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Cut your energy bill this holiday season by switching to LED Holiday lights

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We had our first snow last week. That’s a little early for Toronto, especially to have snow that actually stayed on the ground for a few days.

I was taken by surprise by the early snow and it made me realize that we’d better get the Christmas lights out and start decorating the house before it snows again and makes it difficult to get the lights up.

Have you started decorating your home for the holidays yet?

We’ve pretty much switched over to LED Christmas lights. With the cost of energy these days it’s nice to know that LED lights are 90% more efficient than standard incandescent lights.

Did you know that this past Spring Toronto’s CN Tower, one of the tallest free standing structures in the world, got new lights? Yes, they equipped the tower with thousands of LED lights. Now at night the CN Tower is lite up with a variety of colors or pasterns. I think they change the colors and patterns daily. By patterns I mean that on Canada Day the tower might be light up with a flag totally made of LED lights or on the 4th of July there could be an American Flag showing. It’s beautiful. Plus, it doesn’t cost the city very much to light the tower. Only $1000 per month! That’s pretty good for a gigantic public building and tourist attraction.

So … if even cities are starting to use LED lights maybe you should too if you haven’t already made the switch.

A few other things that I like about using LED Holiday lights is the fact that the bulb is encased in a very hard plastic which makes them extremely durable. I’m sure you know how easy it is to break glass incandescent bulbs – especially the ones you use outdoors! LED lights are also long lasting. They’ll operate for 50,000 hours or more! That means years and years of use before you need to replace a string of lights.

As you know we try to be as green as possible with our gardening and the products we use around our home. I consider LED lights a green product because they are energy efficient and also because they last so long.

How many of you already use LED Holiday lights?






Talk about strange weather

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So far October is shaping up to be more like the end of August or early September temperature wise.

It’s been no less than 10 degrees higher than the average temperatures for this time of year and often a lot higher than that.

This weekend is Thanks Giving here in Canada and the temps are supposed to be close to 30 Celsius each day. That’s the mid 80’s for those of you who are stuck in Fahrenheit.

I remember Thanks Giving weekends when we’ve had snow or when it’s been so cold and rainy that you don’t want to step outside. Luckily most aren’t like that, but neither are most as warm as this one will be.

There’s also been quite a bit of humidity. On Wednesday night I was out with my husband shopping and when we came back to our car at about 8 in the evening the car was blanketed with moisture. It wasn’t cold out so it wasn’t condensation due to temperature change. It was warm and sticky wet humid.

Then, last night at about 6 pm a strange fog descended on the city. You can see photos at BlogTO if you’d like to see how dense the fog was the blanketed the city during daylight hours. The CN tower has clouds at half it’s height! Very strange.

As much as I’m enjoy this strangely warm weather I’m worried that it’s giving my plants the wrong message. How are my roses ever supposed to get the message to stop growing, leaving out and creating new buds if it doesn’t begin to cool down?

Many plants need the gradual cooling of temperatures to signal them to go into dormancy. Without beginning to slow down and become dormant before the harsh cool weather of winter comes along the plants might end up having more winter damage.

How’s the weather in your area? Do you wonder strange weather in your area might affect your plants health?

Goin2travel could make it easier for our to plan our next family reunion vacation

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I’m behind in my blog posts this weekend because we’re having our big family reunion this weekend. In about an hour I’ll be going over to my brothers home where we’ll be having a big barbecue. All of my brothers and my sister will be there with their spouses and children. It should be fun.

I expect at some point during todays activities we’ll begin to discuss what we’d like to do next year for our family reunion. In prior planning sessions we’ve discussed traveling to other countries for our reunions.

Obviously if we were going to hold one of our get togethers outside the country we’d probably look in to some kind of vacation rental as this would keep our costs down and I’m sure we’d have fun staying together in one or two vacation rentals.

So … I’m doing a bit of research before I leave for the BBQ. There’s a site called Goin2travel.com that specializes in worldwide vacation rentals. Owners and managers of various types of vacation rentals list their rentals and availability on the site and people like myself who are looking to rent can browse through the selection and find the ideal vacation rental.

One of my brothers went to San Diego a couple of years ago and he just loved the area so maybe we’ll look into San Diego vacation rental homes. Another idea might be to look for Newport beach rental homes. The beauty of this site is that you can find vacation rentals just about anywhere.

Actually … one of my brothers lives in Vancouver Canada and we haven’t had our family reunion out west yet. Perhaps I should look for vacation rentals in Whistler BC. Staying in a lovely mountain home sounds beautiful doesn’t it?

I’m bookmarking this site and I’m definitely going to be telling my siblings about it when I see them in an hour or so. It might really help us plan our next reunion.

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