12 Things I Do Not Buy and What I Use Instead

 Like most of you, I buy things on sale to save money where I can. Unfortunately, I’m just as guilty as anyone else who ran to the store to buy two things and came out with a buggy of stuff because I found a sale or a deal.

Sometimes I saved money and often times I didn't. The light bulb went off when I decluttered and organized the basement of our old place. Most of the Donate Pile was stuff I bought on sale because I thought I was saving money at the time.
  

 The easiest way to stop those intermittent money leaks disguised as saving was to stop buying things I didn't need even if they were on sale. I either gave up using it, found a reusable for a disposable, or repurposed something to take its place - all are extremely green, painless, and low cost options!

 So scoot over to my food blog Lazy Budget Chef to read my  post:

12 Things I Do Buy

Make sure you read the comments. A bunch of super smart folks shared their money saving tips there too!


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Tiny House Living Lies

I think tiny houses are twee and adorable. I have dozens pinned to my Pinterest boards (follow me @condoblues on Pinterest, pretty please?) I applaud living in a small ecological footprint. There positive financial aspects too. I understand how freeing that can be.

But.

I find it hard to believe that living tiny is nothing but utopia.

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We never hear about the downside of living in a tiny home. Sure, there is talk of how difficult it can be to decide what to keep and what needs to go. However the elephant in the itty bitty room no one will openly admit or discuss especially on tiny house TV shows is this:

• It is illegal to park and live full time in a tiny house on wheels in most parts of the United States. Legally parking a tiny house is the most problematic issue and absolutely not addressed. Most camp grounds and mobile home parks forbid tiny houses - which is their right - as they are privately owned. Buying or renting land and plopping a tiny house on it may not solve the problem either. Local zoning laws often include minimum square footing for a house on a foundation and prohibit full time camping in a RV which is how tiny houses on wheels are classified. And sometimes what must be done to make a tiny house legal makes living in it all but impossible as Rowdy Kittens discusses here in her post On the Road Again…

 

DIY Cigar Box and Wine Cork Storage Box

More often than I want to admit, phone and table cords, earphones, and eyeglasses are strewn about the side tables in my living room.  I put the stuff away. The next evening we need the stuff to read books or watch movies on our tablets and plop it on a table before heading off to bed. I put the stuff away…

It’s a never ending cycle.

A friend found a bunch of empty wood cigar boxes in the basement of her wine shop. I was drooling when I found out. Old cigar boxes are the gold standard of recycled project material just begging for an upcycle!

Needless to say, I made my way over to her shop and came home with a cigar box to make into a decorative storage box with wine cork feet to contain the flotsam and jetsam littering the living room.

 You have no idea how much work it took to to win the eBay auction for these vintage metal frames. I had my optimist fill them with my prescription. I love them!

How to Make a Decorative Cigar Box Storage Box 

How to Make Quick and Easy Peppermint Gift Tags

I have one more gift tag tutorial in this year’s series and it couldn’t be easier! We’re using cute printed packing tape to make Christmas gift tags!

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You will need:

Vintage Button Gift Tag Tutorial

I have another craft supply stash bust gift tag tutorial for you. Today we’re making gift tags with fabric ribbon and vintage buttons! Oh heck, let’s throw caution to the wind and use some scrapbook paper too.

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Many of the buttons I have in my grandmother’s button box are plain old shirt buttons. Great for replacing a lost one and better for crafting because there are so many of them. I also have odd lengths of ribbon from sewing projects that are too long to throw away and too small for my recent sewing projects. Inspired by finding  a box of business cards from my old company (may it rest in peace) I figured I could get these kids together and let them make quick, easy, and beautiful recycled gift tags together.

I’m sure you can figure out how I made the gift tags by looking at the picture so I almost don’t have to write a tutorial but since this is the holiday season is all about giving I will.

Make Peek a Boo Window Gift Tags

After a two day craft room excavation I had a couple of boxes of old business cards and nice little pile of random paper, ribbon, buttons, and punches on my worktable. The following day and fueled by probably more hot chocolate than one person should drink in an afternoon I started to play.

