30 DIY Projects for the 3-Day Weekend: From Apartment Therapy

Reblogged from Apartment Therapy:

Seeing that long holiday weekends always give us some extra time to fiddle about and create creations, we found a super awesome post on Apartment Therapy that features 30 various projects ranging in price that you can DIY during the weekend.

We know you’re not supposed to the laboring, but we figure that for cool projects like this, exceptions can be made. Check ’em out!

30 DIY Projects for the 3-Day Weekend

Some of the projects include:

1. Make a grill for your budding Top Chef – How To Make a Toy Grill for $20
2. Make a place to stash your pens and pencils – DIY No-Sew Colored Pencil Roll
3. Clean your bedroom – The Ultimate Guide to Green Cleaning Your Bedroom
4. Make your kid fly – How to Make Your Baby Fly
5. Create a charging station – An Upcycled Plastic Bottle Charging Station

 

And more!

…they even include a shower head switch out. Something we’re a fan of.

 

Have a wonderful 3 day weekend!

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/30-diys-for-the-3-day-weekend-171742?utm_campaign=topblock&utm_medium=web&utm_source=main-entry

Purge your junk!

We all need a good cleaning from time to time. Usually the start of Spring/Summer is when we get to it, but with busy lives, hectic work schedules, and so many better things to get out and do during those times, you don’t realize how piled you are in excess things until it’s absolutely time to purge!

We’re all about managing junk and cleaning out the garage- but without taking everything and unloading it into the dump.

Typical advertising mail (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So simplify your life and use tech to get it done! Here are some apps and sites that allow you to dump the junk:

1. PaperKarma: Apparently, this is the app to end the age old junk problem- junk mail. PaperKarma allows you to take photos of the junk mail you wish to stop and they automatically contact the Mailer and remove you from their distribution list.

Sign us up!

2. Diggerslist.com: This site is cool! Dubbed as the Craigslist for DIY, Diggerlist has a rapidly expanding site that allows you post home improvement items and furniture that you don’t want. Post, sell, SOLD! Everything from heavy equipment to kitchen appliances can be found here, and its all listed by city/area.

And they have a killer blog filled with decorative ideas and home projects. It’s so sweet it gives us a toothache.

3.  Freecycle: This is an app that claims to be totally grassroots and an entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. With 9 million members worldwide, its hard to imagine that there aren’t many treasure as junk items to discover!

4. Unroll.me: FINALLY. Those pesky email chain letters that you subscribed to eons ago just to get a 15% off coupon are taken care of. Unroll.me is the free and easy way to end unwanted subscriptions and “rollup” the rest into an organized overview made just for you.

Organize the newsletters and make them actually interesting and easy for you to indulge in!

 
So there you have it. Get the junk out of everywhere- well, except the trunk.

Where Do You Generate Your Best Ideas?

*originally posted to Real Simple

Last week on 30 Rock, Alec Baldwin’s character, Jack Donaghy, explains how he’s been exercising something called the Shower Principle, a term that scientists use to describe how the brain generates ideas best when distracted from the task or issue at hand.

As a writer, I’m a big fan of the SP, as I’ll call it…although I confess that I use it to procrastinate as often as I use it for inspiration. For me, however, it’s not showering that loosens the cobwebs, nor do I do my best thinking when I’m in bed. (I think I fall asleep too fast!)

Here are my top two spots for brainstorming, idea generation, and ousting writer’s block:

1. The 2/3 subway train. We’re moving to our new apartment in Brooklyn soon, and have been doing some renovations. This means many, many trips back and forth from our current home on the Upper West Side to the new place, near Prospect Park, so we can check in, oversee, harass and troubleshoot. That’s about 40 minutes each way—to sit and stew, brew and chew over things. The rumble and roll of the subway car sometimes nearly lulls me to sleep, but it can also induce a bit of a productive reverie.

2. Running. There’s nothing like the thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack of your feet hitting the pavement to help loosen the cobwebs. Only problem: I’ve written many, many an intro paragraph or witty kicker on a jog, only to promptly forget it a mere minute or two after I stop running.

Where do you find inspiration strikes you the most?

6 air purifying house plants

We found this article via Live in the Now and just knew we had to share it with you. Read on to find out which plant is best to keep in your bathroom to ward off mold.

1. Bamboo Palm: According to NASA, it removes formaldehyde and is also said to act as a natural humidifier.

2. Snake Plant: Found by NASA to absorb nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde.

3. Areca Palm: One of the best air purifying plants for general air cleanliness.

4. Spider Plant: Great indoor plant for removing carbon monoxide and other toxins or impurities. Spider plants are one of three plants NASA deems best at removing formaldehyde from the air.

5. Peace Lily: Peace lilies could be called the “clean-all.” They’re often placed in bathrooms or laundry rooms because they’re known for removing mold spores. Also know to remove formaldehyde and trichloroethylene.

6. Gerbera Daisy: Not only do these gorgeous flowers remove benzene from the air, they’re known to improve sleep by absorbing carbon dioxide and giving off more oxygen over night.

Written by Casie Terry

Bath Crashers Showcases Super Cool Tubs and Showers

For all you bathroom lovers out there, if you’ve never caught an episode of the DIY Network‘s Bath Crashers then you are in for a real treat now that it’s on your radar.

Just like DIY shows House Crashers and Yard Crashers, host Matt Muenster ambushes homeowners while they’re home improvement shopping. He uses his expertise to identify the ultimate bathroom challenge, and follows the lucky homeowner home and totally overhauls a bathroom in need of repair. It’s super cool.

The show has seen some phenomenal bathroom transformations and recently, the DIY Network’s website put together a smashing slideshow of the most amazing tubs and showers to grace the camera’s lens.

This is by far one of the coolest/handiest things we’ve ever seen done to a tub. Cleanest reading and TV viewing you could ask for!

There are plenty of other awesome ideas if you just follow this link right here:

Amazing Tubs and Showers Seen On Bath Crashers

photo originally from DIY Network.com