1) Winter Guide Intro & Hot Links
Old man winter has blown in with a bone-chilling breeze! It’s time to dust off your skates and find that wool tuque, and head outdoors to embrace all the Canadian winter wonderland has to offer. Then come indoors to heat up by the wood stove with some fair trade cocoa or mulled local cider.
It’s time to take a few minutes for yourself… for ‘people, planet and community’, and explore “Winter Winds”, the CRUSISIS Winter Guide to Sustainable Living 2010. We have a few updates for you first, to follow. Also be sure to check out our Hot Links (scroll to the bottom) for our favorite selections from our Winter Guide 2010!
- Seasonal Guides FREE Moving Forward
- Reminder: Recent Additions
- Coming Up
- Typical Guide Format
- Navigation Tips
Seasonal Guides FREE Moving Forward
Big news for CRUSISIS Sustainable Living and the public of the greater Halifax area and beyond: our Seasonal Guides to Sustainable Living will soon be offered FREE!! It’s been an aspiration of ours to be able to do so for a while since we didn’t want the exposure of the guides to be limited to only those who could/ would afford to buy them. Between some recent sponsorships and re-focusing of priorities for CRUSISIS in 2010, we decided to take a leap of faith that sponsorships and revenues from NEW business services will allow us to continue to offer the guides for free moving forward. Look for them starting hopefully in spring 2010. (Spring Guide 2010 expected early April.)
Reminder: Recent Additions
Explore our NEW “Eco-Local List” (FREE), launched just prior to the Holidays at the Atlantic Eco-Expo, to help foster sustainability of your purchasing power. It’s a sophisticated database of businesses, searchable based on ‘sustainable qualities’ like ‘local’, ‘natural’, ‘hand-made’, ‘organic’, ‘Fair Trade’, etc., which is continually growing. (Find Eco-Local List on TOP or LEFT menu bars.)
Remember also to list your events in our Sustainable Events listing (also FREE) using the My CRUSISIS Menu (TOP left of web pg). Simply create a personal user name and password through our FREE “My CRUSISIS” subscription (BOTTOM Left of web page), and access the My CRUSISIS Menu upon email authentication of your account activation. (This is also where organizations can list themselves for inclusion in the Eco-Local List.)
Also added to the mix over the Holidays is our NEW “SustainaBlog” (also Free). It launched in conjunction with our new banner page on www.haligonia.ca, Halifax’s newest on-line news source and local voice (VocaLocal), We are ‘growing’ into the blog and will add more input from past articles to it soon.
Coming Up:
Just before you launch in to this season’s guide, we wanted to give you some highlights of what’s coming up:
- Business Services available at CRUSISIS.ca: Events Registration & Ticket Sales for your events, Web Feature Pages, eCommerce, Company Spotlights, Web Advertising (starting at $50/season), and more…
- Spring Sponsorship Opportunity: Align your organization with sustainable living values & audience. Contact us for details.
- Earth Day Event: Working behind the scenes at preparations. More soon…
- Spring Guide 2010: Want to be listed or featured? Have something to contribute? Contact us!
- Healthy, Local-Living Workshops: Spring Local, Healthy Cooking Class >> Contact us if you are interested. (open to the public)
- CRUSISIS Awareness initiatives underway behind the scenes & launching soon.
- Contest Winners: Latest winner announcements coming soon!
Typical Guide Format
Our guide takes on its usual format, including the following sections and contributions from community authors:
- Seasonal Pre-amble to set the mood: “Old man Winter’s Here”
- Philosophical Proposal to help get you in a sustainable and seasonally appropriate mindset: “Winds of Change”
- Seasonal Theme #1 with lots of tips to help take winter from bearable to wonderful: “Winter Wisdom”
- Seasonal Theme #2 to help you make sustainable choices for your seasonally celebratory gifts & outings: “Seasonal Celebrations”
- Seasonal Theme #3 to help with natural and nutritional choices for good health: “Winter Health, Naturally”
- Catch-all Section for any themes spilling over from last season or for content that is not necessarily seasonal in nature: “Winter Pot-Pourri” (formerly ‘Seasonal Follow-ups’)
- Seasonal Sign-off to wrap it up for the season
- Seasonal Contributors to give kudos to those who’ve helped make this season’s Guide possible.
NAVIGATION TIPS:
Let the Winter Winds of Change Start Blowing Your Way with Winter Guide 2010. Explore topics that suit your fancy by using themes (from ‘left’ side menu bar). Or, see our CRUSISIS Winter Guide Hot Links (below) for our favorite suggestions, sure to fill your toboggan with fun, healthy, local, and sustainable winter ideas!
When surfing the guide, remember that back/ forward arrows at the end of the articles ‘IN’ the guide, take you back/ forward within the theme the article is found… NOT necessarily ‘back’ to the last page you were reading (as would be the case if you clicked ‘back pg’ on your browser). The same is true when you surf the Search Matrix. IF YOU WANT TO GET BACK WHERE YOU WERE, click ‘back page/ arrow” on your browser, not at the end of the article in the guide. OR, just keep it flowing and use the arrows at the bottom of each article to help you move backward/ forward in the section to explore more…
There is an abundance of information, events and more for you at CRUSISIS.ca. It’s meant as a reference resource to help you with your everyday and seasonal sustainable living choices. So be sure to check back often for new content being uploaded all the time in our Seasonal Guides, our Eco-Search Matrix, Sustainable Events Listings, Eco-Local List, and much more…
Enjoy the Guide and the wonderful winterland!
CRUSISIS Sustainable Living
“Informing & inspiring to action”
HOT Links from Winter Guide 2010
(more links coming soon here… or find them on our main Seasonal Guide page)
- Winter Recipe: ‘Les Oeufs Hiver’ from Everyday Gourmet Chef Mark Giffin
- More Fair Trade Cafes & Coffee Commitment
- Building Your Own Backyard Rink
- Healing Winter Nutrition by the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition
- Body Ecology & Immunity by Roberto Gueli of Conscious Catering
- Winds of Change
- New, Clean Breeze Blowin’ in: Green Energy
- Home Deliveries
- Balancing Local & Organic by Bridget Oland
- CRUSISIS Everyday Hero for Winter: Our Thyme Cafe
- Greener St. Patrick’s Day
- Food for Thought by The Coastal’s Chef Mark Giffin
- Winter Vitamin Depletion
- Embracing the Cold
- Creating Your Winter Playground
- CRUSISIS Everyday Environmentalist for Coffee Drinking, Sustainably
- Curbing the Draft: Energy Saving Tips
- Cabin Fever Conversion
- Sustainable Winter Events
- Battery Care by Bridget Oland
- Save the View from Citadel Hill
- Chocolate Sweets for Your Sweetheart
- Sustainable Gifts
- Earthy Eating Out & Outings
- Winter Charity: The Elizabeth Fry Society