By Lana Torre

The holidays are almost upon us. It just doesn’t seem possible but Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah are merely a few weeks away. Because we are all so bombarded with extreme shopping, cooking huge meals, and major to do lists, I thought, why not make this season even more enjoyable by preparing to transform the foyer now. We can begin with an autumn theme and work our way through to the winter holidays, while using green principles.

Now is the perfect time to take a stroll in your backyard, and finds lots of material to bring in to use in your holiday decorations. Let’s have our own personal scavenger hunt. Take a walk downstairs to the basement and then rummage through the garage to find old chairs, wooden boxes and picture frames.

Grab your garden clippers and gloves and let’s go for a walk. If you are fortunate to have bittersweet vine growing wildly in the back forty, clip it in long lengths. Look for wild grapevine, clip it also and make large circles of the vines, [much easier to handle when back inside]. Collect dry, fallen maple leaves. If rose gardening is your gig, clip the hips [or find wild hips on hiking paths or even roadside]. The wild hips are a beautiful deep red and resemble a small berry. Prune your evergreens now. Take small branches from the underside of the trees. When back home, put the cut part of the branch into a large bucket of water. If you have other greens like holly and cedar, you can clip and save them too.

The garage is the perfect hideout for hidden treasures. Search for old wooden chairs and large, wooden picture frames. By your husband’s work table, look for wooden boxes [he’s storing old tools in them].

Now down stairs to the basement. Search for old, glass canning jars in all sizes. Find your ribbon box and pull out any shade of green.

Let’s start by winding the grapevine in and out of the balusters of your staircase. This will create your base. Add snippets of bittersweet. Wire them on every other post. Make beautiful green bows and tie them to the newel posts. At the base of the newel, pile pumpkins, gourds and squash, or place a small pumpkin on each step. Place the old wooden chair in the foyer. Wrap bittersweet around the chair back and place your largest pumpkin on it. Scatter the maple leaves on your foyer table and add some acorns or walnuts for contrast.

Now, here is the easy part. When Thanksgiving has passed, remove the bittersweet from your vine base. Replace it with greenery and red rose hips.

Keep the wooden chair in the foyer, and add a sprig of green and a bow. Place the large wooden box on the floor next to the chair and fill it holly and cedar. Use the canning jars on your foyer table. Fill them a bit with kosher salt and add a white votive candle. Place the large, empty frame over the table and adorn with sprigs of green.

Get creative. Recycle, reuse, reinvent and relax this holiday season. Your work is done!

You have moved into your beautiful new home. You have unpacked all those boxes and recycled them. You have arranged your furniture and sorted out the artwork, now it is finally time to paint your walls in colors that will create a color flow in your space.

It is important to consider the mood you are attempting to create when choosing color, and how one room will relate to the others. A color story tells that tale. First and most importantly is the light in the room. Is the room blooming with sunlight, does the room catch late afternoon sun, or is this space shaded most of the time?

Color is an emotion made visible and tangible. When selecting your color choices, ask yourself how do you want to feel in this space? Do you need a soothing, cool color in the bedroom? Is your desire to make your family room a warm, neutral gathering space for your family. Have you always wished for a deep red dining room that will spark conversation when entertaining friends? Consider the true meaning of color. Here is a guide that you can use when creating your color story.

Green. Because of it’s dominance in the nature world, green rooms create energy and growth. It is a good choice for family rooms and common spaces. The perfect compliment to green is in the red family, so use brick, or berry shades to accent .

Red. Most complimentary to green. Red is a warm, pure, dominating choice. Perfect for your dining room, or where you wish to conjure lively activity, such as a child’s play room.

Yellow. This is another warm color of sunshine. To make your laundry room cheery, paint it yellow. The best compliment to yellow is purple, or blues with a lavender undertone, like periwinkle. If you have cherry kitchen cabinets, add white to yellow to make a rich, cream shade.

Blue. The coolest color of the color wheel , can evoke feelings of calmness and serenity. It is a perfect choice for a bedroom or a nursery. You can choose a pale blue or a blue with green undertones for your bath, and you will create a spa-like space.

Purple. A color of royalty and playfulness. A young girl’s room is always charming in lavender, add accents of light green.

Brown. The ultimate earth tone, the color of sand and soil. Brown is a peaceful, conservative, easy to live with color. Considered the most neutral of all colors today, it is a perfect color solution for common spaces, family rooms. Traditional and contemporary styles work well with browns, from the color of coffee with cream, to the rich tones of deep sand.

Black. The total no color-color. Strong and formal, black can anchor any room, and I would have every room with some black. Add some white and green to black to make a banker’s grey, and you have a sophisticated and upscale color, clean and uncluttered.

White. Clean, pure, and simple. I always prefer all trim painted in some shade of white. When desiring a white room, change the shade of white for the trim. This will give needed contrast, and will make an interesting play of the white color. Your white walls will open up the room and make your eye think the space is larger and cleaner.

A well chosen color palette for your home will create the feelings  you want to surround you and your family. Be it warm and cozy, conservative and neutral, fresh or lively, you can say it all with color.

It’s Autumn. The kids have returned to school. And you are left with the remnants of Summer, deflated  inflatable toys, outgrown flip-flops, and clutter everywhere.

