:  purity, sweetness
• Sweet William (awww!):  gallantry
• Hyacinth:  games and sport

The mastermind behind all of it was Shane Connolly, "Supplier of Flowers for Events, by Appointment to HRH The Prince of Wales".   Report over for now...off to drink a boatload of coffee after my middle of the night wedding vigil.  Happy weekend!

Climbing the walls

the new Anthropologie in London (first in Europe) has a living wall--irrigated solely by rainwater collected on the roof!  I've always loved living walls--the local Seattle zoo has one in the tropical rain forest house with orchids that is pretty spectacular when they are blooming. (Anthropologie wall pic from Print & Pattern).

A few others to admire...

From mosstika, installed on a roof garden in Brooklyn. Little tiny green sedums growing from between wood slats of varying sizes. (more photos of the process at designboom). Followed by a few more installations by Edina Tokodi of mosstika.  I love the living graffiti idea of many of her pieces.

America's largest green wall (the size of a doubles tennis court!) by PNC in Pittsburgh. When watered the required 15 minutes a week, it weighs 24 tons.

Patrick Blanc appears to be the master of the living wall, or vertical garden as he calls it. Check out the slide show on the opening page of his site. Crazy.

Heartbreak

The news out of Haiti is heartbreaking and just keeps getting worse as the numbers climb. In a country where 80% of the population lives below the poverty line, where there is only a 50% literacy rate, and a history of constant political unrest, the impacts of this 7.0 magnitude earthquake are magnified a thousandfold. Hospitals, schools, relief shelters, and even the UN buildings have been reduced to piles of rubble, and the death toll for peacekeepers and relief workers is so high that there are few to even help.

The easiest way to give immediate assistance is to support the Red Cross as they prepare rescue and medical supplies and gather relief workers to aid the devastated country. It's easier now than even going to their website or making a phone call. They've set up a text number for a quick $10 donation. Just text "Haiti" to 90999. You'll be sent a confirmation text that says to reply "yes" if you would like to donate. After replying yes, they will add a one-time $10 charge to your phone bill. That's it.

I know I probably won't even notice the charge on my monthly bill, but I AM going to notice my fresh running water, warm home, and most importantly, my beautiful family that I'm blessed with.

green-fabulous!

I promised my friend Johnny I'd spread the word a little about his new blog...and then, when I went to get some pictures off of it and started reading, I realized he's actually doing me a favor. There is some really good stuff on there!

Johnny is the owner/founder of GreenFab, a sustainable development company working to achieve a balance between the natural and built environments. They focus on health, community and environment, and are also a portal of awesome ideas and new developments going on in sustainable building. I know I have a few readers currently building new homes--his site is a must see!

One of my favorite finds are these leaves, currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The leaves are beautiful in themselves, but what they do is even better. You attach them to the side of your home, and they capture wind energy as they flutter in the breeze and sun energy through their photovoltaic cells. This is one of the neatest innovations I've heard about in a long time!

I also love the pictures of Johnny's garden, maybe because they bring back fond memories of many summer barbecues with great friends, but most likely because it really is an amazing place and Johnny's amazing photography really makes it shine.

Johnny designed and installed the entire garden, including the cute little shed with the green roof shown below, and the metal sculptures you can see to the side.

I love this Irish moss path and all the other beautiful little details. The pond? It has brilliant orange tumbled glass (from Bedrock--a really cool recycled glass place in Seattle) surrounding the base that you can just get a peek of in the last picture.

Check back with GreenFab often for all the latest innovations (and cool gizmos) in green development!

I know...the picture isn't very sexy...

I'm sure you've heard of this before, but if you are like me, you might have thought "Great idea! I'll do that soon". Well, a few weeks ago I finally got around to filling out the on-line form to opt-out of credit card offers through the mail. And even though the site warned that it could take several months to notice a difference because so many firms print or plan these offers quite a ways ahead, I've noticed a huge difference already!

Less waste AND less chance of identity theft; its a winning situation. And it only took MAYBE 45 seconds to do it. Yup, this is your homework assignment for the weekend. Get to it.

chocolate, coffee, lions, tigers...oh my!

One of my favorite places in Seattle is our zoo. It has a little something for everyone; the cute/fuzzy/ferocious/strange animals (of course! but did you know they just got OSTRICHES, which I happen to think are the most wonderfully wacky animals ever?), an historic carousel that has been so beautifully restored, a great field of grass for the awesome "Zoo Tunes" concert series every summer, and pretty incredible landscaping with miles of walking paths.

If you haven't been in a while, this is the weekend to check it out! Things will just be sprouting up in the gardens, the animals will be in spring fever (or at least enjoying our sudden burst of sunlight around here), and it won't be full of the July and August crowds. Best of all, it's the zoo's first annual eco-weekend. They have all sorts of fun activities planned, but I'd wait until Sunday.

