Holidays should be happy times and there’s no reason why fun for the family can’t be fine for the planet, too. This Halloween, let’s take a look at the way we celebrate and see if we’re doing all we can to keep the holiday super fun for kids while making the most of the green living ethics so many American families are working to incorporate into daily life. We’ve got a list of nifty tips to help you green your Halloween and we’re betting your kids will have the best Halloween of their lives if you can put a little extra thought into this year’s festivities.

10 Green Halloween Ideas

1. Visit A Local Farm For Pumpkins
Many of our nation’s small farmers supplement the income they make from growing food crops by growing a fun crop like big pumpkins for the Halloween trade. Maybe your family only visits these wonderful farms once a year to pick up your jack-o-lanterns-to-be, but October is a super time to find out who the farmers are in your area. Most farms that are open to the public are staffed with family members and friends who will be eager to tell you all about what they grow and you just may find that you could get better, organic, more affordable fruits and vegetables from these skilled, hard-working neighbors than from chain supermarkets many months out of each year. Your family can have a gorgeous day in the sun visiting local pumpkin farms and getting in touch with the lands where healthy food growing is going on near you. It’s a great and important experience for the kids to see crops growing and may introduce the grown-ups to the best apples, potatoes, squash, greens, melons and tomatoes money can buy!

2. Decorate for Halloween Without Plastic
Just a couple of generations ago, no one had plastic Halloween decorations. Holidays are one of those little instances in which this non-planet-friendly material has crept into our lives as a norm or a must. Think outside the box and back to your grandparents’ day when homes were made cute, spooky or autumnal with home-grown or handmade decorations. If you have a home farm or garden, your squashes, pumpkins and dried corn stalks are the most authentic Halloween decor you can get your hands on. Old clothes and fabric scraps become scarecrows, ghosts and goblins. Let the children make their own paper cutouts of witches, cats and owls instead of buying plastic ones. Those gigantic plastic Halloween objects which are seen covering the lawns in some towns may have a sort of instant appeal, but when you think about the energy that goes into producing them for just one night’s use as well as the dangerous off-gassing that occurs with most new plastics, you may start to see something a little monstrous about them and not in a nice, Halloween-ish way. Doing without plastic gives your family a chance to express creativity while reducing pollution this Halloween.

3. Make Halloween Costumes out of Recycled Materials
If time seems short, it may be tempting to buy ready-made plastic masks and costumes for the kids, but if you can set aside just an evening or two to help children plan and craft their own Halloween costumes, you’ll have a lot more fun…and save money! If someone in the family sews, there may be fabric remnants to work with, in which case, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the creative costumes you can make, but very often, everyday clothing can be turned into great costumes with just a little effort. If Mom has a fancy velvet or velveteen robe, that’s the stuff little kings and queens are made of…wizards and other magical characters, too! A pillowcase painted with a heraldic symbol can be cut and belted, turning any boy into a legendary knight and a black dress becomes a little girl’s witch costume if you’ve got a small broom handy. Ghosts are as easy as your old sheets and pirates come to life out of a striped shirt, a red bandanna and rolled up trousers. Let the kids rummage through closets and cedar chests for colorful scarves, old hats and funny shoes and see what they can dream up. With a little help and guidance, the kids will have costumes they’ll be crazy about this Halloween.

4. Bring Something Sugar-Free To Hallowe’en Classroom Parties
With concerns about obesity, not to mention the growing distress over genetically modified sugar being allowed on the shelves of American supermarkets, many families are beginning to think twice about conventional sugar. Unfortunately, most candy and the majority of pre-packaged baked goods and sweets are made with conventional sugar. If you can find treats made with organic sugar, you’re making a safer bet for children’s health (and your own!) but if you’ve signed up to contribute a snack to a Halloween party, consider bringing something sugar-free. All-fruit fruit rollups are a super idea as are 100% juice drinks. Or what about bringing a big tin of hot, freshly-made organic popcorn into the classroom or shish kabobs on which pieces of unusual dried fruits have been colorfully skewered – mango, papaya, pineapples? Raisins and dried papaya make a cool black-and-orange Halloween snack or how about purple bell pepper and carrots sticks with a creamy, yummy dip? Then, even if all of the other parents are loading the classroom down with sugar, sugar, sugar, you’ll be doing a little something to balance that overdose with snacks that taste great, have visual appeal and are super fun to eat.

