Sometimes it is hard to find green gifts at a reasonable price especially if you want to spend $25 or less. With the economy still being sluggish this year, $25 seems to be the magical price threshold that most people want to spend on family that they do not see very often or good friends.

I have been spending quite a bit of time lately exploring eBay’s World of Good. It is a growing shopping mall for green gifts, and specialty items, and really fun to browse.

I recommend that you browse eBay’s World of Good to see what they have to offer and bookmark some items for your friends and relatives. It is always good to know that you are contributing to the health and well being of your friends and family.

Here is one of my personal favorites this week:

Alex and Ani St. Christopher Bracelet
I think that I might have to get one of these for myself.

For my friends, this is a great gift:

Natural Handmade Balm for Dry Skin

To go directly to the World of Good website, click here.

Green Nest is a very interesting company that specializes in organic green products for the home with a special emphasis on products to make your home cleaner and pollutant free. Green Nest has an entire line of air purifiers and non-toxic building products as well as home decor, bedding, and other general home products.

Air purifiers are especially helpful for people with allergies, and other immune system compromising disorders but they are also really great for any family. In the winter, when we are cooped up indoors breathing each other’s air, it is much easier to catch colds and the flu. With an air purifier you can reduce that likelihood immensely.

This is only one pair of many styles by Sanita of vegan eco-chic shoes. They also carry another whole line of leather shoes. These are really fun to collect and share. I crocheted an afghan that looked like these shoes once.

Sanita Women’s Professional Vegan Patch Clogs Shoes

Go bohemian chic with this innovative vegan Patch clog from Sanita, made in Denmark. Not only does the upper feature an incredibly hip granny square crochet inspired design, it’s 100% vegan! Contains no animal ingredients or animal by-products, uses no animal ingredient or by-product in the manufacturing process.
For more about Sanita shoes, follow this link.

Finding new and fun ways to recycle old things is a hobby of mine, and I have just discovered some great new books that would make terrific gifts for any creative recycler on your Christmas list. Or don’t wait, buy them for yourself.

This book is so much fun, even the cover is interesting:

Eco Books: Inventive Projects from the Recycling Bin

Here are 40 innovative book-making ideas using recycled and green materials! More than just earth-friendly, they’re also beautiful, clever, and witty, stitched with traditional binding techniques. Egg cartons, wood, beer cans, and cassette tapes morph into covers, while brown bags, coffee filters, and discarded newspapers are transformed into pages. Create a boxed set of cereal box books, an exposed stitch sketchbook out of cardboard and remnants, and even a faux leather journal made from teabags.

In addition to how-to drawings, close-up detail photographs, and simple stitch diagrams, a gallery of eco-books from an international roster of artists provides inspiration.

Re-Bound: Creating Handmade Books from Recycled and Repurposed Materials
Re-Bound is a beautiful book on bookbinding with a fun green twist-all the projects use recycled and upcycled materials. This book shows you how to take everyday materials from around the house, flea markets, thrift stores, and hardware stores and turn them into clever and eye-catching hand-made books.

Rejuvenated Jewels: New Designs from Vintage Treasures
In this book, readers learn where to find fabulous vintage jewelry, beads, and artifacts, and how to create stunning one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces using these amazing finds. Rhinestone beads and clasps, mercury glass beads, oxidized metal chains, rosary beads, tiny book charms and more are retooled into fabulous statement pieces that can be worn every day.

Semiprecious Salvage: Creating Found Art Jewelry
Semiprecious Salvage shows readers how to think beyond the techniques taught in traditional beading and jewelry books in order to create found art jewelry. Mixed-media applications like sewing, plasterwork and altering found objects tie together to create jewelry pieces such as brooches, pendants, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and belts. In addition to thought-provoking stories on the origination of some of the found items, Stephanie provides the reader with practical jewelry-making techniques that they can incorporate into their own inspired pieces. A simple, organic approach gives the reader limitless ideas for crafting their own jewelry as well as ideas for locating found items whether it be on a nature walk, one’s travels or in the comforts of home.

Each one of these books would be a terrific gift for someone creative on your list.  And there are more similar books.  If you click through the links for each book you will find more books listed underneath each main title on Amazon.

The Body Shop® offers a full assortment of naturally-inspired products, including bath & body, men’s and women’s skincare, and creative gift ideas for a variety of occasions.  They also offer classic and unique fragrances, home fragrances, makeup, and accessories.

Right now in anticipation of the winter holidays, The Body Shop is offering the following specials (click on any of the following links):

• All Body Butters are 2 for $30 at The Body Shop.> – Oct. 19 – Nov. 8
• Free shipping on all orders over $60 at The Body Shop.> – Oct. 19 – Nov. 8
• Free Shipping on all Love Etc… purchases at The Body Shop.> – Oct. 19 – Nov. 8

For those of you who love The Body Shop products, this is a great time to pick some up. This way you can check one thing off your list, and save money on shipping.

Here are a few of my favorites:

The Body Shop Nutmeg and Vanilla Bath & Shower Gel
Best if you want to: Pamper your skin and indulge your senses with fragrant skin cleansing shower gel that gently lathers on application to leave skin feeling cleansed, soft and cared for. Best for: normal skin How it works: Nutmeg extract adds a warm, nostalgic fragrance. Community Trade organic honey moisturizes and conditions skin

The Body Shop Nutmeg and Vanilla Soap
Best if you want to: Cleanse and moisturize your skin with a beautifully embossed soap that contains particles of ground nutmeg to gently exfoliate the skin as you cleanse. Best for: normal skin How it works: Nutmeg extract adds a warm, nostalgic fragrance. Community Trade organically grown soya oil, rich in essential fatty acids, helps to restore the skin’s natural moisture barrier. Derivatives of sustainable palm oil and glycerin cleanse and condition skin.

