1 Happy Easter Photo Card, Paper Culture
2 Eco Plastic Easter Eggs, Eco Eggs filled with jellybeans
3 Painterly Pastel Eggs DIY Tutorial, Papernstitch
4 Porcelain Egg Candles, Revisions Design Studio
5 Milk bottles, Acme Party Box Company with striped paper straws, Just Artifacts
6 Fun table setting with kraft table runner, chalk drawn utensils and colorful confetti
* To view images of our spring inspiration, visit our Pinterest boards.

For an eco-friendly way to set up a fun table setting, bring in Kraft paper as a table cloth that will entertain both kids and adults. Using chalk, you can draw utensil outlines as well as provide an artsy alternative for guests to draw on the paper. Scatter the tops with colorful confetti in spring shades of mint green, coral pink and canary yellow. Not only will this brighten up your Sunday brunch, but also your Easter egg dying station. For beverages and things, we like to reuse jars and bottles like the milk bottles from Acme and accent them with paper straws (always eco chic!) in the chosen color scheme.

A good way to emphasize recycling materials is to bring them to life in new settings. In addition to using eggs to dip and dye, try using them as candles. You can break them in half, pour in soy wax and light them. Or, if you rather save your eggs for your traditional hunt, go ahead and check out Revisions Design Studio’s porcelain egg candles with soy wax! They’ve already done the job for you so you can buy them as is and set them up for your tablescape.

As an eco-friendly business, we like to support all things that help out Mother Earth, so we were extremely egg-static when we saw these eco plastic Easter eggs from Eco Eggs, which are made with corn and are completely compostable. You can use them as favors filed with jellybeans for a more casual spring party or even hide them with little prizes and treats for the little ones for their Easter egg hunt. Cap off your party by sending your guests away with one of our fun spring themed Easter cards from your family thanking them for hopping along to your party to usher in Spring and to celebrate this season with all its promises of new life.

It’s that time of the year again when you’ve got to decide whether or not to order holiday cards. Personally I get sad every year receiving fewer and fewer cards in the mail. There’s nothing quite like coming home to a full mailbox of holiday greetings and warm messages from friends letting me know how their year went. E-cards just don’t hold the same weight, literally and figuratively. Living in a time where e-mails are replaced by short tweets or Facebook messages, it’s often easy to forget how nice it can be do get a real card in the mail.

If you do send cards out this year, we recommend choosing a company that gives back. Not to toot our own horn, but Paper Culture plants a tree in your honor for every order.  If you want to skip the gift-giving this year, plant a tree for someone instead with a beautifully designed card. Now’s the best time to shop with a final sitewide sale of up to 50% off. There are many other companies that give percentages of the cards to charity. Choose a card design that reflects your style and personality. Consider adding a recently holiday photo. And most importantly, add a few lines of holiday cheer to let your lucky recipient know you’ve been thinking about there. Here’s to a happy and safe holiday season for all!

We’ve always been huge fans of collages. All you need are some old magazines, scissors, and glue and you’ve got an instant arts and crafts project. We found a particularly inspiring project this year on Cool Mom Picks from the new DIY magazine Moomah. You can download a template, which includes an abundant cornucopia and the phrase “I am thankful for….” Look through newspapers and magazines Thanksgiving week to find pictures of characters, objects, animals, or even simply colors that your kids are thankful for. It’s a great way to keep them occupied while you’re cooking up a storm in the kitchen. And the results are simply frame-worthy.

Some of the best toys, whether paper dolls or paper planes, are the ones you can make together as a family. Moomah is a new type of community with a motto of “dit” or do it together, offering easy DIY that make fun projects to do with your kids. Their tagline: “Be inspired and know you are doing enough,” says it all. You can subscribe directly to their magazine to get smart, fun ideas delivered right to your mailbox.

Do your kids have a food allergy? Chef extraordinaire Erin McKenna showed us that even the most allergy-prone child need not go without cupcakes. Her bakeries, based in New York, Los Angeles, and Disney World, Babycakes, have made it easy for anyone to indulge in gluten-free, wheat-free, or sugar-free cakes, cookies and donuts. Using healthy ingredients like coconut oil and fresh spices, the treats are a guilt-free indulgence. Her cookbook has made it easy to replicate the recipes at home. And now, an accompanying iPhone App makes it easier than ever to recreate these amazing treats. Even if you’re one of the lucky ones who has no food allergies, the recipes are delicious and enjoyable whenever, and provide a healthy alternative to more sugar-laden treats.

The Babycakes App features how-to videos with indie music from Bubbles, Cult and Dinosaur Jr. It even features a celeb endorsement from Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men’s own Sally Draper, herself a big fan of gluten-free baking. Download the app to make delicious gluten-free recipes like pretzels, sandwich bread, waffles, s’mores and teacakes.McKenna even borrows recipes from the likes of Momofuku and Del Posto. While it’s not always easy to find the ingredients necessary to make great gluten-free baking, if you’re willing to do a little research, and even order online, it becomes easy to incorporate healthy ingredients into your kitchen everyday. Plus you can bring cupcakes to school and not worry if there are any kids who can’t eat them.

Photo by Tod Seelie

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for the East Coast. Residents of New Jersey and New York City are still feeling the intense effects of Hurricane Sandy. The devastating storm has destroyed entire homes in its wake. The hardest hit areas, including Rockaway, Queens, are still struggling to get heat and hot water. The freezing nor’easter last week just added salt to the wound. No matter where you are, there’s lots you can do to help. Recovery efforts have already revealed how strong we are as a nation to pull together after a disaster.

If you’re on the ground, consider volunteering time to help clear basements or distribute donations. You can find the most up-t0-date information at Occupy Sandy.

