DIY Life

That decorative bowl of fruit on the end of the table has suddenly become a haven to a horde of ravenous fruit flies. You get rid of the over-ripe fruit that attracted them, you clean down the area, but you still have the little wretches. You can swat them, but wouldn't it be fun to trap them?

The people at Chow.com have a great tip for making a fruit fly trap, which involves a small dish of wine, a sploosh of water, and a drop of soap, stirred up with a finger. It would take about 10 seconds to put together.

One of the commenters suggests putting plastic wrap over the surface of the bowl, and making pin pricks in it -- apparently the flies can get in the holes, but are too stupid to get out again.

In fact, once you've watched the video, read the comments. There are a few more very creative fruit fly trap ideas there, too!

I enjoy magazines, even though there happens to be an abundance of them in my house. At last count, there were over 1500 magazines. While I am a clutter bug, they happen to be inventory, thank you very much. Maybe someday I'll get around to listing them for sale.

In the off chance that I don't get them up for sale, I think that recycling them into drink coasters is an excellent idea. I didn't find any instructions, so I followed all the links and found that you can make placemats, bowls, and magazine boxes too. A Little Hut has great instructions on how to make magazine bowls, and I believe you can use the author's instructions to make any item that you want to, and save the environment too. On the other hand, if you want to save those magazines, read Debra McDuffee's post on making magazine storage boxes.

Generally speaking, feeding a dog or cat should be the easiest part of owning one. What happens though, when you need to place restrictions on when, what or how much your pet should eat? As if those conditions aren't tricky enough to deal with, what about when you have a multi-animal household and one member of your furry entourage requires special dietary restrictions?

Never fear, the DIY community has already undertaken the development of constructive solutions to your specialized animal feeding requirements.

I have always preferred to feed my dog from a stainless steel bowl. The reasons for that are because stainless steel does not provide a porous surface for bacteria to hide in and stainless steel is so very easy to clean. Additionally, stainless steel bowls are nearly indestructible and they won't break your toes if you accidentally kick them in the middle of the night, but they make a heck of a lot of noise if that happens.

The down side is that if your dog is an aggressive eater, stainless steel bowls are fairly light and Fido may well be pushing that bowl all over the house while finishing his meal. This can actually be quite humorous if you have put something sticky in it.