Re-Nest Names Condo Blues the Best of 2008 Creative Reuse!

Look at what I found waiting for me in my feed reader after the Christmas holiday. Apartment Therapy’s green blog Re-Nest choose my picture frame dog feeder as one of Re-Nest's Best Creative Reuse of 2008 projects!

This is an amazing way to close out my first blogging year. As you may recall, Apartment Therapy’s Re-Nest featured two of my Condo Blues creative reuse projects on their blog in October, Blitzkrieg’s raised dog feeder, and my wine glass chandelier.

So, let’s see, that’s a big THREE stories featuring yours truly on Apartment Therapy this year. I blog I love and read even before I started blogging. Next goal – write an article or have a project featured in Readymade – another of my all time favorite magazines.

What a great way to end 2008! Have you had any unexpected good things come your way this year?

How Constant Holiday Travel Could Drive Even Santa Claus Crazy

the kid trump card works
to host family gatherings
may I have a turn?

I get a little cranky when it comes to traveling for the holidays because I’ve had to do it every year since I moved out of my parent’s house and off to college at the tender age of 18. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas since my college years, my single years, and now during my married years our families expect Husband and I to pack up our stuff and drive 100 miles either North or South (depending upon whose family we are visiting for which holiday) to spend the holiday day with them.

The exact number of Christmases I have celebrated in my own home?

One.

Now, you may recall that The Condo is located in Central Ohio. Since The Condo is in the middle of the state, you’d think that we’d host a family gathering every once and awhile to make it easier for everyone involved.

Nope.

Why? Well, it depends upon whom you ask. One side still has little kids and wants Santa to visit their house. I understand that. A very vocal contingent of The North also believes that I-71 only goes from Central Ohio to Northern Ohio and not the other way around.

Interesting. I have repeatedly driven I-71 South and I know for a fact that it works perfectly fine.

The South has 16 people that gather and claim that we could not host that many people in a 1500 sq. ft. Condo. Possibly. But still annoying because when we go to there, “family gathering” means everyone splits off into factions. The teenagers and a few adults arm themselves with laptops/computers and retreat to one part of the house to sit side by side in one room playing online video games. Don’t have the MMORPG in question on your computer or an account? Well, you can just watch them play.

Snore.

The second faction usually watches a movie on DVD. Usually one of three family friendly favorites that I’ve had memorized since childhood.

There are only so many times a person can hear “Climb Every Mountain” without going Rambo, people - really.

The third faction are the kids who take full advantage of not being the normal watch of their parents and spend the entire time loudly bouncing off of satellites.

To combat my stress, every year I suggest that Husband and I host a holiday gathering. It never happens because someone ends playing the kid trump card. It works too. Face it. If you don’t have children, you get the shaft when it comes to even getting a say in the where, when, how, or what of family/holiday gatherings. No matter how old I am, (did I mention that both Husband and I are the first born in our respective families?) being a DINK (Double Income No Kids) means you are treated like a college student – you don’t get a say, you get told. Don’t like it? Put up or shut up. Level the playing field and have a kid. And no, having a dog doesn’t count. I already tried that.

Is it any wonder that sales of chocolate, alcohol, and fatting food spike around the holidays?

In addition, while I am getting a little, OK a lot, sick of the constant travel commitment, I do like seeing the reaction to the gifts that I give these people since I try very hard to give the people on my gift list meaningful holiday gifts.

Guilt much? Yes indeedy - do.

The stress of our year in year out holiday travel commitments would try the patience of a saint, say, St. Nicholas for instance. I’m sure that some years even Santa Claus goes crazy because he’s expected to do an extraordinary amount of travel during Christmas too.

How do you cope with constant holiday travel commitments?

A Pekingese Under A Pine Tree

click

"ooo-uff!"

click

"rrrrrr-rowr"

click

"Brark!"

As I took photos of some of my favorite handmade Christmas tree ornaments, someone put on a full on case of the cutes, sat under the Christmas tree, and demanded that I take his picture too.

Say Merry Christmas Blitzkrieg!

"Browr-RARK!"

Here's wishing you a very Happy Solitice, Merry FestivusChrismaKwanzaHanukkah, and New Year from all of the Condo Blues crew.

This post is part of Wordless Wednesday, but in our case it's not entirely wordless - because we like to bark!

A Quick and Easy Modern Christmas Decoration

As I was decorating The Condo for Christmas, I had a little problem. I needed an extra holiday something on one of my side tables. Something not so rustic folksy. Something more long the lines of the Retro Modern Bauhaus Contemporary Found and Funkified Da Da-Danish decorating style I’m striving for in The Condo.

