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Non-Toxic Way To Clean Stainless Steel Pans

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All my pots and pans are stainless steel. I ditched all the non-stick Teflon pans years ago because of PFOA – pertluorooctanoic acid – a solvent used to make Teflon coated pans that are toxic to our health. I’ll admit; it took months of getting used to stainless steel pans because, as you can imagine, everything sticks to the pan if I’m not careful. But time to time, I get [...]

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Foam Soap Tutorial

Do you ever wonder how to use up all of that little bit of soap that’s left on the bottom of the soap dispenser or a refillable soap containers? Like this one? It looks empty, doesn’t it? But don’t let the outside color fool you. There’s enough soap inside to make at least another bottle of soap! Here is how. You’ll Need: Foam Soap Pump – I use old ones [...]

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Floor Savers; Reusable Chair Leg Pads

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I have hardwood floors and ceramic tiles on the first floor of my house. I used to use disposable felt pads to put under the legs so that the floor doesn’t get scratched. But more than that, so that I don’t get goosebumps and hair raising from hearing the screeching noise every time someone drags the chair on the floor. Scrrrrr-eeeee-chhhhh. Eeeeek. Goosebumps. Chills. Then one day, my Mom brought [...]

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Furoshiki Quilt published in “Quilts!”: Instructables eBook

One of the most rewarding aspects of blogging, besides challenging myself to meet deadlines (finish writing before feeds get sent out) and coming up with interesting topics (and yes, I hear crickets over here many times and it feels like I’m the only reading it as I peek in to see if anyone left a comment in the last 40 seconds since I looked last)… is writing tutorials. I love [...]

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How to Make Photo Ornaments with Glass Jar Lids

I love making special Christmas ornaments. The best kinds of ornaments are not the crystal ones from Waterford or fine china from Lenox. To me, the ones that my kids made while in Pre-School or elementary schools are the best ones. There is a contortionist snowman made out of pipe cleaners with crooked googly eyes, toothless smiling face on a fade construction paper glued with colorful macaroni, warped and glittered-to- [...]

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How to Upcycle a Glass Jar into a Soap Dispenser

I use one soap dispenser in my kitchen. I use non-toxic plant based dish liquid soap so I figured, if it’s good enough for  my dishes, it’s good enough for my hands, right? So I only use one type of soap in my kitchen in one soap dispenser. Less clutter so I’m good. But the soap dispenser I was using was too small and I was refilling the thing every [...]

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What to do with Old Fitted Sheets: Part 2

Some of my friends left comments on facebook after reading my last post, “What to do with old fitted sheets“. Some recommended donating old sheets to local shelters or to a vet. I donate blankets and old towels to a local animal shelter but I would be embarrassed to donate some of my ‘vintage’, old worn out ones. If they are not so worn out, may be. But trust me, [...]

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What to do with old fitted sheets

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I just cleaned out my linen closet and came up with a few old fitted sheets with worn out elastic, faded colors or prints, and some that are just tired looking. I think many of them are considered ‘vintage’ by some standards. Since I didn’t want to throw them out but can’t donate them (who would want to use someone else’s old sheets?) or can’t make anything that I can [...]

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How to recycle t-shirts to make a memory quilt

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This will be a short tutorial as there really isn’t too much involved in making a memory t-shirt quilt. I mean, what’s to explain? Cut up old t-shirt fronts and sew them together, right? Wrong. There are some helpful things I learned along the way that I wanted to share just in case you want to try making this great gift for a college bound son (like in my case) [...]

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How to make a simple fabric flower

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I posted a tutorial for a multi-layered fabric flower tutorial last year and it became one of the most viewed tutorials. In fact, Emily’s Little World posted a link to the tutorial on her blog and I was really thrilled to share it. But for this upcycled denim skirt bag that I donated to a recent PTA meeting, where I spoke about being green and saving money, I wanted to [...]

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How to join fabric yarns

You saw how easy it is to make fabric yarns yesterday. But what if you have fabric yarns that are too short to make anything? You can join the pieces to make longer yarns, of course. This is a silly simple method of joining them without tying. I cut these strips wide and I’m using two different colors to illustrate the method better here. 1. Take two strips of yarns [...]

