This morning my husband and I decided on our tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day date. We’re hoping to tire out the kiddo by eight, so we can have the rest of the night to ourselves.

For dinner we decided to stay in and enjoy a healthy home-cooked meal. It’s nice that we don’t have to leave the house for our date, we don’t have to hire a baby sitter, deal with traffic and spend gas.

I’m going to make sushi. Sushi is basically raw fish wrapped in rice and sea weed. Fish and sea weed don’t require any hot cooking, so no electricity or gas is spent. Rice does require cooking, but it cooks fairly quickly, in about 15-20 minutes.

I love candles, so I’m planning on setting the mood by lighting some candles and turning off all the electric lights. Lastly some Michael Buble on the background should do the trick!

We decided not to get any cards, since they can be pricey and they will end up in the garbage eventually. I feel it’s more personal to voice the appreciation for one another, than to write it on a card. And a card is such a cliche. It’s better write a poem or a song and then recite or sing it to your loved one.

I’m not sure if my husband is going to get me flowers this Valentine’s day. I’ll leave it up to him. All I know is that most commercially grown flowers require fertilizer. Fertilizer is made out of chemicals like sulfate, phosphate, urea, ammonia and it requires energy to produce. Another thing is, if you do get the flowers, try to get as minimum of wrapping as possible. Potted flowers might be a nice alternative, since they last a heck of a lot longer.

I already know what my favorite Valentine’s day gift is going to be. My husband is going to help me redesign my blog to better reflect its theme. I’m so excited!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

• Tripod.
• Camera with a timer, so everyone can be in the picture.
• A place to take the picture reflecting the theme of your greeting. It can be inside or outside of your house. For example, next to the Christmas tree or on the porch that is decorated for the occasion.

I recommend to take a few pictures at a time. This way you get to pick the best shot once the pictures are uploaded on your computer screen.

Next, find a printing company online. Type ‘Personalized greeting cards’ in the search engine’s window. Plenty will come up with their own greeting card designs.  Pick the company and the design you like and upload the picture(s) for your greeting card.
I used Wal-Mart’s online photo center to design our greeting card. Wal-Mart appeared to be the least expensive, charging $0.33 for an 8×4 greeting card.

And the last thing, don’t procrastinate.  It takes time for the printing company to print your cards and send them to you. Allow yourself time to address and stamp the envelopes, and for the Post Office to process and deliver your greeting cards.

From my family to yours, wishing you happy holiday season!

I love giving gifts!  I feel good when I see the excitement on the recipients’ faces as they are about to find out what they got.

Mystery is an important part of gift giving.  We conceal the gifts before we give them away.  It’s the feeling of surprise and anticipation that gets everyone so excited about getting a gift.  Wrapping a gift is not a matter of practicality, it’s a matter of delivering emotion.

But paying for something that is going to get torn apart and thrown away just doesn’t seem right to me. At the same time I don’t want to look like a total cheapskate when my present is being unwrapped. So I still wrap my gifts and make them presentable. I just improvise on the materials.  Here is what I do to save money on gift wrapping:

• At times I run into gift bags for $1 or less at stores like Big Lots, Wal-Mart, Dollar Store.  I buy a few that don’t have any particular theme to them.  This way I can use them for any occasion, especially if I’m in a hurry and don’t have time for wrapping.
• I use free gift-wrapping service when available.
• I reuse gift bags that were given to me.  I remove the card that comes with the bag and make a new one using a hole puncher.  I attach a new card to the handle by untying the knot on the inside and then tying it back.
• I buy wrapping paper during after-holiday sales.  I find deals for 25-50 cents per roll.
• I pick up cardboard boxes at the retail stores when they are restocking the merchandise.  Hey, they’re free and they make a good gift box. I have to cover them with the gift wrapping paper though.
• I save paper bags from my groceries and use them as wrapping paper.
• Instead of bows and ribbons, I use yarn.  I pay $2 for 200 yards of acrylic yarn.  That covers a boat load of presents and then some!

Guess what, by reusing you’re doing a favor to the environment, since you’re generating less waste!

Happy Holidays!

First I evaluated how much money I would need to invest in the new LED Christmas lights.  We usually decorate the roof line on the front of our house with white icicle lights.  We use six strands of the incandescent lights which come in a set of 200 lights and are 9 feet in length.  Their cost is $10 at Wal-Mart.  I found a set of 70 LED lights that are 9 feet long for $16.

I use couple of strands of multi-colored mini lights on the bushes in the front of the house.  And the Christmas tree gets couple of strands as well.  The incandescent lights come in 51-foot strands and cost $10.  I found LEDs of the same kind that come in 24-foot strands and cost $16.  Looks like for each incandescent strand, I would have to purchase two LED strands.

So far I will have to invest $124 more up front for the LED lights.

Second, I looked at how much money I would have to spend on each kind for the energy use.  I found that if I run the lights for 6 hours per day, every day for six weeks, I would spend $17 on the incandescent lights and $2 on the LED lights.

Third I looked at how often I would have to replace the LED lights versus the incandescent lights.  LED lights manufacturers claim that they would last 50,000-100,000 hours.  Since I would only use my Christmas lights 250 hours per season, these LED lights should easily outlive me, my kids and possibly my grand kids.  On the other hand, I will have to replace the incandescent lights every five years.

Taking all of this into consideration, looks like the difference in initial investment for the LED lights will pay for itself within 5 years.  This graph shows how much money I would spend on each kind of Christmas lights within 10 years:

Looks like if I keep using the incandescent lights I would spend almost $500 in the next 10 years, and I would spend half of that using LED lights.  As this pattern continues, the difference will triple in 20 years and quadruple in 30 and so on.

So what am I going to do this year?

I decided to keep using the incandescent lights, since we already have them.  Investment of $224 on the LED lights is a little steep for me this season. But as my short-lived incandescent lights die off within the next couple of years, I will more likely replace them with the LED.  This will also give me some time to find out how my neighbor’s LED lights are holding on!