As summer approaches, you may realize that your son or daughter is about to graduate from high school or college. You may even want to honor his or her achievements by celebrating with family and friends. But you probably don’t want to rent out an expensive venue or spend hours cleaning your house for guests.

Have you considered throwing an outdoor graduation party for your son or daughter? With the weather warming up, the outdoors can be a perfect setting for an upcoming celebration. Follow these steps for a simple yet unforgettable outdoor graduation party.

The best music in the world—according to many who play—is the random music heard around a fire in someone’s backyard. Nothing compares to the real life experience of a crackling outdoor fire and spontaneous live entertainment. The allure of the pairing is so strong, some big music festivals now add “campfire sessions” with the pro musicians to their lineups.

Informal settings encourage the entire group to sing along, keep the beat on a hand drum, or dance to the rhythm of the tunes. Outdoor sing-alongs are both ice-breaking and stress-relieving for all ages.

If you play a portable instrument, having a backyard musical setting is a must. If you don’t play, support the musicians you know (and the ones you want to meet) by creating an outdoor fireside “venue.” The following tips show you how.

The most wonderful aspect of tiny-home living is how easy it is to heat up a small space on a freezing winter day. Start up the gas, pellet, or wood stove, and you have a cozy room in minutes.

Choosing which type of stove to use in your tiny home takes a bit longer. There are important safety and design issues to consider before selecting a final model of heater. Make a checklist of the following requirements to help you choose the heating stove that’s right for your tiny space.

If you have a fire pit or a fireplace out back, you may be looking forward to hot dogs and smores this summer. However, meat and sweets aren’t the only options for outdoor cooking—you can use your fire pit or outdoor fireplace to cook fruits and vegetables too.

If you need a break from the marshmallows, look for something new. For nutritious side dishes, or even main dishes if you want to go vegetarian, try these options this summer.

If you’re joining the shift toward a green lifestyle, your home is the first place you start. You may start using cloth grocery sacks, install a few solar panels, and start your own garden. Many green-minded homeowners might wonder if it’s energy efficient and environmentally friendly to use a gas, pellet, or wood fireplace.

The truth is that utilizing a fireplace in your home can go either way. Here are some tips to keep your merry, warm hearth without significantly increasing your impact on your local environment.

Opt for Closed Fires

Open fires are often not permitted in modern building codes, but for historic homes that have the kitchen hearth still present and stained from over a century of fires, it can be hard to say goodbye. However, it’s best for your house and the planet if you convert your open fire to a more efficient closed one that uses pellets, firewood, or gas.

The open fire draws cool air into the home to feed the flames. You might feel warmer while in the room with the blaze, but other rooms in the house will become colder. If you have a forced air or boiler heating system in addition to the fireplace, the lowered temperature in other rooms will actually cause you to burn more fuel.

An open fire is therefore a lose-lose for green living. You’ll burn more fossil fuel or electricity heating other areas of your house and also burning wood in an inefficient way. The best solution is to install a closed fire that has high efficiency ratings.

So, should you choose gas, pellets, or traditional firewood?

Choose the Right Fuel for Your Area

Whether or not a fuel is right for you completely depends on your local economy and pollution.

Wood

Burning wood in an efficient wood stove provides plenty of heat for a home, but produces smoke. In a rural area with low pollution levels, the minimal smoke from single wood stove will not make much of an impact. It’s also an “electricity-free” option, which is great in emergencies and power-shortages.

Wood fuel is generally acknowledged to be carbon neutral; it doesn’t help the environment, but it doesn’t hurt it either. If you live an area that has few wood-stoves and plenty of moving, fresh air, choose a wood stove with the following guidelines in mind:

• It’s better to source your wood locally. If you buy wood from local providers, it stimulates your local economy.
• It’s always better to burn properly cured and dried wood. Green wood smokes and burns dirtier than dry wood.
• Use your wood stove in place of electric of gas heating whenever possible. This helps keep your choice to burn wood more carbon neutral.
• Use the ashes to enrich the soil in your garden. Ashes give back to the earth by off-setting soil acidity and increasing available potassium.
• Replace an old, non-EPA approved wood stove with a more efficient model. You’ll burn less wood, get more heat, and reduce emissions.

Even though wood stoves produce a little smoke, they are more environmentally friendly than you might initially believe. Wood burning stoves or fireplace inserts can still provide the ambiance of yesteryear with glass doors to show the flickering flames.

Pellets

In a more congested area where pollution is already a problem, it’s better to invest in fuel that produces fewer emissions, simply for the sake of local air quality. Pellet stoves, while still burning organic material, have a high BTU output but lower emissions, making them a good middle-ground for those who prefer a “wood” fire.

Keep in mind that pellet stoves still require electricity, which does still release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, the energy consumption of a pellet stove is less than the consumption of an entire house heated by an electric furnace.

Gas Inserts

If your main goal in including a fireplace in your home is ambiance and an inviting atmosphere, you can’t go wrong with choosing a natural gas or propane insert. Unlike wood stoves that produce smoke, natural gas and propane both burn quite cleanly. They have one of the lowest levels of emissions of all fossil fuels, making them an ideal choice for polluted areas.

That being said, like all fossil fuels, natural gas is not a renewable resource. You will want to research where your local gas is sourced. You can choose to support fuel companies that try to reduce their footprint when extracting natural gas.

Select the Right Size

A fireplace insert or stove that is too small will eat fuel quickly as you try to heat your home. A stove that is too large will also waste fuel—you might burn more than is necessary for your home. It’s best to properly research your heating needs by speaking to a local fireplace specialist.

For more information on choosing a green-friendly stove or fireplace for your home, contact us at Alpine Fireplaces.

As winter approaches, you may find yourself longing for the cozy crackling of a fire to light up your living area. However, because most fireplaces are used infrequently during the warmer months, your gas fireplace may not be ready for a blaze right away.

Use the following seven steps to prepare your gas fireplace for colder weather.

In your living room, you have a darling fireplace with a lovely mantel. You may have a few trinkets on it, or it may be completely empty. Either way, perhaps you’ve decided your mantel needs a little extra pizazz. But how do you begin?

Whether you’ve just moved into a new home or have lived in the same cozy house for several years, decorating your mantel gives you a creative outlet and gives your room a unique personality. You can also regularly change up your mantel décor for a fresh look.

But, if you need suggestions for decorating your mantel, take a peek at the following tips to get started.

No matter how long you’ve lived in your home, you will feel like the space is missing something at some point or another. As you think of items you can add to your house, you might decide that a fireplace would be the perfect addition for your needs and preferences.

Instead of opting for the traditional, wood-burning fireplace, you may want to add a gas fireplace to your home. These units are incredibly versatile and they provide you with countless benefits. We’ve listed just a few of them below. Read on to discover why a gas fireplace is the most advantageous option for you.

Summer comes to a close as October and cooler weather arrive. You now the recipe for a really memorable autumn evening: wrapping your kids up in old quilts from the house, gathering around the campfire, and eating the last s’mores of the season.

You can almost see the leaves on the mountains change color. The air is crisp and cool. The campfire glows. You love these times with your kids and neighbors, and you want to do something special with them.

Try our favorite autumn s’mores recipes. Full of rich, savory flavors, these concoctions are sure to keep your family happy all autumn long.