By this time of year, when the garden is devoid of flowers, the florist shop is not the only source of plant material to put in an attractive vase. Cuttings from a potted plant purchased at your local supermarket or corner store can take their place.
BEAUTIFUL & EASY | We’ve used a combination of origami light cubes and bare LED bulbs (in a ratio of 1 boxed light to three bare bulbs) on every Christmas tree we’ve decorated in the last dozen years. The origami boxes produce beautiful, diffuse squares of light, something you don’t normally see on a Christmas tree. Some years we’ve chosen to box only white string lights, but mostly we box multi-coloured ones. To make our boxes, we worked with vellum squares (available at art supply stores or online) that deepen and intensify whatever colour light they cover. Read more
BACK TO BASICS | Call me a freak, but putting on rubber gloves and plunging my hands into my own toilet bowls to clean them with a scrubbing sponge doesn’t bother me at all. What does bother me is that no matter what cleaning products I use, the bowls of my newish toilets look dirty again in days. Frustrated by the ineffectiveness of Vim, Ajax, Lysol et al., I turned to cheap, common household bleach. Read more
Murphy’s Law should have a corollary along the lines of, Anything that stains is more likely to spill—and that especially applies to wine. Read more
CREATIVE SOLUTION | The trouble with gloves is that they get lost, loaned, separated from their mates, mangled by pets—or can’t be found where you put them last. Read more
WASTE NOT | Some digital deal behemoths like Groupon, Living Social—and now Social Shopper—alert purchasers when their social shopping deals are about to expire, but other sites do not. This puts the onus on the purchaser to make sure their deals don’t slip through the cracks. If you’re like me, you may have forgotten about a few things you bought on impulse (social shopping is impulse buying after all), or just plain allowed coupons to expire. When this happens, social shopping becomes a gargantuan waste of money. Read more
THE CREATIVE SOLUTION | Metal home or office furnishings dating from the 1950s are hot accent pieces for contemporary interiors, but painted items must be stripped entirely to the raw metal to bring them right up to date.
There are three ways to strip metal furniture. People with the space, time and muscle can use a biodegradable chemical paint remover such as Heirloom Furniture Stripper. Another method is to sand the paint off with an electric sander using a sanding pad specific to metal. Sanding leaves painty skid marks and a distinct pattern, giving the piece a timeworn look. Read more
If you’re like me, you probably have a bunch of dead AA and AAA batteries rattling around in a drawer—possibly scattered among several drawers. You can’t throw them in the trash or even in the blue box. And even though since July 1 all household batteries (alkaline and rechargeable) can be recycled at almost 1,500 collection locations across B.C., you still have to take them there. Read more
BE PREPARED | Sometimes it’s impossible to determine the genesis of an urban myth, but there is good reason to believe that David Cassidy and the rest of the Partridge Family clan either started or fanned the flame of fallacy by suggesting tomato juice removes skunk scent from dogs. The truth is it doesn’t, though it might temporarily mask the odour. In a now famous 1970 television episode, the family dog, Simone, and all the kids wound up bathing in gallons of the red stuff after a run-in with a certain Pepe Le Pew. Eeeew.
With skunk season now in full force and the air filled with the scent so familiar to Metro Vancouverites, Frugalbits decided to put together what we call a (pre)-Catastrophe Kit. The ingredients are small (and inexpensive) and the instructions are few, but preparing a deskunking kit in advance will save you time and stress should an altercation ensue. Read more
Have you got boxes of old 35mm slides that need to be scanned and transformed into digital files on your computer— then turfed because you’ll just never, ever look at them on a slide projector screen again? Well, here’s something novel you can do with a stack of them.
My inspiration for this retro-look pendant lampshade came from the infamous credit card dress that a fashion designer wore to the Academy Awards ceremony a number of years ago. The construction method for both items is similar. Read more