Green Christmas Giveaway Hop

Thanks for stopping by the Green Christmas Hop, hosted by your friends at Home Grown Families and Just My Everyday Life.

 I have put together a great handmade prize pack for one lucky winner! Here are our sponsors:

Entertaining Ornaments on Etsy features the creations of Blair Jost, also known as Beezartist on her website, a creative NYC gal and bartender with a knack for upcycling, painting, and photography. Blair creates items for co-workers and clients who are looking for something original and eco-friendly. Since being asked by a friend to create a NYC ornament last year, she has made a collection of Christmas ornaments out of NYC subway maps and made them available through Etsy to you and me. I think these ornaments are a great and unique way to commemorate a recent trip or love of the city on your Christmas tree. Perhaps you are a native New Yorker and want to be reminded of home every time you look at your tree, or you have friends or family who live or visit there regularly. These ornaments remind me of holiday cookie cutters, as they are shaped in many familiar holiday shapes like candy canes and gingerbread men. Her best seller is a small star ornament. They are touched off on the edges with a bit of glitter so they will catch the light and sparkle on the Christmas tree.

Entertaining Ornaments sent me the subway-map star above to review, and I'm excited to add it to my Christmas tree this year. The star I received feels like a delicate ornament but is sturdy and does not bend or collapse. The seams of the map are not obvious, nor are there glue bumps showing through the map. The glitter is sensitive and some does fall off with handling but this is typical of most of my Christmas ornaments and not a bother. Every time I look at the subway map ornament it reminds me that NYC is where my husband and I went when we first started dating, we even had our second kiss on the Empire State Building! I know my brother-in-law would also appreciate one of these as a gift, as he often travels to NYC on business and loves visiting the city.

Blair also has another great Etsy shop, Sock Monkeys 4 Everyone, featuring greeting cards made from humorous pictures of her adventures around NYC with her sock monkey. Who doesn't love a sock monkey? All the cards are so cute, I can hardly pick my favorite. Blair sent me one to review of a sock monkey next to a "No Loitering" sign that's very smile-inducing. It looks just like a professional photo card I would get at the store! It might be the sock monkey posed as King King, sock monkey with valentines candy hearts, or homeless sock monkey with a "will work for bananas" sign. Blair would love to see her greeting cards on store card racks across the nation and is working towards this goal. She is open to custom orders as well as working in new mediums, so feel free to contact her through her Etsy store if you have a specific request. Blair has given me a small star ornament, and this adorable Sock Monkey Christmas card to give away to one of my readers as part of the Green Christmas Giveaway Hop, so be sure to enter!

The Etsy shop of Cursive Arts is giving one of my readers a set of twelve hand-printed lino-cut notecards, in a variety of Christmas colors, with each printed on deckled ivory cardstock with an envelope to match. The winner will receive their choice of holiday cards.

Cursive Arts

 Two Little Sea Stars Etsy shop is giving away a super comfy "His and Hers" earmuff head wrap set for staying warm this winter. Hand crocheted with soft, non-itchy acrylic yarn, the "His" wrap comes in sage green and the "Hers" in cream.

Two Little Sea Stars

Here are the other blogs participating in the hop: