One of my favorite parts of the December holidays is shopping for the greeting cards I’ll send to family and friends. Truth be told I’ll often do this card shopping on December 26th of the previous year, when prices are dirt cheap.

Because we were traveling immediately after Christmas last year, I didn’t get to do my annual stocking up. Plus, with my new lean, green approach to living, I felt that this year I needed to have holiday cards that were appropriate to my mission–affordable and eco-friendly. Problem is in this day and age, it’s nearly impossible to find green greetings that don’t break the bank.

I looked at tons of different cards offerings and even had some samples sent to me. But between family, friends and clients, I’ve got over 100 people on my list, and nearly every “green” card option I found cost close to $1 or more per card. Once I did the math, it became clear quite quickly that my holiday greetings might end up being green but they definitely would not be affordable.

So I decided to make my own.

First, I used the drawing tools in Microsoft Word to fashion festive images for the inside and outside of the card. Then I created the design, which would allow me to get two folded cards per 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of paper.

Speaking of paper, I wanted it to be as green as possible, so I picked up a ream of 100% post-consumer waste paper from Staples. It’s not a heavy stock like you would expect with a greeting card, but it’s going to get the job done.

Next, I bought replacement color and black inkjet cartridges for my color printer. (Side note: Staples is still offering a $3 off coupon for every inkjet or other HP printer cartridge that you bring into the store for them to recycle. Because I had two cartridges, I got $6 in coupons, which were applied to my purchase. Also good and green: HP no longer packages its inkjet cartridges in those massive clam shell plastic containers. Instead, the cartridges are housed in a cardboard container, inside a reusable plastic security device that the cashier opened at checkout and then would use again when restocking the ink.)

Then I purchased greeting card-sized envelopes. (Sadly, they were not available in a recycled paper variety.)

Not counting the cost of ink (because I’ll be using the ink long after Christmas has come and gone), I’ll have spent about $25 for possibly 1,000 cards. I say 1,000 because a ream of paper has 500 sheets, and if I’m getting two cards per sheet, well, you get the point. Anyway, that’s about three cents per card–that’s affordable in my book.

In a perfect world I would have used soy ink to print these cards but right now, soy ink is available for commercial use only–meaning I would have had to have my cards printed professionaly, which would have added on to the price. Maybe in the near future the HPs of the world will offer a soy ink cartridge option.

So, considering that I’m printing my cards of recycled paper, I can recycle the cardboard package that the inkjet cartridges came in, the fact that HP will recycle the inkjet cartridges after I’m done with them, and Staples reuses the security package it uses to hold the inkjet cartridges in the store, does this make my Christmas cards carobn-neutral? If it does, I may have just stumbled onto a new and lucrative business venture.

One of the benefits of our new house is that we have three fireplaces–one in the dining room, one in the living room and one in the family room. All three chimneys were swept this fall, and we’ve been using the fireplace in the living room nearly daily (burning those enviro-logs we picked up at Home Depot). Having a fireplace creates a wonderful, homey smell when the fire is burning. These days, that homey smell has turned into a smoke-filled tavern smell, and here’s why.

On Friday we lit a fire in the family-room fireplace for the first time. As luck would have it, a huge downdraft occurred as we lit the fire, forcing smoke into the room. It took about 30 minutes to clear the smoke–open windows, fans running–and then we let the fire burn out on its own.

When we got up on Saturday morning, no one could go in the family room. It smelled like we’d had a fire–and I don’t mean in the fireplace. I swear there is smoke damage in the room, and we’re at a loss as to how to fix it.

In desperation, I washed down the walls, the floors and the furniture using Murphy’s Oil Soap diluted in water. (I’m so pleased that Murphy’s is considered to be a green cleaner. It’s what I was raised to use on wood floors and pretty much every other surface in the house.) When that didn’t work to get rid of the smell, we burned those Oust “odor-evaporating candles” (actually we burned all three in the package), and we kept the windows open again for about 2 hours. After the candles the room smelled like sweet soap, not smoke, but by the time we got up the next morning, the acrid smoke smell was back. It hits you the minute you near the entrance to the family room.

Today, I decided to try some other green ways of getting rid of the smell. This morning, I put out bowls of vinegar around the room, because someone told me it’s an odor neutralizer (though I must admit that vinegar in the laundry did nothing for my daughter’s soccer cleats, which, I’d bet, could win that Odor Eaters Rotten Sneaker contest). Later on my husband put out bowls of baking soda. One of his work colleagues had had a fire in her house, and she told him that baking soda is what the fire-recovery company had used to get rid of the smell. That seems logical, considering so many people swear by their box of Arm and Hammer baking soda in the refrigerator to get rid of odors.

It’s only been a couple of hours, but the smell is still here. I have no idea how long this is going to take to work or if the vinegar or the baking soda will even work.

Interestingly if you smell specific things in the room, nothing actually smells like smoke. It’s just the general je ne sais quai of the room that leaves you smelling smoke.

My concern now is that we’re going to have to fully repaint the room, assuming the walls have absorbed the odor, to get rid of the smoke smell. I’m also concerned my daughters are going to get clever and end up mixing the vinegar and the baking soda together to create their own special kind of volcano that will erupt all over the floor. And you know who will be left to clean it up.