With the New Year we get inspired, creating a list of goals that we would like to achieve for the year. Goals are powerful, inspiring and keep us in check with our aspirations.

However, in addition to having your lists of goals, it is also important to have a “what not to do list”. These two lists go hand in hand and complement each other. A “what not to do list” keeps you on track and can help you attain your goals with less stress.

To be successful in attaining your goals, remember to set SMART goals.

S - Specific

M - Measurable
A - Attainable
R - Relevant
T – Time bound

To avoid being disappointed goals should be realistic and attainable. Clearly defined goals are goals that can be measured and achievable. However, if a goal is easily achievable, then set your next goal a little higher.  When you have attainted a goal, remember to take time to celebrate your achievements.

A “What Not to Do List” is really a list that ensures sanity, peace and joy. For example, the following pointers are simple yet they can help you move on to your goals faster and with less stress.

Worry – worrying about things that are beyond your control cannot get you closer towards your goals but can contribute to unnecessary stress and a shorter lifespan.

Learn to say no - we tend to over extend ourselves – pleasing or obliging can bring on headaches and heartaches. Stop saying yes when you really mean no.

Negativity - stay sane by refusing to be surrounded by negativity. Negative friends, family or situations can be unpleasant and detrimental to your health. Additionally, listening to negative news cannot get you closer to your goals. For instance rather than listening to the news about the recession, find opportunities that the situation presents.

Small Stuff - lastly forget being obsessed about little things. The few pounds, the few gray hair or the few wrinkles. Give up perfectionism and enjoy the beauty in each phase of your life.

Here’s to your success.

The last few years I have been stressed sending holiday cards. It seems that it is the only time of the year that I feel compelled to write and keep in touch with my family, relatives and friends via a Holiday card.  I also include the latest picture of the family.

My ordeal of last year will not be repeated. While waiting to get my hair done at the salon with a heap of greeting cards on my lap, postage in my hand bag I was writing furiously.  It seemed forever to finish each card, adding the family picture, then licking each envelope, addressing the envelope with the address from my address book and attaching the right amount of postage. I had various amounts of postage as I had cards going to Europe, Singapore, Japan, USA and Canada. What an ordeal!

However, this year it is going to be a breeze because of  SendOutCards, an unbelievable, easy to use greeting card system. It is not an e-card but a system that physically prints, stamps and mails the card all from the comfort of your living room in front of the fire with a glass of cabernet.  The best thing is it has an address book. Additionally, SendOutCards has the ability to incorporate your handwriting/ signature, different fonts. You can upload digital images which you can use to either custom create a card with your images on the front or add these images inside the card. SendOutCards has over 13,000 cards to choose from and it is the most cost effective way of sending a beautiful card without leaving home.

SendOutCards incorporates a reminder system where it will email you a reminder about an upcoming birthday or anniversary. Additionally, the system allows you to create multiple campaigns for your greeting cards and manage different address groups with the system contact manager.  What an amazing system.

I am looking forward to my full bodied carbenet sauvignon and sending out my holiday cards this year. You can too. Cheers!

Here is a guide to help choose some cool gifts for $50.00 and under. This list of gifts varies from gourmet goodies, outdoor gifts, spa gifts and unique Canadian gifts.  For everyone on your list, you will find something unique.

Couple of pointers to keep in mind; do some quick research on your gift recipients.  Get some great gift ideas by making some quick phone calls or by asking around about your recipient’s likes, dislikes and preferences. Check out what holiday your recipient celebrates and be sensitive to his or her customs and beliefs.

