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My wife really likes candles. The problem is that most candles are made out of petroleum. As I'm sure you know petroleum is not exactly environmentally friendly and takes millions of years to make. We need to reduce out dependence on this industry, so cutting using soy candles instead is a nice start.

Soy candles last significantly longer (up to three times) than petroleum based candles. Other types of natural candles, such as beeswax, can also claim long burn times, but soy is the most cost effective. Soy candles are also cleaner. While their might be a little soot, you should not have the thick black soot that you have with petroleum based candles. Petroleum candles can actually put out more smog than a car.

Candles are great, but can be a very dirty light source. If we are going to help clean up our environment, we have to look at every thing we do. Are our candles clean? Is our dish washer efficient? Are our cleaners phosphate free? There are so many things that we need to keep in mind. It would be nice if the manufacturers would do a little more to make sure that we get eco-friendly products, but we can't wait for them. We have to do it ourselves. A simple thing to do, if you burn candles, is make sure you use soy candles.

If you are a retailer, consider loosing your smog producing stock and replacing it all with soy. Wholesale soy candles are inexpensive and a great alternative to your current stock of petroleum based candles. The more we support the local farmers who farm the soy and the more we stop using products from the oil industry, the cleaner our environment will be. We are shepherds of the Earth.

Printing can be very wasteful. The paper comes from trees, petroleum based inks let out volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can damage the environment and the process of making paper is not very pleasant. But when we need to do brochure printing or business cards printing, or whatever else we need to print on paper, our businesses need to be able to do that. Without everyone using a PDA of some sort, there is no way to go completely paperless. What are we to do in order to keep our business and personal needs met and still keep our environmentally sound desires satiated?

Of course, the ideal of a paperless society is a long way off, and we may never get there. We can't produce enough sustainable wood products to meet all of our paper demands, but there are a few things we can do to help reduce the environmental impact. We can make sure our printers use recycled materials and we know what type of recycled material they use, we can make sure they use soy based ink, instead of petroleum based inks and we can make sure their paper comes from a mill that uses less water, contains their waste, and uses fewer volatile chemicals in their production of paper. We, as consumers, need to hold our printers to green printing practices.

There are two types of recycled material for paper, pre-consumer and post-consumer. Pre-consumer recycled material means that the wood chips from the wood mills (ie, sawdust, etc) is used in the production of the paper. This is good to use, but not a big shift from what they were already doing. The better type of recycled material is that used post-consumer. That means that you and I read the paper, we then put it into the recycling bin, it gets carried to the mill where it is shredded, pulped, and turned into new paper. A certain amount of pre-consumer wood is usually used to give it more strength, but we want a high amount of post-consumer paper used as well.

VOCs are damaging to the environment. Besides, we need to cut our reliance on unsustainable materials, like petroleum. Soy is a better solution. You can shred up the paper with soy based inks and feed it to your worms, spread it on your compost pile for bulk, use it as cat litter or bedding for small animals and much more. All these things would be dangerous with petroleum based inks.

The first two options are easy for you to check into. The last is not so easy. We often do not know what the mills do. We do not know if they dump their hot, chemically laden water into the river their next to. We don't know even what mill the paper came from most of the time. As consumers, there is not much we can do here, but the business owners that deal with these mills can insist on clean practices. They can refuse to work with mills that do not lead environmentally sound practices. And they can let us consumers know that they expect their partners to follow environmentally sound practices. The problem is, they need to define what is environmentally sound. What they call environmentally sound, I may not agree is such a great practice, but that is another article.

For all my contest loving friends out there, Charter Communications if offering a contest for anyone who lives in their services area (whether you get service from them or not). You can enter to win a Honda Civic Hybrid. It is a nice car that would be nice to have in this time of high prices and low wages.

I don't know much about Charter, since I don't live in their service area, so I can't speak to them being a good service or not. I did look at a few of their prices, and they are reasonable. If I was in their service area, I'd be interested enough by their prices to see how good a deal I'd really get. Unfortunately, since I'm not in their service area, I can't even enter the contest. :(

If you live in their service area, check them out. At least enter the contest. You can't win if you don't enter. If you win, be sure to let me know!

With the government mandating that all television broadcast must be digital by February, it leaves many of us wondering if we need to buy a new television. Our TV was purchased in 1991, so is not digital. Our VCR and DVD players are much newer, but I confirmed that neither of them have digital receivers. So I'm looking for a new TV.