5. Make An Extra-Healthy Local Harvest Dinner On Halloween Night
Halloween falls at harvest time and there is no more bounteous time to eat locally than in this ripe season of the year. If you know your kids are going to be stocking up on junk food Halloween night, fill them up first with a good, healthy dinner. Try baked winter squash, carrot-raisin salad, iron-rich greens, sweet potatoes or whatever you find growing right now at the farms nearest you. In all cultures since the dawn of agriculture, autumn has been the time of eating well and giving thanks for the very best foods Earth produces. Halloween, itself, is an ancient holiday, once tied into the belief that bad spirits could be warded off with the right practices. In modern times, our families can ward off bad and wasteful eating habits by choosing to eat what’s fresh and in season, and Halloween is a perfect night to celebrate the harvest with a locally-grown supper.

6. Give Trick-or-Treaters Something Spicy Instead Of Sweet
If you live in a neighborhood that gets haunted by small witches, ghosts and goblins every October 31st, do them a favor by filling their sacks with something that’s both tasty and healthy this year. There’s nothing worse than a little pirate with cavities! In our society, we automatically equate Hallowe’en (and most other holidays) with sugary stuff. Try a new twist on the old tradition of trick-or-treating by giving out something spicy this year. Kids would be really excited to receive individual packages of spiced pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, flavored, salted and roasted nuts. Steer clear of peanuts to make sure no child with allergies is left out. When the kids go home with a bag full of candy bars, that little pack of cinnamon coated almonds will stand out as special and different.

7. Host An Old-Fashioned Halloween Party At Home
Some families live in places where kids can’t go out trick-or-treating, either because of lack of rural lighting or safety concerns. Other families opt out of trick-or-treating because of dietary concerns. Whatever the case may be, hosting an old-fashioned Halloween party at home solves all problems. Prizes for games like Bobbing For Apples can lean more towards little toys and games than sweets if you’re trying to cut down on the sugar. Have a costume contest, a Halloween parade around the house or a square dance in the family room. Tell ghost stories, carve jack-o-lanterns or make Halloween crafts. With a little extra thought, a homemade Hallowe’en party can provide varied entertainment and enjoyment for folks of all ages.

8. Serve Homemade Halloween Treats
Apple cider, homemade doughnuts and popcorn are the time-honored snacks that have added a tasty element to Halloween parties for generations. You can make caramel popcorn or popcorn balls with maple syrup or molasses or try herbed popcorn popped in a bit of olive oil and sprinkled with a mixture of thyme, sage, dill, salt and pepper for a more sophisticated crowd. Let the children help make some of the snacks. Teaching kids how to cook is a green habit every family should get into. The goodies you make at home will taste oodles better and be better for you than anything you could buy at the store.

9. Make Halloween Night A Lights-Out Night
Halloween is the perfect night to shut off the electric lights and illuminate your home with candles. Plain tapers work just fine, but you can buy Halloween-themed candles, luminarias, and lanterns, too, in addition to your jack-o-lanterns. Life by candlelight is weird, wonderful and spooky for kids and romantic and memorable for adults. Be sure to practice good fire safety! You’ll be saving energy and creating a fun atmosphere with this simple Halloween tip.

10. Compost Your Jack-O-Lantern
When Halloween spooks have gone off to bed and the sun rises on November 1st, most families are left with a row of pumpkins that will quickly start to grow mold and draw flies if left unattended. Large jack-o-lantern-type pumpkins generally don’t make good pies…but they make fabulous compost. Invite neighbors to bring their old jack-o-lanterns to your compost pile where you will gladly recycle them into food for next season’s garden. Don’t have a compost pile? Put your pumpkins in the yard wastes bin if your local garbage service provides one. These green leftovers are often used to create municipal compost piles at county dumps where they can rot properly and enrich soil for community projects.

Do you have any other cool Green Halloween ideas? We’d love to hear them. Happy Halloween to all your family from the potters at Emerson Creek Pottery!

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Flickr Photo Credit

Light a hurricane lamp in your home and history illuminates your abode. Since prehistoric times, families have burned oil in vessels to hold off the darkness and lengthen the hours in which people can work and play. From the palaces of Ancient Rome to the humble little house on the prairie of pioneer days, oil lamps have an honored place in the human story and many modern Americans declare they wouldn’t live without them, despite our general dependence on electricity. Hurricane Lamps represent a major historical improvement in lamp design and this article aims to answer all your FAQs about them.