I didn’t want to jump into the car and go to the store and buy something because honestly, I knew I wanted something on that side table, but I had no idea what. In other words, going to the store and trying find and buy the perfect holiday something was a kin to a multistore and multiday vision quest. And while fun, I just didn’t have time for that. Not that day.

So I scrounged around and came across my decorating standby – the giant martini glass. You may remember that I filled it with seedpods from a neighborhood park during the Fall.

I filled the martini glass with green and red glass cubes, and carefully balanced some tea lights among the cubes.

I always seem to have tea lights left over from projects in my decorating stash. These particular tea lights were spray painted red and used to decorate an anniversary party.

Perfect.

Woven Danish Hearts and Junk Mail Snowflake Window Decor

Some of my neighbors hang wreaths or swags on their second floor windows. I really like this look, on the freestanding Cape Cod style condominiums in my neighborhood. I thought I’d do the same this year. It should be easy enough, I thought because I could hang the wreath by opening the windows and hanging the greenery from the inside. In theory, this would have worked well. However, in the alternative decorating universe that we call The Condo, I forgot that I sealed the inside of the windows in October for winter. In order to hang the greens, I would either have to remove all of the rope caulk from the inside of the windows or get out a ladder and climb up on the roof of the porch and possibly fall off of the roof because I am. That. Talented. Neither of these tasks was very onerous but both lacked appeal since I wanted to do the outdoor decorating job quickly and immediately – it was cold outside!

Oh, and I had one other small problem.

I didn’t buy greenery for the windows.

A shopping trip changed all of that. No, I didn’t buy wreaths or boughs of holly. That would be too easy. I walked by Anthropology’s holiday windows and found them covered in paper snowflakes.

I got inspired.

We were running low on white printer paper (I didn’t realize this until after I came home from the store, natch) so I cut the unprinted white parts of some junk mail envelopes into squares, folded the paper, and then went to town with the scissors. It's been quite a while since I made snowflakes, but they got better as I made them.

The woven heart baskets are a Danish tradition. Danes hang woven heart baskets on the Christmas tree and fill them with candy instead of putting candy your socks like the American tradition. You can make woven heart baskets out of felt or paper. I made my woven heart decorations out of red wrapping paper that is white on the backside that I already had in my wrapping paper stash (and is recyclable in my city.) Since I was going to hang the woven hearts in my windows, I didn't make baskets; I just wove the two pieces of paper together.

I think I like this idea better than my original idea because it’s unique, I get to share a little bit of my ancestor’s tradition with my family and neighbors, and the price can’t be beat - free.

Now pardon me while I fire up a batch of Glögg * to drink while I admire my Danish American Christmas window decorations.


*Literally. We Scandinavians like to light our spiced holiday bunch on fire before we drink it! (We come from Viking marauders, you know.) Skål!

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This post of part of Thrifty Green Thursday.

How to Use and Make Cloth Napkins

I’m a recent cloth napkin convert. It’s not that I didn’t already have cloth napkins, quite the contrary. I already had two sets of cloth napkins that coordinated with my everyday tablecloths stashed in the back of a kitchen drawer. However, I rarely the casual cloth napkins because, using cloth napkins every day seems like a pain (as in the I’d always be doing laundry because we ran out of cloth napkins) and honestly, I could purchase a giagundo pack of paper napkins for a $1.00 at the store if I played my cards right.

Sure, we’d quickly tear through that huge pack of paper napkins because He Who Cooks My Dinner used to use them to clean the kitchen instead of the small army of wipes, towels, cleaners, and sponges that we store under the kitchen sink (Harrumph!) Annoying, but still cheap.

However on one snowy, icey, and all around cruddy December day we ran out of paper napkins. I didn’t want to slog through all of that yuck to drive to the store and buy just one pack of paper napkins. I pulled the cloth napkins out of the drawer. I figured I’d try using the cloth napkins for daily dinners until my next grocery shopping trip. Well, my laziness paid off. I found that the cloth napkins were easier, cheaper, and a whole lot classier to use than the paper napkins. Not quite the pain in the hoo-ha I originally imagined. And, yes, the cloth napkins are more environmentally friendly too. This goes double for me, because I already had them in that the-greenest-thing-you-can-do-is-use-the-stuff-you-already-have way. Bonus.

• The cloth napkins I had already coordinated with all of my tablecloths, so no mismatched table linens here (a pet peeve of mine way before Martha hit the scene and informed the world that uncoordinated table linens are an Entertaining Diva No-No.)


• The real key to making cloth napkins work for you is to just have more of them on hand, than you need for just one meal. For example, if you are a family of 4 = (2 adults + 2 kids) x 7 dinners = keep at least 28 napkins on hand for the week. Of course, you may be able to reduce that number if you use your napkin for more than one meal in a row before it’s time for the laundry hamper.


