DIY Life

At my house, we really try our best to live in an environmentally friendly way, for our health and the Earth's. We eat local, fresh food as much as we can, we never use chemicals on our lawn or plants, we don't clean the house with chemicals, and we have quite the raging compost pile.

It seems that we got a bit overzealous with the composting, in fact. Last fall, after carving a stunning Jack-o-lantern, we responsibly dumped the innards of the pumpkin into our composter.

Throughout the autumn, we had several pumpkins displayed on our walkway and stoop. When it was time to put up the Christmas decorations, we plopped the pumpkins in the composter. Follow me after the break; I'm going somewhere with this...

I think most people would agree that bath products make a nice gift. Unfortunately, they're a little over-gifted, if you know what I mean. But, if you take some effort to make your own products and to personalize them, what was old-hat suddenly becomes new again. Whipup's bath bomb surprises are a perfect gift idea that you can personalize for anyone.

You'll need baking soda, citric acid, your choice of essential oil, a spray bottle with witch hazel, and your choice of trinkets to insert in the bath bombs. You'll also need a large bowl, a whisk, an ice cream scoop with a release mechanism, and a tray covered with wax paper.

To make the bath bombs, combine the baking soda and citric acid. Then slowly spray in the essential oils. Adding the witch hazel can be a bit tricky as you need just the right amount of moisture. Once the consistency is right, you'll be able to use the ice cream scoop to create the halves of the bath bomb. Then insert the trinket and put the two halves together. Whipup has the details.

Keep reading for different gift ideas with these "surprise inside" bath bombs.

There's no doubt about it: Indiana Jones is cool. After waiting almost twenty years for the fourth installment of the Indy series, the buzz is beyond buzzing. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, although it is not my favorite of the series, has every ingredient you have come to expect and love about an Indy movie.

So what's this got to do with DIY-ing? You can capitalize on all the movie hype and make your own Indiana Jones costume. Will you be perceived as cool, too? With lots of leather items and some electrical tape, how could you be anything but?

You'll need brown and black electrical tape, rope, a light brown and a dark brown leather belt, jeans, a fedora, and just a few minutes of your time. There are details about how to make a Indy-style shoulder bag and a whip using rope and electrical tape. Add a few key clothing items and your costume is complete.

So wear it to the movie, don that costume on Halloween, or just put on those duds and venture to the grocery store. You'll be Indy-cool, and that much cooler because you made it yourself.

Iron Man gear is all the rage these days, thanks to the popularity of the new hit movie. We recently went to my nephew's fourth birthday party, and as a gift, he received an Iron Man mask and an arm attachment that shoots discs. Ah, the weaponry a four-year-old apparently needs....

If you've got an Iron Man buff in your household, why spend the money on a store-bought mask and arc reactor when you can build one yourself? Details after the break.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Michaels Stores, Inc., has issued a voluntary recall of about 310,000 seasonal writing pens. The surface coating on each of the Flower Writers, Christmas Writers, Easter Writers, and Spooky Writers pens, contain high levels of lead which violates the federal lead paint standard.

Manufactured in China and sold exclusively at Michaels retail stores from August 2007 through March 2008 for about $1, the recalled pens were sold individually as part of a series of four pens. Each pen has decorative ornamentation. Please check the CPSC press release for more information.

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled pens and return them to any Michaels store for a full refund. For more information on the product recall, contact (800) 642-4235 / (800) MICHAELS, or visit their website; www.michaels.com.

The advantages of full skirts are obvious. They spin and twirl in a delightful way, and have been in style for the last few summers, usually in the form of a ruffled peasant skirt. Even when they aren't fashionable, they can be useful for all kinds of dance (salsa, flamenco, swing, modern, belly), as well as for costuming.

If you have basic sewing skills, they're incredibly easy to make. There are two popular ways to create a very full skirt: make a circle skirt, or make a gored skirt with wedge-shaped panels.

To make a circle skirt, in the most simple terms: draw, on fabric, a circle the circumference of the intended wearer's waist, then another circle as far outside of it as you want the skirt's length to be. (If that doesn't make much sense, think of a "bull's-eye" pattern.) The result is a typical circle skirt. The interior circle is the waist, which will need a waistband, and the exterior circle is the hem, which will need to be finished.

