The Week Before Christmas
December 17, 2007 | 1 Comment
Twas the week before Christmas and the search engines were slow, shoppers were searching for places to spend their dough.
With mom on her laptop and me on the pc, we knew that the family would be happy as could be.
On VISA, on MASTERCARD, on AMEX we spend, will this internet shopping spree ever come to an end.
Email accounts were totally ablaze, Credit Card companies wanting our limits to raise.
Overnight deliveries are now the only way, UPS and FedEx the dividends they will pay.
Now it’s all ordered and we have time to think, Oh what the heck I’m just going to have a drink.
We will get it all wrapped, some how, some way, And my wish for you is a wonderful Christmas Day.
Green Holiday Lights
December 11, 2007 | 1 Comment
They are beautiful to look at and in many cases provide us with countless hours of conversation, so whats the big deal with the energy required to operate outdoor holiday decorations? A little higher power bill for the month of December has come to be expected. The problem is that when you take a major metropolitan area like Atlanta, and figure that outside lighting adorns probably 50% of all homes, when added all together there is a tremendous waste of power by simply not controlling how long the lights stay on. Energy efficiency has to do with, not only what kind of lights you use but also how long they remain illuminated.
Timing Is Everything
There is a simple way to fix this delima. Go to your local home improvement or hardware store and purchase a timer to use on your outdoor lighting. These timers can be as simple as allowing you to set the amount of time for you lights to remain on daily to containing photo cells to turn the lights on and off for you depending on when dusk arrives. All in all the photo cell timers are my favorite. You only have to set it once and that is when you are installing them initially. As an added benefit, if it is raining or has turned surprisingly cold, you don’t have to go out to do anything with these photo cell timers. They just come on and go off automatically and you determine the duration of how long your lights remain on.
Christmas Tree Decorating
December 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment
As has happened in years past, decorating the Christmas Tree around our home starts early in the morning with the assembly of the tree. To hold all the ornaments we have a nine foot tree that requires around 1400 lights. Once the tree is up and the lights are on, our trip down memory lane can begin. You see, over 30 years ago when Millie and I got married we started collecting Christmas Ornaments from every where we traveled too. Soon enough family members saw how much we enjoyed our ornament collection and elected to add to it with ornaments of things they noticed that we enjoyed; Barbie Dolls, Harley Davidson, Atlanta Braves, and of course Georgia Bulldogs just to mention a few. Today we have over 600 special ornaments along with over 100 filler ornaments that go on our tree.
So as you can well imagine, decorating the tree involves discussion about when and where we acquired certain ornaments, our first Christmas together and the "Baby’s First Christmas" ball from when our son was born. Perhaps a bit of this tradition is being passed on as we gave our son and his wife a "Baby’s First Christmas" ball to hang on their tree. I guess it goes without saying that we are really looking forward to Christmas Day and our son, daughter-in-law and grandson Lincoln coming over for the day.
I can only hope that as you are decorating for the holidays you have as much fun and as many fond memories as we do. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays To All.
Holiday Lights Southern Nights
November 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment
At last nights Lighting of the Great Tree, there was a video of Mayor Shirley Franklin announcing a photo contest of holiday lights in Atlanta. The contest is called “Holiday Lights, Southern Nights” and runs through December 15. Metro Atlanta residents are encouraged to submit photos of their holiday lights and decorations to www.atlanta.net. The photos will be voted on and the top three winners will receive the following prizes: A $500 Fresh Market gift card for Third Place, A $1,000 Macy’s gift card for Second Place and the Grand Prize of $2,500. All three winners will receive tickets to some of Atlanta’s most sought after attractions such as The Georgia Aquarium, The Atlanta Botanical Gardens and The Fernbank Museum of Natural History.
Let’s spread the word about this contest and give the voters an even more difficult job than normal in choosing the winners. Some of you started your decorating for the holidays right after Halloween and you have a good jump on the rest of us. But don’t worry, we will be getting our decorations up in plenty of time to get the photos submitted. The sooner you get your pictures submitted the more time they will be available for the voters. So hurry and get your photos in and give your fellow Atlantan’s plenty of time to vote on your holiday decorations.
