Doing Our Part: Recylcing

There are many ways that Jeff and I do our part for the environment. Things that most people don't even realize are environmentally friendly (not to mention wallet friendly). Here is a list of some of the things we do:

1. The Library: Check books, DVDs, and even video games out at the library. Membership is free and think of all the space in your house that is not being cluttered by books and movies you will only watch once! Not to mention all the dusting that you are saving yourself from!

2. Using e-mail as much as possible and scanning documents to PDF. You are saving a tree and some much needed space in your filing cabinet. You can save these items to an external hard drive, or a CD. Both of these items will also fit in a safe-deposit box if you are really worried about safe keeping.

3. Switch all your light bulbs to Compact Fluorescent. They are more energy efficient and last so much longer. Make sure you find the "instant on" ones, some of them take a second to kick on and that can be a pain in the rear. We have found GE brand to be great. Here's a great website to find what you need based on your criteria: http://www.edf.org/

4. Make a compost pile: Jeff created a compost pile just beyond our fence that he empties grass clippings, leaves, and table scraps (only of the non cooked veggie variety). It was easy to do, he used wooden pallets and nailed them together. I can't wait to have topsoil for my plants!
Jeff's handy work:


5. Grow an herb garden: Makes your kitchen smell nice and saves you money and time at the grocery store.

There are the obvious ones (recycle, reuse, etc.) Anyone else have some great ideas to add? I'd love to hear them!

Weekend Project: Fireplace

After much debate we finally bit the bullet and made a decision about our fireplace.
Backstory: We've been working on this project for 2 years now getting estimates for gas, propane, pellet stoves (why don't they make attractive versions of this?) looking at the new gel fireplaces (most of which are too modern for our colonial home), figuring out direct vent vs vent less, electric vs gas vs propane, costs for each, etc. We would do some research, get discouraged and move on to a different project.

So behold our new fireplace doors: Yes, I do realize that these doors don't have the ability to make fire, but they are a cheap fix to keep the cold air out (at least 90% of it) and we can get rid of the hideous cardboard that we had there before. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we were living ghetto fabulous with cardboard covering our fireplace. Here are the before and after:

Before:










And After:















What makes me even more proud of the completion of this project is that we picked out the doors online at Lowes and they were $339, when we got to the store they turned out to be $289. Wait, it gets better: we also had a coupon for 10% off! So we got $339 doors for $260.10! WOO-HOO!