Now is the perfect time to reorganize, and have a garage sale.  Turn that clutter into cash! Fall garage sales are reportedly more prosperous than Spring sales. Some people have the urge to purge before Winter, while others are in the gathering mode, like squirrels. Take advantage of those “squirrels“, and spend time at least two weeks before your sale to de-clutter,  purge, and sort items that are saleable.

While doing this, make lists of items most likely to sell like children’s bikes, gourmet kitchen appliances, and collectables, then advertise them. Use your local papers and on-line social sites. Approach your neighbors to join you in this event, multi-family sales draw more crowds. Usually a two day sale is long enough, so plan to offer a discount on the second day.

Collect folding tables from neighbors and friends to use for smaller items. Use boxes for books and have a clothes rack ready to hang that red designer suit that was always too small. Recruit the kid’s to help out by making signs that can be seen from the main road and the closest, busiest intersections.

Three to four days before your sale, take a drive to a dollar store and purchase colored stickers for pricing. Also make a stop at the bank for change, making sure to have plenty of single dollars.

On the day of the sale, rise early, very early. Antique collectors will be at your driveway by sunrise to make a big score. Have girlfriends close by for needed help and make a big pot of coffee and a plate of blueberry muffins, [they will love you even more for this].

Be ready to work, and practice the art of negotiation.

The first hours of the sale will be the busiest, but a neighborhood sale can lure in a steady stream of buyers.

By the end of the second day, when you are tired and cranky, and are really great at haggling, order a pizza for the family, have it delivered, close the garage doors and bring in your shoebox of money.

After enjoying dinner, sit back and have the kids assist in the game of money counting. Be proud that all your work has been fruitful. Your closets are cleaned out, you sold the Shark knife sharpener, and you have plenty to donate to Goodwill.

Be good to yourself come Monday morning, go to the mall and purchase a new, red designer suit.

As the Dakota proverb says, “We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.” This statement has taken on a whole new meaning in regards to our environment. The carbon footprint from the past and present are causing devastating effects to the future. The United States insatiable appetite for energy has made it the biggest contributor to green house gases. The typical American household generates 55,000 pounds of carbon dioxide annually. By contrast, the typical German household contributes 27,000 pounds, while Sweden is only 15,000 pounds. Carbon dioxide is the primary cause of global warming and is emitted into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels (gasoline, coal, oil and natural gas). Global warming has been linked to the increase in severe hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves and flooding.

One not-for-profit organization in the Rochester-area is willing to take on a global issue and bring it to the local level. Cool Rochester is launching a 3-year effort to engage 80,000 households in the greater Rochester area to reduce the total annual CO2 emissions of the area by 1 billion pounds. The project, called the Cool Rochester Challenge, will introduce participants to a variety of simple actions that they can choose from to reduce their household energy usage and their CO2 emissions.

In addition to engaging individuals, the Cool Rochester Challenge includes businesses, municipalities, and community groups. Cool Rochester will encourage them to make a significant CO₂ reduction pledge from among their constituents, among those they serve, and from within their own internal operations.

All participants in the Challenge will register on the Cool Rochester website, www.CoolRochester.org, calculate their current carbon footprint, and make a pledge to reduce their energy consumption by a targeted amount. The total number of pledges will be displayed on the website homepage, to serve as references and inspiration for others. As specific actions are taken, participants will update their individual profiles on the website and they will be encouraged to provide monthly utility data so that their progress, normalized for temperature and other factors can be tracked.

As participants register on the website, they will be able to choose their organizational affiliation, so that organizations can compete for recognition and rewards by achieving the biggest carbon reductions. Cool Rochester will provide participants with the necessary tools, training, and support to reduce their carbon output. Cool Rochester will encourage businesses, municipalities and other organizations to engage with others in their field to form “Communities of Practice”: sharing best practices, insights, goals, and resources, in an atmosphere of friendly “co-opetition” as they move from encouraging their constituents to reduce carbon at home, to examining their own internal operations for opportunities to cut-back. As participants complete the residential program, they will be encouraged to become “Cool Ambassadors” and encourage their family, friends, and coworkers to join the Challenge, with incentives and recognition for those who are successful.

Cool Rochester is leveraging the strategy outlined in David Gershon’s book “Low Carbon Diet.” It outlines energy saving ideas in a very easy to implement step-by-step process. It takes homeowners and renters through four sessions aimed at educating, informing and empowering them in the area of energy savings. The book focuses on making small lifestyle changes that will reduce the home owner’s energy consumption, thus saving money. Opportunities to save energy can range from recycling to water conservation, to electrical energy conservation, heating and cooling, transportation opportunities and so forth. One major savings opportunity in Rochester is water conservation because much of the water is pumped uphill from Lake Ontario which requires a great deal of energy (close to $4 million worth annually). The home owner is able to pick and choose what changes they are able to make. All the small changes can add to a significant savings.

Cool Rochester has partnered with the City of Rochester and has been endorsed by Mayor Robert Duffy. The list of organizations that support Cool Rochester include Sierra Club, Town of Irondequoit, Rochester Museum and Science Center, and the Center for Environmental Information. The list is growing everyday as more and more individuals and organizations want to be part of the solution to global warming.

Join citizens of Greater-Rochester to Save Money, Energy & the Planet.