Getting the best possible results is a little more complicated than that. For more circle skirt tips and tricks, as well as everything you need to know about gored skirts (and a few useful pattern links), please join me after the break.

Last week saw the release of a new issue of The AntiCraft, the free online craft magazine for people who might prefer spiders and bats to sunshine and daisies. This time, it's all about crochet... and setting cheese on fire.

The new issue is, more or less, amigurumi-themed. Like most concepts tackled at the site, it's been interpreted with a darkly funny twist: sure, there are cute animals, but one is Cthulhu and the other is a Dungeons and Dragons monster called a "Beholder" (it has a lot of eyes). There's also a small "eyeball" bag for jewelry or dice, a chainsaw and ax for horror fans, and a (knitted) cover for knitting needles shaped like an anatomical heart.

One of these days, someone is going to come up with an amigurumi version of the Cloverfield monster, or the smaller-but-equally-distressing critter from the 2006 Korean film, The Host. Interested parties will have this issue of The AntiCraft to tide them over until that day comes.

Some video games take years to become classics and enter the popular consciousness, but Portal, the puzzle game from The Valve Corporation's Orange Box game bundle, seems to have taken only a few months.

With online memes popping up like "The cake is a lie" (referring to a promised in-game incentive that may or may not actually exist), and the game's clever, catchy closing theme, "Still Alive", it would be difficult to have been active on the Internet in the last few months without bumping into multiple Portal references.

There's a hole in the sky through which things can fly, as they say at Aperture Science, Portal's setting. Please join us after the break to see what people are doing in tribute to this ground-breaking game, with special note taken of the improbably-endearing "character" known as the Weighted Companion Cube.

But beware... there are plot spoilers just ahead. There's cake, too. All you have to do is pass through the portal.

Yeah, yeah, Halloween is so last month. But we figure that not everyone is interested in the winter holiday rush, and furthermore, posting solely about winter holiday topics stands a pretty good chance of making all of us writers feel exactly like retail workers do by December 18th (never, ever, ever wanting to hear a Christmas song again). Most of the best Halloween costumes don't hit the Internet until the first two weeks of November anyway, and if you want to win some costume contests next year, it wouldn't hurt to get started as soon as possible.

Thus, it is incumbent on me to point out this totally awesome Dwight Schrute bobblehead costume over at Incredible Stuff I Made. Dwight is the strange, uptight young salesman played by Rainn Wilson on NBC's hit comedy series The Office; he has a bobblehead of himself on his desk. Who wants to be plain ol' Dwight-the-fictional-person for Halloween, when you could build a costume that involves an oversized head and a bobbling mechanism?

The problem with writing about holidays on a DIY site, particularly one-day holidays, is this: by the time the best new information pops up on the Internet, the holiday has been over for at least a few days. So, what do you do when someone writes about their complex, creative Halloween costume in November? You hope that some people have costume parties to go to on New Year's Eve, that's what.

Instructables user Nicemag, Nicole Magne, created a tutorial for her complex 2007 costume: Kali, the Hindu goddess who can be variously and sometimes contradictorily seen as both a destroyer and a protector. It's not an easy thing to build.

You can read more about how she did it after the break.

Every week, the sites Knitting Pattern Central and Crochet Pattern Central post new free patterns that they've heard of or that have been sent to them. Several dozen patterns are often posted each week, and sometimes it can be tedious to look at them all to find the good ones... so I've done it for you. Then I've categorized them, alphabetized them, and written brief descriptions for each.

These patterns were all posted to the aforementioned sites in October, 2007, though some may have made their initial appearance on the web somewhat earlier. A few may have been posted in late September or the first few days of November: they were interesting enough to include here!

If you prove to like this feature, I'll continue to do it for you every month. You'll find patterns of all kinds after the break: sweaters for men, women, and babies, handbags, scarves and shawls, hats, toys, animals, socks, mittens, you name it.

