Arbor Day is a nationally-celebrated observance that encourages tree planting and care. In 1854 J Sterling Morton moved from Detroit to the area that is now the state of Nebraska. At that time there were virtually no trees in the area and he and the other pioneers desired to have them in their surroundings.  They also noticed that trees were needed to act as windbreaks to stabilize the soil and to provide shade from the sun, fuel and building materials. Morton planted many trees around his own home but wanted to encourage and enable others to do the same.

At a Nebraska State Board of Agriculture in 1872, Morton proposed a holiday to plant trees. This was known as “Arbor Day” and prizes were awarded to the counties and individuals who planted the most trees on the day. A total of about one million trees were planted in Nebraska on the first Arbor Day.

On Arbor Day, people are encouraged to plant and care for trees. A wide range of events such as, tree planting ceremonies; proclamations by city governments; exhibitions and educational activities on trees and their importance to local communities and the planet as a whole; and fairs, musical performances and open days in garden centers are organized to promote Arbor Day.

If you are interested in finding out the benefits of planting trees in your specific area, check out the The Tree Benefit Calculator, which allows anyone to make a simple estimation of the benefits individual street-side trees provide.

Celebrate this Arbor Day Friday, April 29, 2011 in a personal way by planting a tree yourself.

Terra Verde, a 3,000 square foot 1970’s Florida-style ranch located between Orlando and Ocala, FL, is being greenovated by Dr. Anna Marie into a healthy, sustainable and energy efficient green home.

The 400 square foot renovated kitchen showcases bamboo, and the newest eco-friendly offering in the Robin Wilson Home Collection by Holiday Kitchens, coconut palm custom cabinetry.  Coconut palm is an innovative alternative to exotic tropical hardwood timbers that are fast depleting due to deforestation and illegal logging. Holiday Kitchens’ coconut palm cabinetry contains no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) or urea formaldehyde.

CLICK BELOW  to watch the first step in the greenovation of Terra Verde’s kitchen:


Terra Verde’s Kitchen Renovation Begins


The eco-friendly Robin Wilson Home cabinetry collection by Holiday Kitchens features varying sustainable materials from bamboo, coconut palm, wenge, stainless steel, plus hardwood in cherry, maple, oak with low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) finishes.

Stay tuned for more updates on the kitchen greenovation at Terra Verde!

Click on the below link to view.
Holiday Kitchens – For Your Home

Hosted by Vicki Payne, the program appears on over 550 PBS stations nationwide and was syndicated this past fall and winter 2011. Please check your local listings for air time on 3/26/2011.

Guest blog post by Susan Lund of Spacial Design – San Anselmo, CA

We would like to inspire you by telling you about five of the most important trends that are in our consciousness as we consider how we want to design and live in our kitchens. These are lifestyle trends, not the color of the month trend! Kitchens are once or twice in a lifetime projects, typically. We want to pay attention to new ideas, absolutely, but seek longevity in design and materials as well.

1.Open Floorplan – An open floorplan design concept comes to mind first. We’re busy. We want to connect with our family and friends while we perform the sometimes mundane tasks we need to do in the kitchen. We’re also feeling more relaxed, less formal, yet desire more control of our spaces. Taking charge of our family connections in our own home means designing our kitchens for easy, efficient, communication across disparate spaces. A loft-like design concept is gaining momentum as a coordinated “designed” response to the need for communication in our homes. Products of quality to better relate (as well as to better serve their purpose) to surrounding living areas are seriously considered for their longevity and classic design, be they modern, traditional, or artisan.

2.What’s Your Style? – We see a continuing movement toward tapping into one’s inner creativity, finding one’s personal expression. The gift from the internet gods to those redesigning a room or a home is the ability to find the nuance of our personal style online. There are also endless books, magazines and resources to tap into your own personal desires. Finding those nuanced products, ideas, methods, that speak to us, is a direct result of a fresh and new confidence, built up over recent years and a trend that has recently accelerated in light of our very difficult last 1 1/2 years. Personal expression aside, what many of us also seem to be moving toward is a warm, modern, feel with clean lines and simple design elements with an appreciation for design that is inspired by nature, and offers easy care as one advantage. We used to have one or two clear trends in kitchen design. Now we have quite a few trends, sub trends, mixed trends. The trend landscape has changed dramatically, a good change.