Hurricane Lamp History And Modern Usage
Early oil lamps had three main drawbacks:

• Their light was seldom very bright
• Oil lamps smoked a great deal
• The slightest breeze could put them out

The Invention Of The Hurricaine Lamp
In 1780, Francois-Pierre Aime Argand, the son of a Swiss watchmaker, was struck with a bright new idea. He invented an oil lamp with a glass chimney and a control nob. Aime Argand was a scientist with a particular interest in Chemistry, and he realized that a cylindrical wick which allowed air to flow both through and around itself would produce a brighter light. The glass lamp chimney protected the flame from gusts and the control nob enabled the lamp user to adjust the height of the wick, offering further control over the strength of light produced. Whale oil or olive oil was typically used as the fuel for the new lamp. Aime Argand was a man of his times – a scholar of the period we call The Enlightenment – in which science was being explored for the benefit of mankind and in inventing the prototype Hurricane Lamp, Aime Argand would illuminate the world for centuries to come.

Hurricane Lamps On Ships
Piracy, sea battles, royal navies and transatlantic voyages were part and parcel of life in the 18th and 19th centuries and mariners quickly adapted the wind-resistant hurricane lamp for use on their vessels. Hanging hurricane lamps and wall hurricane lamps, often lantern-like in shape, became necessary equipment for ships and in addition to lighting cabins and decks, they were used to send signals from ship to ship.

Hurricane Lamps, Gone With The Wind
Many Americans most readily associate Hurricane Lamps with the Civil War of the mid 19th century, largely owing to fact that these lamps were extensively used in the lavish movie sets of Gone With The Wind. True to the burgeoning Victorian delight in ostentatious ornamentation, Hurricane Lamps of the 1800s could be grandly large, wrought in colored and etched glass, embellished with gleaming brass scrollwork and other fancy elements. Floral motifs, amethyst and red glass chimneys, milk glass, etched star glass, crystal pendants, beads and more were highly prized and today, antique Hurricane Lamps command a hefty price at auction. If you’d like to collect Antique Hurricane Lamps, the important things to look for are unmarred chimneys and wick controls that are still functional and haven’t rusted. Make sure the lamp base still holds oil properly, as well.

Hurricane Lamps Go West
Far simpler than the elegant, frilly lamps of stately Victorian era homes were the simple clear glass vessels that lit the way for pioneers across the West. Just as the above screenshot from the popular 1970’s TV series Little House On The Prairie depicts, plain glass hurricane lamps turned lonesome cabins in isolated landscapes into cozy harbors for families to gather in the evenings to eat, to chat, to pray and sing, to plan the next day’s work long after sundown had drawn a curtain of darkness over wood and prairie. Hurricane Lamps remain very much in demand for all types of historical re-enactments and if you look at some of your favorite shows or movies set in the 19th or early 20th centuries, you are sure to notice that these basic, light-giving oil lamps are everywhere! Civil War societies and other historic clubs and committees are keeping Hurricane Lamps alight across the USA.

Hurricane Lamps In Modern Times
In many areas of the country, the power of electricity was slow to come. Long into the 20th century, folk in rural areas continued to live by candlelight and the light of kerosene oil lamps. Even now, some areas of the USA are not connected up to the grid and, of real note, some families with pioneer-like bravery are jumping off the grid and fueling and lighting their homes in different and creative ways. In these situations, owning several Hurricane Lamps for occasional or emergency lighting is a smart survival tactic.

Of important regional significance, residents of states like Florida cope with hurricanes and other fierce storms as a fact of daily life. A vintage cookbook I treasure describes a community so used to these upheavals in the weather that they developed meal plans for hurricane season and the local housewives were heard saying, “What will you be having for the hurricane for dinner?” If you live in a part of the country where weather or other factors cause frequent power outages, purchasing a trusty hurricane lamp really makes sense.

Hurricane Lamps are also ideal for outdoor living. Use them at your next barbecue or on a camping trip for light without the hassle of cords or batteries.

