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Homemade cat scratcher
I feel like I should apologize to non-cat people for all the cat-related content we’ve been generating of late. This should be the last cat post for a while. (At least until the widdle snugum wuggums...
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Noodler’s Ink Reusable Fountain Pen
Julia just wrote a post on Ramshackle Solid about our newest solution to the frustration of disposable pens: Noodler’s Ink and fountain pens. From the Noodler’s website: Why Noodler’s? “Noodler’s Ink”...
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Loofah Sponges
We talk about the joy of loofah–or luffa– (Luffa aegyptiaca) all the time, but I don’t believe we’ve every blogged about it here. I was reminded of it when we received a letter from Candace, who heard...
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Broom Corn–or is it Broomcorn?
Mrs. Homegrown here: This summer I suggested we plant broom corn for no other good reason than I saw the seed pack at the nursery and thought it would be fun to make a broom. (This sort of temporary...
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Scrubbin’ It
Say hello to my new friend the KingSeal Stainless Steel Scrubber, Heavy Duty Commercial Size. If you’re doing the cast iron cookware thing, as we are, you’re going to need a scrubber. And this puppy...
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Clean your hands with olive oil
I was just outside staining a piece of wood and got oil stain all over my hands. A bit of olive oil took it right off. These days, olive oil (or any cooking oil, really) is my first resort whenever...
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So-So Tomatoes Become Excellent When Dried
As we reported earlier, we weren’t thrilled with our cherry tomato choice this summer. They were just plain dull. They were also rather large for a cherry, more like mini-plum tomatoes, which made...
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Emergency Supplies: It’s all about the lids
Above you see one five gallon bucket transformed into a toilet, and another into a food storage container, by virtue of specialty lids. The toilet seat lid I have here is called Luggable Loo Seat...
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Goat Worship: A Halloween Exclusive!
Dance with me in the witches’ grove! Bwah ha…ha…er…. Well, okay, if you’re not so into that, I’ll take an apple instead. This Saturday our friends Gloria Putnam and Steve Rudicel at the Mariposa...
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The Whip: A Homemade Moisturizer How-To from Making It
This 2011 post has been edited on 7/8/14, also to include new tips and new pictures. Most important of these are directions on keeping the lotion fresh. Confession: I can’t live without my homemade...
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Cat allergies, cat hearts, cat cuteness: an update on all things cats.
Many apologies to people who don’t come here to hear about the cats. This won’t take long. I just wanted to give two quick updates. The first is to let you all know that Phoebe is doing amazingly well...
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Quick Tip
I’ve learned that if I put a sheet or two of our otherwise useless weekly newspaper at the bottom of my counter-top scrap pail, dumping it out becomes much less gross. No more fuzzy, slimy things...
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How to Keep that Christmas Tree Fresh
Photo from WSU Washington State horticulture professor Linda Chalker-Scott, has a podcast “Last minute advice about Christmas trees and other fun stuff” that details more than you’ll ever want to...
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Is This Egg Good?
From left: Very Fresh • Pretty Fresh • Bad • Cat When you’re wondering about the age of an egg, put it in glass of water. Really fresh eggs lie on the bottom the glass, flat. These are the eggs you...
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Make a Brigid’s Cross
A little cross hanging on our chicken coop Spring is here. In LA, it’s definitely in full swing, but I suspect even in more northerly places folks may notice a slight change in the air, or find early...
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Clean your bathroom without resorting to Poison
We talk about non-toxic housecleaning in almost every lecture we do, and we cover it in both books, but I can’t remember if we’ve talked about cleaning the bathroom on this blog. We did cover how to...
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Heavy-duty disinfecting the non-toxic way with hydrogen peroxide and vinegar
Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph showing Salmonella typhimurium (red) invading cultured human cellsCredit: Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH The comments on yesterday’s post indicated...
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Cheap and Natural Handsoap–and a rant
This is just a quick tip. If your family prefers liquid soap to bar soap, one easy way to avoid all the creepy, expensive, colored, perfumed, anti-bacterial liquid soaps on the market (and all the...
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The World’s First Lamp
Erik’s link to the orange lamp on Saturday reminded me to post this. This is Project #1 in Making It, and we often open our lectures by building one of these, but I realize I’ve never talked about oil...
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Japanese Cat Baskets
omg that’s cute Someone help me, I’m obsessed with Japanese cat baskets (稚座 or neko chigura). Like all traditional Japanese crafts, they are functional and stunningly beautiful. Mrs. Root Simple and...
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