I've looked at the local places and can get a decent one for around $500-$700. A bit more than I want to spend, but if I can manage to save up the money, I will. I thought I'd look at some of the large plasma screens that are available. If I'm going to spend that kind of money, I might as well spend a little more and get a really cool screen.

I found a 46" Sharp Plasma Screen for $750. It is just a little more than the 36" I was looking at for $700 and a lot bigger. But this is really out of my price range. I would love to have a screen like that, it would be awesome to watch Veggie Tales on a big screen TV with Dolby 5.1 surround sound, but I plan on spending that money on stuff I can do to keep Emma active, rather than sitting on the couch. I've sent away for the converter box coupons. The converter box costs about $60 and the coupons are for $40. That means that 46" screen will cost $730 more than the converter box. Maybe some day I'll get the big TV, but we don't watch TV enough to pay for cable, let alone a big TV.

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I'm not in great shape. I'm about the right weight, but I have very little muscle mass. With my arthritis, I should exercise daily, get some muscle mass, especially in my trunk. I do want to be able to dance at Emma's wedding.

The problem is that exercise is often boring. You can spend a lot of money on equipment that you might use as a clothes drying rack. There are also many videos out there, like the XFLOWSION series.

The nice thing about exercise videos is that you have a little excitement, if they are interesting videos. But after watching the same exercise video 20 times, is it still going to be interesting to you?

With the XFLOWSION series, you get several videos, which would be nice, but they cost $59.85. That is still a lot of money to be spending on something you may let sit on your shelf and collect dust. If you think you will use it, it would probably be worth it. I've not watched it, but from the short bits of it I have seen, it looks more fun that a lot of exercise videos I've seen. It seems like he has you doing multiple things, instead of the same type of thing every time. My library doesn't have it, so I can't try it out.

I think that the best exercise is one that you will enjoy. If you don't enjoy it, you will not continue doing it. If you really like riding your bike, ride it. If you like gardening, that is good exercise. If you like jumping rope, jump away. There are lots of good exercises that can be a lot of fun for everyone. I like gardening, but I don't think that I get enough out of it. I think I need more. What works for you?

When I was 13 when I got my first computer. A Commodore 64. It was a lot of fun. Along with it I got a 300 bps modem and the first thing I did was to connect to the an on-line chat service called Q-Link. This company later became known as AOL when they moved their services to the PC world.

I didn't stay with Q-link long, I found another service called Playnet. Playnet was a little more personal. It was smaller. It was actually older than Q-link and I was told that Q-link "stole" the software from Playnet. It was very similar, but Q-link did better marketing but getting Commodore to include their software with the sale of the modems. Playnet later went under and I had to move services again.

While I was on Playnet, one of my favorite things that we did regularly was bingo. I played regularly and had a lot of fun with friends from around the US. I've not played much bingo since, but now that I have a child, it might be fun to take up playing again. Especially if it is something that we can do as a family.

Disney Bingo could be a lot of fun. Emma is a big fan of the princesses. She loves all of them, but right not her favorite is Ariel. No, Sleeping Beauty. No Cinderella. Well, she really likes them at any rate. I like some of the other Disney products as well. Elizabeth came into our marriage with a large collection of Disney movies.

When I was a teen I used to play paintball every few weekends. Paintball is a lot of fun, a group of us would all cram our paintball gear into my car, don our battle dress uniforms and drive out to some forest land where a guy, we called sarge ran a paintball site. I'd grab my paintball gun, buy a box of paintballs, load up my rifle and sidearm, and two pouches of extra paintball ammunition. I'd pull my mask down over my face and I'd run out and shoot people, and get shot myself.

I no longer remember if I used a spyder paintball gun, or a tippman, or some other brand. The paintball weapon to me, is unimportant, what mattered was getting out with friend, enjoying the woods, and of course, shooting people. It was a blast and I highly recommend trying it.

If you are going to do paintball, I recommend getting a few basics to protect yourself. You have to have a mask. They make masks specific for paintball. Anyone who does paintball without eye protection is asking to be blinded, but I recommend more than eye protection. There are a few other sensitive places on your head. Getting a paintball in the ear, nose, temple or mouth is not pleasant. I used a mask that covered all of these and I still got hit in the face once (a shot came from underneath me, hit me in the chin.) It stung a little.

