Doesn’t this home look like somewhere one of the Hobbits would live? Or some Woodland fairies?

This is home to a couple and their two young children. It is a completely green home. Solar panels provide electricity. A composting toilet. No running water. Straw bale insulation. Heated solely by a wood burning stove. The refrigerator is cooled using the naturally cooled air underneath the foundation.

The home is dug into a hill, with sod used for the roof.

Would you like to live there? Well, they are building an eco-village in Southern Wales.

And they are not alone. In the UK there are groups of people who are living in low impact developments. Cae Mabon is a community with breathtakingly beautiful roundhouses.

There is a huge green living movement afoot. And while this type of home and lifestyle is at the extreme, I think that most of us are looking for ways to reduce our energy consumption. For many of us it may be based solely on a selfish desire to lower our energy bills, but for these select few it is born out of a desire to have a zero impact on the earth.

All of us can probably learn from it.

Do you find the idea of making your home energy efficient overwhelming?

The Money Pit has just the answer for you. The first ever video podcast by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR program which shows the simplicity of home energy efficiency.

“This podcast is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to make green improvements to their home while saving money,” said Kraeutler. “Homeowners can use it as a step-by-step guide to improving their home’s energy efficiency. The tips we discuss are incredibly simple yet make a great impact on energy bills and the environment.”

Taking you on a room by room tour of a typical American house and offering tips for improving energy efficiency.

The New York Times recently ran an article about people who are capitalizing on their windy locations and installing turbines to harness the wind and provide energy for their homes.

Sales of wind turbines have been growing steadily since 1990, when the American Wind Energy Association, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, D.C., began tracking them. Last year, about 7,000 small wind turbines — defined as those that have a capacity of up to 100 kilowatts, roughly enough to power a large school — were purchased in the United States, according to the group, which said it expects sales to reach about 10,000 this year.

If I lived somewhere windy enough I would definitely consider this. While the cost sounds high, when you figure in your utility costs and heating costs, which for those of us in northern states are significant, a turbine would pay for itself in within a decade.

Residential turbines… are typically 33 to 100 feet tall… cost between $12,000 and $55,000, but in recent years, 19 states, including California, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Ohio, have begun offering incentives and rebates that can cut purchase prices by up to 50 percent… the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that would help states provide grants and low-interest loans for residential turbines (as well as solar panels and geothermal heat pumps), and that would offer a 30 percent federal tax credit on turbine purchases, up to $4,000; the Senate is now considering a similar measure.

One man featured in the article has a turbine which not only powers his entire house, but makes surplus power which he “sells” to the power company. How awesome would that be? Not only would you be reducing your own carbon footprint, but helping to make the power company a little more green.

However, there is a booming market right now beyond the homeowner. In places like Texas where there is lots of empty land and lots of wind, enormous turbines are beginning to dot the landscape.

Photo: Brian Harkin for The New York Times

The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.

Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines.

Utilizing wind energy has grown 45% over the past year. While still a small percentage, if it continues to grow as expected it will eventually make a significant contribution to the electrical contribution of the entire nation. To quote the television commercial, moving towards a more energy efficient and environmentally friendly future, priceless.

What kind of light bulbs are you using in your house?

The last time I was at the store buying light bulbs I was confused by the vast array of choices. There was literally an entire aisle of light bulbs. I had no idea what I wanted or what the differences are between the various types. I want a nice warm glowing light. And while I am all for saving energy, the environment, and puppies, I hate the greenish cast of some florescent lights I have tried. The odd shape puts me off for some applications. The buzzing noise is somewhat annoying, though I have children who adequately cover that up for me.

It seems that I am not alone.

In a recent article in the NY Times, a panel of staff members from the Times tested and rated 21 different light bulbs that were provided by various manufacturers. Almost all of them were rated as unacceptable.

There were a few that got good marks from the reviewers:

The n:vision TCP Home Soft White, for example, was deemed “a warm pleasant light.” The TCP Spring Light/Soft White was “almost warmer than incandescent,” one person said. And the MaxLite SpiraMax was generally liked, considered “pretty good” and “clean.”

One thing that I did not know until reading this article is that compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) contain mercury and can not just be thrown away with your regular garbage. They need to be properly recycled. I wonder if I am alone in my appalling lack of knowledge in this area or if this is something that needs to be addressed better. The Energy Star website answers the questions of disposal and what to do if you should break a CFLs.

