DIY Life

Every spring, I have to get my long haired Black Lab shaved. If I don't, he spends his days in absolute misery, due to ticks and fleas constantly biting him. I try to keep up with the ticks as best I can, but his fur is so thick that I miss many of them.

It is still pretty cold at night, and the days haven't warmed up past 70 yet, but I know that fleas will be making their rounds soon, and that once again Jake will be scratching up a storm. When the ticks let up, the fleas will come knocking at his door, looking for a home. I can stop them by making my own herbal flea powder.

Using Eucalyptus, Rosemary, Lavender, Fennel, Yellow Dock, and Pennyroyal, you can make your own herbal flea powder for your treasured pet too. All you have to do is mix as many of the ingredients as you can find in a shaker-top jar, and then apply sparingly to your pet.

Be sure to read through the comments, as there seems to be some confusion as to whether or not Pennyroyal is acceptable to use on cats and dogs. It would seem that using powder is okay, whereas Pennyroyal oil is toxic to animals.

When it comes to protecting our families from poisonous plants, we go about things wrong, all wrong. Backwards, in fact.

Yes, you are probably already aware that a great many common garden and container plants are poisonous to humans and/or family pets. But if I asked you to identify the ones posing the greatest risk to you and your family, chances are you'd be stumped, or perhaps hard pressed to name more than one or two.

Why? Because we learn about poisonous plants from our teachers at school, from books, and from television. We see pages and pages of photographs of toxic leaves and berries. We scan ultra-long lists of poisonous plant names. The nerdier among us (Ooh! Me! Me!) have tried and failed to memorize some of this mass of information.

Silly thing is, your own yard is the best starting point for learning. Once you feel confident in your own landscape, it will be much easier to branch out and learn about less well-known species, which I'll discuss after the jump. And check out my gallery below if you'd like to see some of the common poisonous plants growing in my yard.

One of our four cats seems to love to play with the toilet paper. I've had this problem before but they usually grow out of it. I have been throwing away shredded toilet paper or re-rolling half of a roll more frequently lately so it was time to figure out a way to stop it.

I know that one solution is to not put the toilet paper on the dispenser. But that simply is not an option for me. I'm even compulsive about which way the roll is put on the spindle.

Just use a long rubber band and wrap it around the ends of the holder. A few weeks of that and most cats should lose interest and move on to play with other things that they shouldn't. (Perhaps you'll need a tip on keeping your cat out of houseplant dirt.)

Recently, Unclutterer posted some useful information for those of us who drown in piles of pet hair. In response to a post about speedy house-cleaning, a reader asked what to do about piles of fur shed by their Chocolate Lab. The question came up because most "Clean your house really quickly!" plans don't take pet ownership into account.

Erin from Unclutterer responded with a number of tips for dog and cat owners. In summary, and with a few parenthetical comments from me, they are:

• Pick up pet-hair dust-bunnies with damp paper towels daily.
• Bathe pets as frequently as you can: a lot of excess fur will go down the drain with the water. (Bathing a dog more often than every few weeks can really dry out their skin, so be careful with this one. Also, it can clog your drains.)
• Brush pets regularly. (A shedding loop/blade may be more helpful for longer-haired or double-coated dogs.)

Find the rest of the tips, more ideas about how you can put them into action, and information about equipment that might help you, all after the break!

Within the last year Friskies dry cat food switched from a paper bag with a plastic liner to a type of woven plastic for their big bags of product. The paper bags my cats could chew through, but these new bags are nearly impossible to tear. Without a use in mind I began to tuck them away once they were emptied.

My girlfriend suggested that we start to bring our own bags to the grocery store recently. So we started to collect the canvas totes and conference bags that we had around to keep in the car for our next trip to the store. But none were very large and the pile was bulky and quite mismatched in size and style. Then I realized that the cat food bags could work well for our trips to the store.

If you have cats and shop at warehouse stores or a store that charges for bags these giant sacks might work well for you. Of course, it may take a while to collect enough bags to hold all of your groceries. We just found out that our grocery store gives you a two cent credit for each bag of your own that you use.

Our household has twice as many felines as people. Our two youngest kittens have the tendency to like to dig in the soil of our few remaining potted plants. After filling a good portion of our vacuum cleaner bag with the good kind of dirt, I decided to find a way to keep them out.

I considered cutting a piece of cardboard, wood, or metal to fit around the plant but watering would become more of a hassle. Then I used a collection of marbles and polished pebbles. They worked well at letting the water pass through and prettied up the top of the potting soil but the kittens loved to rummage them out and play with them. Finally, I threw a few large pine cones in one of the pots. They lock together well enough that the cats don't pull them out, they don't prevent watering, and, as they degrade, they will add organics to the soil.

With the idea of interlocking items in mind, my cacti are now guarded with beach-combed coral pieces and the aloe plant has an arsenal of green army men protecting it.