1)    12 Can Dispensing Cooler $38.00 item # 6053

2)    3 tins of smoked Salmon Pate in wood box  $27.95

3)    4.5” Native Fine Pewter Plate with Panel Pipe Design $41.00 item# 9041

4)    7-in-1 Magnetic Combination Game Set $37.00 item #5030

5)    Alpine Cove Gift Basket $40.00 item # 2189

6)    Aqua Swirl Bulb Bowl $49.50 item # 1025

7)    Coffee Table Book: Canada A Visual Journey $39.95 item #9068

8)    Cool Yule gift basket $42.00 item # 526

9)    Golf Trunk Organizer $50.00 item # 6051

10) Grill Tools – BBQ Tools $43.00 item #6017

11) Inspiration 3 tube Vase $30.00 item # 9179

12) 3” Jade Inukshuk $50.00 item # 3006a

13) Lunch In Style with Accessories $ 39.99 item #6037

14) Rosewood trivet in maple leaf shape $38.00 item #9018

15) Marble Grizzly Bear with Jade Fish 4” $45.00 item #3015

16) Mexican Spice Cocoa $19.95 item #2224

17) Moon Box with Pewter $46.25 item #9017a

18) Napa Wine Set $35.00 item #1028

19) Popcorn popper $45.00 item #2011

20) Purple Hybrid Orchid (Phalaenopsis) $50.00 item #8013

21) Roots Outdoor Adventure 15-piece set $39.90 item #6031

22) Rosewood trivet with Sun Mask $32.50 item #9116

23) Santa Barbara Wine Carrier $35.00 item# 6048

24) 8 oz  Smoked Sockeye Salmon, in hand silk-screened cedar box with Native design $37.99 item #9033

25) Stadium Seat & Blanket $47.00 item #6056

26) Sunset Boulevard  $45.00 item 6004

27) Variety Pate Trio $29.99 item #9097

28) Zen Garden Shaving Set $30.00 item #7008

29) World Garden – Mediterranean Herbs Indoor Garden $30.00 item #109

30) With Compliments Gift Basket $42.00 item #2183

Can’t find what you are looking for? We can help you customize to suit your budget.

100-Mile Gift Basket

In 2005, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon began a one-year experiment in local eating. By only eating locally produced foods within a 100-mile radius of where they lived, their experiment struck a chord with many and brought a whole new meaning to the idea of eating locally. 

Eating locally helps to minimize your carbon footprint and is thus less harmful to the environment. For example, the average piece of food on the typical North American kitchen table has travelled two and a half thousands kilometers, from farm to processor to packager to store to consumer. By supporting local farmers and food producers, eating locally also helps to create local jobs and optimizes local resources.

Additionally, eating locally encourages eating foods in season and makes us more aware of the natural world and its rhythms.

With those concepts in mind, we have created a range of 100-mile gift baskets and hampers that include Gourmet Foods and delectables from within a 100-mile radius of Vancouver. Some of these yummy treats are:

1)      Gone Crackers - a unique and savory compliment to wine and are ideal on their own.

2)      Tasty shortbread biscuits with a blend of fruits and edible flowers.

3)      Demerara butter crunch

4)      Smoked salmon

5)      Vegetable antipasto

6)      Gourmet chocolate

7)      Sweet or  savory chips

8)      Local teas and much more delicious products that are all made locally.

 These tasty treats can be packaged in your choice of locally made wooden crates, produced from pine beetle wood and made by women on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. This is a creative way to utilize the pine beetle wood and provides support to women through Tradeworks, a social enterprise program. Program participants are recovering from substance abuse and other personal trauma, have little or no work experience, live in poverty, and lack the skills and confidence to become employed. The long-term goal of the program is to help participants transition from the woodworking shop to gainful employment. Each and every box purchased impacts their lives in a positive way. 

Green Zebra Booklet

Another “Green Gift Option” is Green Zebra, a booklet containing local savings for sustainable living.

Packed with more than 250 exclusive offers totaling thousands of dollars in savings, Green Zebra encourages you to explore eco-friendly businesses in the Vancouver area. The booklet contains savings for retailers, restaurants, markets, green home services, wellness resources, bookstores and more. The best part is that the Green Zebra booklet is valid through to December 2009. This green gift provides a whole year of discovering green shops and services, strengthening your community, and most importantly preserving your planet!

I am very excited about our hat-trick here are the details on how you can get involved in making a difference.

For those of you that are sport-challenged like I am, a hat-trick is a hockey term that means scoring three goals in one game. Green and Green has committed to doing a hat-trick this year as part of our commitment to making a difference.

It’s free to do a hat-trick and it’s as simple as choosing items from a menu. A hat-trick has three parts:

1. Selecting an imaginative project that has a high impact in poor countries. Like a merry go round that generates electricity for a school as the village children play. Like a solar stove for Dakar that means women don’t have to risk their lives to gather fire wood.

2. Selecting a way to save the money for your project through environmental savings in your company. Like using recycled paper, double siding, extending page margins. Or making changes to how your firm uses power. Or any of 8 other money-saving environmental ideas.

3. Selecting a way to spread the word so that others will do a hat-trick. One school is doing a play about their hat-trick. One association is telling their contacts through Linkedin and Facebook.

