DIY Life

There are more reasons than ever to learn how to burn a CD: to create your own CD wedding favors or to make a story CD for your child, for example.

Are you technically savvy enough to do it? I, for one, am happy to have a husband who is, but in the interest of being a strong, independent woman and a good example to my child, I set out to learn how to do burn a CD myself.

The first thing I learned is that there is this thing called a "Wizard" that pretty much does everything for you; simply drag and drop the files you want to write to the CD and surf the internet during your wait time.

OK, it isn't quite that simple (but it's close), but Worldstart has a tips and tricks page with:

• CD-R versus CD-RW tips
• step-by-step instructions
• a separate tutorial for Microsoft Windows XP, which has its own CD burning software

and more -- everything you will need to know to burn your own CD, in fact. Independence is just a click away!

I was searching for ways to get peanut butter out of carpet and found these instructions claiming that peanut butter can actually be just the thing you need to get gum out of your carpet. I was just as shocked as you, but reading through the reasoning it sounds like a great solution.

Scrape off as much gum as you can, then rub on some creamy peanut butter. The peanut butter will take the stick out of the gum. It should wipe away easily. Reading trough the instructions I thought "that's great, but what about my original problem of having peanut butter in the carpet?" Well, it turns out that isn't quite the problem I imagined it to be. A simple, homemade solution will wash way the peanut butter and your carpet will be as stunning as it started (or in our house, will only have the stains that existed before the gum and peanut butter).

Taking photographs of people can be hard enough, but when you want to capture a family memory for eternity the pressure is really on.

Baby Center has gathered some tips from photographer moms that help take the mystery out of photographing your family.

I for one can speak to Tip #1, which suggests that when you have the kids say "cheese," you are asking for an unauthentic smile. When we ask Owen to smile, not only do we get to see all twenty of his pearly whites, but the rest of his face scrunches up into an uber-squint. Not a good look.

I have a secret fear of winning some great lottery and not being able to claim the prize because I can't figure out the skill testing question. Math is a topic of high anxiety for many adults and children. I didn't like math as an elementary, high school, or college student. Last semester I took a statistics class and fought the urge weekly to storm out of the room in tears screaming "math is dumb!". OK, it might not be as extreme for some of you, others may even enjoy math (my husband is sick like you), but the ability to quickly solve math equations is something that a great number of people simply don't have.

I'm all for tricks when it comes to this stuff. Check out the video here, courtesy of glad2teach. It's truly amazing how quickly you can solve these math problems using the method they show. there are secrets to fast math. Check out their site for some other videos. Unless you still in school and you'll loose marks for not showing your work, these little tools are a great way to get you mind moving quickly and efficiently through complex math problems.

I don't know that the math in this video is the sort of math you would use on a daily basis, but it would make a great party trick! Have a friend ask you complicated multiplication questions and show off you mad math skills - after all, chicks dig guys with skills.

Does an arrangement like this make you flee, for fear of your wall crumbling around the multitudes of nails used to hang all of the pictures?

It used to make me run too, especially in our first house, an antique with the original plaster walls. It took us years to work up the courage to hang anything up, and even then, we did crumble some of the walls a bit.

Using this trick will save your walls and make it easy to hang pictures without mistakes and a bunch of nail holes.

It's easy:

1. Make a kraft paper template of each picture you wish to hang.
2. Use blue painter's tape to attach the kraft template and figure out where you want the picture to go.
3. Put picture hanging hardware on walls, directly through the paper.

The pictures will be exactly where you want them, the walls won't crumble and everyone will be happy.

This technique works much better than the ol' masking tape trick, so give it a try.