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Once I got on a creative roll, I upcycled a bunch of old business cards into gift tags I’m not ashamed to tie onto our Christmas gifts this year. I have so many handmade stash buster gift tags, that I’m going to turn this craft project into a blog series. Come craft with me!

 

How to Make Embossed Gift Tags for Hanukkah or Christmas

How to Fix a Broken Dishwasher Rack

The top rack of the dishwasher was a little wonky.
 
Scratch that. A lot wonky.

The top rack wouldn’t slide in and out of the dishwasher easily. When it does, the rack dips down to an angle instead of being parallel to the bottom dishwasher rack.

Husband did a little investigation.  Instead of something being misaligned, the sliding brackets on both sides of the dishwasher rack broke off. So that’s why the dishwasher recently wasn’t cleaning dishes well!

How to Make Wine Cork Napkin Rings

I want to switch up my dining room decor for Thanksgiving. One of the easiest and cheapest way to do that is to decorate with fall colored napkins and napkin rings. The cloth napkins I have. The cute fall napkin rings I do not.

I have a TON of wine corks in my craft room, just waiting for a crafty wine cork project. Time to get my upcycling on and recycle some of the corks into handmade napkin rings!

Recycled Copper Beaded Wine Cork Napkin Rings

This is a quick little project you can do for yourself or make and give them to someone as a homemade gift. Christmas is just around the corner you know!

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For each napkin ring you will need:

10 Natural, Reycled, and Upcycled Acorn Crafts

Fall is one of the best times of the year to decorate with nature. A simple walk in the park or, if you are lucky, a few steps from your front door is a whole host of Mother Nature’s splendor just waiting for a little green Fall decorating and craft magic.

 

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Autumn leaves, pumpkins, and cornstalks (I almost bought some from a farmer’s market on a whim last weekend,) are what I normally think of when it comes to Fall décor.

It wasn’t until I saw Dandelion Patina ‘s  recycled sweater and coconut shell acorns that I thought about decorating with acorns and acorn crafts. I pinned her post to my Fall decorating Pinterest board (follow me @condoblues on Pinterest pretty please?) and fell head first into real, recycled, and upcycled acorn crafts and decorations.

Homemade Fairy Wing Dog Halloween Costume

Costuming is my favorite part of Halloween, but Lacey? Not so much.  Lacey’s favorite part is earning treats at Halloween pet charity events. I can’t blame her for that.

Husband and I use dog charity events as fun socialization training to help Lacey work on her fear and anxiety issues (Read more about that on this dog training post on Condo Blues.) Unlike her humans, Lacey isn’t into wearing dog Halloween costumes or clothes (unless it is freezing outside.) We don’t push it because the costume thing is really for the humans, not the dogs.

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How to Fix a Running Toilet: Replace the Float

Water in the guest bathroom toilet kept running after every flush. I removed the lid to the toilet tank to investigate.

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• I already replaced the toilet flapper when it warped and made the toilet run. That was not the culprit this time.

How to Build a Rain Barrel Drainage Pad

Late summer/early fall is a great time to do garden landscaping projects. The weather isn’t as blazing hot as it is in the middle of summer and most of the materials are now on clearance to make room for fall and winter merchandise.

  

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Or in our case, you end up with a bunch of extra bricks from repairing your vintage brick garden border and want to do something with the lovely, worn, and free reclaimed bricks.

Thanks to two months of never ending rain and me replacing the broken spigot on the rain barrel (read the tutorial here) before the rains came, Husband and I have plenty of water to use for watering our new plantings. Eco Dork that I am, I get positively giddy watering my plants with rain water but I’m not happy with stepping in the mud that sometimes surrounds the rain barrel spigot.

5 End of Summer Projects and Adventures

Just as our unseasonably cold and soggy summer finally gets around to acting  like a normal clear and blazing hot summer the season is officially over with Labor Day weekend. Ohio weather is certainly an adventure!

That’s not to say, Husband and I have not had our share of projects and adventures in between thunderstorms. Since most of them are tidbits rather than full blown blog post I figure why not wrap up the summer with a wrap up of our summer fun?