I met with Kathy Sayers, Hat-trick’s Executive Director, and decided on Green and Green’s first hat-trick. We looked through 6 ideas and I decided on Sleeping Children around the World. SCAW provides a child in one of 32 countries with a bed kit: a mattress, sheets, a blanket, a pillow, mosquito netting, clothes, a towel and school supplies.

Bed In A Box

Then we kicked around environmental savings ideas for our hat-trick. We’ve decided to pay for “our bedroom in a box” by asking our clients to receive invoices electronically instead of by mail.

We’re telling others about our hat-trick in our newsletters and this blog to spread the word that there is something we can do that will make a difference.

The whole process took about 20 minutes.

Every quarter, we’ll do a new hat-trick and find a new way to make Green and Green even greener.

I first met Kathy at a business networking meeting and when I heard what she was doing, I knew we wanted to be part of it. The spark for hat-trick came when she read the story about the merry go round that generated electricity. “I could imagine what a community-building impact that would have. And when I read that 10 minutes of kids playing could provide hours of lighting for a school, I knew I had to figure out a way to let people know about these kinds of projects.”

Once she decided to combine doing good with saving the environment, Hat-trick was born.

She spent several months researching projects and charities that were innovative, high impact, low cost and solid. And then she researched ways to save environmentally.

She’s made this as simple as selecting from a menu. Select you project from column a. Select your environmental savings from column b. Select a way to spread the word from column c.

Hat-trick’s website will be completed in mid-December. In the meantime, contact Kathy at 604-736-1287.

Looking forward to our Hat-trick.

My son’s Christmas wish list brought a smile to my face. Stuck at the top of my desk, Aaron had carefully listed the gifts he wanted from Santa: “Archery lesson, Etch-a-sketch, Park Zone Mustang (electric plane), flight joystick, X-zylo Launcher…” were among the suggestions on the list. “A Barnes & Nobel gift card, I-Pod, Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards, and unsweetened chocolate for the Christmas stocking, please”, Aaron had written.

  Children look forward to the holidays with such excitement and anticipation. I was amused at his list and great ideas for his Christmas gift, however, I also would like him to think of others less fortunate.

I thought it would be a great idea to pick a theme of how you can share with others this Holiday season. Here are some ideas you can adopt either as a family or as a group.

1)    Invite a guest for your Christmas dinner, some one who is unable to make it home for Christmas. There are lots of international students in the city who are unable to go home.

2)    Roll your sleeves up and serve up either breakfast or lunch on Christmas day at a soup kitchen.

3)    Have a Food bank drive, at the Office Christmas Party or at a gathering of family and friends, get everyone to bring something that can be donated.

4)    Sponsor a family for Christmas. My family and some friends have done this in the past. It was so gratifying to do this for someone less fortunate. It was single mother with 2 kids; we got their list and pooled our money and went shopping; providing from breakfast, lunch, dinner and their presents for Christmas.

5)    Pool funds for a good cause; The Union Gospel Mission is a non-profit urban relief organization serving the Lower Mainland, providing hope for the hungry, hurting and homeless since 1940.  

While you plan for the Holidays, remember others who are less fortunate.

The History of Champagne

The history of Champagne dates back to the 17th century when in the cold, northeastern region of France, bubbles accidentally appeared in bottles of fermenting wine.

That’s right. This celebrated beverage first began in Champagne, France as a science experiment. The trapped carbon dioxide bubbles were not originally intended to be part of the wine.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Cheers $100.00

It is widely rumored that Champagne was invented by Dom Pérignon. It is also rumored that he was blind. Neither is the case.

English scientist and physician Christopher Merrett created his own Champagne production method in 1662, nearly 30 years earlier.

The Dom was a Benedictine monk and cellar master at the abbey Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers where he spent many years tending their vineyards.

While Perignon may not have actually invented Champagne, he is credited with perfecting the art of champagne production during his years at the abbey.

The location of the region of Champagne has also played a role in the history of Champagne and in the development of the beverage that bears its name.

The Champagne region includes the major cities of Epernay and Reims. It lies about 90 miles east of Paris. Click here to see a map.

Reims, considered the capital of Champagne, is home to the Cathedral of Reims, site of numerous royal coronations and celebratory events over the centuries.

The new sparkling wines of the region often became an important part of those celebrations.

Whenever you’ve been on the receiving end of an act of thoughtfulness or kindness, remember to acknowledge that act.

We teach our children to say thank you but yet as adults we tend to take these gestures for granted, or we put off showing our appreciation as we are so busy with our daily lives.