3.The Chef’s Kitchen – We’re loving fabulously fun cooking equipment, appliances designed in countless configurations offering any feature you can dream of, including cool high tech features and lots of color and finishes. We’re going to local farmer’s markets, and a desire for healthy foods of quality is also responsible for the renewed enjoyment of cooking. The grill pans, specialty knives, panini presses combined with an appreciation for the classics such as the cast iron skillet or the Le Creuset ovens as examples, bring us to a more sophisticated level in our culinary lives. We’re cooking at home again for family and friends. The “Healthy Kitchen”, connected in philosophy to the “Chef’s Kitchen” will include aging in place design/universal design principles (it’s own enormous trend/topic), non toxic surfaces, and appliances for healthy foods and homes such as steam oven, air scrubbing refrigerators, ventilation that automatically turns on/off, adjusting its speed, electronic on/off faucetry and many more innovations designed to create and enhance a healthy lifestyle in the kitchen.

4.The Social Kitchen – More than ever before, we want our kitchens to be social. So social, that we see islands becoming larger as walls continue to come down, even taking center stage to include a sink and a cooking appliance, and seating. We see furnishings (such as a kitchen sofa for example, which is raised to meet the breakfast room table or an island designed with a lower dining table attached) in the kitchen and it is all about comfort and function. We see finishes and colors which do not match, but blend. Fireplaces and larger windows in width and height create an open feel and add architectural interest as they do in surrounding rooms. Alternative finishes, textures and products add sophistication. Good artwork, sconces (and other non-typical kitchen lighting) and media media media of any size/shape/type contribute to the feeling that one is truly in a living/social area. Multiple work stations providing optimal function for various social lifestyle situations will be designed into the space. A desire for real comfort is strongly connected to the social kitchen trend.

5.Environmental Awareness – No list, even a short one, would be complete without mentioning the importance of sustainable living in our everyday life and thinking sustainability in the products we select. Appliances have made enormous strides in energy conservation in recent years, and faucets and cabinetry, flooring, tile, and countertops are made with recycled or certified environmentally safe materials. Conserving water and energy is our collective goal. Energy saving lighting fixtures has made great strides as seen in CFL and LED fixtures. Yes, you can still have your glam touch with (energy saving) lights at your sink or countertop! Green design, in our opinion, does not work without longevity built into products. Longevity built-in, equals quality. More than a trend, real quality, as it always has, simply makes sense. Environmental awareness brings with it a desire to experience the natural character of wood species, natural textures in metals, stone, and fabrics. A parallel to this trend is enjoyment of hand crafted, artisan, items, an easing up from perfection, toward organic shapes and joinery.

The word for design in 2010 and for the foreseeable future just may be “Authenticity”

Arbor Day is a very special day at Holiday Kitchens and we celebrate every year by providing all our employees with a tree to plant.  While many people have heard of Arbor Day, many do not know the history behind it. 

Arbor Day was founded by nature lover J. Sterling Morton on April 10, 1872 in Nebraska.  It was declared a legal holiday on April 22 in 1885 – Morton’s birthday. You can find out more about the history and how you can make a difference by visiting http://www.arborday.org/index.cfm

If you are interested in finding out the benefits of planting trees in your specific area, check out the The Tree Benefit Calculator, which allows anyone to make a simple estimation of the benefits individual street-side trees provide.

Celebrating Arbor Day is just one of the ways Holiday Kitchens protects the enviroment – you can learn all about our different shades of green at http://www.holidaykitchens.com/livegreen/

Q: What is the definition of a “Green” kitchen cabinet?

A: “Green” refers primarily to how friendly a product is to the environment and to the health of those producing and using it.  In terms of the environment, it can encompass everything from the amount of energy used to manufacture, how much virgin (versus recycled) material is consumed, and what the resulting waste stream contains.  A cabinet can be green because it is healthier, because it has a low impact on the environment, or because it is simply more durable.  The quality of a product is critical to how long it will last.