• “Now hold on there,” you say, “I use paper because it’s cheap. Cloth napkins are way too expensive for me to kit out my house for me and my 17 children.” Well, I answer that by saying yes, the initial investment for causal cloth napkins can cost you a few more bucks up front. Of course, you can reduce that initial investment if you find cloth napkins on sale, at a resale shop, or like me, find some stashed in the back of a drawer, but after that, you’re done.

On the other hand, you could just make a bunch of inexpensive cloth napkins yourself.

How to Make Cloth Napkins

This tutorial will include directions for a Sew Method and a No Sew Method (perfect for crafting with kids or if you don’t sew). Here goes.

Materials – for each napkin you will need:

1 piece of 16 ½ x 17 inch piece of cloth (Preferably cotton. Trust me, it shouldn’t wrinkle too much after washing and won’t need pretreating for stains as much or at all unlike a polyester or polyester blend.)
Ruler
Iron
Straight pins
Thread (Sew Method)
Fabric glue (No Sew Method)

Make it

1. Fold the raw edges of each side of the napkin over ¼ inch and pin into place with the straight pins.
2. Set the edge by pressing the folded area with an iron.
3. Optional Step:
Sew Method - Sew each raw side of the napkin down with a basting stitch removing the pins as you sew.
No Sew Method - Tack each raw side of the napkin down with a small line of fabric glue removing the pins as you glue.
4. Fold the edges of the napkin over ¼ inch and again, pin into place with the straight pins.
Set the seam by pressing the folded area with an iron.
5. Finish the seams:
Sew Method - Sew the sides of the napkin down with a straight stitch removing the pins as you sew.
No Sew Method - Glue the sides of the napkin down with a small line of fabric glue removing the pins as you glue.
6. Press the finished seams flat (No Sew Method – Wait until the fabric glue is dry or you may gunk up the bottom of your iron!) and iron out any wrinkles the napkin.
7. Put that napkin on your lap and eat some grub!

This post is part of Works for Me Wednesday.

20% Home Utility Reduction Challenge – November Update & Tips

My goal is to lower my home’s natural gas and electricity use by 20% in 2008. I also want to reduce my utilities as inexpensively as possible. Our main focus is on changing habits instead of replacing all of our fairly new and still working appliances and items with Energy Star equivalents. If our stuff wears out beyond fixability then of course, we’ll consider Energy Star items as replacements if applicable. Now that it’s getting colder in Central Ohio, we’ve turned on our natural gas furnace and unfortunately, it’s supposed to be a colder than normal winter. Winter is when our natural gas usage is at its highest, so let’s see how we did for November 2008.

November Natural Gas Usage

We use natural gas for heat, hot water, and a natural gas fireplace in our living room. Once the outside temperature dips to 40 degrees (F), we turn on the heat and switchover to some winter heat saving habits. Our habits and minor home improvements are paying off because in November 2008 we only used 28 CCF of natural gas dowm from the 37 CCF of natural gas we used in November of 20o7, that's a 9 CCF difference folks!

How I Lowered My Natural Gas Bill in November

• We use the preset program on our programmable thermostat. It raises to 68 degrees when we wake up in the morning, lowers to 58 degrees after Husband leaves for work (I work at home), raises to 65 degrees for evening, and lowers to 62 degrees after bedtime. I highly recommend that if you are buying a new programmable thermostat that you get one with a preset program. It really takes the guesswork out of trying to decide how cold or warm to set the thermostat without worrying about it being so cold that the pipes freeze. (Yes, in Condo Blues fashion, we did have the main water pipe freeze because we set the thermostat too low one winter's eve, oops.)


• Even with when working at home with the daytime temperature set at 58 degrees I’m able to stay warm without a lot of extra effort or energy. My office is upstairs in The Condo, and as we all know, heat rises – so it’s a tad warmer than downstairs. Surprisingly, I found that if I keep the door to the office shut, the CPU of my computer warms up the room a little bit. Our computers are home built (a more economical upgrade path for us since we’re able to pass old parts between ourselves or on to others who can use them – unlike laptops) and while I don’t recommend using your computer as a replacement space heater it might be a contributing factor as to why I’m not jacking up the heat during the day.

November Electrical Usage

Daylight savings time means that we are turning on our lights earlier and using them longer in the evenings (so I ask you, where is the “savings” part of Daylight Savings Time? Anyone? Anyone?) And like most people’s natural gas furnaces our has an electric fan that helps blow the heat throughout the duct work in The Condo in order to keep the whole place warm. Again, those CLFs and new electrical habits are paying off in lower electric bills, with very little effort. In November 2007, we used 586 KWH of electricity (approximately 20 KWH a day) and lowered that to 458 KWH of electricity (approximately 15 KWH a day) in November 2008. That’s a reduction of 128 KWH of electricity! (Cue Happy Dance.)