Here are a couple of points to keep in mind.

Timing is key - Do not wait too long to convey your thanks – the sooner, the better. If writing a `thank you’ card will take too long, send a `thank you’ email instead. Better yet, a quick phone call will be greatly appreciated.

Stock up - It is a great idea to have some `thank you’ cards or notes on hand. These can be bought in packs inexpensively, and is useful to have at home or at the office. I love sendoutcards, the system so simple to use. You can send a card so easily wherever you are. Additionally, you have the option of adding your own pictures and it enables you to personalize each card. The system offers over 13,000 cards to choose from, or you can create your own card.

Keep it appropriate – Often people are not sure how big a `thank you’ is appropriate. Sometimes a simple card or phone call will do. Keep in mind that you should not overdo or underplay your gesture of thanks. If you are thinking of sending a gift, home-baked cookies or a cake also make great and meaningful gifts.

Involve others – If children or other family members can be involved, include them. Children love creating cards and drawings which would make the “thank you” more meaningful and memorable. My son loves to help me with this. He can get pretty creative with his thank you cards and loves being involved.

Never too late – if you have forgotten to thank someone, it is never too late to do so. It is your gratitude that counts and people like to be appreciated and thanked for their thoughtfulness.

Mindy Tulsi-Ingram

Thanksgiving is the time to pause to consider what we’re thankful for. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’ve been looking for a way to give back for the blessings we all share. I also wanted Green & Green to be part of the solution in dealing with the consequences of global warming. That’s why we’re delighted that we’ve found a way to give back and help the environment.

Green & Green’s Environmental and Social Responsibility Programs

Green & Green only uses specially designed recycled, biodegradable cellophane. We have this custom made to ensure a beautifully wrapped gift and less impact to the environment.

We have a comprehensive in-office recycling program – everything that can be recycled is recycled.

We support local charities through the Rotary Club of Vancouver. We are passionate about the Rotary Annual Bike-A-Thon which raises funds for the hearing impaired.

We have a commitment to supplying donations to a variety of charities for door prizes and auctions.

We have partnered with Tradeworks Custom Products, a social venture helping women in the Downtown Eastside.

Hat Trick at Green & Green

When I heard about a new company called Hat trick at a business networking meeting, I knew I’d found the perfect way to show we care.  

Hat trick means three goals by one player in a hockey game. We’re doing a hat trick with our new Green & Green corporate giving project. Here’s how we’ll score our three goals. 

First goal: We’ve selected a high impact project for the developing world, Sleeping Children Around the World. SCAW provides a child in one of 32 countries with a bed kit: a mattress, sheets, a blanket, a pillow, mosquito netting, clothes, a towel and school supplies

Second goal: We’re paying for “our bedroom in a box” entirely through environmental savings at Green & Green.

Third goal: We’re telling others about our hat trick to spread the word that there is something we can do about the important issues in the world.

To achieve these goals we ask for our customer’s support. If you agree to receive our invoices by email instead of by regular mail, we’ll put every dime we save on postage and processing toward our hat trick.

Every quarter of the year, we commit to funding a new hat trick by searching for new ways to make Green & Green more environmentally efficient.  

For our first hat trick, we need your help. If you agree to receive our invoices by email instead of by snail mail, we’ll put every dime we save on postage and processing toward our hat trick.

Every quarter we’ll commit to funding a new hat trick by searching for new ways to make Green & Green more environmentally efficient.

With Thanksgiving over and Halloween coming soon, if you’re thinking of shipping overseas this holiday season,  take the time to take a look at when you will need to get your items in the mail.

For regular greeting cards going Canada Post:

Africa, Central and South America- December 1

Asia, Australia, Caribbean, Europe, Middle East, New Zealand - December 8

USA - December 15

Outside your own province - December 17

Within your own province - December 18

Local delivery - December 19

For packages going overseas going UPS Express Service:

Middle East, Eastern Europe, South and Central America, Australia and Africa - December 16

Western Europe, United Kingdom, Caribbean, Mexico, Pacific - December 17

For packages in Canada:

Regular ground rates - December 17

Expedited - December 20

It’s a good idea to take a moment to plan out what you will need to send to other provinces and overseas now, and avoid disappointment and expensive expedited shipping rates.  Get a jump on your gift giving plans with some of our new holiday items, and leave the wrapping hassle and shipping nightmare in our competent hands!

Cool Yule $42.00