All Lit Up!

For Christmas that is! The Christmas tree is up and all decorations are in place and note to self: Remember to use garden gloves when it comes time to take the tree down! My knuckles are all sliced up from hanging ornaments and having my hands in water cooking this weekend. Ouch.

So what kind of lights did you choose for your tree? Did you use the old, warm, white or colored strands of lights or did you say out with the old and in with the new and shoot for the new LED lights? I personally love the warm feel of the older lights period. My favorite are the old school, screw on bulbs, ya know, the ones Snoopy used to decorate his dog house in Charlie Brown's Christmas cartoon.

Having said that, last year I got rid of the old bulb lights b/c I was worried about how hot they got. This year I picked up a few packages of the new LED lights to try out and though I don't care for the bluish glow of them, they are cool to the touch so they do feel safer on the tree. Below is a picture I took of the tree in night time mode on my camera. It cracked me up how the picture turned out because I had all the lights in the room turned off except for the tree. It's so electric looking!


Speaking of the new LED light bulbs, did you know that they can be hazardous to the environment if broken? I didn't realize it but they can be very harmful if broken because they hold small amounts of mercury, which is harmful to humans and animals. The bulbs are great in conserving energy but use caution when disposing of them!

A couple of months ago, I ordered a pack of 16 free LED light bulbs from our power company. The city/county offers free light bulbs to each household, you just have to call and request them. So when I got them I opened the box just to be sure they were all in one piece as not to cause any problems to the household.

Here are a couple links to some helpful information regarding light bulb disposal and recycling.

http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/

http://www.lightbulbrecycling.com/regulations.html#Federal_Regulations