Finally, there is a glow of romance surrounding these special lamps with their long history. Electric lights cannot reproduce the soft, warm radiance of the Hurricane Lamp and lighting one works some type of magic in that it instantly creates a feeling of intimacy, quiet and comfort. Whether you own a period home and are looking for an antique or reproduction Hurricane Lamp or you simply prefer the gentler illumination oil lamps provide, the Hurricane Lamp is a piece of our past worth saving.

About Our Hurricane Lamps
If Francois-Pierre Aime Argand, inventor of the Hurricane Lamp, had crossed the Atlantic to visit Colonial America, he would have inspired the manufacture of lamps very much like the ones our potters handcraft here at Emerson Creek Pottery in Virginia. Early colonists had to throw all of their inventiveness and industriousness into founding factories that could produce the metals, glass, ceramics, cloth and other goods they needed for life in their new land. To avoid excessive overseas taxation, Dutch settlers produced the first whiteware pottery in 1684 and out of necessity, early American goods focused on being sturdy and functional. Over time, styles of decoration and refinements in forms produced the high quality American ceramics which are now priceless collectors’ pieces and from which our potters have drawn inspiration since we founded our own American company in 1977. Our Hurricane Lamps offer both authentic antique appeal and handmade quality you can count on.

Hurricane Lamp Parts
A Hurricane Lamp consists of 3 basic components: the wick, the chimney or globe, and the base. In addition to this, most Hurricane Lamps feature a nob which allows you to raise and lower the wick to control the brightness given off.

Our Hurricane Lamps feature a lead-free pottery base and a clear glass chimney. If you need to buy replacement wicks or chimneys, we can sell them, or you can find them at your local hardware store where you can also buy lamp oil.

Hurricane lamp oil is an oil of the kerosene family. It is prized because it produces little smoke or soot. You can purchase it at your local hardware store or camping supply shop.

How To Use A Hurricane Lamp
It’s no surprise, considering the prevalence of electricity, that many modern people have never used or lit a Hurricane Lamp. Here’s how Hurricane Lamps work:

Step 1
There are two pieces secured to the top lip of the Hurricane Lamp. One is permanently attached to the Hurricane base and the other screws off/on to the piece secured to the base. Unscrew the detachable piece from the base and fill with lamp oil about 3/4 full.

Step 2
The wick should be pre-fed through the insert on the detachable piece from the bottom coming up through the top while using the turning wheel to bring the wick up through. The wick should clear all metal parts about a 1/4 of an inch to start. The lamp wick can later be adjusted up by the turning wheel to achieve desired flame size.

Step 3
While feeding the wick into the base, tightly re-secure the detached metal piece to the metal piece permanently attached to the base. If any oil was spilled, thoroughly clean the area before lighting.

Step 4
Light wick. Slide glass globe inside four metal arms on the metal base. Adjust flame size with spinning wheel.

Special Notes On Using Hurricane Lamps In Your Home

• Keep Hurricane Lamps in a safe place away from children and pets. Young children, unused to flame-based lighting, should never be left unsupervised in a room where oil lamps are present. Just as you would take extra care in a room where candles are lit, practice good safety when using Hurricane Lamps.
• Pottery can scratch you furniture. Protect your furniture by placing a non-porous surface underneath.
• Make sure your lamp is placed in a secure location where passing traffic cannot accidentally knock it over.
• Citronella lamp oil can be used in outdoor settings in Hurricane Lamps to deter insects.

Giving The Bright Gift Of A Hurricane Lamp
Birthdays and holidays can be challenging when you’re shopping for the man who has everything or the lady who won’t tell you what she wants. The gift of a Hurricane Lamp may just solve your dilemma. Though once a given in nearly every American home, oil lamps can be a novel idea these days, even for tough-to-shop-for loved ones. Who would appreciate a Hurricane Lamp?

• History buffs – just imagine how nifty they’ll feel lighting up their home or office in this interesting, historical manner!
• Elders – they may well remember hurricane lamps from childhood and would be delighted to see one again.
• Scholars – what could be better for burning the midnight oil at exam time?
• Homesteaders – this is an ideal gift for the young generation that is going off the grid and getting back to the land.
• Rural and regional residents – if you care about someone who lives out in the country or in a fierce weather area, a Hurricane lamp could really lighten their worries during outages and emegencies.

Hurricane Lamps And You
Do you remember a Hurricane Lamp your grandma owned? Do you have any tips or tricks for using, cleaning or enjoying Hurricane Lamps? We’d love to hear your stories and welcome your comments here.