After spending a little over a year driving past it and silently sending the place “build it faster” vibes

Quick Craft: Make a Portable Phone Charger Case

I  love photography. My phone has a good camera and I’m not shy about whipping it out to document the beautiful, fun, or surprising things that cross my path in any given monument. Unfortunately, using the camera so often kills my phone battery. I started carrying a portable phone charger or two in my bag or backpack when Husband and I go on one of our adventures.

My quick phone charger holder makes a great gift. 

You should pin this post for gift giving season!

I quickly realized I need some sort of phone charger holder or case to store the charger and the cord together.  Why are the things you need to grab quickly always in the deepest darkest corners of your bag or purse and take ages of rooting around to find? It’s some sort of purse conspiracy I tell ya.

How to Make Color Guard Swing Flags

This year, one of my band association’s members choreographed an epic swing flag routine to Pompeii (a song I like to begin with) for a group exhibition performance at the Drum Corps International World Championships. DCI asked our community band association to perform to let the corps kids know they don't have to give up music once they age out of drum corps at 21. Bucket List moment!

Our color guard choreographer put an instructional video up on YouTube so the guard members can rehearse on our own in our respective states before we meet for the performance later this year.

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I feel stronger and more graceful than I really am when I spin. It is good exercise too.

This way we won't have much work to clean when we meet two days before the show to rehearse together. Yes, it is as crazy and insane as it sounds to put together a pep band show of  5 routines with only 8 hours of rehearsal but luckily we’re all disciplined adults so it works when the umbrella organization has a country wide group performance made from performers from our member bands.

Rehearsing at home is no big deal except the group with the practice swing flags are using theirs this season and lives in New York. The group with the performance swing flags are using theirs and lives in Florida.

I better get a pair of swing flags for me in Ohio then, huh?

What is a Swing Flag?

Landscaping Budget Hack: Use a Tool Lending Libarary

It seems strange to start a landscaping project in late July instead of May but Mother Nature isn't giving us much choice. Ohio has the opposite water problem California has - too much rain.

The number of days in a row Columbus has not had any precipitation this year?

Four.

This we're lucky if we get a 24 hour period without rain once every couple of weeks. If the sun decides to visit us after a 15 to 19 day rainy stretch we learned to drop everything to do outside chores just in case it rains later in the day.

 

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7 Back to School Craft Projects

I always think of Back to School season as an unofficial New Year's Day. It is full of new possibilities and new school clothes, shoes, and supplies. My parents bought me new consumable school supplies like pens, pencils, and notebooks but for the big stuff like lunchboxes, binders, and backpacks they had a One and Done policy. I had to take care of it because I wasn't going to get another for the following school year if I trashed it that year.

Looking back, it was a great green lesson about taking care of what you have so it will last. It was also a lesson in creativity. Sometimes I jazzed up last year's school supplies makes them feel bright, shiny, and new for the new school year with a craft project like my washi tape USB Flash drive.

 Them: "Hey, where did you get that cool Flash drive?!" Me: "Oh, I made it."

When you want to be crafty for Back to School season it helps to start early. Especially if you have a student going back to college since most college start before summer officially ends.

Cheap and Easy No Slip Tool Chest Organizer

After I built my recycled pallet and cabinet workbench, I needed to organize and load in my tools.

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The power tools were easy to organize. I already keep my power tools in their cases. I stashed those in the workbench cabinet. Boom. Done.

How to Repair a Quad Camp Chair

One of Husband’s coworkers has a HUGE Fourth of July parade party and cookout.

Food was made. Watermelon cut and cubed. Coolers were washed and ready. The one thing we didn’t double check were our first generation armless folding quad lawn (camp) chairs. (aff link)

We discovered one of rivets holding the chair legs to the seat broke after we set up the chairs at our parade viewing encampment. Whoops!

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Replacing a broken rivet on a folding quad lawn chair is a super simple fix. It takes barely any time at all. If you have a jar of odd nuts and bolts laying around, it could be a zero dollar repair. What’s not to love about that?

How to Fix a Folding Lawn Chair

12 Favorite Summer Craft Projects

Summer is in full swing. I am loving it! Warm summer days are excellent DIY and craft project weather. Here are a few of my favorite summer craft projects that are not only clever but useful too!

 

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DIY Personalized Insulated Wine Glass Tumblers –  Fun and reusable!