More green Halloween tips

Choose a kid-friendly carryall
When it comes to hauling all those treasures home, reusable canvas bags get the win over plastic or paper for safety and environmental reasons. Buy your own blank bags and let the little ones decorate them with non-toxic paint—they're sure to be an annual highlight—or browse craft stores and online retailers for seasonal offerings that sport witches, ghosts, and goblins galore. Then keep your kids visible to passing cars with battery-free flashlights.

 
Keep it simple
Your decorations—plastic spiders, dangling skeletons, spooky scarecrows—should be one-time purchases that you use every year, just like the rest of your holiday decor. When possible, look for reclaimed material; if you?re buying things you know you can't keep—like streamers or paper plates—be sure to look for brands that are both recycled and recyclable.

 
Eat—and decorate—locally
If spiders and skeletons aren't your thing, you can draw inspiration from the harvest bounty; think pumpkins, gourds, straw bales, and corn husks (all from your local farms, of course). Serve up snacks and nibbles made from other farm-fresh, seasonal produce, like squash soup, carrot cake, and apple cider. Check out  local spots to get the best of the harvest in your neck of the woods.

Eco friendly beauty face mask

1

Choose different ingredients that can exfoliate, moisturize and tighten skin and mash them together in a bowl. Some combinations for eco friendly faces masks are: avocado, honey and brown sugar; banana, oatmeal and honey; oatmeal, olive oil and strawberries; and honey, oatmeal and avocado.

2

Add the mashed ingredients to the entire face, applying a generous amount.

3

Let the mask sit on the face for 10 to 15 minutes, and rinse with warm water. For additional pampering and cleansing, fill the sink with very hot water and allow the steam to rise up onto the face. The steam can open the pores, allowing the natural ingredients to soften, smooth and clean the face.

4

Apply moisturizer to the face after it has been slightly dried to retain some of the moisture in the skin from the rinse.

5

Apply the multi-purpose mask two to three times a week to keep the complexion fresh and soft.

Using old puzzle pieces to make a frame

Materials Needed:

• 4 Craft Sticks
• Puzzle Pieces
• Photo
• Tab From a Soda Can
• Craft Glue
• Scissors

Instructions:
Glue the craft sticks together at the edges to make a frame. Glue the puzzle pieces around the craft stick frame. Trim the photo to the same size as the frame and then glue it to the back side of the frame. Finally, glue the pop tab to the back to use as a hanger.


about.com

New Products in the Cangles Store

Just wanted to let you know that the new and improved Cangles.com is up and running.

We have new products for you to take a look at:  Pictures below are the new leaf necklace and bracelet.

New Website

Our new Cangles Website and Store should be up and running in the next few days.
We will be introducing some new products - hope you all like them.

How to Make Flower Pots out of Recyclables |

1

Make flower pots out of recyclables by poking holes in the bottom of a cottage cheese container. Then decorate it by painting, or gluing shells, buttons, pebbles, etc. to the sides.

2

Make flower pots out of recyclables from the kitchen cupboard. Clean out the kitchen cupboard and find old bowls that will make great flower pots. When using containers that won't have holes for drainage, line the bottom with some rocks or pebbles. This will provide a place for excess water to settle. Make sure to not over water. This plant won't require as much water as a pot with drainage holes.

3

Make a flower pot out of an old shoe. Paint it or decorate with buttons, bows, or anything else found in the junk drawer.

4

Recycle an old purse to make a flower pot. Decorate it with anything the imagination comes up with.

ehow

Using all parts of a Pumpkin

Once Halloween ends and you’re done displaying your pumpkins, don’t let them go to waste! You can use all of the parts of an uncarved pumpkin.
Uncarved pumpkins can last weeks to months depending on how they’re stored. Pumpkins stay fresh longer if kept in a cool, dry place. If left sitting outside in the cold fall weather, they probably aren’t good to eat. Check to see if the pumpkin is moldy or the outside feels soft and squishy. If so, it will have to go to the compost bin.

