‘DIY – Life Hacks – Projects’ Category

  1. book clock tutorial

    August 7, 2012 by Lauren

    Summer = slow shop = lots of time on our hands = we have lots of DIY projects to share with you guys!

    Today: A book clock tutorial

     You’ll need: A book (at least 1 inch thick), a clock kit, a drill, a pencil, and box cutter or xacto knife

    Clock kits are super cheap, some being just $4! And some even come with numbers! Some options here
    Steps:
    1. Figure out where you want the clock to go on your book. Ours is in the middle.
    2. Drill a hole through the front cover with a 1/4 inch drill bit. (and through a couple of the pages)
    3. Open the front cover. On the first actual page, trace around your clock part to see how big the hole in the book needs to be. (you’ll need to make the hole just a little bigger but you also want it to be snug.)
    4. Using your knife, start slicing out the paper on the lines you just made. You can take off the pieces of paper as they become loose. Keep cutting off the paper until your clock base can fit in the book with the front cover closed. It doesn’t have to be pretty in there, no one will see it. This part will get a little tedious, so put on some good music!
    here’s Josiah in all his dorky green glasses glory:
    and make sure it fits…
    5. Close the front cover – you might have to finagle it a little over that tall pointy clock thing. The clock hands SHOULDN’T be on right now. If the hole won’t line up (which happened to us), then adjust/make your square hole a little bigger accordingly.
    6. Screw on the clock hands and the final bolt that holds them in place. (this does vary based on what clock kit you have)
    7. Put it somewhere AWESOME! We placed ours on a bookshelf.
    If you’re going to hang it up, hang a little hanger-dealy on the back. You might need to use velcro to hold the front cover down.
    And done! A book clock for under $10! Amazing. And a great way to reuse an awesome book cover that you don’t actually wanna read. Ha!

    Category DIY - Life Hacks - Projects | Tags: | 6 Comments

  2. use a squeegee to gather fuzz & fur & hair

    July 31, 2012 by Lauren

    I was really skeptical of whether this would work. Josiah was really really skeptical. Our cats just wanted to play with the squeegee.

    BUT IT WORKS.

    Use a squeegee to gather fuzz and fur and hair off your carpet!! 

    Yes, I know. Lauren, just use a vacuum. But if you’ve ever been like me and had:

    -Not the most expensive vacuum cleaner
    -TONS of carpet fuzz from new (and terrible) carpet (yay for renting)
    -long hair that gets everywhere AND clogs up the cheap vacuum cleaner
    -2 cats

    then you’ll know that vacuum cleaners don’t always work like they should. Long hair clogs them up. PLUS they are heavy to lift up and down stairs. Plus they are noisy. And smell weird sometimes. And expensive for a nice one that will actually do a great job of vacuuming!

    The squeegee costs $5. (unless you already had one for cleaning windows or something. and there’s some online too!)

    And it is amazing at gathering all that stuff. I’m not even gonna show you the huge bag of hair/fuzz/furr we gathered because it’s just plain NASTY how much there was. Plus it isn’t noisy, or a pain to take up and down stairs, or smelly. (and no electricity needed… & an arm workout for you!) The carpet actually even LOOKS like it’s been vacuumed – you know, that just-vacuumed-and-if-you-step-you-can-see-your-footprint-look. Amazing cleaning hack / life hack.

    If nothing else, just “vacuum” your carpeted stairs with this. You’ll thank me later. You’ll still probably want to vacuum every now and then to get those smaller dirt things and whatnot. But this is amazing for a quick clean right before guests come over… like this amazing picture that describes my life:

    Bahaha. So don’t doubt that squeegee-ing your carpet will work! It’s amazing. And Josiah can testify to you that it’s great! Give it to your kids. They’ll have fun. Or your husband. Maybe mine’s just easily amused….

    Category DIY - Life Hacks - Projects | Tags: | 10 Comments

  3. thumb-controlled watering can

    July 3, 2012 by Lauren

    A thumb-controlled watering can... such a fun and FAST project! When the container is filled up with water and you cover the top hole with your thumb, the water stays inside! Remove your thumb and water will come outta the little holes at the bottom. This is perfect for watering new seedlings or for letting kids help water (so they don't drown those plants....ha!)