Most of the light bulbs in my house have long ago been replaced by fluorescent bulbs. The few lone remaining incandescent bulbs are in places where the bulb shows. But now that there are new bulbs that have the tell tale fluorescent coil hidden in an outer case, I really have no excuse.

And it seems we had all better just get used to it.

After more than eight months of intense deliberations between Congress and bulb manufacturers, environmental groups and other parties, a law that requires light bulbs to become more energy efficient became part of the energy bill that President Bush signed into law on Dec. 19.

Over a three-year period beginning in 2012, all new bulbs will have to use 25 percent to 30 percent less energy for the same light output as today’s typical incandescent bulbs.

Why wait until 2012? Go buy your CFLs now and break yourself in slowly.

We have all heard of using granite, formica, quartz, stainless steel and tile for countertops. But what about paper?

The new eco-luxury item in kitchen design is PaperStone.

PaperStone is made from sustainable sources, making it the “greenest” architectural surface on the market today. It is the only architectural solid surface certified by the Forest Stewardship Council for using 100% post-consumer recycled paper. ( There are three different PaperStone lines, one is made with 100% recycled paper, the second is 50%, and the third with virgin paper.)

The paper fibers are held together with non-petroleum, formaldehyde-free resins, some made from cashew nut shell liquid.

It can be cut and shaped with standard woodworking tools, yet is extremely hard and is practically impervious to water. It is scratch resistant and can be used for cutting boards. It is also highly resistant to staining and can withstand temperatures up to 350 degrees, making it an excellent choice for kitchens. It is also resistant to bacteria growth, making it popular for commercial applications.

At $90 to $120 a square foot, PaperStone is comparable in price to granite or engineered stone.

The New York Times is calling it the Year of Eco Decorating.

A recent Guggenheim International Gala event 28,000 square feet of a parking garage on the Hudson River was decorated in post-consumer cardboard including the tables, chairs, centerpieces and chargers.

While visually stunning, I think we will stick with our traditional holiday themed dinnerware. I am not sure that my extended family would embrace this.

But the basic idea can be incorporated into all of our holiday decor. I already wrote about the LED lights. But what about the decorations that are going up around your house? Punched tin can lanterns made from your recycled tin cans can make nice accents to your holiday table. Gather pine cones from your yard (before it snows!) and place them in shallow bowls on the buffet. Use the cuttings from the Christmas tree to decorate the mantel.

You don’t have to eat off of cardboard to make your holiday a little bit greener.

So the time has come to deck the halls, hang the garland, curse out the tangled mass of Christmas tree lights.

You know, the ones that you promise every year that next time, you are going to put away properly.

But we all know that by the time the tree is half dead, losing all its pine needles and the holiday spirit is a distant memory you won’t care anymore and stuffing them into the box will seem like a perfectly acceptable idea.

I need new tree lights this year. I should have bought them already, but I haven’t. I also need new window candles. The past two years they have all been sold out by the time I ventured to the store. I guess I should stock up when the holiday decor first comes out, in August.

Do you remember the scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, when Chevy Chase hangs all of the lights all over his house and the neighbors are blinded by the lights? Well, for many people that level of decorating is a thing of the past. Rising energy costs have made people scale back on their electricity usage. And I am not sure that is a bad thing. Just sayin’.

Well now that LED Christmas lights have come of age, they are a viable option for holiday decoration. They are available in a wide variety of colors now, unlike years past when red and green were the only options.

They do cost a considerable amount more money to purchase them, about $1 more per bulb. The advantages though outweigh this single negative. LED bulbs use 90% less electricity. Made of a hard plastic, they are virtually indestructible. So over the long haul they will actually cost less. LED bulbs are cool burning. So if you do chose to light up your rooftop and yard like you are part of a traveling carnival,* you will not have to worry about having the fire department on stand-by.

And this is not even factoring in being environmentally conscious.

So go forth and decorate, tastefully. If you are unsure what tasteful decorating looks like, please check out the link above for clarification

Updated to add: Even the lights at Rockefeller Center this year are LED.   According to the news, the 84-foot-tall Norway spruce is sporting energy-saving bulbs and an array of solar panels atop 45 Rockefeller Plaza will help power them.