It's been over a week since Halloween. For days, you've been nagging your roommate to take down that ghost decoration they put up in the corner of the living room, near the ceiling. The trouble is, said roommate (who is usually pretty good about washing the dishes and not using all the toilet paper without buying more) claims not to have put up a ghost decoration anywhere in the house.

Meanwhile, the ghost stares at you balefully, waves its arms around, attempts to make spooky noises, leaves ectoplasm stains on the walls, and is starting to gather dust. You think you may have a bit of a problem on your hands: you're not afraid, you're annoyed. So, who you gonna call? There aren't many actual exorcists in the phone book, let alone Dr. Peter Venkman. (Does he even count as an "actual exorcist"? I mean, have you seen the man work?)

My prescription: get a copy of Ghostbusters and run it incessantly on your DVD player this weekend. At the same time, visit the Ghostbusters Prop Archive, a site dedicated to building all sorts of replica props from the film. Make a point of lingering on the pages for Proton Packs and Ghost Traps: print out a few plans, make some notes, and, most importantly, let your uninvited house-guest see you doing it. Periodically make calculating glances in his direction. Munch on marshmallows.

If your ghost is a reasonably bright ghost, he'll put two and two together and head for someone else's apartment. He doesn't have to know that you're not figuring out how to build real ghost traps, right?

If you just want to make some costumes and props for Ghostbusters cosplay or fan films, the GPA would probably work for that, too, I guess... because I'm joking about the exorcism idea. The site has all the detailed information, screen grabs, and building suggestions you could possibly need to make your project a success. There's even a small shop full of elements that may be difficult to find: knobs for the goggles, belts for the uniforms, etc. Get busting!

Yes, folks, it's that time of year: the latest roughly-seasonal issue of The AntiCraft is up. The current issue is the Samhain (Winter) 2007 issue, full of cold-weather weirdness. As always, we have to start with a warning: the projects on the site are not "adult" in the naughty sense, but the language is, so if you're easily offended, The AntiCraft is probably not for you.

The newest issue is spider-obsessed, there have been changes to the site in the form of forums, and the ladies of The AntiCraft are also starting to peel back the covers on their new book, which will be released in a few weeks. In relation to the book, there's a shiny new extremely odd contest for you to try your hand at.

See what I mean after the break.

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In Mexico and in Mexican-American communities around the country, it's the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), a festive celebration to honor lost loved ones and others who have gone before. It corresponds with All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day on the Catholic calendar: November 1 is dedicated to children's souls, while November 2 is for the spirits of adults. It is said that these souls return to Earth for a visit, but they aren't feared: they're greeted with open arms. And lots of trinkets.

When relatives are coming, you don't want them to think you're unhappy about the visit, do you? The same logic lies behind much of the celebration. People commemorate the lives of lost loved ones by creating ofrendas ("offerings": altars and shrines), making sugar skulls as presents for the dead, hanging banners made of papel picado ("pierced paper" filigree), decorating with real or paper marigolds, baking pan de muerto (the tasty "bread of the dead"), visiting family graves, and maintaining a festive atmosphere.

Who can resist taking these themes and running with them? You'll find more information and plenty of tutorials after the break!

Are you a Halloween procrastinator? Never fear! You can still whip up a last-minute homemade costume for tonight's festivities. Surfing around, I discovered that Fox News has posted some make-it-yourself costume ideas complete with photos and instructions. Among the suggestions: all-in-black dancer from the iPod commercial, mummy, jellyfish, Hershey's Kiss, bag of jellybeans, spam monster and sudoku.

Okay, okay: the downside? Their photos shown are most definitely of nicely-made costumes. They are not of people sporting the last-minute, homemade costumes described in the article. Let's get real. You are probably not going to look that fab unless you are a Martha Stewart clone. However, if you follow the instructions and aim for the look depicted in the snapshots, you will most definitely look suitably festive.

Time is of the essence here, so pick one that's really easy to do with materials you already have on hand. For that reason, I'd suggest ruling out more involved ideas like mummy or jellyfish in favor of the super-easy spam monster costume. Here's what you do:

SPAM MONSTER COSTUME
You will need: one old hoodie sweatshirt, scissors, duct tape, printer and paper.