Don't let any parts of your pumpkin go to waste! You can use all of the parts of an uncarved pumpkin.
Get the most out of the pumpkin by roasting it. Follow these steps to roast your own pumpkin.
Step 1: Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Step 2: Cut off the stem of the pumpkin. Compost the stem.
Step 3: Cut the pumpkin in half and remove the seeds. It’s easiest just to pick them out with your fingers. Set the seeds aside.
Step 4: Use a spoon to scrape out the pumpkin “guts.” Compost these.
Step 5: Cut the pumpkin into large pieces, leave the skin on.
Step 6: Place pumpkin into a roasting dish.
Step 7: Roast for 1 to 2 hours or until tender.
Step 8: Remove the pumpkin from the oven and let it cool.
Step 9: Remove the skin from the cooked pumpkin and compost it.
Step 10: Mash the cooked pumpkin with a food processor until smooth.
The roasted pumpkin can replace canned pumpkin in any recipe. The inside of the pumpkin can go into tons of recipes—pies, muffins, cakes, soups, breads and more. Try using your roasted pumpkin in these yummy recipes: pumpkin thyme scones and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.
The seeds you set aside when roasting the pumpkin can also make a tasty treat. Try making cinnamon-sugar roasted pumpkin seeds or spicy pumpkin seeds. You can also store the seeds to plant your own pumpkins next year.

taken from article by Kirsten Hudson

Fall Leaves the Eco-Friendly Way

The changing colors of the autumn leaves are beautiful – until they’re no longer on the trees and instead are covering your yard. Here are a couple of ways to be green with the fall colors.

Skip the leaf blower and use a rake. While it’s a little more labor intensive, raking leaves is better for the environment than the leaf blower. Leaf blowers create a lot of noise pollution, and — if they’re diesel powered — create a fair amount of air pollution as well (unless you’re running on bio-diesel).

Don’t burn your leaves. Once you’ve got the leaves raked in nice piles, go ahead and jump in them, but don’t burn them. Burning creates a lot of smoke, especially when leaves are damp, and releases particulate matter and toxic compounds.

Do compost or mulch. Some areas offer yard waste pick up in addition to garbage collection and curbside recycling.

 from Green Options

Green Halloween tips

When the neighborhood ghouls show up at your door this Halloween, give them treats that also treat the environment gently.

There is a growing variety of eco-friendly candy—from organic chocolate to organic lollipops—available online and from local organic groceries, health food stores, or consumer cooperatives. These organic candies can satisfy your sweet tooth without compromising your health, and they are produced using methods that don’t damage the environment.

Choose treats that use little or no packaging that is produced using fossil fuels and cannot be recycled. Whenever possible, buy locally produced treats from local merchants. Buying locally supports your local economy, and also reduces fuel consumption and pollution associated with transporting products.

Another option is to avoid candy altogether and to give Halloween trick-or-treaters useful treats, such as colorful pencils, small boxes of crayons, erasers in fun shapes, or other inexpensive items you can find at your local dime store or dollar store.

Teach your children to keep candy wrappers in their reusable trick-or-treat bags until they return home, or to dispose of them in trash cans along their route.

Preventing candy wrappers from becoming Halloween litter on the street is the right way to treat the environment.

Take along an extra bag when you take the kids out treat-or-treating, and pick up litter along the way to help clean up the neighborhood.

Help your child make an eco friendly Scarecrow

You can use any materials you have at home and build a wonderful scarecrow. 

For the head - use an empty baby food container and coated it with gesso (base coating substance). Then  paint his face (eyes, lips, cheeks).

The hair -if you want a girl cut long hair out of a colorful plastic bag.  
Cut the bag into stripes and pin them on top of the container.

The arms – are made from soda bottles. Paint them with some acrylic paint mixed with water based glue (use glue so that the paint will stick to the bottles).

The hands –draw your childs hands on a piece of cardboard,  cut them out and glue them each to a skewer, then make a small hole in the bottle’s cap and inserted the skewer.

The body –use an old shoe box.  Flatten the box by opening it’s sides and cut it in the shape of a skirt. Then  decorate it with colorful stickers and crayons. To finish it wrap the body with a plastic bag so that it won’t get wet in the rain.

10 most eco friendly countries

• 1. Switzerland:
  Thanks in major part to Switzerland’s tough legislation regarding pollution, they made it to number one on the world’s most eco-friendly nations. Their long-term plans target cooperation between organizations and individuals. Individual awareness is also a factor, since Switzerland charges for their water and waste management services as well as establishing a sever environmental taxes, promoting personal responsibility. Prevention is a third key tenet, shown by the 2006 development of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), meant to sustain natural resources and develop safety measures for natural hazards. 

2. Norway:
Norway earns a high spot for being first home to the world’s largest solar production plant, owned by REC Group. They have also taken emissions seriously, now planning on becoming carbon neutral by 2030, not 2050 as originally expected, in major part by funding green projects abroad and reducing at home driving and flying.

• 3. Sweden: Sweden’s mandate for a country free of fossil fuels by 2020 puts it in third. A majority of the country’s power is either nuclear or hydroelectric already. Solutions for automobile and flight transport include ethanol and animal waste conversion. Furthermore, the power of waves is in the process of being harnessed as well. Thanks to development at the University of Uppsala, Sweden is developing “wave power” which converts waves into 4x as much energy as solar power in the same amount of time, with no waste and no emissions. 

• 4. Finland: Finland is a country showing remarkable recovery from industrialization with its initiative to clean up water and air quality in industrial areas as well as land preservation. What’s more is that Finland’s forests are now growing at a greater rate than they are being deforested, showing an environmental gain even with the annual timber harvest. Finland can also be attributed with starting the United Nation’s Environmental Programme (UNEP) Task Force for Sustainable Building and Construction, which looks not only at the sustainability of the building, but of the resources and process used to construct it.  

• 5. Costa Rica:
  While there is a strong correlation between a country’s economic wealth and their environmental stewardship, Costa Rica still scores a five on the EPI scale. With 5% of the world’s biodiversity contained in one country, Costa Rica has always been on the forefront of environmental conservation. In fact, a full quarter of the nation is devoted to park preservation. But other developments such as the used on hydroelectric power in 80% of the country and the 5% gas tax which funds environmental programs put Costa Rica in fifth. 

• 6. Austria: Austria’s environmental conservation measures are enforced by all levels of government, from federal to municipal authorities. Waste disposal especially is a highly regulated department encompassing everything from individual waste to cooperate chemical, air and agricultural pesticide pollution. Water quality and forest preservation, however, is the highest priority. The quality level for Austria’s lakes and rivers is some of the highest in the world. The development of Austria’s National Protective Forest Plan has also helped in keeping the nations natural beauty pristine. 

• 7. New Zealand: This nation’s relatively small population in relation to land mass has helped preserve this nation’s natural resources. While automotive emissions do prove a real threat, as well as industrial pollutants, New Zealand is working hard to develop restrictive legislation and alternative energy sources. The nation was also host to the 2008 World Environment Day, as well as developing the Environmental Risk Management Authority, which regulates the introduction of non-native species and environmental components to determine their threat to New Zealand’s pristine atmosphere. 

• 8. Latvia: Latvia’s relatively small size is no indicator of their pride in their natural resources. By monitoring and reducing water pollution, their salmon and freshwater bodies are all in the range of “good.” Lativia has also begun dismantling unnecessary and pollutive farms to reduce fertilizer and insecticide chemicals and allow room for the return of natural forests. In fact, since 1990 Lativa has decreased stationary pollution by 46% and wastewater by 44%, devoting a major portion of environmental funds to water treatment and energy conservation techniques.   

• 9. Colombia: Beating Costa Rica, Colombia is home to 10% of the world’s species, with a wealth of ecological diversity. While Colombia has had problems in the past concerning deforestation, the detrimental effects of the coca trade, and political strife involving their natural oil deposits, all these factors have helped to move Colombia towards energy conservation and new, less politically tumultuous resources. Colombia has also begun programs for the cultivation of natural parks that support the growth of native medicinal plants. The Orito Igni-Ande Medicinal Flora Sanctuary is a 10,626 hectare preserve that may just show that Colombia is on the right track.    

• 10. France: The French government is very aware of the problem of climate change, and it is for this reason that France has made tenth of the list. Their strict environmental protection measures are incorporated into the national Constitution and reviewed every year with the eventual goal of 54 million tons of saved C02 by 2010, one of the few in the Kyoto agreement to cut such a large amount of emissions in so short a time. These laws are also comprehensive, covering every setup of production from supplier to producer to consumer, also helping to make them the number one producer of renewable energy sources in the EU, 78% of its energy being nuclear powered, which in turn has reduced nitrogen oxide and other hazardous emissions by 70%.