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How to make fabric yarns

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You know one of my 2010 resolutions was to simplify my life. I finally cleaned out the closets and drawers and came up with four piles. 1) keep 2) dump 3) donate 4) re-purpose Ahhhh…it feels so good to de-clutter. One of the things I made with t-shirts from the “re-purpose” pile was fabric yarns. I always wondered how I could make yarns out of them – continuous yarns, that [...]

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How to unclog a sink or a bathtub

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My bathtub is clogged. I hate having sloshing water at my feet when I am in the shower. (Who does?) So, I tried the only natural method I know, since commercial drain cleaner has Sodium Hydroxide, which is a very caustic substance that I wouldn’t want in the house. There are various methods of using baking soda and vinegar to unclog a drain. But this method seems to work the [...]

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How to add Feedburner E-mail Subscription form

I posted about adding content titles to your posts for e-mail subscribers this week and I realized I was ahead of myself. Some of you didn’t know how to add the e-mail subscription form to your blog. There are alot of e-mail management companies that you can use – some are free and some are not. I like feedburner for the simple e-mail subscription feature. It’s up to you how [...]

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How to add content titles to blog feeds

I wanted to see what my blog feeds look like in your mail boxes so I signed up for my own blog to see how they looked. This is how they looked when I checked. See how the title is the same and there is no content title for the posts? When they are delivered this way, I can’t tell what the posts are about. Gah~ It turns out, I’m [...]

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What to do with socks without their partners

I put this tutorial for my Eco Etsy Team’s blog a couple of weeks ago and received rave reviews so I thought I’d post it here for those of you who are not a team member. If you are the one who does the laundry in your house, you know the age old mystery – what happened to the other sock? You are sure you put both socks in the [...]

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Voting starts on my quilted furoshiki

Remember my quilted furoshiki wrap and the tutorial? Well, it’s in a contest at Instructable.com and I need your vote. It’ll only take a minute. You have to become a member first in order to vote. The site has amazing instructions to make anything you can imagine – mostly eco-friendly and DIY projects you’d love. Go check out the site. And vote for my wrap. I really really need a [...]

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How to make a fabric flower

A fan on facebook asked me how she could make this brooch and I thought I’d post a simple tutorial so that you can use up your fabric scraps in a eco-fashionable way. I saw some beautiful flower brooches, hair clips, headbands and fabric necklaces on Etsy and I, too, wondered how to make these flowers. I couldn’t find any tutorial so I experimented a few different ways and found [...]

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My first contest entry

I was in a weird, enthusiastic and optimistic mood this morning and entered a contest. Yeah, it was my first. I submitted my furoshiki tutorial to a website called Instructable. It is running a Mother’s Day contest and I thought the quilted furoshiki would be perfect for Mother’s Day. Wish me luck!

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How to add a facebook button on blogspot

I looked everywhere to see if I can add a simple facebook button on my blog. But I couldn’t find it. Facebook has a feature where I can add a badge on my blog but it also has update information below it and I didn’t want that. It was too big. I just wanted a simple blue rectangle button that says “facebook” on it. Well, I finally figured out how [...]

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Ecogeneration’s Furoshiki Tutorial Part 2.

2) Machine Sewn Silk Furoshiki To make this silk furoshiki, I had to buy silk scraps because I didn’t have any in my collection. But still, I bought an inexpensive pack of scraps and not a whole yard from a wonderful etsy seller, Purseapalooza. The problem of buying scraps is that you don’t know if you are going to get a large enough piece for your project. But, it didn’t [...]

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Ecogeneration’s How To Make Furoshiki Tutorial: Part 1.

Hand quilted furoshiki I wonder how we became to be such a wasteful society? I know…that’s deep and we can have an all out pow-wow conversation about it. But I want to talk specifically about something so wasteful, something so not necessary. Wrapping paper. Who invented wrapping paper? I mean, it really is meant to solely “cover” the thing that you want to give to someone, just so that it [...]

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See my soapdish tutorial on EcoEtsy’s team blog!

You’ll love this. Eco Etsy’s blog featured my soap dish tutorial! How cool is that? It explains why I decided to make this soap dish for myself but also to show you how easy it is to make it. We can upcycle anything we want and these non-recyclable plastics are perfect for making this soap dish. Why waste and add plastic to our landfills when we can use them? Isn’t [...]

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