WhiteFence's Favorite Thanksgiving Dishes

We're now just hours away from our Thanksgiving feasts, and it's getting a little hard to focus on anything else at this point. I've noticed that while the basic components of everyone's meals are pretty consistent, it seems like every family has their own twists and traditions to make their meal unique.

My wife and I are hosting our first Thanksgiving at our house this year, and we've been trying to work out what dishes to add to the mix. With that in mind, I turned to my coworkers to get some ideas.

Here are some my fellow WhiteFencers' favorite Thanksgiving dishes:

• Anthony, Marketing Optimization Analyst – My favorite Thanksgiving dish is a little outside of the box and quite possibly a little bit dangerous. It’s…(wait for it) turkey.

• James, Marketing Optimization Analyst – Someone in the family usually makes a 7 layer Mexican bean dip and if I’m not careful, I will fill up on that and chips before we get to the main food. We usually have it at Christmas as well.

• Tara, Senior Manager of Paid Search – So, when I fix my plate I fill it up as efficiently as possible—covering the bottom layer with the ‘sides’ like dressing, green beans, yams, roll, etc..,etc…then I lay the turkey across the top and finally finish with the cranberry sauce! Pretty delicious! For round two, an hour or so later, I go with the turkey sandwich on a roll. So basically, my favorite is the perfectly made plate-takes precision!

• Stacey, Senior Process Analyst – I’m all about the sides. I find turkey to be dry unless it’s in a sandwich with other stuff. I also don’t really like gravy or mashed potatoes. I fill up on green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, and whatever kind of casseroles are available.  Also, lots and lots of pecan pie. Mmmmmm, pie…

• Lindsay, Marketing Optimization Analyst – My family likes to replicate the first Thanksgiving. We hunt deer and wild turkeys and cook them at home. We love to couple them with instant mashed potatoes and the pumpkin pie found at HEB.

• Eddy, Senior Copywriter – My grandma makes mac and cheese from the box but for some reason it tastes better than any mac and cheese ever, and I really have no idea why.

• Russ, Manager of Site Design and Development – Kugela, Lithuanian potato, cheese & fat casserole.

Beating the Black Friday Deals Now

Ah, Black Friday, the titan of shopping and savings that looms the day after Thanksgiving. I can't think of a better way to celebrate a gluttonous feast than to go buy a bunch of stuff. Personally, I avoid the day like plague, because in my head it's probably just a re-creation of several popular zombie horror movies, only with even more bite wounds. That being said, I do see the necessity of it for folks that do a lot of Christmas shopping and don't want to break the bank in the process.

However, if you want to do your Black Friday shopping without all of the hassle, there are actually a number of sellers and vendors this year doing pre-day deals, so that people can capitalize on the savings early. Yahoo has a list up of 7 Black Friday Deals Worth Buying Now, and it outlines all the places that have been in a price dropping war the last week or so, including Target, Wal-Mart and Amazon. Good news for shoppers!

There are a few key items to take note of where the savings are potentially at their highest. For one, toys seem to be getting marked down already, almost across the board. In addition, HDTV's are going to see their best prices in years. In fact, it might even be possible to grab 42" 1080p TV's for as low as $500. It all sounds too good to be true, but you might want to check out the list to see if there's anything you can get a steal on before the craziness of next week.

So, which of you brave readers will go out and confront the masses for Black Friday next week? Do you have another source of great deals? Let us know in the comments!

8 Popular Home Phone Calling Features

Back in the old days, all your home phone did was make and receive calls. These days though, the humble home phone has become a bit of a communications computer, capable of lots of cool stuff we used to only be able to dream of.

However, without the right home phone plan, you might be missing out on all of the cool calling features out there. If you're to add some features to your home phone experience, it may be time to shop for something new.

Here is a quick rundown of some of the most popular home phone features available here on WhiteFence:

• Caller ID – Know exactly who is calling before you pick up the phone and never deal with another telemarketer again

• Voicemail – Hear all of your messages wherever you are and say goodbye to your old answering machine

• Call Waiting – Never again miss another important call because you were already on the line

• Conference Calls – Get everyone together on one conversation instead of making lots of separate calls

• Call Forwarding – Have your calls forwarded to your cell phone or another landline while you are away from home

• Auto Redial – Easily redial the last number person you called even if you've forgotten their number

• Anonymous Call Rejection – Block calls from anyone that has chosen to block their name and number

• Speed Calling – Set up custom codes for all of your friends and family to make calls in a flash without your Rolodex

Video: Watch Out for Energy Vampires

We've posted on this blog before about the danger of energy vampires when it comes to your power bills each and every month. There are a number of ways to save electricity and lower your payments, but one of the easiest and least intrusive ways to do so is to watch out for these vampires.

What is an energy vampire, you ask? While your appliances may have on/off switches, many of them continue to draw power from their outlets while they are off. You would be surprised by just how many appliances in your home join in on the vampire fun. Just think of the prongs of the plug as their little monster fangs, taking your energy away.

To provide a bit of advice about this very subject, Alabama Power Company has provided a new video, the latest in its series of consumer education shorts.

What are your strategies for saving energy around the home? Do you watch out for energy vampires?

New ESL Bulbs Combine the Best of CFLs, LEDs and Incandescents

What if you could combine the best qualities of incandescent, CFL and LED light bulbs to create the ultimate bulb? Wouldn't that be great? Well, Vu1 think they have done just that with their new ESL bulb.

The ESL, or Electron Stimulated Luminescence, bulb creates light by accelerating electrons to stimulate phosphor, which in turn makes the surface of the bulb glow. By creating light this way, the ESL bulbs eliminate many problems faced by other types of bulbs.

