DIY Life

I have a massive procrastination issue. I believe it started somewhere in university, where you could often find me face-down in a pile of unfinished classroom notes and study guides -- cramming for that inevitable 9 a.m. exam.

Not much has changed in recent years, although rather than the aforementioned study guides, you'll often find dinner party recipes, article deadlines, and -- this month in particular -- costume ideas for that dreaded Halloween party.

This year, I've vowed to change my ways and am getting started early. Yet, for those of you with chocked-full schedules that are anticipating a very late Halloween Eve, feel free to check out these last-minute costume ideas that have saved my procrastinating buns in the past. Each costume requires very little craft knowledge on your part, and should be easily compiled with household items. Ready? Let's get started!

1. Static-Cling
What You'll Need: Dress normally and pin a few pairs of panty hose, a dish towel and dryer sheets to your clothing.
Bonus: You'll get a few laughs, and will be the comfiest (sans pins!) in the room.

2. Paper Shredder
What You'll Need: A stack of paper. When someone asks you what your costume is, tear a piece of paper in half and proclaim "I'm a paper shredder!"
Bonus: You can use your spare paper for all of those phone numbers you'll be sure to get.

3. Nudist On Strike
What You'll Need: Dress normally and create a sign out of posterboard, cardboard, or whatever you have on hand. Poster should say "Nudist On Strike."
Bonus: Trust us -- no one wants any other kind of nudist at their party.

4. Aircraft Carrier
What You'll Need: Steal a toy airplane from your little brother, or make a paper airplane of your own. When someone asks you who you're dressed as, hold the airplane high and announce "I'm an aircraft carrier!"
Bonus: You still have one spare hand to hold your drink!

5. Refrigerator Magnet
What You'll Need: Spray paint a shoe box black and attach it to the back of your shirt. Instant refrigerator magnet!
Bonus: Your sense of humor just might magnetize a new date.

Proof that Halloween can be both fun -- and affordable -- this year, with or without the late night procrastination! For more Holidash highlights, head on over to Holidash right here.

Summer vacation keeps rolling along. How long until your kids go back to school? Are they spending too much time lounging on the couch? Here are a bunch of summer projects to trick your kids away from their air-conditioned sanctuary and out into the great outdoors of, er, your backyard.

Okay, okay. So the backyard is not the great outdoors. True. But the main thing is to get the kiddos out in the fresh air, learning about nature, and learning about the noble pursuit of maintaining a garden.

Getting their hands dirty
1. Ask them to help with the weeding. Pay them a small amount of pocket money for their time.

If you're a coupon-clipper, you'll know the challenges:

• how to keep those bits of paper, plastic, and cardboard from taking over your purse or the drawer in the kitchen,
  
• and how to develop a system that ensures they get used before they expire.

The super-helpful people at Tipnut have put together a list of suggestions that pretty much guarantee you'll find the system that will work for you, whatever your organizational style -- or lack thereof! You like the casual efficiency of envelopes? You can do that! You prefer an accordion file or a wallet, a card file or a binder? It's all there!

Dreaming of a Mediterranean-style oasis in your own yard? Me too! Okay, let's get inspired!

So, what makes certain gardens "Mediterranean," anyway? Well, for starters, they're designed to withstand both lots of heat and irregular rainfall. The garden designs are visually appealing, true. But they're also low-care and eco-friendly. Because plants are selected for toughness, and lawns are absent or insignificant, there's less need for chemicals and watering.

1. It's all about contrast.
Mediterranean styling is pretty easy to imitate. The essential element? Contrast. That is, contrasting hard, structured surfaces with soft, unstructured foliage and blooms. Think tumbling vines atop high stone walls. Think paved walkways next to climbing roses. Think clipped hedges fronting tall, slender cypress trees. You get the picture.

One of the hardest things about writing is
One of the most difficult problems in writing
It can be difficult for a writer when
Writer's block is no fun!

Most writers, whether they're writing professionally or just for their own entertainment, have encountered it from time to time. It's frustrating: often, it's like having an idea "on the tip of your tongue." It stalls the flow of work. It has even been known to have a negative effect on the victim's self-esteem, causing them to put their face in their hands and moan loudly about being a "complete hack." Oh, the humanity!

If you've ever suffered from creative block of any kind, you will probably appreciate Language is a Virus, a site that could help to solve your problem. Among the resources you'll find there:

• A character name generator that spits out monikers like Tracen Kailey, Storm Cricket Sue, Nash Nash Daveigh, and Liberty Quiana Vi.
• The Title-o-matic: don't you want to know what Liberty Quiana Vi is doing in a story called "Strawberry Hypnotized" or "Angels Vapor"? (No, not "Angel's" or "Angels'.") And surely Storm Cricket Sue is the protagonist of "Jamboree River."
• The Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, in which you'll add a line to the beginning of a poem -- one that you can't see until after you make your contribution.
• Over 150 writing prompts, like, "Make up a list of dates with associated events, real or imagined," and, "Write a poem consisting entirely of overheard conversation" (both from Charles Bernstein).
• Brainstorming techniques from some of the 20th century's most famous writers and artists, like Jack Kerouac and Salvador Dali.

It's like a magical map that shows the way to where all those missing ideas have been hiding.

It should come as no surprise that even the humble business card has not escaped the green movement. In the effort to make better use of our resources, many great minds have examined the life cycle of the common business card to see if there is room for improvement. It has been said that business cards should have new uses and innovative designs. Business cards should be multi-purposed marketing devices, not just pocket sized personal billboards. Much to our betterment, the effort to cultivate increased practical use of business cards has been a growing success. It is my unqualified privilege to share with you some of the ideas that people have come up with to make practical use of business cards which may have otherwise lost their usefulness.