How I Lowered My Electric Bill in November

• Now that it’s getting colder, we are drinking a lot more hot tea in the evenings. I like to use the microwave to make my tea (it’s quick and uses less electricity.) Husband likes to use the electric stove (the water stay hotter in his mug longer.) Nevertheless, the electric stove obviously uses more electricity than the microwave oven. I ended the How to Make Hot Tea argument by buying Husband an electric teakettle for his birthday. Now he uses less electricity to make his hot tea, which I have to admit the electric tea kettle works a lot better than my using the microwave oven to heat tea water.


• December outdoor holiday light conundrum. I love decorating the outside of The Condo for the holidays. I usually do a few strings of lights on the porch rails and battery operated battery operated candles with light sensors in the windows, sorry, no insane Griswald Christmas light displays here. However, all of my current lights are electricity-sucking incandescents, not miserly LEDs. Since we’re trying to meet this challenge without replacing everything we own, that includes no new strings of outdoor holiday lights. I might skip the outdoor electric lights this year. AEP was very kind to raise our rates and even though our November 2008 electricity use was lower, the rate hike made the 2008 electric bill almost the same amount of money as the November 2007 bill. Thank you for the early holiday gift AEP!


• That’s not to say we’re being Scrooge and not decorating the outside of the Condo at all for Christmas. I put up all of the other outdoor decorations, everything we normally decorate with except the strings of electric lights. The interior designer neighbor still pronounced my outdoor holiday décor “more festive than mine” (which is nothing – in the cobbler’s son doesn’t have shoes kind of way) so I’m not feeling too bad about just using candles in the windows as holiday lights this year.


• December indoor holiday light not a conundrum. We decided to follow the Danish custom of just lighting the tree on Christmas Day during our gift exchange. However, we are using electric lights (again incandescents) and not the traditional real candles. While I’m all for saving electricity, I don’t want to it at the risk of burning down The Condo if (when) I get klutzy around the Christmas tree!

Eventually I’d like to add some LED Christmas lights to our decorating arsenal. Some of the reviews I’ve read for LED outdoor holiday lights say that some brands corrode after about a year and given that strings of LED lights cost significantly more money, that’s not something I want to replace every year. Does anyone have a recommendation for strings of durable LED holiday lights?

How do you save natural gas and electricity during the winter months?

Handmade Holiday Ornaments

decorate the tree
handmade holiday ornaments
Christmas past, present*

I really enjoy Christmas tree ornaments. I’ve been collecting them since I was a teenager. Some were made for me as Christmas gifts from the crafty ladies in my family, some are store bought, and some I made myself. Let’s take a look at a few of my favorite handmade Christmas tree ornaments.

I still have my 12 inch bachelorette Christmas tree**. I put it up on the second floor landing of The Condo. This tree is now our Rennie Tree. It has some of the ornaments that Husband and I collected and displayed when we performed at renaissance festivals. Back in the day, our large tree was The Rennie Tree decked out in purple lights, gold ribbon, and Elizabethan animal ornaments. To fill in the holes in the that large tree, I bought some frame ornaments from Restoration Hardware and put photos of Husband and I in our many characters on the tree. For more filler, I string a few jingle bells on ribbon from my sewing stash. After all these years, they still look good. These ornaments sum up my personal decorating style -pair and pull off a combinaton of the expensive with the clever but very inexpensive.

I revamped these plain glass heart ornaments last year. Where they came from neither Husband nor I know. Nevertheless, they’ve been sitting in the bottom of the ornament box forever. They never made it on the tree because the clear glass blended into the tree too much. Last year, I decided to make our large Christmas tree the Toy Tree of Whimsy and wanted some new red and apple green ornaments to tie into the red and white color scheme we have going on in the living room 24/7 356 days a year. Since I have enough ornaments to decorate probably three Christmas trees, buying new ones didn’t seem like a good idea. I roughed up the plan glass hearts with a Brillo pad and repainted them in the colors I wanted with craft paints and added ribbon hangers. I always hang my ornaments with loops of ribbon. I think it looks a little more elegant, it’s one less thing to buy since I always seem to have ribbon in my sewing stash, and more importantly I hate accidently stabbing myself in the foot by stepping on a wire hanger that’s imbedded itself into the carpet long after Christmas is over. (Inserting a “No wire hangers!” joke here is optional, but not required.)

