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.

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.

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.