The easiest way to help out if you already have an Amazon account is to contribute something to the Occupy Sandy wedding Registry. Instead of cleaning out your closet to come up with donations consider fulfilling a specific request. People on the ground are constantly updating what is needed most. You can buy cleaning supplies, hardware, or baby items that will be delivered straight to relief efforts.

Architecture for Humanity is a global community that helps to rebuild spaces, often in green ways, in post-conflict areas.Their recent report just how much is needed to rebuild the coastline. Text REBUILD to 85944 to make a $10 donation.

The American Red Cross is on the ground feeding hot meals to people and distributing blankets. You can contribute directly on the website.

Did you know that 65 percent of kids entering school this year will end up working in careers that haven’t even been invented yet? According to Cathy N. Davidson of Duke University, that means the need to be creative in life is essential. The new site DIY.org makes it easy and fun for kids to start enhancing their creativity skills early on. The website and app presents a multitude of projects kids can create at home. Once they complete the project, they earn virtual skill patches, similar to a Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts badge. They can share photos or video of their project to further enhance the feeling of pride of a job well-done. The projects range from easy and homemade, like making pickles or a smoothie, to medium-skill such as making an animal mask or rock collection, to complex, such as knitting a scarf or even making your own bicycle fenders.

We love how fun some of the the projects are, such as a cardboard birdhouse, scary monster finger cookies, or a marshmallow shooter. It’s the perfect solution for a rainy day, or any bored afternoon when your kids are sitting around wondering what to do. Turn off the computer and turn on the DIY. The site even has a parental dashboard to make sure kids aren’t sharing private information. Kids can sign on with an avatar and nickname, to make the site even safer. If you’re looking for a painless and productive site online for your child, it’s hard to beat DIY.org. We love that it provides online information for real-world fun.

If there’s one thing we love it’s paper. And we especially love when people turn it into art. One new artist takes it well beyond origami, creating gorgeous 3-D art out of recycled paper. Ali Golzad is an artist living in Texas, originally from Göteborg, Sweden by way of Tehran, Iran. With a background as a graphic designer and creative director, his latest project asks us to question how we normally look at waste and see something beautiful: “Over the years I have developed my own technique using various mediums,” he says. “Aside from my formal graphic design training and time spent as a Creative Director you could say I am a self taught artist. My urge to create while still caring for our planet enabled me to look at ordinary objects in a new light and transform these commonly discarded materials into something meaningful.” We love the innovative use of paper techniques to recreate well-known figures. More pictures after the jump.

We recently showed you our favorite DIY paper masks for Halloween. But what if you have a newborn and don’t want to throw away money for a costume on year zero? Fortunately all you need to celebrate the holiday with your newborn is an old onesie, a scrap of fabric, and some. Check out Rachel Low’s costume templates to turn any onesie into a fun costume. You can even increase the pattern size with your printer and make a matching sweatshirt to wear out trick-or-treating.

Our favorite is the skeleton template, complete with a little heartbeat. Or choose between a jack-o-lantern or ghost for more fun. You can use either a simple thread and needle to sew the pieces on, or, if you’re like most new moms, extremely pressed for time, fabric glue works just as well. And if you have artistic inclinations, you can turn any white onesie into a costume. Imagine drawing a Frankenstein or witch’s face with fabric pens. Don’t stress out this Halloween. Just find 20 minutes to spare and you’re ready to go.

With 85% of textile waste going to landfills every year, Halloween can have a devastating effect on the environment. While it’s tons of fun to pick out a costume and dress up, any family can make a night of crafting DIY costumes, and avoid creating unnecessary waste. Look around for wornout clothes, old sweats, or too-small garments. Many of today’s costumes can be made by hand if you have a sewing machine. Or if you truly want to make something easy, consider making an easy paper mask to wear on top of a colorful outfit. Paper masks can be tons of fun for kids and adults to wear. There are lots of sites that offer outlines for you to print out. Just color them in, add some sequins and glitter and you’re ready to go.  For masquerade style, glue it onto a stick, or for easy-wear just add an elastic band.

The great site Cool Mom Picks has rounded up their favorite online patterns. There are six fright-ready choices available at Mr. Printables, including a black cat, jack-o-lantern, skull and spider. They’re free to download. The patterns can also be used to make longer-lasting felt masks. The cutest patterns online are hands-down Wee Society’s DIY Wee Alphas, which are free cutouts that can be pasted onto a brown paper bag. These little bags are the complete costume. Choose between an owl, lion, fox and gorilla. For a more fancy option, Etsy store Shades of Every Color offers digital downloads for $3.99 each. Choose between full-color printouts of a peacock, owl, or deer. And if you’re feeling inspired, just take out some cardboard and markers and get to work.

Amazon.com, the king of all super convenient e-commerce sites, has launched a new online site dedicated to all things eco-friendly and green: vine.com. The site sells earth-friendly products at super friendly prices across home and beauty, kids and babies, pets, apparel, grocery and more. But the best feature is when you use a coupon code when checking out (HEALTHYCHILD10), you’ll get $10 off your order, free shipping, and vine.com will donate $10 to Healthy Child Healthy World. Everybody wins.

Healthy Child Healthy World is a nonprofit very dear to Paper Culture’s heart. We made holiday cards to benefit the organization, while educating consumers on how to have a safer, healthier home. Healthy Child Healthy World has been around for 20 years, working to teach families about the link between a child’s health and the environment. Not to mention they have a great website with daily ideas about improving our child’s health. Vine.com seems like a can’t-beat combination. Next time you do your weekly shopping check it out and make a free donation to an amazing charity.