In Demark, it’s tradition to use hearts and the national flag as Christmas decorations. As a third generation Dane, I couldn’t help myself and painted one of the heart ornaments as a Danish Dannebrog heart.

I didn’t make this ornament, but love it just the same. A friend made this for us. I am amazed at her handiwork – she made all of these shapes using just glue and glitter! I could never do the job so neatly.

Do you have any favorite ornaments, handmade or store bought, decorating your home this season?




*I’m dedicating today’s haiku to A. Because he told me how much he likes it when I participate in Haiku Friday. Enjoy, my friend!

**Yes, we have fake Christmas trees. In The Condo, we’re all about reuse, and that goes for our Christmas trees, which we’ve had going on 10+ years and plan to use long after that. An artificial tree saves us money too. More importantly, it saves my nose, because I’m allergic to tree pollen.

15 Habits That Lower Winter Utility Bills

During my 20% home energy reduction challenge, I quickly found that one of the best ways to lower my utility bills was to change my household habits according to the seasons. Seriously, folks, all of the energy efficient light bulbs and sealing of air leaks in the world won’t do much to p reduce your home’s electric and natural gas use if you keep every light in the house blazing and set the furnace to the highest temperature all day every day.

Here are some of the things I do that help me lower my winter electricity and natural gas usage and hopefully the bill (unless they raise my rates.) These habits will work also work for apartment dwellers and renters too.

1. Put Extra blankets on the bed. I put four extra blankets on our bed, so we won’t have to turn up the electric blanket as high or at all. I like the cocoon of a ton of blankets around me, however other folks may feel like they’re trapped and can’t move under so many blankets so your mileage may vary.
2. Use flannel sheets. I use jersey sheets on my bed for fall and transition to flannel sheets when it really starts to get cold outside. Flannel sheets + fleece winter pajamas = cozy warm heaven. I’m so toasty warm you have to pry me out of me on cold winter’s morning. If I could telecommute from my bed cocoon, I would.
3. Dress in layers. Dress accordingly during the day and wear warm nightwear at bedtime = Fleece pajamas! Fleece pajamas! Fleece pajamas!
4. Lower the thermostat. I installed a programmable thermostat with a preset program. My thermostat is set in the morning at 68 degrees (F), lowers to 58 degrees during the day, rises to 65 degrees for the evening, and lowers to 62 degrees at night when we sleep.
5. Use free passive solar heat. I raised the padded roman shade on the South facing windows of the house in winter and keep the door closed during the day to help heat up our bedroom with the pitched ceiling (which I thought was a great design element until that first winter when I realized that heat rises.) The passive solar heat warms the bedroom up just enough that we don’t need to run a space heater to keep the room warm. I didn’t expect this to work since Central Ohio has more overcast days than sunny days per year, but it did. Who knew?
6. Shut doors to unoccupied rooms. This keeps the heat in the room and not floating out into the colder hallway or into unheated utility room.
7. Add moisture to the air. Humid air feels warmer than dry air, caused by running the furnace. To add moisture to the air, I place bowls of water in front of the heat registers. I also start line-drying laundry on hangers in our second bathroom. I admit that line drying laundry is a bit of a pain, but it also saves me electricity (although I do use the dryer to fluff up stiff dry towels and jeans and to dewrinkle shirts.) But the real reason I do it is to keep static electricity down in The Condo so I don’t get that look from Blitzkrieg after we’ve shocked each other that says, “Why did you do that? You promised me that no one would hurt me ever again!” Yes, out of love for my rescue dog, I put up with the extra work of line drying laundry during the winter. I have pollen allergies, which is why line drying is a seasonal activity for me. Your mileage may vary.
8. Seal inside the windows. The Condo has energy efficient double paned windows but they are still cold during the winter. To keep heat inside of the house I seal around the interior of my windows with removable rope caulk. (I couldn’t find a clear pealable caulk at my home improvement store.) Rope caulk allows us to easily get out of the house via the windows in case of an emergency and I can reuse the caulk for the following year after I remove it from the windows for the summer. If you don’t want to do rope or pealable caulk, you can buy plastic sheets that fit inside of the windows and block drafts. This isn’t an option for me because the plastic won’t seal properly because of the roller shade mechanism on my front windows.