Sunday's event is....coffee and chocolate! Ok, NOW the zoo might be my very favorite place in Seattle. They'll have tastings from several local companies that support organic and fair-trade practices, including Theo Chocolates, Pete's Coffee, Tony's Coffee and Teas, and Grounds for Change, to name just a few.

Some of the other events will be special celebrations in honor of the zoo's primates, amphibians, bears and wolves. They'll even be announcing the name of and introducing the baby gorilla for the first time. Check out the zoo site for more details! And get a little wild this weekend...

my little (green and cheap) remodel

My big plans for this weekend include a quick and cheap freshening up of my studio before the mad rush of the summer wedding season begins. I'm dreaming of a new fun color on the walls, and something soft and drapey on the ceiling, and a great big new bulletin board above my workbench to pin inspiration to.

My remodel inspiration is this sky blue and chocolate paper (which is gorgeous in person and pale/washed out in this picture!), that I found a couple years ago at Old Navy of all places! I'll use it to cover my bulletin board, and maybe the back of some shelves (one of my favorite decorating tricks!)

With my grand plans swirling around my head, I took off for my local Benjamin Moore paint store a few days ago, thinking I'd check out their new Aura paint that is supposed to be super eco-friendly and have a fancy formula that is quick drying, self-priming, and have a cool color-lock techonology. But once I got to the store, I got totally side-tracked by the great big shelf of homeless paint cans. It seems that a lot of people order paint over the phone and never come pick it up. Or one can out of several that are made up in one color doesn't quite match. Or people change their minds. I don't know, but there were a lot of pre-mixed cans that seemed eventually headed for the landfil unless someone took them home.

So, I dug around for a few mintues, and found the most beautiful shade of blue that perfectly matches my paper. And it has the perfect "pearl" sheen that I was looking for. And it only cost $5.99 (!) instead of $37.99 since I was rescuing it.

And then yesterday morning, Ideal Bite's daily green tip was about eco-friendly paints, and they stated that "one gallon of conventional paint that's not properly disposed of can seep into the earth and pollute 250,000 gal of drinking water". So the next time you are feeling adventuress and not too picky about your paint color, check out that shelf of homeless cans that seems to be at every paint shop. You may just find a perfect match!

I'll let you know how the studio freshening goes!

Lights out!

I'm always a big fan of anything that is good for the earth and fun too. Not that I'm so self-centered that there has to be something in it for me, but it's just a little added bonus.

So, grab someone you love, and join people around the world tomorrow night in powering down for 60 minutes. The someone you love is the fun part...I'm sure you can find something to do in the dark!

Warning!

This site is my new addiction, and I'm sure will eat up a good chunk of your precious time. It's fascinating and valuable though.

Skin Deep will let you put enter the item name or company from any of your cosmetics, hair products, lotions or fragrance, and it will bring up safety information about all of the ingredients. It also has baby products in the database! In just a few minutes, I found out that the expensive Mustela baby shampoo I always splurge on for the boys (since I thought it was safer), is actually a level 6 (out of 10) hazard! I'm not even going to finish the bottle, since the site also gave me some great alternatives. I also found out that the hand lotion that I can't live without, is in the harmless zone. Go Neutrogena fragrance-free Norwegian formula!

Food and Drink

After all, it's easier to help end hunger when you've got a full stomach of your own. And all that money you're going to save on dinner thanks to this little tip? Use it to help distribute clean water to the 1 billion people that don't have it!

Food: Dine around Seattle is a group of 30 restaurants offering a three-course dinner for $30. When you see the list of restaurants, you'll realize what a steal this is! Campagne, Veil, Oceanaire Seafood Room...and 27 others. Sunday through Thursday running through March (excluding Easter Sunday).

Drink: A lot of us take clean water for granted. Just like electricity, plumbing, and heat, its one of those things that you don't really think about when you have them. But 90% (!) of the world doesn't have access to clean drinking water, and 6000 children a day of thirst or a water related disease. UNICEF's TAP Project is working to change that.

Through this Saturday, a long list of restaurants around the U.S. is offering you the chance to pay $1 for the water that is usually free. For every dollar raised, a child will have 40 days of clean water. Thats a huge return on your investment.

For local readers, the list of Seattle restaurants is here.

There are 15 other cities participating, find yours here.

If you're not going out this weekend, why not do a little TAP project of your own wherever you will be? I won't be going out this weekend, but will be eating in with some friends. I'm thinking that I'll put a jar by the sink and a note on the faucet/refrigerator/water bottle to remind people to donate. UNICEF makes it super easy to turn in your contributions--just fill out this very short on-line form and pay with your card. You can also print the form and mail it in.

Have a great weekend! I hope it's filled with delicious food and refreshing ways to make a difference. --Alexa

Yes...