Does your puppy linger under the children as they open their advent calendar, hoping some chubby little hands will drop a piece of chocolate? I never would have thought of including the pets in this, but if you're looking for a way to give your pet his own advent calender, this is a great project for you. It only takes about an hour and you probably have most of the materials around the house. Here's what you'll need:

1. Green poster board (or another color with a green cellophane overlay)
2. pen or pencil and marker
3. Scissors
4. Tape
5. Glue gun or stapler
6. 26 foil cupcake liners
7. 25 Dog or cat treats

The full instructions and pictures will guide you through crafting this treat tree. I think it's a cute idea to make an advent wreath for your pet, but I don't see that this design has to be for an animal. you could use all the same ideas and fold chocolate or other candy into the cupcake liners. Better yet, make your children and the family pet matching calenders. The countdown started Saturday so you better get crafting!

Roman Sock is the nom de blog of a young Edinburgh lass, Brie. She's been blogging for about six months, and since then, she's turned out some of the most distinctive and interesting crocheted amigurumi patterns I've yet seen on the Web. Best of all, they're free.

What I appreciate most about Brie's work is her design sense. The patterns she creates don't share the generic look that you see in a lot of amigurumi patterns (basic humanoid bunnies and cats come to mind -- their cuteness is not in doubt, but originality is sometimes lacking). I have no idea if (or how much) she sketches out her ideas or uses reference photos beforehand, but they look like they jumped out of the sketchbook of a particularly good illustrator... one who likes their animals two parts realistic and one part cartoon.

Don't miss it: you can read more about her wonderful world of quirky animals and creative crochet after the break! The pattern links are there, too.

Nearly all pet owners have a dirty little secret that we all desperately want to keep under wraps: sometimes our perfectly trained, dander & body function free little people actually poop and pee other than in their prescribed locations ...only occasionally of course. Unfortunately, the tell-tale smell from these occasional mishaps can linger, well, forever.

Even after using various pet odor removing products that caution you against using them around animals a faint scent always remains to remind you and spill the beans to your guests that your cat or dog isn't perfect. I learned a simple, 100% effective, and all natural solution to even the foulest of pet odors by applying a little kitchen knowledge.

Over the last few years, I've seen a couple of Halloween wreaths in stores. They're usually pretty cool, but slightly expensive for what they are... like, I'd spend that much on a real fir or holly Christmas wreath, but not for a wreath of black silk roses or sleek black feathers. Never mind that they'd probably cost about the same amount of money to make. And my family made crazy-detailed themed Christmas wreaths when I was a teenager, so I've always thought that planning them and getting them right wasn't worth the hassle.

But now, Amy at Glitter, Vinyl, and Thread has made some really cool kitschy wreaths for Halloween that aren't too difficult at all, and that seem to be totally worth what it takes to make them! My favorite is the eyeball wreath, but there's also a fang wreath, and an orange garland wreath with cute spooky critters all over it.

The orange wreath is easy: it's just a wreath form wrapped with several different types of garland, after which a few loose things were added to it. The fang wreath has a slightly higher difficulty level, due to the need to drill holes in the fangs; Amy has a drill press. The eyeball wreath seems the most labor-intensive, with lots of drilling and stitching, but is undeniably tons of fun.

[via Crafty Crafty]

It's really not too difficult a task to trim your cat's claws if you know the techniques and have the right tool for the job. Problems often arise however, when kitty decides that claw trimming is not an acceptable game for the two of you to play. There are a number of things that you can do to make the endeavor easier on both you and your cat. First and foremost, you should review the proper techniques of claw trimming. You can find some nice pictorial assistance here from Cat-World.com and here from Washington State University College of veterinary medicine.

There are good ways to ease the stresses of claw trimming. First, you should begin trimming your cat's claws when it is just a little kitten. This way, kitty learns that having you handle its paws and feeling the slight tug on its claws is a natural thing. Believe it or not, the majority of cats appreciate having their claws trimmed after the task is done. Claw trimming reduces the incidence of claws get ting stuck in carpet and fabrics, meaning that your cat will have more comfortable paws overall.

Giving your cat a pill is no picnic, but it doesn't have to cost you a cornea either. Even the most unwilling cat can be encouraged to take her medicine with these simple steps.

What you need:

• A cat

• A pill

• A dab of butter

• A sense of humor

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.

Over at her Sucka SC knitblog, Arlette Thibodeau offers this awesome "Dead Kitty" chart to use in knitting and crochet projects.

The chart features a cat's head with crossbones, a play on the traditional skull and crossbones motif. Think of the irony of it, a cat, normally cute and cuddly, now the symbol of death, evil, or pirates. It is pretty funny if you think about it.

She designed it for a double-knit scarf (shown in photo), but you can use it for just about anything! Stuff made with this chart would make a great present for the punky teen girl in your life... even if that girl is you.

Amigurumi have been a hot Internet craft topic for the last few years, with plenty of patterns and tutorials available on nearly all the popular sites, so it's surprising that almost no English-language books on the topic have hit the stores before now. That's about to change, with four new books scheduled in the second half of 2007.

What are amigurumi? Well, nuigurumi (noo-ee-goo-roo-mee) is a Japanese word that means stuffed doll, but it refers to sewn fabric items. Ami (ah-mee) is from a word that means crocheted or knitted. So, an amigurumi (ah-mee-goo-roo-mee) is a crocheted or knitted stuffed doll.

Join me after the break to learn much more about amigurumi, including links and a detailed tutorial for Nekoyama's Amineko cat, shown above. And join me over the next few days to see what else the web has to offer on this topic!