What Works for me Wednesday!

The Christmas season is upon us. For us parents, its time to finish the llooonnnggg list of gifts to buy and start the shopping. I've decided to make this year a bit different. I've always made some kind of homemade gift for others, but this year I've got the Green Christmas means slowing down. Going back to basics and not only showing your love to the enviroment, but your true love to others. I have vowed to not buy anything plastic (ok, buying for hubby requires plastic- but thats it!). All homemade and all natural!

I will be changing my "What works for me" Wednesday posts to "Green Christmas" posts throughout the season. I want to share all the great, simple and easy ways to bring a natural Christmas back.

Some Green Christmas Tips of the day:

TIP #1: Do what I did and take the challenge and buy only Handmade!

TIP #2: Instead of hanging useless, energy wasting lights on a tree, decorate a tree for the birds - place seed bells, suet, pine cones with peanut butter and seed trays on any tree in your yard, preferably a tree in the open where cats can be seen easily by the birds. You can attract a wide variety of birds, use varied seed types such as black oil sunflower seed, wild bird mixed seed and nyger seed bells. This is a great activity for kids, and offers an important food source for birds during the winter. Find a neat article here for more information (http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?c=9089&aid=1418)

TIP #3: Speaking of lights.....The house with the most lights used to be the 'best'. Times have changed. The cost of electricity goes way beyond the utility bill. Electricity drains natural resources. Try to reduce the size of outdoor lighting displays - A smaller presentation of lights can still be attractive, and more appropriate in the 'season of giving'.• Use LED lights for house and Christmas tree lighting - LED (Light Emitting Diode) holiday lights use up to 95% less energy than larger, traditional holiday bulbs and last up to 100,000 hours when used indoors. LED holiday lights use .04 watts per bulb, 10 times less than mini bulbs and 100 times less than traditional holiday bulbs. Over a 30-day period, lighting 500 traditional holiday lights will cost you about $18.00 while the same number of LED lights costs only $0.19. As an added bonus, if one of the LED lights burns out the rest of the strand will stay lit. • Outdoor Mini-lights will also save energy. A 100-light string uses only 40 watts. If you're buying a new set of lights, compare based on equal 'lighted lengths'. Some higher priced brands have 100 mini-lights for only 8 1/2 feet of length, while some 100 mini-light strings cover up to 40 feet in length.• Turn tree lights and outdoor house decorative lighting at bedtime. It's simply a waste of energy to leave the holiday lights on at night after everyone's gone to sleep, besides no one is driving by your house at midnight in the freezing cold to look at your light display....come on'! Do the earth right!!!