DIY Life

If your lifestyle is anything like my family's, you might have an overdose of candle holders and other decorative stuff filling up the closets and other storage spaces in your house. We started to take it outside in the form of sprinklers for the garden and they look a lot better than the black sprinkler stakes you can buy.

We used candle holders, lamp bases, and little garden statues to make this work; but anything you can drill a hold into and run an irrigation hose through should work. Note that wood and metals will probably age and rust, but that's part of the charm.

To build these, drill a hole into the decor just smaller than the irrigation hose so it fits snuggly into place. Run the small hose into the main irrigation feeder line. In my case I used a soaker hose. Add your sprinkler head and start watering.

These are great for making mini bird baths and butterfly watering stations. Just add some aquarium gravel or pea gravel to the basin for butterflies so they don't drown.

I spent many hours playing carroms as a kid. Carroms is a game similar to billiards. Rules vary considerably from country to country and even from town to town. A few years ago I bought a board at a thrift store while visiting my parents. When my father saw it he became excited and a family game of carroms followed.

Since that purchase I've bought two other carroms boards. Each has been slightly different but the size of the playing surface works great for a table top.

I have found that the corner pockets make great drink holders. Friends that see the table want to play or want to know about the game if they never have played before.

Suggestions on how to build a table out of a carroms board after the jump.

Continuing to recraft finds from the game closet (last week was Monopoly wine charms) here is another easy project that uses old dominoes to make a bracelet.

A single domino could be used as a pendant on a necklace as a gift for someone with a favorite number or a birthday present by using the numbers to represent their age. Wooden dominoes like the ones that I used would also make great coasters by gluing them together (like the Scrabble tile coasters).

After the jump is the list of supplies and suggestions for making a few of your own domino bracelets.

Every Wednesday I will be bringing you a project that has been recrafted from something else. I dabble in everything from paper crafts and sewing to construction and electronics so there will be a broad range of projects. The focus being the reuse of items -- often items available for little money or even free.

This month I raided the game closet for inspiration. For years I have stocked those shelves with thrift store purchases. By keeping an eye out for odd games and even the standby classics I have more games than I will ever likely play. A few duplicates give me the raw materials for some nostalgic projects.

We entertain often enough to have the occasion to need to distinguish one glass of wine from another. For some reason people congregate in the kitchen and by milling around, glasses of wine end up misplaced and the ownership of fuller glasses disputed. Putting a unique ring on each glass stem will help people remember which glass is their own -- but there may be arguments over who gets the shoe!