9. Seal where windows and sliding glass doors meet. I made draft dodgers for the tops of our windows and where the sliding glass doors meet in the kitchen. I made them using leftover white material so they blend in with the white window trim and don’t look too Mobile Home Disaster from the outside of The Condo. Sure, I could have used more rope caulk to seal this, but since I could only find gray rope caulk instead of white, it looked nasty from outside of the house.
10. Turn off the gas fireplace’s pilot light when not in use. I don’t use my gas fireplace very often because our natural gas furnace is more efficient at keeping The Condo warm. We only light it for ambience - usually when we have guests, or during a blackout for heat. I was amazed at how much natural gas I saved each month by just turning off the pilot light!
11. Cap outside faucets. I unscrewed and drained the garden hose from the outside faucet and put an insulated cap on it to keep cold air from leaking inside The Condo.
12. Use the one light per person per room rule. The Condo is chock full of energy efficient light bulbs, but we still use more electricity to light them during the winter since we have to turn them on earlier in the evening and run longer at night now that it gets darker earlier (Boo! Darn you Daylight savings time!) The one light per person per room rule is isn’t always possible, for example as I write this both Husband and I are sitting in our office at our respective computers, with lamps lit for both task and ambient lighting. However, the rest of the unoccupied rooms of The Condo are dark. Previously I’d keep a light on downstairs or in the upstairs hallway even if all the family were upstairs in the computer room (which we frequently are – you don’t think The Condo Blues Blogging Empire happens all by itself do you?) Once I changed this habit, I noticed a difference on my bill at no difference in the level of our home security, which is one of the reasons I had unoccupied room in The Condo lit up like Christmas in the first place.
13.Enjoy hot drinks. Hot coffee, tea, hot chocolate, warm milk with nutmeg and cinnamon, or if you’re feeling festive, spiced apple cider, mulled wine or hot buttered rum are all yummy ways to warm up when it’s cold outside.
14. Snuggle up with blankets or that special someone. Especially if that special, someone is a small double-coated dog who likes serious lap time in order to suck all of the heat from your body like Blitzkrieg.

15. Limit the Christmas lights. I like to keep our outdoor decorations simple and classic. Battery operated candles with light sensors in the windows, reusable boughs of holly, and a couple of strings of lights on the porch rails. Sorry, no Griswald Christmas light displays here (besides it’s too cold to spend all of that time outside setting up such a huge light display!) I put our lights on timers and changed the time the lights are light to 6 hours a night instead of from dawn to dusk this worked when lighting my outdoor Halloween decorations, so I'm going to go with this at Christmas too. Eventually, I’d like to replace my current incandescent holiday lights with LED lights or even try solar outdoor Christmas lights. However, I’m not sure solar holiday lights would work in overcast Ohio since my solar garden lights only work during the summer months. As for lighting the Christmas tree, this year, like last year, we are following the Danish tradition (I’m a third generation Dane) of lighting the Christmas tree only on Christmas Day while we are opening presents, although we use electric lights instead of the traditional real candles. I'm too afraid of burning down The Condo to use real candles on the tree!

How do you prepare for those high winter utility bills?

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10 Green Gifts That Suck

There are some great environmentally friendly gifts and some that are not. I suspect that these are the items that a Greenzilla would give. (You know, the zealot who raises the green living bar so high that pretty much every person who honestly tries to do their part still fails in the eyes of the Greenzilla because you haven’t met the Greenzilla’s specific expectations?)

On the other hand, if you’ve decided this holiday season not to give gifts not as a token of love and appreciation but as a way to force your recipients to live the green life by doing everything exactly like you do – NO EXCEPTIONS then these sucky enviro-gifts may be for you. (Personally, I’m not into the Greenzilla line of thinking because I think that there’s always more than one way to do something and achieve the same goal, which in this case, is a living a more sustainable life.)

1. Compact florescent light bulbs. Even though they are expensive, they are still light bulbs people! And honestly how do you know if your recipient doesn’t have a package of these in a closet somewhere and are waiting until their current bulbs burn out before they make the switch? Which I might add, is a green practice because they are using what they already have. The Better Green Alternative? Give the person a lamp to go with the CLF bulb.

2. Rechargeable batteries. Giving a battery is just as lame as giving a light bulb, even if it is a more expensive rechargeable battery. The Better Green Alternative? If you’re giving someone a gift that uses batteries, then include a set of rechargeable batteries and a recharger.

3. Some wooden toys. I get that last year’s plastic toy recalls freaked out a lot of parents (me too.) However, I think that some wooden toys can be just as dangerous – look at this handmade wooden baby rattle. Imagine the concussion baby could give you when they throw this warhammer at your head when they play endless rounds baby’s favorite high chair game of I Throw the Toy and Make Mommy Pick It Up. Also, some otherwise fun little kid wooden toys turn into sucky green gifts when given to much older kids. The Better Green Alternative? Do not look at the wooden toy in question with your responsible grown up eyes but from the perspective of your inner child. And please find something that’s age appropriate. A wooden rattle for an 8 year old would suck, but a wooden trebuchet or catapult would rule. (I wouldn’t mind having one of these either.)