• to feeding a hungry school child for a full year
• to natural organic cotton and jute burlap
• to dumping those plastic grocery bags, or...
• a great new accessory for spring!

FEED Bags are a project from the UN World Food Programme. They've targeted their efforts at feeding children that are attending school in developing countries because the impact is exponential. School feeding is a magnet; it can increase enrollment by 100%. And, the children that are attending are able to learn more when they have food in their stomachs and energy for their brains!

The bags are $59.oo and ship for free. You get one great accessory, the kids get 365 great meals. I also think they'd make a great gift for any generous-hearted friend that loves great bags!

The FEED Bag site has some great info about the project (as well as a link to amazon so that you can purchase one), but what more do you really have to know?

P.S.--Thanks Katy for the tip! If YOU are carrying one, I KNOW they must be chic!

No...

to toxic tulips.

I feel so sorry for these poor little tulips have been in their own personal Easter Parade through all of the florists wholesale newletters etc. for the last couple of weeks.

According to the site where they are sold, they've "been through a highly developed color enhancing process, shedding a different kind of glow, with each petal of the bloom displaying a new color". Call me crazy, but I suspect that this highly developed process isn't the same highly developed process other flowers go through--sun, rain, rich crumbly peaty soil, a little more sun, a little more rain...

7

At the recent Urban Unveiled show, I picked up a little goody bag with a few sample sizes from the ultra-stylish 7 Salon. When I got home, pleasantly worn out from an evening downtown that required heels and offered cocktails, I absentmindedly started to throw the little bottles in my travel cosmetic kit. It would be fun to try them the next time I was traveling.

But then I remembered that a stylist from SEVEN had briefly mentioned that their new product line was composed of even more organic components than the ubiquitous Aveda line. Maybe it was worth a try sooner than later. The next morning--pure organic hair BLISS!

Now, I'm not a total product junkie like some, but I do love anything that smells yummy, feels perfect, and actually works. And if its organic on top of that? Well, I feel obligated to pass on the secret.


So, as any good blogger would do, I thought I'd find out more, right from the source, and share it with you. Last week, I talked with Rodger Azadganian, founder and stylist extraordinaire (Linda Evangelista, Melinda Gates, Donna Karan...) about the product line they recently created.


Fiore fresco: Tell me about your new product line and the ingredients you used to design the formulas. You don't advertise it as being organic, but I've heard rumors.

Rodger: I wanted to create products from the purest, most natural and organic products available. We spent three and half years on the formulas, and now have been refining the products since they were released two years ago. The recipes are from scratch, based on what we knew worked on hair.

A lot of products that claim to be organic are really only about 1/3 organic in reality. We knew we could do better! Workiing with various suppliers, we have been able to create formulas that are 2/3 natural. We've eliminated 10 chemicals that are in most other formulas that are known to heighten allergies. We've sourced natural preservatives.


Fiore fresco: Tell me about your salon.

Rodger: SEVEN is actually two salons now. One in downtown, the other in Bellevue. Our philosophy is that for you to really feel good, your hair has to look good. We study our clients face shape, bone structure, eye and skin color, and create something that is completely tailored to each individual.

Fiore fresco: What kind of special experiences do you offer for brides or others planning events?

Rodger: We have a team at SEVEN that offers on-location services, and they are pretty incredible. They've done some of the major Northwest fashion shows; Donna Karan, Badgley Mischka, Michael Kors, and the Nordstroms shows. Its a very special way to treat your bridal party!

Fiore fresco: Finally, any trends in special event hair right now?

Rodger: Hair looks like hair again! Long and flowy, very natural. A few years ago it was so sculptural that it often didn't resemble hair. Thankfully we're back to a beautiful romantic look.

I was so taken with SEVEN's product line that I begged them for a few little samples to be able to share with my readers, hoping for a few of those little bottles I mentioned above. But the very generous Andy Rubenstein from the salon sent a wonderful pack of six (weird, huh?) FULL SIZE products, covering all aspects of their line (shampoo, conditioning, styling, and finishing). It kills me to do this, but I'll be sending it to one super-lucky reader next week.

Of course you don't get such an awesome treat without a little work...please leave a comment on this post, and answer the following questions (from your reading assignment this week).

1. What is your personal favorite sign that spring is on the way?

2. What is your current decorating obsession?

3. Favorite site you go to for inspiration?

4. Description of your worst hair style ever.

Comment number ___ gets the goods. (I've already selected a number--you just don't get to know it yet of course!)

If you'd like to book an appointment at SEVEN, or purchase some of their products to try, please call the salon at (206)903-1777 or (425)289-1777. If you are local, they can also be picked up at the salon.

Have a great weekend! I'll be busy with flowers for Shirley and Derek--a fabulously sweet couple getting married at the Lake Union Cafe. Congrats you two!