This weekend, I was on a trip to Binghamton. In the midst of unpacking my toiletries at the hotel, I found that my brand new razor blade had lost its cap. How did I find that out? Well, when I pulled my hand out of the bag, I found that my right pointer finger was missing a bit of its tip and dripping blood on everything. Thankfully, Nathan G. H. Shlivovitz was with me and knew what to do, but the experience helped me to realize that everyone needs a little first aid knowledge in life. Here a...
In the mood for a treat but can’t decide between salty or sweet? Why choose when you can have the best of both worlds? Chocolate covered pretzels are a mouth-watering snack perfect for satisfying even the most wicked cravings. They are a huge hit at parties and get-togethers, and your guests will be impressed you made them yourself (not to mention that store-bought versions can cost a pretty penny!)
Being in a cool pool on a hot day—it doesn't get much better than that, right? Well, unless you also have some ice-cold drinks to go along.
Enjoy the deliciousness of a peanut butter sandwich without the artificial chemicals that comes in store-bought jars. To make your own peanut butter at home, all you need are pre-roasted peanuts, peanut oil, and a little bit of salt and sugar.
Though silica gel packets clearly instruct you to throw them away (and not eat them), you can actually keep them for a variety of unexpectedly practical uses around the home. Silica gel is a desiccant, a substance that absorbs moisture, which makes these packets perfect for keeping things extremely dry and moisture-free.
You're alone in the wilderness. Stranded. Hungry. Cold. What do you do? Naivety could be your downfall, but you don't need to be an Army Ranger to survive.
Remember Grandma-approved eco-friendly mud graffiti? London native Helen Nodding has taken a similar approach: non-destructive moss graffiti. Helen was inspired by the cold hard steel, glass, and concrete of the city:
Improve your cardiovascular system and tone your legs with help from Men's Health. With this leg workout exercise, you'll work on many muscles of the body and improve your cardio system. The exercise is called the "dumbbell corkscrew to single arm Cuban press".
It's currently 2011, but when you fire up your game console, put your hands on the controller and play the new Dead Space 2 video game, you're warped into the future— into the year 2511— just 3 years after the events that took place in the first Dead Space. And it's sure to be a beautiful, frightening, futuristic experience.
If you're ever in a survival situation where you have no electricity and you're fresh out of flashlight batteries, fear not. By using commonplace items such as glass containers, old T-shirts, and cheap vegetable oil, you can very easily put together your own DIY oil lamp that will brighten up that darkness for hours. And no matter how fancy those store-bought scented candles can smell, none of them will smell as good as a DIY lard candle made with your leftover bacon grease.
Gina Kometani posted such a cool tip to the community corkboard, I had to illustrate it!
Do you have a green thumb but an extremely limited living space? Try building your own DIY terrarium. All you need is a clear glass or plastic container, a few of your favorite plants, and some cheap gardening supplies to start your own self-contained, self-sustained miniature garden.
Who could resist a retro SCRABBLE board game for two bucks? Suereal definitely couldn't, especially with the challenge of totally revamping a board game into something genuine and creative. Craftster's Craft Challenge #51 last June was meant to bring life back to an old board game with the following expectations:
Using water, nail polish, and a white ceramic mug, you can easily create your own artsy DIY coffee mug with a "watercolor" effect colored on its surface.
To make your own sweetened condensed milk at home, all you need are milk, sugar, butter, and about two hours of your time.
Have you seen all the adorable miniature garden ideas? Containers of some sort (wood boxes, planters, drawers, wheel barrows, bird baths…) hold a little scene full of tiny living plants along with little adornments like garden benches, hardscapes and paths. They are absolutely enchanting for all ages and how fun to shop the house and find special little things to decorate your tiny garden whether indoors or out. Not only can you plant real, live tiny plants in your garden. Consider little suc...
Making your own snow cone syrup requires only three ingredients: sugar, water, and a packet of your favorite Kool-Aid flavor. Simply combine sugar and water until it's boiling, then let it simmer for three minutes. Gradually add a packet of Kool-Aid until it's completely dissolved, then pour the syrup with a funnel into a separate container, which can then be chilled in a fridge until it's ready to use.
If you always carry earbuds with you in your purse or backpack, you can use simple household objects to prevent the cords from tangling up into knots.
Rice water refers to the cloudy water that is leftover after washing rice in a bowl, or the excess water drained from a pot used for cooking rice in boiling water. Whichever method you prefer, rice water can be saved in a separate container once cooled, then used for a number of beauty, health, and home uses.
