I’m not super “crafty” but I couldn’t resist these fruit bags. Be hip and styl­ish next time you’re shop­ping at the farm­ers mar­ket. They’re made from old shirts or the ones you acci­den­tally shrunk. They’re so cool look­ing, prac­ti­cal and envi­ron­men­tally respon­si­ble. You can make them in all dif­fer­ent shapes and sizes. The sewing required is very begin­ner basic. Then you just snip, snip away… Here is the link for the step by step instruc­tions:…

As promised from my article, The Easiest Way to Make Money, I am going to show you how to make a simple photography lightbox. Most people will find having a  lightbox useful for photographing items for eBay, blogging, taking stock of their personal inventory for insurance records or to enhance their photography hobby. For my son, who made me the lightbox, it was originally an assignment at school. I encourage you to find the items…

I love shar­ing ways to repur­pose dif­fer­ent items. Today I’m fea­tur­ing a clas­sic favorite, mason jars. Here are five ways I’m lov­ing them: Pie In A Jar Our Best Bites came up with this genius idea. They’re indi­vid­ual serv­ing sizes and can go straight from your freezer to your oven. These pies in a jar are per­fect to have on hand for unex­pected guests or a sud­den crav­ing of sweet good­ness! Find the recipe and direc­tions here.…

I recently threw a shindig to kick off the new sea­son of The Next Iron Chef. Although it’s too late to repli­cate this for a pre­mier party, you can take every­thing I did and use it to throw your own sea­son finale party. The finale will be aired Decem­ber 18th. Make your guest list and send out an Evite. If you want some sug­ges­tions on what to say on your invi­ta­tion click here. What went down:…

Wine boxes are not only cool look­ing, but they may hold some sen­ti­men­tal value for us. What can we do with them? My hus­band had a kinda genius idea. This past year we made a rule to give each other hand­made gifts. Since I’m a foodie and a winey girl, he came up with this idea for me. (I’m still hav­ing trou­ble believ­ing he didn’t get some help! wink, wink) What’s extra amaz­ing is he…

I love to enter­tain! So this is the first of my many tips and tricks to make enter­tain­ing eas­ier and hope­fully lighter on the wal­let too. These days I’m try­ing to find ways to cut cor­ners with­out cut­ting “class”. An eco­nom­i­cal tip is to make your own ice. The aver­age bag of ice costs $2.50 from your local super­mar­ket.  How many bags you would need depends on the size of your gath­er­ing. I think it’s…

I owe this genius idea to my sis­ter. She puts her dish soap in a small spray bot­tle next to her kitchen sink. I had the oppor­tu­nity to try it out one night when I so nicely vol­un­teered to clean the din­ner dishes. I was amazed how such a sim­ple change like the soap dis­penser could make clean­ing dishes that much eas­ier. That’s when I decided I had to share this with everyone! PROS: You…

This might be my favorite way of repur­pos­ing used wine corks. (besides the wine cork mulch idea) Instead of using pre­dictable store bought charms, name tags or dif­fer­ent col­ored rib­bons, I used dif­fer­ent win­ery corks for my wine tags. The next time you have a party and don’t want to run out of glasses, this is the per­fect thing to have on hand. Every­one will know which glass is theirs by their winemaker. It’s also…

How cool is this? Corks for mulch! I’d like to say it was my idea but it wasn’t. My mother-in-law who has a “neon green thumb” came up with this idea. Her hubby loves to drink wine (in mod­er­a­tion of course!) and she loves to gar­den. Is this the per­fect mar­ry­ing of the two of them or what? Ok, in fair­ness, she likes to drink wine too…haha Mer­lot mulch recipe –save and col­lect wine/champagne corks…

I have been promis­ing for a while now to reveal my not so typ­i­cal herb gar­den. Here it is! Repur­pose your old bbq or fire pit into an herb gar­den. Not only is it prac­ti­cal, but it’s also got a kitschy vibe going on that makes a great con­ver­sa­tional piece. Every­one who sees them loves them! The how to: be sure there are hole open­ings on the bot­tom for water drainage (they prob­a­bly already exist…