The Body Shop Mango Foaming Bath
Best if you want to: Soak in a moisture-rich bath filled with a creamy lather and fresh mango fragrance that leaves your skin soft and lightly scented. Best for: very dry skin How it works: Mango extract moisturizes the skin. An ingredient derived from Community Trade cocoa beans creates foaming, cleansing bubbles.

Changing any habit is difficult. When you want to change an entire family’s habits, it is even harder. Well, here is a guide to help you:

Green Made Easy: The Everyday Guide for Transitioning to a Green Lifestyle

Review

“When I read Green Made Easy, it changed the way I look at the planet, and I hope it does the same for you. As we work our way through today’s economic challenges, Chris can also show you how going green is both good for our planet and good for your pocketbook. His book is packed with information that makes going green simple, inexpensive, and meaningful. Chris sprinkles ‘Green Bites’ throughout that are both inspiring and enjoyable.

“Remember, this comes from a man who receives a credit from his utility company every month instead of a bill!”

— Christiane Northrup, M.D.

Product Description

In Green Made Easy, author and green pioneer Chris Prelitz shares how to be both environmental and economical at the same time. Going green is not only good for our planet, it’s good for your pocketbook. For over 20 years, Chris has been helping businesses, home owners, and corporations lower their monthly expenses by going green. Chris and his wife, Becky, share a green solar-powered home in Laguna Beach, California, which Chris designed and built. Most months they produce more power than they use and receive a credit from their power company instead of a bill!

In this book, Chris shares personal experiences, lessons learned, and reflections that humorously touch the heart and inspire the spirit. The chapter “Busting Green Myths” will sway even the most cynical person toward better eco-choices that will also save money. Chris says, “We’re rediscovering that it’s so much healthier, more lucrative, and better for every living thing to transition away from wasteful, polluting technologies and make choices that work in harmony with nature.”

Green Made Easy is written in a friend-to-friend, conversational style and examines our daily lives from personal care and cosmetics to solar-energy systems. This book will delight and inspire any and all who dream of making a difference and wish to create a thriving, healthy future for generations to come.

With the colder temperatures starting, people will be spending more time indoors. This year, it seems that with the higher risk of catching the swine flu, it would make a lot of sense to think about the quality of the air we were breathing in our home or office environments.

Swine flu is not quite the epidemic it was last year, but just as an example, one local school shut down just last week because they had 100 cases of swine flu. This will become more of a problem when people are forced inside breathing more of each other’s air. Winter forces closer contact with other people, which is one of the reasons we see so many more colds during the winter time.

This is a good time to think about an air purifier for your home. There are many types of air purifiers, some for just a room, and others for the entire home. The need becomes even more critical if you have someone in your home with a compromised immune system from another condition or disease. Or if you have a family member recovering from surgery.

I went looking today, and noticed that eBay has a very good selection of name brand air purifiers. One of the best brands that I have been reading about is BueAir air purifiers. Here are a couple of them that I found on eBay today.

F/S Blueair 250E Digital HEPA Air Purifier 250
Blueair is the system for people living with allergies, asthma, or other respiratory conditions, or for anyone who wants cleaner, more breathable air. The 250 effectively purifies air in rooms as large as 200 square feet. It uses patented three-stage HEPASilent™ technology to capture 99.97% of the tiniest .1 micron particles, including allergy-provoking pollen grains, dust mites, mold spores and pet dander particles.

This same filter technology earned the larger Blueair 501 Best of Class ranking in independent testing of Clean Air Delivery Rates. The 250 provides comparable performance for smaller rooms.

Value-added features include quiet operation, low energy use, steel construction and easy maintenance: simply open the front and slide in replacement every 6 months.

Blueair ECO10 Air Purifier
The ECO10 uses breakthrough technology to create the most eco-friendly air cleaner on the market. Consumes up to 95% less energy than other models in its class, saving you money while saving the environment as well.

The ECO10 is a breakthrough air purifier which produces a crisp and clean indoor environment, in an extremely economical and eco-friendly way. All of Blueair’s superior cleaning features are combined with remarkable energy savings over other similar air cleaners.

Environmentally Friendly – The World’s First Green Air Purifier

The ECO10 ultra-efficient EC fan motor is the star of this energy-saving design. This innovative motor functions with a CADR-per-watt ratio of 19.5, the highest rating ever recorded by the US Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR Program – nearly 28% better than the next best room air cleaner. This energy savings protects the environment, as less energy consumption directly leads to less carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, this unit produces only a fraction of the carbon produced by other air cleaners. In addition, NO ozone by-products are created during operation. Following a long lifecycle, the entire unit, including filters, is recyclable.

Blueair Familiar Features

The ECO10 contains all of the Blueair’s award-winning design features:

* Create cleaner, more breathable air with Blueair’s state-of-the-art filters that remove 99.97% of the tiniest airborne particles, including allergy-provoking pollen, dust mites, mold and pet dander.
* Patented HEPASilent technology cleans the air using both mechanical and electrostatic filters – creating a system through with air flows freely and whisper-quiet. In fact, on low setting the unit creates no more noise than a desktop computer.
* The SurroundAir system achieves peak performance with no noticeable drafts, all while maintaining an exceptional air exchange rate. Air is drawn in from the sides and bottom and is released through the sides and top.

For more information and specifications on these models and others, follow this link.