If you bruise easily, you might want to wear two layers of clothes, and this is a good idea until you know what it feels like to get hit by a paintball. You don't want to be always on guard, expecting to get hurt by a paintball shot. The extra layer gives you some padding, then you can learn what it feels like and as you play, you may find you don't need the extra layer.

The paintball gun you choose is less important. A paintball gun can range from junk to really good. If you are playing just once or twice, the paintball gun you choose will depend on what is available for rent. If you buy your own paintball gun, but the best you can afford and you will have a better paintball experience.

Where you play paintball determines what you wear. If you paintball in the woods, like I did, then you want camouflage. If you don't have camouflage clothing, either head to your local Army surplus, ear wear comfortable black pants and a dark shirt. If you paintball in an indoor park, then dark clothes are best as indoor paintball parks are often dim. Check out the venue before deciding on the proper attire.

I really want life insurance for my family. What happens if I go Home tomorrow, how will the bills be paid? Emma and Elizabeth could get by for 9 months on our savings, but then what? That does not even account for the cost of the funeral. I hope it is nothing fancy, but I know they would not do the cheapest either.

I've often pondered about this. The problem is that the budget right now is so tight. It always seems to be. But wouldn't it be even tighter for them if I was not making money? I always think that I'm young. I'm only 35, I've got plenty of time. That might be true, but you never know what our Lord has in mind. My time might be up very soon. While I'd love to see Him, I need to make sure my family is not going to be living off the generousity of others.

I've done a little research on life insurance. It is very confusing to me. Term Life, Whole Life, Half Life... All these terms that I don't really understand. I found out that Term Life is where you pay monthly a small amount for a period of time. At the end of that time, the policy ends and you can buy another policy. The only way to get anything from it is to die. Whole Life is a little different. You make payments into it and they are put into a savings account. If you die, then your family gets the protection ammount. However, the ammount in the savings account can accrue interest, and you can get loans from it and use it in various ways that I'm unsure of.

I think that I need a simple term life policy. There is also mortgage protection insurance which is a simplified policy that only pays off your mortgage and a little extra to cover "some final expenses". While this is not really ideal, it might make the cost low enough that it is something we could do now. Then Elizabeth would own the house and would only have to worry about the other needs. Since the mortgage counts for half of our expenses it might be worth it to get mortgage insurance.

Another fact I learned is that one in five people are disabled permanantly before the age of 65 and that half of all bank forclosures are cause by disability. That is staggering. Now, that figure I'm guessing, includes people, like my step-father, who received disability from the military (knee I think) but are still working and functioning like regular members of society, just with something that slows them down. I wonder if my arthritis would count? Anyway, I don't think that this scares me enough to get insurance for it, but there is mortgage disability insurance which would pay off the mortgage if I was disabled. I'm betting it only pays it off if I am disabled and cannot work.

Finding a policy we can afford I think is something we should seriously consider. It is important and would allow Elizabeth a little time to process everything, even if it is not enough to live on for the rest of her life, and send Emma to college as well. We almost got a policy just before I went back to school, but decided the budget was too tight. That was probably the right decicion, because with the higher cost of... everything... we may be struggling to pay it, if we had.

With so many soldiers over seas, we need to do whatever we can to ensure that they can be reminded of their loved ones. Personalized Christmas Cards are a great way to remind those you love, overseas and at home, that you are there. Christmascardsdirect.com has a good variety for you to choose from. You can order a quantitiy of cards to pass out to all your loved ones.

Christmascardsdirect.com has made sure that many soldiers will be able to remind those at home that they are loved. They donated 180,000 cards to Soldiers Angel's who will give the blank cards to soldiers over seas. Those soldiers will then be able to use those cards to write home. The soldiers in some areas of the world may have a difficult time getting cards for their loved ones. This is a very generous gift, that will affect many. Many gifts from organizations like this are generous, but only affect a few people and while this is a small thing to each soldier, all the small things add up and make small impacts on many.

Even if you do not agree with the wars, you still need to support the troops. They are doing thier job, and doing what they are told in order to make our country safer. They are doing a great job and diserve our support. Thank you, christmascardsdirect.com for showing your support.

It has been a while since I participated in a Food Friday and I thought it fitting that I rejoin with a talk about jelly beans. Do you like them? Would you rather strawberry shortcake or tiramisu? I think I