Great Idea, Terrible Noise!

I just opened a fresh bag of Sun Chips this afternoon for my lunch. I think I am deaf now. The new packaging even warns the consumer that the bag is LOUD, but I bought them anyway. The bag is the first compost-able bag in the world (so they claim) and that is why it is so loud. I think the idea is great. Anything we can do to create less trash, I'm all for. I give the Frito-Lay company an A+ for their great idea. I give Frito-Lay D- with regard to the noise pollution the bag creates. I don't think I will let my kids eat from the bag, we will all be hard of hearing if I do. I thought I might just dump the chips into some other container and go bury the compost bag in my flower bed. Go see for yourself what I am talking about, and then let me know what you think! Happy crunching!!!

LED Christmas Lights: A Tangled Mess!

Last year I joined the bandwagon and purchased some LED Christmas lights to decorate our landscape. LED lights are supposed to be better for the environment and they use less electricity to light. I think proponents of LED lighting also claim that the bulbs don't burn out. Anyway, I purchased a couple of boxes last year for my blue spruce in my front yard. I say that I purchased only two boxes because the darn things are so expensive. The regular light strings are really cheap, so it is a shock when you see that a string of LEDs are $20.00. This year we live in a totally different house, but I had to make my lights work because it just isn't in our budget to replace any of our other Christmas lights with regular, let alone LED lights. I thought I was being super careful last year when I put all my lights away. I wound the strings around newspaper bolts and put them in totes; all safe and sound. Today, I took out my lights and started stringing them around my porch and the few trees and shrubs we have here at our new house. I got to the tree that I wanted to put the LED's on and they were so incredibly tangled that I felt like Chevy Chase in the "Christmas Vacation" movie. I stood there trying to get the wires untangled for an hour! I got so frustrated that I had to put them down and go inside for awhile. On my second try, I got them untangled, and strung around my tree, but I was exhausted! There must be something about the wires that makes those lights prone to entangling themselves. I had put them away in the same manner as my regular lights, but during their off-season the LEDs wormed their way into a nearly hopeless tangled bundle. They are way too expensive to just toss in the trash like I have been known to do when my old ones got so tangled, so here is my advice if you choose to use LED Christmas lights: be very meticulous when you put them away so you don't end up with a mess like I did!