Atlanta Tree Lighting
November 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Every year for the last 60 years the holiday season in Atlanta is kicked off by the Lighting of the Great Tree atop Macy’s at Lenox Square. This year was no different. Chilly temperatures greeted over 100,000 guests who witnessed the event. Prior to the lighting of the tree, the crowd was entertained by country music stars Big and Rich along with recording artists Take 6 and Emmy Rossum. As the switch was flipped and the lights came on an awesome fireworks display began. This is one of the top ten must attend events during the holidays each year. If you missed this event in person, you can catch the replay Saturday evening at 7:00 EST on WGN.
Clean Air For The Holidays
November 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment
You Are What You Breathe
I hope that statement is not true. So what kind of interesting things do you think we breathe at home? Airborne particles are found in every home and include smoke, dust, pet dander, mold spores, dust mites, or pollen. These particles that are floating in the air that flows through our homes are for the most part very small. They vary in size from about 0.03 to 100 microns in size. So what is a micron? Well let’s put it into perspective. The average diameter of a human hair is 50 microns. As you can see, many of these particles are tiny.
Clean It Up
What would you think is the best way to improve the air quality in our homes? You guessed it, Change the filter on the HVAC system on a regular basis. There are a multitude of different types of filters on the market today. Everything from the inexpensive fiberglass filters to more costly electrostatically charged filters. Only you can decide which is best for your needs. Just remember the smaller sized particles could pass right through a standard fiberglass fiter and circulate back into the air you breath. It is recommended that the air filters in our homes be changed every 3 months to improve our air quality. If there has been a remodeling project in your home, you may want to change the filters more often to help clean the air quicker. This would also help in keeping the house cleaner from dust.
The Holidays Are Here
Why not welcome your holiday guests with cleaner air by changing the air filters in your home? Wouldn’t now be a great time to get on the quarterly schedule? Happy Holidays!
Top 10 Atlanta Holiday Events
November 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment
As the holiday season approaches, Atlanta probably will not see a white Christmas as other areas of the country will. However we will have quite a few fun filled and totally entertaining events. Newer residents may be looking for a special event or two to attend while some of our more established residents may need a refresher course on some of the fun things to do during the holidays in Atlanta. While this list does not contain every event, my family has enjoyed these and have made them a holiday tradition.
- The Lighting of The Great Tree atop Macy’s at Lenox Square - A Thanksgiving Night Tradition
- Putting up our tree and decorations - We have collected decorations from all of our travels and decorating our tree is like a trip down memory lane
- If you have children take them to ride the Pink Pig
- The Festival of Trees - Benefiting Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
- Light display at Lake Lanier Islands
- Light display at Stone Mountain Park
- Light display at Callaway Gardens
- The Atlanta Ballet performance of The Nutcracker
- The Chick-Fil-A Bowl
- The Peach Drop on New Years Eve
It’s time to start making your plans to take in some of the festive events that metro Atlanta has to offer during the holidays. Hopefully this helps.
Christmas at Macy’s
September 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Last night my wife and I went to the Mall of Georgia and had dinner and did a little shopping. Bear in mind that it is the end of September. Imagine our surprise when we walked into Macy’s and saw Christmas decorations already up. Now, I understand getting ready for the holidays a little early. It’s nice to have things done and ready for the festivites, after all Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year.
I guess we have all heard someone say that it looks like the retailers are getting ready for Christmas earlier and earlier each year. Do you remember when the day after Thanksgiving was so special because you got to see all the decorations that the stores had been concealing. Then we would begin to see decorations toward the middle of November and then the beginning of the month. What’s next, Santa Claus shooting fireworks from his sleigh for the fourth of July? Oops, I probably just gave some marketing guru at Macy’s their next Christmas marketing ploy. Oh well I might as well go ahead and get ready for the after Christmas Sale, it should probably begin about 3 days before Halloween!
