Thanks to the sluggish economy and the price of gasoline, folks are having to tighten their belts on auto expenses these days. Some are selling their gas-hogging SUVs and purchasing more efficient cars. Others, like us, have had to downsize from two or more automobiles to one per household. When it’s time for you to

A couple days ago my sister noticed we were out of mayonnaise and suggested I whip some up and do a tutorial at the same time. My first reaction was, why do a tutorial? Doesn’t everyone know how to make mayonnaise? Well, according to Google, there are a lot of people looking for homemade mayonnaise

This post should be very helpful for the ten other DIYers besides me who are fools enough to try to fix the bearings on their front loader washing machine. The ten minute video below shows the main steps in the process that took ten hours. I left out the whimpering and screaming and declarations that

Having grown up in Bolivia and Brazil, I don’t think of making rice as a challenge because we made it pretty much twice a day every day (and sometimes three times a day if we were making sweet rice for breakfast). But I hear that not everyone knows how to make simple, fluffy, white rice.

See this ugly white water stain on our piano bench? The bench (and piano) aren’t even ours, which makes the stain even uglier. I intended to sand it down and refinish it before the owners claimed it back, but today that plan got replaced by a much easier way to remove water marks from wood

Right now I am so stinking mad at iTunes that the last thing I want to do is write a tutorial on how to move an entire library of music from one computer to another and make the music PLAY. But since I learned it’s a couple simple steps to make iTunes play your moved

Here is a quick toy snake you and your child can make on a rainy day. It took me and this 5-year-old child half an hour to felt and film the making of these colorful snakes. There is nothing much to this craft: take a piece of bike chain (see How to Take Apart a

My sister’s birthday is close to Valentine’s Day, so her parties always end up having a red heart motif. This year I decided to focus on the centerpiece above the table–the chandelier. I bought some red heart tissue paper, and in half an hour transformed our clunky light fixture into a Valentine’s themed chandelier. Your

You may remember my post about a party we had this summer where a bunch of kids were running around the yard and ran into a yellow jacket nest in the ground (and in the dark). Our first concern was to figure out what to do for the bee stings. Since it was dark out,

Thanks to the recession, my sister and I no longer have the option of not growing our own food. Unfortunately, we live in the high desert region of Central Oregon where the hardiness zone is technically 5, but where you have to be prepared year-round for the possibility of frost at night. Last summer we invested

This scarf is my first attempt at nuno felting, or felting into fabric. I’m showing it off and telling you how to felt a scarf like this one because I think it’s simple enough for an auto detailer to do. In fact, this kind of felting is especially suited for an auto detailer because the

This side table was one of the DIY gifts I made for Christmas after seeing a similar one on Pinterest. It’s made out of four window shutters someone brought over hoping we could “make something” of. I added a utility light under a hinged table top for indirect lighting if the recipient wanted that feature.