Have Yourself a Merry Flat-Packed Christmas: The Christmas Card Edition
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 12.17.07
Half Christmas card, half Christmas tree replacement (with tongue fully in cheek), UK-based designer Alexander Glenn has created a fun flat-pack tree just in time for the festive holiday season. In the spirit of having a Merry flat-packed Christmas and a really flat-packed tree, the card goes from flat to fun with a few snips of the scissors and a quick assembly, leaving you plenty of time to make your officemates jealous before the big day (and speaking of: still not done buying gifts? TreeHugger's Gift Guide is waiting...).
About the design, Glenn says it “looks at the throw-away society and mass consumerism especially around Christmas time. The idea of a flat-pack Christmas card reflected this idea and lent itself to Ikea’s furniture, while making it cheap to post too. Recipients can then build their own Christmas card, which is more interesting than a bit of folding card.”
Acknowledging that e-cards are at the top of TreeHugger's list, we still love the creative, playful interactiveness of this idea; most of the cards you'll receive this year will, once you read it, sit on your desk or get tacked to the bulletin board, and that's about it. The genius of this is that it can be a perfectly functional card and decoration, and there's no need for both when you can do it with just one. ::Alexander Glenn via ::Creative Review Blog
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On a different note, I found this article (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=3225220) saying that Chicago was the greenest city. I guess the general population cares about the environment and global warming. My score on their calculator was 400 but at least I am trying. Here is the link to the website that published the list of cites and where the carbon calculator can be found: www.earthlab.com. The test took me like 5 minutes tops, and then maybe another 2 minutes to find the pledges I wanted. Pretty cool application.
My wife made some cool wrapping paper using recycled paper grocery bags and some holiday stamps (ie christmas trees, stars, snowmen). They look better than most wrapping paper and we'll recycle them again when we're done.