3/50 Project

Now this is a New Year's resolution worth keeping. The 3/50 Project is the brain-child of Cinda Baxter. If you go to her website, www.the350project.net, you can read how one person made a change and a big one at that. Here are the basic steps:

3 Pick 3 independent, locally-owned businesses that you would hate to see go away and visit them. Your purchases keep their doors open.

50 Spend $50 a month at those stores. Again I'm not going into the details, check those out for yourself.

68 For every $100 you spend, the locally owned retailer puts $68 back into their community. National retailers only put back $43. And online stores put nothing back into your local economy.

1 It only takes one person to make a difference.

All The Pretty Paper

Checkout these great gift wrapping ideas. I think my favorite is the lump of coal boxes.

Courtesy of Martha Stewart Living

Dropping like Flies

I enjoy getting home decor magazines and subscribe to three (Veranda, Traditional Home and Cookie). I wish I could subscribe to more but I can't finish one before getting next month's. Cookie replaced Domino oh about a year ago and two days ago I got a post card from Cookie stating "sorry but we signing off from publication and giving you Lucky." It's not that I loved Domino or Cookie but I'm just so sad to see that some magazines are dropping like flies. Think about all the people employed by these publishing house who will now be without a job.

I was skipping around Blog-Land and stumbled on Designtherapy.com and he too was discussing the disappearance of Cookie magazine and other "shelter" magazines. It looks like the publishing industry isn't going down without a fight and another, hip, right now magazine has come on the scene, lonnymag.com. I've looked at it on-line and its not bad. I tried to post a picture on here but it wouldn't save. Let's hope they survive.