Whether you want to avoid the cliche of expressing love through red roses or simply want to engage in a fun and simple DIY experiment, making your own rainbow roses using white roses and food coloring is a very simple project that will result in beautiful and unique floral eye candy in a matter of days.
Need to keep your favorite feline entertained at home? Using common household items lying around your bathroom or kitchen, you can craft together DIY cat toys that cost nothing to make and will provide endless entertainment for your favorite cat.
You may be surprised to know that the wildly popular and seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks actually does not contain any pumpkin in its ingredients. That, and making your own pumpkin spice latte at home is actually not very difficult at all.
Throwing a pool party before autumn arrives? Truly emphasize the festivity of summer by making a floating beer and soda cooler out of foam noodles, waterproof rope, and a large-lipped container.
Want to attract more birds into your backyard for your viewing pleasure? With a simple household objects and bird seeds, you can easily turn your backyard or outdoor balcony into a bustling destination for your neighborhood birds.
Do you use disposable wipes for cleaning dusty tables, dirty windows or removing make-up? Ditch the chemically-loaded store brands and make your own cheaper, non-toxic and super-easy DIY wipes at home.
Also known as shower soothers or vapor shower tablets, vapor shower disks are circular tablets you place at the bottom of your warm to hot shower to release effervescent vapors into the steam, which you then breathe in to relieve your cold congestion, allergy-induced stuffiness, or simply stress.
Store-bought citrus reamers and squeezers are great for extracting all of the juice out of lemons, limes, and oranges, but if you're not squeezing fresh juice every week, you probably don't have one—and have never even thought about buying one.
Thanksgiving is just around the corner, but there's no need to spend a lot of time or money on a fancy centerpiece for the dinner table.
Bringing your lunch to work doesn't always have to involve boring brown paper bags and plastic ziplocks.
Originally invented by the Shaker community in the 1700s, clothespins are incredibly useful for hanging wet clothing on a clothesline, but also can be used to organize your cable cords, keep your pair of socks together, hold down the used end of your toothpaste tube, and decrease the possibility of you accidentally hammering your finger while pounding down on a nail.
Compact discs...remember those? Before you toss your old CD spindle cases away, consider upcycling them to a DIY terrarium, cable storage container, hamster toy, rainfall shower head, bird feeder, bagel sandwich lunch box, and more.
Don't add your plastic cup to the trash bin just yet. The sturdy plastic material of these ubiquitous containers makes them perfect to use as miniature DIY greenhouses for seedlings, smartphone sound amplifiers, Christmas ornament storage, and even packing material.
Wax paper, a moisture-proof paper commonly used in the kitchen to keep food from sticking, can also be used to preserve maple leaves, keep bathroom fixtures spotless, line your refrigerator bins, funnel spices into small spice containers, and make re-corking unfinished wine bottles a cinch.
In their cooked form, rice is great for making spam musubi, sushi, and other amazing meals. In their uncooked form, dry rice grains are unexpectedly useful for preventing your salt from clumping in your salt shaker, cleaning out the insides of weirdly-shaped, hard-to-wash containers, weighing down your unbaked pie crust, cleaning out your coffee grinder, and—if you act quickly enough—saving your wet cell phone from cell phone death.
Film canisters, remember those? Those black containers with the grey lids that used to contain... camera film?
In addition to keeping your cold drink from turning lukewarm, ice cubes are also surprisingly useful for removing gum from your carpet, keeping your hollandaise sauce from curdling, skimming fat off your soup, and watering your hard-to-reach hanging plants.
Need a broom and a dust pan to clean up your living space? Look no further than your recycling bin and upcycle some of your empty drink containers to make new cleaning tools for your home.
Other than holding together bundles of pens or creating a miniature catapult for a science project, rubber bands have many other surprisingly practical uses in the kitchen, office, for DIY home projects and more.
If you want to cut down on your sodium intake but don't want to get rid of all the salt in the kitchen, you're in luck. Salt has many unexpected uses, ranging from killing weeds to removing perspiration stains from garments to extending the shelf life of your new natural bristle broom.
Look left. Can your garbage take photos like that? With a few tweaks it will! The pinhole camera is photography in its most basic form. Using a light-proof container, the 35mm will capture the image when the pinhole is opened. The resulting photographs have a distinctly démodé look, like this shot from Kodak's archive.
