Fun Fact:  “To talk turkey,” means to speak candidly, directly, plainly and/or bluntly. There are several possible explanations to the origin of this phrase.  Some support a link to uncensored familial conversation around the Thanksgiving dinner table; Others say the phrase is linked to the actual sounds a turkey makes, because the male turkey’s “gobble, gobble” is a basic, unadorned, matter-of-fact kind of vocalization.

Wherever your holiday “turkey talk” may lead, Capitol Lighting’s Thanksgiving feast is sure to please everyone with custom designed lighting at unbeatable prices.  The lighting experts at Capitol will help you to illuminate your home for the holidays…elegantly, efficiently and affordably.

A little light goes a long way to bring charm and soothing illumination to the home environment.  Crystal mini chandeliers, mini table lamps, and other mini lighting fixtures create the stylized finish to designer decorated home interiors.  Feast your eyes on Capitol Lighting’s most outstanding selection of the season!

Add to your Thanksgiving holiday with the latest lighting designs from American Brass and Crystal Lighting.  Capitol Lighting invites you to take advantage of promotional pricing on ABC’s masterful works of art, including mini table lamps and crystal mini chandeliers available in a myriad of finishes including Antique Pewter, White Nickel and True Brass with crystal options ranging from Golden Teak Strass Teardrops to colorful Strass pendoloques.

Give Thanks for the Little Things

Capitol Lighting Highlights the “Mini Strass”

Warm up the room.  Instantly create elegance. Provide your home with charm! The mini chandelier has become an increasingly popular lighting fixture and accessory in home decorating schemes due to its versatility and small size. With extraordinary styling and imaginative design motifs, mini table lamps, too, are gracing more homes than ever.

Capitol Lighting’s Top 5 “Mini Must-dos” for a Superb Finish

To view the latest in home lighting and accessories and for more designing ways to put the mini on your menu this Thanksgiving, visit with the lighting professionals at Capitol Lighting.

Enjoy designer discounts on the best from American Brass and Crystal Lighting available this week at Capitol.

American Brass & Crystal (ABC Lighting) has built a reputation as one of the premier manufacturers of the finest quality cast brass and crystal mini chandeliers. All crystal chandelier and cast brass frames are molded in Italian casts by some of the finest metal craftsman in Europe and are then adorned with genuine Strass crystal from Swarovski. Each crystal mini chandelier from American Brass & Crystal Lighting is available in any of their 17 custom finishes and a multitude of different crystal grades, shapes and colors.

Visit a Capitol Lighting showroom or shop on-line at 1800lighting.com to custom designs your holiday illumination.  Enjoy promotional values on the latest mini lighting fashions from ABC.  The options abound; with American Brass & Crystal you create a design in a crystal chandelier that is uniquely your own and each one is hand made by American artisans with meticulous care.

A school, whether its grade school or a college campus, can use up a lot of energy during the day. From heating the building to inefficient lighting fixtures in the building; a school that is running 8-10 hours a day can prove to be a huge consumer of energy and thus; a high overhead to maintain.

This post is specifically for those whom work for a school or college campus that can either make the decisions, or can recommend new ideas to those who do make these types of decisions. The overall goal of this post is to bring the most actionable energy saving ideas for schools so that you can start looking into them immediately.

We are going to be covering 15 practical tips and ways that you can start saving energy in schools and become a greener, more sustainable facility overall. Here they are…

hallways, classrooms, and really anywhere with lower ceilings that are flat.

This technology is, more often than not, fluorescent. Believe it or not, this actually isn’t the most energy efficient lighting technology out there. So what is you ask?

Well, LED technology is by far the most efficient luminaire on the market today. By switching from fluorescent to LED, you will be able to realize a 30% reduction in energy usage associated with your tube lights.

As for you parking lot and sports fields, you can make the switch away from technologies like metal halide or HPS over to LED and realize every greater energy savings by up to 75%! Talk about a lot of energy being reduced.

And no, screen savers don’t save energy. But, what does save energy more-so than a screen saver is the “sleep” function that every computer has. On top of that, next time you plan on upgrading your computers, make sure you buy Energy Star qualified ones. This means they’ve passed some energy efficiency tests and are much more energy efficient than non-qualified computers are (same with your lighting system, make sure it is Energy Star or building commissioning, you get every single last area of your school inspected to ensure it is running exactly how it was designed to run. A lot of times we overlook things that are unique issues to your school, and no matter how long of a list we read on ways to conserve energy at school; we will never see everything. So our tip for you is to bring in a professional to do a full building commissioning audit, and let them tell you what is up.

Face it, a lot of classes happen during broad daylight and by not using up that free light from outside is a pure waste. By opening blinds to there fullest (when appropriate) you can reduce the amount of lights you need on by nearly half, depending on the day and time of year.

Just make sure to remind everyone to do this otherwise, you’ll never will with this tactic. Remember: you need to get the school on board or else you can only do so much.

Alternatively to just opening the blinds and windows, installing skylights into virtually any area of the building can be an even more effective way of getting the most natural light into your building. This is probably most beneficial for areas that would otherwise have no natural light whatsoever, such as hallways or interior rooms.

We’ve already brought up some points about your heating system, but here is yet another. Think about how often students are in the hallways, not nearly as much as they are in classrooms, right? So, why not make an initiative to heat the classrooms and stop heating those huge hallways that waste tons of heat to the outside from all those doors being opened.

Just make sure that everyone is closing their doors if you do decide to go this route. Likewise, you could install doors that automatically close which will prevent random doors from being forgotten about.

Although this won’t directly save your school energy, it sure does help reduce both waste and energy associated with creating new materials. The most simple way to start the promotion of recycling at school is simple; make it readily available. If you aren’t putting recycle bins next to every trash bin, most people won’t go out of there way to recycle so they will just throw it away and let it go to the landfill.

A step further would even to start investment in solar technology can be hefty, but rebates and grants are out there to make it a more affordable option that ever. On top of that, you are becoming a role model to the community by showcasing what conserving energy can do when used with solar energy technology. Let solar generate your building a positive ROI all while conversing the planets resources.

We think the list could endless of all the possible ways to save energy in school, so we must of forgot some. Be sure to comment down below your energy conservation tips that will help out school facilities become greener!

Conclusion

All of these tips are exactly how energy efficient schools are becoming more sustainable, reducing ongoing costs, and generating a positive atmosphere and educational system for students and generations to come.

Don’t let the upfront costs scare you, instead look at the bigger picture. If you have to invest money now to save 10x later, isn’t it worth it? All of these things will do just that, improve the bottom line. And not only are we doing that, but we help the environment out just a little bit too. Sounds like a win-win to us! Just remember that saving energy at school doesn’t have to be hard, just take it step by step and you will slowly see the results of your efforts build up!

Anyways, to wrap it up we’d like to invite you to share any of your own energy conservation tips for schools that you may have done or even just thought of that may benefit other schools across the globe. Share your tips in the comments below, you never know who it may help. And remember, an energy saving school is a happy school!