Q: Can a “finished” cabinet be eco-friendly/green?

A: A natural finish is an eco-friendly finish because no stain or color has been applied prior to the topcoat.  Another option for an eco-friendly finish is hand-rubbed linseed oil finish, which is earth friendly. This finish has been used for years on antique furnishings and gun stocks.  Holiday Kitchens uses formaldehyde free glue to construct all of its cabinetry.

Q: Are there eco-friendly/green cabinet options – other than wood?

A: Bamboo is becoming a very popular alternative to traditional wood cabinetry.  It is a fast growing grass that is strong and durable.  Bamboo finishes beautifully with many of the same characteristics as wood.  Although bamboo is a grass and not a wood, it’s a sturdy and highly sustainable resource that is as good as any traditional wood. It is a rapidly renewable plant based product that will qualify for green building points.

Another eco-friendly/green option is reconstituted (composite) veneers, which are wood veneers engineered from sustainably harvested African hardwood trees and Italian plantation grown poplar trees.  These veneers replicate wood species that are under environmental pressure.  Holiday Kitchens offers Brookside veneers in Wenge and Zebrawood as an option for an exotic “green” look.

Q: Is there an organization that oversees environmental/green practices of cabinet manufacturers?

A: Holiday Kitchens is proud to be a certified member of the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturer’s Environmental Stewardship Program (ESP).  The ESP is designed as a framework for manufacturers to highlight environmental business practices concerning: product and process resource management, air quality, environmental management policies and systems, and community relations.

Holiday Kitchens is making every effort to utilize only vendors that practice sound forest stewardship practices.

Not all linseed oil finishes are created equally – there is “raw” linseed oil and “boiled” linseed oil.  Raw linseed oil is squeezed from flax seed and packaged with no additional additives or preservatives.  Most products labeled as “boiled linseed oil” are a combination of raw linseed oil, petroleum-based solvents and metallic dryers – making them not so green!

Raw linseed oil, when used as a finish, dries slowly as it soaks into the wood versus coating it like a varnish.  This leaves a smooth shiny surface that shows off the grain of the wood. Wood treated with linseed oil is resistant to denting and scratches and can easily repaired.

At Holiday Kitchens we only use raw linseed oil – we don’t know of any other cabinet manufacturers who can claim this! We offer this earth friendly finish on cherry, oak, and alder woods.  The finish comes in three options Light Linseed Oil, Medium Linseed Oil and Dark Linseed Oil.   

For more information on Linseed Oil, and other eco-friendly cabinet choices, visit http://holidaykitchens.com/livegreen/choices.php

Dr. Anna Marie

Holiday Kitchens’ eco-friendly line of cabinetry has been chosen to be featured in the Greenovation of Terra Verde, a green renovation project led by Dr. Anna Marie, Health Specialist for the Weather Channel and host of the nationally syndicated better living show Your Life with Dr. Anna Marie. 

Terra Verde, a 3,000 square foot 1970’s Florida-style ranch located between Orlando and Ocala, FL, is being greenovated by Dr. Anna Marie into a healthy, sustainable and energy efficient green home. 

“It is a perfect fit for Holiday Kitchens to be the cabinet provider for Terra Verde,” said Dr. Anna Marie.  “The company’s commitment to the environment is demonstrated throughout every facet of their business – they not only talk-the-talk but they walk-the-walk. From their use of sustainable resources to their use of non-toxic “low voc’s”- they meet our goals to achieving not only an eco-friendly kitchen but a healthy kitchen.  Not to mention the cabinets are downright gorgeous and their craftsmanship is second to none.” 

Terra Verde will feature the eco-friendly Robin Wilson Home Custom Cabinetry  by Holiday Kitchens, which  has over 100 door styles in varying materials from bamboo, coconut, wenge, stainless steel, plus hardwood in cherry, maple, oak with low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) finishes. This frameless, custom-cabinetry line has over 10% more usable storage space maximizing storage, cleaning and functionality, compared to framed cabinetry.

Stay tuned as we follow the progress of the kitchen remodel!