Here are some of the benefits of the ESL:

• The quality of light produced rivals that of incandescents and avoids the problems faced by owners of CFLs and LEDs

• Energy usage is estimated to be around 70% more efficient than an incandescent

• There is no mercury inside and the bulbs are easily recyclable

• Unlike CFLs, they are fully dimmable and achieve full brightness as soon as they are turned on

• Predicted lifespan around three times that of a incandescent

So, what's the catch? Well, the only strike against the ESL for now is the price. While no where near as expensive as an LED bulb, they are a little more expensive than a CFL at around twenty dollar per bulb.

Vu1 has just secured UL approval for the bulbs and plans to have them on the market early next year.

Image via Vu1.

Poll: Where Could You Save the Most Money?

Lately, my wife and I have been taking extra care with our spending habits, and really trying to analyze where our money goes each month. It's surprising how your standard of living can just ratchet up over time without you even realizing it. Several years back, we were living on much less and coming through each month just fine in terms of our savings.

There are a few different areas that we're targeting to see if we are spending more than what is sensible: food, transportation, entertainment, utilities. Already, we're finding that we can easily cut down on the amount of gas we use by running errands together over the weekends, and knocking them all out at once, rather than making several trips to different stores over the course of a few days. In addition, our entertainment and food expenses can be dramatically decreased just by making a schedule for when we eat out with friends and what we're going to have for dinner each night.

All in all, it's been an interesting exercise to see where most of our money is going, and we were certainly surprised by the results that we saw. I decided to make a poll to see where the WhiteFence Blog readers fell in this discussion. Where do you guys think you could stand to save the most money? Feel free to tell us more in the comments!

Would You Buy an Empty Bottle of Cleaner?

It turns out that only a fraction of the liquid in the cleaning products under your sink is actually cleaning chemicals. Water is the primary material in most cleaners, typically making up around 95% of the bulk.

When you buy a cleaner like that, not only do you have to pay for the water, but that water has to be transported to the manufacturing plant, then to the store and then to your home. That's a lot of wasted energy. It may not seem like a big deal at first glance, but if you add up all the fuel burned in order to move all of that water around for all of the cleaning products sold in the world, it adds up pretty quickly.

Another common source of waste with cleaning products is the bottles they come in. Those plastic bottles are not only made from petroleum products, but require fuel to be burned to produce and ship them. We usually just toss them in the trash once the cleaner is gone, which is silly if you think about it. After all, it's not like a bottle of cleaner is going to get dirty.

To help cut down on all of this waste, Replenish is selling a new line of cleaners with empty bottles. They come with concentrated pods of cleaner that snap onto the bottom of the bottle, completely cutting out all of the waste from the water. The bottles are designed to be reused for years, which further cuts down on waste. You just buy one kit at first and then buy refills as needed, filling the bottles with tap water.

Not only do you get to slash lots of waste, but you'll actually save money, too. Each kit costs eight bucks and contains enough cleaner for four bottles worth of water. Once you run out of cleaner, new pods cost just four bucks. If you do the math over a few years, that means each bottle's worth of cleaner is costing you around one dollar each.

Image via Replenish

Placing Smoke Alarms Around Your Home

Now that we've been in our house for just a few weeks over a year, it's time for my wife and I to start checking all of our smoke alarms. It's recommended that your home smoke detectors receive a new set of batteries once a year, so setting it around a yearly event such as a holiday (or in our case, the end of Daylight Savings this weekend) helps to keep track of it.

If you're wondering about the best places to put detectors, Charles & Hudson Home Security has a new blog post up about Where to Install Smoke Alarms in Your Home. Considering that each year, nearly two-thirds of all home fire deaths can be traced to improperly working smoke detectors, this is valuable information that could help you protect your family, yourself and your belongings.

Here's a rundown of the list:

• Put a smoke alarm in each bedroom and on each floor of the house. Yes, that includes the basement!

• Connect the alarms so that one alarm will trigger each one. That way you will be alerted if an alarm happens to go off somewhere that you would not have heard it before.

• Smoke rises, so place alarms either on the ceiling or near the top of a wall. Too low and the warning could come too late.

• Test your batteries each month, just in case!

Hopefully this list proves helpful for anybody that needs to re-inspect their smoke alarms in the near future. For more information, be sure to visit Charles & Hudson.

Find the Best Offer for Your Old Cell Phone in Seconds

I don't know about you, but when I get a new cell phone, I just throw the old one in a box and forget about it. I'm not sure if it's that I want to keep it as a backup or if I'm slowly turning into one of those hoarders you see on TV, but that's just what I've always done.

The other day I was cleaning out some boxes in the garage and came across the mother lode of old cell phones. Between my wife and I, we'd amassed a collection of about 15 phones! Some were broken, some had been replaced when they became obsolete and some neither of us could remember owning (cell phone fairy?). It was a sorry pile of forlorn electronics and it got me thinking.

I knew the old phones could (and should) be recycled, but I was wondering if there was a way of getting a little cash in the process. I took to the Internet to research the topic, and came across EcoSquid. Just like how WhiteFence lets you compare offers on home services from multiple providers at once, EcoSquid lets you compare offers for your old cell phones from multiple buyers and recyclers at once.

Just head to EcoSquid, enter the details about your phone(s) and you'll get offers in just seconds. Depending on the age and condition, you may find that there are companies out there willing to pay you for your old phone. If not, the site will show you a variety of ways to easily recycle your cell phone locally or by mail. Either way, you can get a little clutter out of your house and feel good in the process.

As for my stack of old cell phones, about half are actually worth something, with a total value of around $50. The other half are too old or damaged to have any value and are due to be shipped off to various recyclers. While it may not be a fortune, I'm certainly happy to find $50. Maybe I can use it to upgrade my cell phone...