4. Organic fiber underwear. Remember the look on Ralphie’s face when he opened the gift of underwear in the movie A Christmas Story Yeah. Natural fibers or no, the gift of underwear is not a gift any kid wants to get. Period. The Better Green Alternative? Getting a pair of organic fiber undies from your beloved that’s so va-va-voom that you can’t open the gift in front of the kids. Or your parents. Or your grandparents.

5. Carbon credits. This is the gift that says, “I couldn’t come up with anything else to cover my guilt so I’m giving money to a company that normally plants trees whether I give them money or not but I’m doing it in your name.” The Better Green Alternative? How about just giving the person a tree for their yard or plant for their home? Or another type of carbon – cruelty free diamonds.

6. Used and broken items. Vintage items are unique but not so great if they are broken beyond usability. The Better Green Alternative? Do I really need to say out loud? Give something that’s all in one piece and in working order, unless you are passing down a beloved family heirloom.

7. Shake flashlights. Great in concept but poor in execution. It takes about 15 minutes of shaking one of these babies to get only a few seconds of weak light from the flashlight. The Better Green Alternative? Crank generated flashlights. A few twists of the crank and you have strong light – and no more searching around the house for batteries, bonus.

8. Sock monkeys. I don’t care if your Great Aunt Tally made it with her very own hands by candlelight from socks made from organic wool. Sock monkeys creep me out. That puts them on the sucky green gift list.

And don’t even get me started about the freakoutablity of the sock monkey octopus.


The Better Green Alternative? None. Socks are meant to be worn on feet. Not for monkey making.

9. Environmentally friendly cleaning supplies. Nothing says, “You have a dirty disgusting house” like the gift of environmentally friendly cleaning supplies. The Better Green Alternative? An all expense paid trip to a spa to make up for implying that the recipient’s house is a dirty pit of despair (even if the recipient’s house really is a dirty pit of despair and could use a good clean.)

10. Nothing on purpose followed by a lecture about consumerism. There’s no way to tell whether the giver is being sincere or is just a cheapskate with a clever excuse. And lectures at a time of appreciating family and loved ones is just, well, mean. The Better Green Alternative? If you really feel that strongly about not giving anything to anyone for the holidays (even gifts of time or for services or to events) then excuse yourself from even going to holiday festivities. Please don’t let your negative views spoil the rest of the responsible gift givers holiday fun you big meanie.

What gift do you not want to see under your holiday tree?

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How to Make a Personalized Appliqué Fleece Dog Blanket

Last year, Blitzkrieg and I participated in a small dog sport gift exchange. Well, technically the dogs were the gift givers and recipients but their humans did all of the shopping, wrapping, and shipping of gifts. In other words, the dogs got the goods and the humans did all of the work. Seems only fair because in our sport of agility Blitzkrieg does all of the work of running up over and through the obstacles on the course while I just run beside him and point to what he has to do next. OK, dog sport people know that there’s more to it on the human side, but that’s not the point of this post.

Anywayz, my New Year’s resolution that year was to try to use up some of the stuff in craft stash that in some cases had been sitting around for more years than I like to admit. Some of the items languishing in my craft stash were pieces of fleece that were too big to throw away but not large enough to make anything out of. That is, until this gift exchange. Turns out the fleece squares I had were just the right size to turn into small dog blankets. This project was the perfect time to try my hand at a little hand appliqué as well.

(My applogies for the poor photo quality. I had to use my PDA to take the photos.)

How to make a personalized appliqué fleece dog blanket.

For each blanket, you will need:
2 30 inch x 30 inch squares of fleece
Sewing thread to match the color of the fleece
Interfacing
Small rectangle of white cloth (I used terry cloth)
Embroidery thread
White sewing thread


1. Create a bone shape using a graphics program like Photoshop or you can enlarge the pattern I created here.

2. Cut out and create your appliqué using the Freezer Paper method.


3. If desired, use a running stitch and embroidery thread to embroider the name of the lucky dog onto the dog bone appliqué.


4. Hand sew the appliqué to the right side of one the 30 inch x 30 inch squares of fleece.


5. Pin both fleece squares right sides together and sew them together along three sides of the blanket.


6. Remove the pins from the blanket and turn it right side out.


7. Sew the open sides of the blanket together by hand or with a sewing machine.


8. Optional: Hand or machine quilt the blanket to finish.


9. Keep that puppy warm - wrap up your chilly dog in their new fleece blanket!

10 Easy Ways to Give Meaningful Holiday Gifts

As my extended family gathered and opened presents one holiday eve, the Dad looked over at the gift his son just opened and said, “Hey, that’s cool! Who’s it from? I bet it’s a Lisa gift!” Then the mom got excited, “a Lisa gift! What is it? Let me see! Let me see!”

