FUN

Our holiday Green Drinks at the Metropolitan last week was a lot of fun, complete with a Green Carpet at the entrance that made us feel like rock stars, as did the Met staff's very cool chalk art (right) welcoming us.

We were pleased to have new Annapolis Mayor Mike Pantelides join us and we wish him well! He stayed for over an hour and talked with a lot of people about a lot of different topics.   

O'Callaghan's was hosting the Annapolis Sailing Industry Association's holiday party at the same time and a number of the ASIA members came to Green Drinks as well.  

THANKS

Manager Tom Hanna and Owner Jody Danek did a fabulous job keeping up with our appetizer consumption and letting us have the run of the place -- second deck and enclosed rooftop terrace. And the Met donated 10% of bar proceeds to Annapolis Green! Thanks also to Great Frogs, our local winery, for showcasing their wine and for the fabulous bottle of Lollipop Red Dessert Wine!

And thank you again to the staff of O'Callaghan Annapolis Hotel for donating the proceeds of their Casual Fridays funds to Annapolis Green. General Manager Albert Montone made a presentation of the funds and we sent back a hand-made thank you card.    

"Ivanna B. Green"

And a big thanks to Meghan Matthews of MISEA Group for providing "Ivanna B. Green," her sexy Santa that inspired photos now on Instagram! Meghan also helped us with the LED "creation" Christmas tree still on display at the Met, in the lot next to Lemongrass.  

Did you notice that the star on top was designed to look like a wind turbine? Another set of helping hands for that was Blue Crump of Clean Currents, our sponsoring organization for the night. So, of course, it was a wind turbine, since Clean Currents is our source (and the Met's) for clean, wind power.

The point of the whole LED salute and the light strings exchange was to promote the energy-saving LEDs for holiday decoration so that we can all save money and reduce our energy consumption - which is good for the environment!

RECYCLE HOLIDAY LIGHTS

We collected three huge boxes full of incandescent lights that were taken to MOM's Organic Market for recycling in exchange for discount coupons to replace them with LEDs. Thank you, everyone, for participating. This week  we picked up even more lights  from our other retail partner, K&B True Value, whose own collection program (instigated by us) closed last Sunday.   

The lights collected at K&B overflowed a large wheeled toter and filled Elvia's car to the brim as she delivered them to MOM's. The community really got behind this. The drive was more successful than we ever dreamed it would be!  

The bottom line is that we took a lot of old lights out of service and replaced them with energy-efficient LEDs. That saves money and energy, and that's good for the environment!

We've sent out a challenge to the Annapolis Jaycees for next year's Hanging of the Greens downtown -- to trade in the existing lights for LEDs! Homestead Gardens used more than thousands of LEDs in the decorations downtown, including the big Christmas Tree next to the Market House.

We have photos and more details about the holiday Green Drinks on our website. Read more... 

Save the date for January's Green Drinks -- the Official After-Party for the Maryland Environmental Legislative Summit, on January 21. Details to come.

Have a wonderful holiday!

Elvia & Lynne