• They're great for making a quick list for a small shopping trip because they slip easily into your pocket but don't scrunch up like a regular paper note does.
• They are ideal for entering drawings for door prizes and such.
  
• Use them for putting personal notes in the lunch bag of someone you love.
• They make pretty good luggage tags.
• Clean the spaces between your keyboard keys. (The sticky end of a used post-it note works good for this also.)
• Use some to identify your CD cases.
• A business card makes a pretty good toothpick in a pinch.
• One fellow said he gives them to girls he hooked up with so they'll email him.
• You can use them by the telephone to jot quick notes on.

These are just a few of the ideas that people have come up with to use old and obsolete business cards. It's not a world changing concept, but it's a start. Remember, any time you can find an alternate use for something that might have gone straight to the landfill, you again validate the manufacturing processes which created the item. What alternate uses have you found for your obsolete business cards? We'd love to hear about them!

It's funny to think that we need to teach ourselves how to calm down, but it's true. We spend so much of the day on over-drive that when the time comes to decompress, we're not really sure where to begin. It is worth carving out time in the day for some calming rituals. Lifehacker points us to 12 ideas for establishing a calming routine, which I think are incredibly useful.

The tip that really caught my eye was this one about establishing a bedtime routine.

Each week, we'll show you how you can take a trendy decorating idea, garner inspiration from it and recreate a reasonable facsimile in your own home, easily and cheaply.

Our fun little DIY Inspirations feature has taken us from photos to mantels , from Better Homes and Gardens to Pottery Barn, all with the intent of finding inspiration for DIY projects to make our homes more beautiful.

This feature has been keeping track of all of my inspirations, but this week I found a little treat on Flickr that I thought was a fun way to keep track of your inspirations.

Flickr user Gnome G made an online photo scrapbook of home decorating inspirations. I love this idea, because whenever you get the urge to recreate something in your house to be more wonderful, you can just look at your scrapbook and get inspired all over again.

Is it easy to do? You bet. Simply find the photos you want, copy them to Flickr and create a set. The FAQs should have all the information you need to do this if you've never used Flickr before.

And the best part? It takes up no room in your house, so you can even decorate Zen.

Those of us who have lived or live in apartments sometimes feel the need to just go berserk and make the place all our own. It's true that we don't "own" an apartment per se, but we do own the "environment" inside the apartment. Who says we can't get a little creative and spruce up that inside with some creative yet cheap solutions for our own little custom piece of the world?

Have lots of books but just don't like the look of clutter? Try curtained bookshelves. Better yet, get really organized and take advantage of all the nooks and crannies available to you inside your domicile. Even hide storage areas with tablecloths or other decorative items so that those books can be handy, but also be hiding in plain sight.

Want to not feel squished in front of the boob tube? Try open-air furniture and armless chairs. Use those corners too, and don't forget to give your kitchen some personality. After all, this is where you live and it needn't be so depressing, unorganized or lifeless. Space is only an issue if you don't get things looking like home instead of "the inside of an apartment."

I love to read. Books are a way for me to escape the hassles of life for awhile, but I don't feel like I get to stick my nose in a book nearly enough. I read for a bit when my littlest one takes her nap, and for about 1 hour at night before I go to bed. Nope, not nearly enough.

I have amassed quite a few books, and have found that my bookshelves are overcrowded and boring. All books, just books, and gasp, books. It was time for me to add a little life into those boring bookshelves and although it took me the better part of 4 days to come up with happiness over how I finally arranged them, I want to share my results with you.

Simply Thrifty has a terrific new article about 100 things you can make, and while the title might be a little vague, the contents are quite the opposite. The list begins with a spattering of recipes, then veers into the world of DIY hygiene products, before taking a jog through "make your own clothes" land, and ending with a menagerie of miscellaneous items.

"Convenience is certainly...well...convenient. Take a trip to just about any type of store and notice how everything is packaged and prepared. It seems the more we advance, the more stuff is done for us. I don't mind letting someone else do all the work for me, the problem is of course, that convenience is expensive and we're getting really lazy. I started thinking about all the things we can make ourselves if we put forth a little effort and found lots of cool instructions online."

My personal favorites from the list are the #14) hummus (gotta love hummus), #31) beer (need I clarify?), and #70) windmill (just plain awesome). With so many projects on the Internet, this list could've been a thousand times longer, but this is a good starting point. After all, that's what DIY Life is here for!

A recent Newsday article discusses the popularity of scrapbooking among crafters in their 20s, and the tendency among these enthusiasts to create more design-oriented pages than those that used to be associated with the craft:

"Although scrapbookers of a certain breed may gravitate toward time-savers like pre-decorated, just-add-photos pages or themed accessory kits, experts say younger-generation crafters often take a far more custom approach.

...Sick of the mass market where everything looks the same, the Gen-X and Gen-Y sets practically crave the rush that comes with doing something creative and distinctive."

This article is a worthwhile read for those interested in scrapbooking. However, there is a whiff of advertorial: its secondary purpose seems to be to promote the new Martha Stewart craft line available at Michael's stores (warning: flash page). The inclusion of several other companies, like EK Success, makes it seem balanced, but the Martha Stewart line and several of the other products mentioned are all made by EK Success. (Some companies that also make great supplies are listed in the article's sidebar.)

That said, I stopped into a Michael's store after reading this article, and I don't have any complaints about the actual Stewart products.