Me? I’m sitting there thinking,”Uh oh. I’ve totally done it again. The family I love but that has more Nos than Yeses when it comes to what’s allowed for their kids, is going to make my gift disappear because I screwed up their only-known-until-you-break-it-kid-gift rules. Crap!”

Quite the contrary, the Dad told me. In their house, a Lisa Gift is something unusual, awesome, and something the giver didn’t know that they wanted or needed until they got the gift and used it – a lot.

So, how do I do it? Well, in the beginning it wasn’t easy. I soon found that with a growing family and gift giving list that if I waited until December to do all of my holiday shopping, I’d drive myself crazy(er). As a matter of survival, I made a mental shift. I decided that the best gifts I could give were full of thought and meaningful to the person I’m giving it to. And, for the sake of my bank account, I started shopping all year round either for items or ideas, which I have listed on my PDA and synchronized with my computer. Where do I get my kooky fabulous ideas? Here’s a list of 10 methods I use to buy good gift.

1. Shop from wedding registries. Even after the wedding, stores keep these lists active for a period of time – use them they are the perfect wish lists.

2. Shop from baby registries. Even after the baby’s born, stores keep these lists active for a period of time too.

3. Observe your target at the store. What item(s) do they look at closely, consider purchasing, and then put down claiming, “oh maybe later” or some other excuse. Husband is the Master of this technique. In fact, he purchased a pair of vintage sunglasses for me that I apparently admired in the store, didn’t purchase, and forgot about it. Lo and behold on my birthday, I get this fabulous pair of vintage sunglasses and screamed, “These are so me! How did you know?”

4. Think about their life’s circumstances and gift accordingly. Have they just moved? Then maybe a gift card to a to home improvement store/Container Store, etc. or gardening supplies may be appropriate or possibly a kitchen or household item upgrade. Started a new job? Try some new work clothes or a new computer bag. A college student? Try something computer related or dorm room living related likes a coffee maker.

5. Conduct year round recon. This is my favorite technique and it goes along the same lines as observing your intended target I mean victim, gift recipient while shopping except you aren’t at the store and the conversation or occurrence may not have happened at gift time. Some examples:

• At a summer family reunion, one of my nephews kept asking his mom if he could use her digital camera to take a picture. I wrote this down on my gift giving idea list. It gave me time to look for an appropriate kid digital camera and in my niece and nephew price range (there are eight nieces and nephews on my gift list so I try to keep all of their gifts within the same price range) that had easy software that the kid can use on an older passed-down-to-the-kids-for-homework purposes computer. My nephew loved it because he wanted a camera but didn’t tell anyone. Thus, I secured my title as Most Fabulous Aunt on Plant Earth for yet another year.
  
• During a mini-break to New York with some friends, we noticed that all of the tourists seemed to be wearing Burberry scarves. It became a silly in-joke during the trip. That Christmas, Husband, and friends got Burberry scarves for Christmas. In addition, I totally earned my Frugal Hacker badge because I got a deal on them – I bought in August at a reduced price. Shopping early saved me time and money. Score.

6. Listen for hints. As in the “someday, I need to replace X.” “I wish I could find an X that does Y better than the X I currently have.” or the best one “If you see an X for sale, will you let me know? I’m looking for one and can’t find it anywhere!”

7. Read the children’s letters to Santa. Before you mail them for your kids to the North Pole of course.

8. Ask!

9. Try giving one big family gift. Such as event tickets, maybe a new TV or electronics, Netflix subscription if they are movie buffs, tickets to an event or show, zoo or water park membership, etc. I did this the December we bought the Condo and it was a big hit. Some of these gifts seemed a little extravagant but in reality when I divided the overall cost of the big gift by the number of family members the per person amount in some cases the was surprisingly less than what I normally budget per person. I saved money, time, had less stuff to wrap and less wrappings to later dispose of = all good things in my book.

10. Above all think and gift something that would be meaningful to the person you are giving the gift to and not yourself. I believe that holiday and birthday gifts should be given in the spirit of appreciation not as a punishment or reward or to change someone’s behavior or lifestyle to follow my personal philosophies. If you go that route, it leaves the door wide open for the recipient to turn around and give you gifts that try to force you to change your ways and subscribe to their religious, political or whatever philosophy they hold dear. That never works and the only thing it accomplishes is starting a huge argument during what should be a peaceful family get together.

So Greenzillas, that means no compact florescent light bulbs as holiday gifts, unless you give them a lamp to go with it. K?