    We got this awesome idea from Fun in the Making – and tried it out ourselves! We tried it with both a 1/2 gallon milk container and a mysterious other container. (oh fine. it’s an empty vodka bottle.) The “other” bottle worked much much better to control the water… so we’d suggest using a sturdier plastic container like an alcohol bottle, an old maple syrup container, etc.

    There’s not really any thing else you HAVE to have to make this. You’ll need to poke small holes (6-15ish) in the bottom but you can do this with a tiny screwdriver, a thick needle, a thin pin, OR you could go the fast way and use a drill. You’ll also need one bigger hole in the lid of your container. We used a 1/16 drill bit to make the bottom holes and a 3/16 drill bit to make the top hole.

    To fill it up:
    Put the container in a bucket full of water. Then cover the big hole with your finger and lift it outta there. Then put it over your plants and take away your thumb. Water!
    Or you can do what we did (we have no bucket…) which is turn the hose on really fast into the container. It’ll fill up in about 4 seconds (and leak some on the ground) and then you can cover the lid hole with your thumb.

    We found that the milk container was too flimsy / the lid wasn’t super tight and let a lot of water through after you’d already covered up the big hole with your thumb.

    So we tried it with the thick vodka bottle with a screw-on lid and it worked perfectly! So cool.

    ta-da! donezo. Your kids will think it’s super fun now to water plants. (or your husband…. ahem Josiah.)

    :) i hope you find some sweet containers to use that work well! Embrace your alcohol bottles. Except it might be weird if your kids are running around with them. Ha!

    Category DIY - Life Hacks - Projects | Tags: | 4 Comments

  4. bamboo + lace ring / napkin holder tutorial

    June 29, 2012 by Lauren

    Today we’ve got a super easy project to show you. We had to buy NOTHING for this diy project… which is so awesome!

    It’s actually two different items: A bamboo ring and a bamboo napkin holder. And you can add lace to make them look cuter and girly!

     Materials necessary:

    Dried bamboo
    Saw
    Sandpaper
    Lace
    Mod Podge or Hot Glue

    Depending on what you’re gonna make, you need different widths of bamboo. (Josiah just ran around in the forest like he likes to do and grabbed some dried dead bamboo)
    Napkin rings – We used bamboo that had an inside diameter of at least 1 inch for the napkin rings (and that depends on the thickness of your napkins… if you have lil wimpy napkins they could be thinner.)
    Finger rings – We used bamboo that had an inside diameter of 3/4 inch for my ring finger, and 1 inch for my thumb. (this also depends on your finger size. I have baby handz)

    So once you’ve got the perfect bamboo to use, you gotta cut it with the saw into the perfect pieces for rings and napkin holders. We cut ours to be about 1/2 inch thick… but do whatchu like.

    And then sand those suckers! Just make the edges smooth so they don’t snag on anything.

    Above are the bamboo napkin rings… below is a bamboo ring (it’s a little big for that finger… ha oops)

    This could be the end of your project if you like ‘em just bamboo-y. They do look pretty sweet! BUT…. you could add some lace. Which ups the cool factor.

    I used lace that was leftover from another project. I cut the lace a little wider than the ring and hot glued it on… and then mod-podged over it so there’s not any loose ends. Then I chopped off all the extra lace with some scissors (oops, forgot to say that one in the materials. i’m sure you have like 10 pairs of little kid scissors lying around. those work great.)

    don’t they look so fun and delicate? but they are so easy. and free. you could also use black lace. OR a colored lace. OR you could spray paint over the lace on the bamboo and then take the lace off…. leaving the design of lace! Ok, I wanna do that next. :)

    Our AC is broken at the shop today. Yes, it’s currently like 1000 degrees outside. Yes, I’m crying.

    Category DIY - Life Hacks - Projects | Tags: | No Comments

Older Entries
Newer Entries