Story of the Day - Page 3 of 56

Is Color Wow The Best For Root Touch-Up?

May 30, 2014/0 Comments/in BEAUTY, Fashion & Beauty, Hair & Nails, View All Beauty Stories /by Editor

Believe the hype. This hair touch-up product does an exceptional job at getting to the root of regrowth. (VIDEO)

MONEY WELL SPENT | If you colour your hair and occasionally need to camouflage your roots, there are plenty of inexpensive products that do a so-so job covering the regrowth (we have written about a few of them HERE). I say so-so because most of these cheapie crayons produce sticky (as in leaving hair strands clumped together), patchy (as in placing colour on the topmost layer of hair and not on the follicles underneath) results at best.

I was going on (and on) about this problem to my stylist, Heather Kopchia, when she jumped in to recommended Color Wow, a mineral powder she uses to touch up the regrowth of film actors she coifs. “You won’t believe how amazing this stuff is. You really can’t tell it’s in your hair.” Read more

CLUG: An Easy, Elegant Way To Store Bikes

May 21, 2014/0 Comments/in FITNESS, Fitness & Health, HOME, Organizing, View All Fitness Stories, View All Home Stories /by Editor

Designed in Vancouver, the CLUG is an easy and elegant way to store bikes.

INEXPENSIVE & AWESOME | If this isn’t a fabulous idea, I don’t know what is: a practically invisible clip that you can attach to almost any surface to store your bike in a space-saving position. Use the stylish CLUG—it’s a blend of the words clip and hug—“to keep your place tidy and display your ride without damaging it or your walls,” say the trio of industrial designers (with a Fuseproject connection) at Vancouver-based Hurdler Studios. They are currently crowd-funding on Kickstarter in an effort to speed their clever product to market. Read more

Electric Is The Best Way To Brush

May 9, 2014/0 Comments/in Fitness & Health, HEALTH, View All Health Stories /by Editor

If you are a lackluster brusher, a high-powered electric toothbrush will make a huge difference in the state of your mouth.

MONEY WELL SPENT | If you think listening to someone talk about watching paint dry is snooze, try concentrating while a pal waxes on about brushing his or her teeth.

So you know I would never bring up ongoing tooth care unless I had something interesting to report. Last week, during a routine appointment with my dental hygienist, she confessed to having trouble cleaning my teeth. “I’ve looked for plaque everywhere, and I can find just the tiniest speck on a single tooth,” she said. “Mouths like yours could put me out of business.” Read more

A Novel Way To Stay Awake While Driving

May 1, 2014/1 Comment/in Fitness & Health, HEALTH, HOW-TO KNOW-HOW, View All Health Stories, View All How-To Stories, Well Being /by Editor

There are plenty of strategies to help you stay awake while driving. Here’s a highly effective one you may not have thought about.

TRAVEL ADVISORY | Recently a number of Canadian newspapers reported the results of a new online survey from a national insurance company confirming that an “alarming number” of people (30 percent of male respondents and 14 percent of female ones) admitted to nodding off while driving (CLICK HERE for the story).

Yikes! With road trip season in full swing, vacationers are going to need to reach deep into their bag of tricks to make sure they stay awake when driving long distances. To the roster of obvious ways to maintain alertness—starting out rested; ingesting caffeine (coffee, Red Bull, No-Doz); blasting yourself with cold air, intense conversation or loud music—we would like to offer a not so obvious solution, an inexpensive food item that has worked shockingly well to revive every driver we know who has tried it. Read more

Just Jump—You Won’t Be Sorry

April 27, 2014/1 Comment/in Exercise, FITNESS, Fitness & Health, SAVE EFFORT, SAVE ENERGY, View All Fitness Stories /by carolannrule

How to improve your mood, energy level, agility, cardiovascular system and bone density by doing this one simple thing.

