Affordable Gift Ideas For The Holiday Season

You can find great Holiday gift ideas like this and more www.pinterest.com/patmartin/cheap-but-thoughtful-gift-ideas/

Christmas Tree on a Dime
With trying economic times, you may be tempted to forego the tree this Christmas. But you really can decorate an entire tree for under $50. Check out three inspiring, penny-pinching ideas.

On the Cheap
We asked stylist Rebecca Hawkins to dream up three Christmas trees that cost under $50 to decorate.
Although she was initially skeptical that it could be done, Rebecca came up with three innovative and charming trees that you can copy at home by simply recycling old decorations and using things you may already have around the house.
In calculating our costs, we factored in only the decorations, assuming you already had a tree and lights.

Children’s Tree


By gathering elements that your children play with or use every day, you can tailor a tree to a child's tastes. Colorful socks and mittens make creative ornaments. Children's pinwheels come in large quantities at a party-supply source. Threaded through an ornament hanger, they have big impact on the tree. Cookie cutters press into service as ornaments, and a Santa hat tops the whole thing off. A colorful throw serves as a tree skirt.

Natural Tree


By simply gathering material from your yard in the weeks leading up to Christmas, you can create a sparkling tree with natural appeal. On a tree that’s extremely budget-friendly, dried hydrangea blossoms, berried branches, and sweet gumballs make a layered, elegant display. Start looking for hydrangea blossoms and gumballs in mid-October. A store-bought birdhouse was our only splurge, but you could save this money by purchasing a wooden one a crafts store and painting it yourself.


Paper Tree
Save your Christmas cards from years gone by, and repurpose the colorful designs as Christmas ornaments and garlands. With a hole punch and a hanger, paper coasters were also turned into decorations. A paper lantern continues the paper theme as a tree topper.

Home Buyers Value Environmentally Friendly Features

In a shocking (not really) development, new research has shown that home buyers now, more often than not, favor environmentally friendly and sustainable features in homes than in previous years. While this particular development may not come as a shock, the reasons behind this shift in opinion are more varied than you might think.

Coinciding with a rise in desire for quality neighborhoods and schools, and consequently a willingness to shell out more money to ensure this quality, home buyers are also taking steps to ensure that they pay less (in the long run) for the home itself. Thus, features that save money on upkeep, utilities, and energy are hot items.

You can read more about these findings over here at RISMedia, where much of this information originally came from. 

An Interactive Webinar With Practical Compliance Strategies

As most environmental professionals know, governmental agencies at the international, federal, and state level continue to strongly focus on green house gas (GHG) from industrial sources. For example, in February 2013, the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) released its second year of emissions data, including information from facilities in 41 source categories. States, such as California, which passed a sweeping climate change plan last decade, continue to implement that regulatory program, and ongoing discussions on taxing carbon continue to unfold in Congress.

If you are presently a regulated facility, it's likely you have been undertaking steps to reduce your carbon footprint for quite some time. If your company is unregulated right now due to your industry type or company size, you may have not had much to do with measuring your carbon footprint or considering viable reduction strategies. But, now is the perfect time to a closer look.

Reducing your carbon footprint should not be driven by regulatory requirements alone. There is a strong case for pursuing GHG reductions, most of which are tied to energy usage, as a means to achieve positive bottom-line results by reducing your costs.

Join us for an in-depth webinar on December 5. Our presenter, a seasoned environmental professional who has helped numerous companies develop and implement business-based carbon footprint reduction plans, will provide a roadmap for developing a plan that can add savings to your organization's bottom line.

You and your colleagues will learn:

• Useful regulatory context, including a brief overview of important regulatory schemes at the international, federal, and selected state level

• A simple method for performing a GHG emission assessment process to identify sources 
• • How to use the collected information from the previous steps to provide senior management with a comprehensive going forward strategy based on business opportunities and savings
• Viable focus areas, such as key energy conservation and reduction projects
• Case studies that illustrate the best practices other companies have followed to establish and maintain successful programs
• How to partner with third parties, such as your utility provider and equipment manufacturer, to identify additional opportunities for reductions
• How to communicate your carbon footprint reduction plan successfully to customers, regulators, local communities, employees, investors, and others
• How to identify and evaluate resources to help you develop and implement your carbon footprint reduction plan.

                    CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO AND TO REGISTER YOUR SPOT

EAT. DRINK. MINGLE. HOP. REPEAT.
SATURDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 19TH, 2013
4:00PM-8:00PM / 5 VIP Satellite Parties

7:30PM-10:30PM / Main Rooftop Party
10:30PM-1:00AM / After Party at Rhythm & Brews


Hop to 5 amazing rooftop parties on a fall evening and enjoy incredible views, delicious food and cocktails. Take our Traveling Rooftop - the Double Decker Bus or Bike Chattanooga from one to another. Then move to the main rooftop party on the Bijou parking deck overlooking the scenic city not to mention 6 green|spaces incentivized solar installations.


green|spaces main rooftop party will feature 7 local restaurants which will provide yummy appetizers and delectable cocktails, music by WTM Blues Band & our Headliner T-Bird & the Breaks and great people coming together to support green|spaces. And thanks to our wonderful sponsor EPB, you will be able to watch the big game in style in "The EPB Fiber Optics Football Lounge". After listening to great music and partaking in the amazing drinks and food, hop on down to Rhythm & Brews for more live music and entertainment!

Looking for a Sustainable Urban Living Website?

So you're interested in green living, sustainable architecture, smart urban growth, the whole shebang. But sometimes you might have trouble finding a site or blog that covers general trends, rather than endless posts about palette gardens and urban chicken farms, and how you too can create your own solar panels in the basement using all-natural ingredients (spoiler: it's difficult).

Well...read this, then. Ever heard of This Big City? If you haven't, it's great, and you should definitely click here in order to start getting your fill. Traffic problems, green architecture, sustainable growth, ideas for the urban economy of the coming centuries, you'll find it all here.

You can also follow them on Twitter (@thisbigcity) if you feel so inclined. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go read about how Lagos is tackling bus pollution and congestion.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Hello everyone!

Just wanting to let everyone know that we have a new website dedicated to Green Living! Click here to see it! The new site will continue to change a bit as we edit and add more features and functions, along with migrating information from the old site.

But fear not! The old site, greenlivingwithgrace.com, will still be active for awhile yet.

In addition, there are now blogs tied to this website, among others (as you may have noticed). These are also in the process of being set up, so please bear with us as we work our way towards functionality!