FIT IN A MINUTE | Gretchen Rubin, author of The New York Times bestseller The Happiness Project, wrote a blog post last December on the joy of jumping up and down. Gretchen claims that the simple act of jumping up and down—in street wear, no special equipment or gym strip required—relaxes and/or invigorates her, depending on the situation. Oh yes, and it makes her kids laugh too, something that contributes to a more lighthearted mood at home. Read more

Shine Your Silver To Perfection Quickly Without Commercial Polish

April 25, 2014/0 Comments/in Cleaning & Maintenance, HOME, Home & Garden, HOW-TO KNOW-HOW, SAVE TIME, View All Home Stories, View All How-To Stories /by Editor

This homemade concoction will put a shine on your silver with minimal cost and effort. (VIDEO)

THIS STUFF WORKS | Until recently, I have polished my wee cache of silver—both sterling and plate, everything from jewellery to flatware—with pricey silver polish from a local jewellery store. “Why do you use that stuff?” my friend and Frugalbits contributor Brendan Power asked one evening after I complained about the bits of pink paste that had become lodged in the nooks of my newly cleaned Tiffany bracelet. I could avoid this residue, and polish up everything nicely, he explained, “using tin foil, soda and salt.” Read more

The Surprising Things Trees Can Do For Your Garden

April 22, 2014/2 Comments/in Design, GARDEN, Home & Garden, View All Garden Stories /by Editor

In honour of Earth Day, we look at a few of the magic tricks trees can perform in your garden.

MONEY WELL SPENT | In the landscape of memory, trees define the countryside. As the most prominent and long-lived of all vegetation (think giant sequoia), they are the one green symbol guaranteed to represent place. Mention Italy and Italian cypress come to mind. Images of southern France always include olive trees. The English landscape, that great affectation, is symbolized by large-scale deciduous varieties planted in “clumps” (by Capability Brown) that look from a distance like a single stylized tree. In the Pacific Northwest, iconic evergreens—Douglas fir, Western red cedar and hemlock—colour much of the landscape black-green, a situation that both pleases and perturbs me. Read more

Baby Cakes: Hosting A Gender Reveal Party

February 3, 2014/3 Comments/in Culture & Leisure, Entertaining, FOOD, HOW-TO KNOW-HOW, View All Food Stories, View All How-To Stories /by Editor

Here’s a fun and memorable way expectant parents are revealing the gender of their baby.

SNEAK PEEK | Our daughter Alexis got married last spring, and now she and her husband Dave (pictured here on their wedding day) are expecting a baby. Last week, they went for their 20-week ultrasound. This imaging technique is used five months into a pregnancy to determine whether a fetus is developing normally. At 20 weeks, it can also detect whether the baby is a boy or a girl—if the gender is visible, of course.

Lexi and Dave wanted to know the sex of their baby. And they wanted to share the experience of finding out what it is with members of their immediate family, so this past weekend we had what’s called a gender reveal party at our house.

Here’s what Lexi and Dave did to ensure the baby’s gender was kept under wraps (and unknown even to them) until the appropriate moment.

Walk Therapy: How To Log Maximum Miles Every Month

February 1, 2014/0 Comments/in Exercise, FITNESS, Fitness & Health, HOW-TO KNOW-HOW, THE LATEST, View All Fitness Stories, View All How-To Stories /by Editor

There’s no question that walking is good for you. Here’s a trick to make sure you keep moving.

FIT FOR FREE | Last month, I walked from Vancouver in Canada to Bellingham in Washington and then back to Vancouver again. After that I walked from Vancouver to Hope. I didn’t actually visit either of these lovely towns—I walked the equivalent distance, 316 kilometres (196 miles), in and around my own neck of the woods. Read more

The Easiest Way To Pull Together An Emergency Survival Kit

February 1, 2014/2 Comments/in Goods & Services, HOME, HOW-TO KNOW-HOW, Organizing, View All Home Stories, View All How-To Stories /by Editor

If you have yet to cobble together an emergency survival kit, this well-priced ones from Costco will make the task an {almost} no brainer.

MONEY WELL SPENT | I can’t believe how many people I know who still have not put together a basic emergency preparedness kit. But hey, even with straight- forward easy-to-follow directions on this very website (CLICK HERE for our story on how to put together a survival kit from scratch), up until recently I was among the great unprepared. I wish I could say it was Frugalbits that prompted me to get my kit together, but it wasn’t; it was my dear friend and neighbour who showed me hers, a store-bought version from Costco. Read more