The Secret Yumiverse Features
The Dried Beans Cheat Sheet: Soaking & Cooking Times for 15 Different Beans
While it may be tempting to rely on canned beans to save time, going through the process of preparing dried beans for cooking can actually be better for you in the long run—for both your physical and financial health.
How To: Read Your Own Palm Lines
Palmistry is the art of characterizing or foretelling the future through the reading of palm lines. Though there are certainly many variations and techniques when it comes to interpreting the meaning of palm lines, you can brush up on Palmistry 101 by getting acquainted with your four major palm lines: the heart line, head line, life line, and fate line.
How To: 11 Easy DIY Techniques for Opening a Super-Tight Jar
Have a hard-to-open jar? If it's never been opened, the air pressure inside the jar is making it harder to break the seal. If it's been in the fridge, it's possible that the lid shrunk slightly—just enough to be extremely frustrating.
How To: 8 Home Remedies That'll Get Rid of Those Dark Circles Under Your Eyes
If people are constantly asking you why you look so tired, then maybe it's time to get rid of the puffy dark circles under your eyes.
How To: Send a Secret Message Inside an Egg
Whether it's for Valentine's Day or you simply want to send a note to someone in a unique way, a secret message inside of a seemingly untouched raw egg is the perfect way to go.
How To: 8 Awesome Uses for Chalk That You've Probably Never Heard Of
Commonly associated with classroom blackboards and sidewalk art, chalk can also be used to repel ants from invading your home, lift grease stains from clothes, prevent your tools from rusting, and hide your wall scrapes and nicks in a pinch.
How To: Make a Smoke Bomb with Sugar and Potassium Nitrate
Surprisingly, making your very own smoke grenade is pretty easy—and cheap. All you need is a saucepan or skillet, piezoelectric lighter, sugar and some potassium nitrate (easily available online and in most gardening stores).
Guerrilla Gardening 101: How to Make a Seed Bomb
Build up your arm strength and beautify your local community in a single stroke by dropping homemade seed bombs in and around your neighborhood. A guerrilla gardening technique anyone can participate in, seed bombing is a fun and effective way to add tiny oases of wildflowers and healthy green plants in vacant lots and other overlooked and neglected parcels of land.
How To: 7 Great Things Black Pepper Can Be Used for Besides Cooking
Like table salt, black pepper has its unexpectedly handy uses that goes beyond seasoning your meals at the dining table. You can use black pepper to keep ants from invading your home, drive away bugs from eating your delicious garden vegetables, temporarily fix a radiator leak, and even stop bleeding on a minor wound.
How To: 9 Ways to Cool Down Your Burning Hot Mouth After Eating Really Spicy Foods
Mouth burning with pain from eating too much hot sauce or some seriously "spicy" food? Well, ignore your first instinct and steer clear of that cup of cold water — it won't help. Instead, reach for a glass of milk, a lemon slice, a spoonful of sugar, or some starchy bread to dilute the painful heat on your tongue.
How To: Make Your Own Temporary Tattoo
Whether you need very temporary skin art for a costume or simply want to test-run a potential tattoo design before it gets permanent, making your own temporary tattoo only requires wax paper, a printout or drawing of your desired design, black eyeliner, rubbing alcohol, baby powder, liquid bandage, and a lot of patience.
How To: 5 DIY Methods for Unclogging a Clogged Toilet Without a Plunger
Got a clogged toilet on your hands? Before you call the plumber or bust out the plunger, try one of the five DIY methods listed below, all of them incorporating common tools or ingredients easily found in your closet, kitchen or medicine cabinet.
How To: Effectively Disguise Yourself and Keep Your Identity Secret
The art of disguise is a very important skill to master, no matter if you're a hounded celebrity trying to ditch the paparazzi or just someone who'd like to step out of the house without being recognized. If you think simply throwing on sunglasses and a hat is a good disguise, you are so wrong.
How To: 18 Clever Uses for Empty Film Canisters
Film canisters, remember those? Those black containers with the grey lids that used to contain... camera film?
How To: 8 Weird Ways to Cool Down for Summer
Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to cool down during the hot summer heat without blasting the A/C in your house and opening the refrigerator every few minutes to feel the cold, machine-made air blow against your overheated face.
How To: Make Invisible Ink
Need to pass along an important message on paper without having it accidentally discovered by your archenemy? Using very common household products, you can easily whip up an invisible ink recipe and write out your secret message with the solution. All the recipient needs to do is heat up the paper using a stovetop of light bulb, or brush the surface of the paper with a simple iodine mixture to read the message.
How To: 15 Ways to Reuse Old CD Spindle Cases
Compact discs...remember those? Before you toss your old CD spindle cases away, consider upcycling them to a DIY terrarium, cable storage container, hamster toy, rainfall shower head, bird feeder, bagel sandwich lunch box, and more.
How To: 16 Home Remedies for Treating Poison Ivy, Oak & Sumac Rashes
Poison ivy, poison oak, and the lesser known skin irritator, poison sumac, can all cause a conundrum in the search of itch relief: to scratch or not to scratch. Fortunately, there are a number of home remedies one can try to help alleviate the itch(ing), with many like coffee, a banana, baking soda, or mouthwash likely already in-house for most.
How To: 7 Ways to Cook a Campfire Meal, No Pots or Pans Required
To make yourself a tasty meal during a camping trip, all you need are chopped up raw meats and vegetables, glowing embers, and a roll of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Simply place ingredients in a tightly wrapped aluminum foil packet, place on hot embers, and wait until everything inside is fully cooked.
How To: 10 DIY Ways to Repair Nicks & Scratches on Wooden Furniture
If you've had wooden furniture in your living space for a while, chances are that you've accumulated at least a couple of nicks and scratches on the surface. Before you spend money on a professional wood refinisher to restore the surface, try out some of the DIY techniques below using common household items to minimize the visibility of the scratch.
How To: 10 Easy DIY Methods for Removing Ink Stains with Household Items
Need to remove an ink stain from your carpet, clothing, wooden furniture, or new pair of jeans? Thankfully, as with most DIY stain removal techniques, you can probably concoct your own stain-removing solution from common household items in your bathroom or kitchen. Some examples include white vinegar, corn starch, toothpaste, WD-40 spray, dishwashing soap, hair spray, and even milk. Yes, milk.
How To: 14 Weirdly Useful (And Non-Drinkable) Uses for Soda Pop
If you just gave up drinking soda and you don't know what to do with the six-pack of Coke gathering dust in your garage, then this article is perfect for you. The acidity, sugar content and carbonated nature of most soda drinks are perfect for a number of surprisingly practical uses for DIY home projects, garden work, kitchen cleanup, car maintenance, cooking and more.
How To: 12 Innovative Ways to Reuse Plastic Cups
Don't add your plastic cup to the trash bin just yet. The sturdy plastic material of these ubiquitous containers makes them perfect to use as miniature DIY greenhouses for seedlings, smartphone sound amplifiers, Christmas ornament storage, and even packing material.
Winter Warmth: How to Make a Cheap Microwavable Heat Pack Using a Sock & Dry Beans
Using dry beans and and some scraps of cotton fabric, you can make your own DIY microwavable heat pack which can be used to relieve sore muscles, warm your hands when stepping outside into cold weather, heating up your pillow case on a freezing night, and more.
How To: Build Your Own Terrarium
Do you have a green thumb but an extremely limited living space? Try building your own DIY terrarium. All you need is a clear glass or plastic container, a few of your favorite plants, and some cheap gardening supplies to start your own self-contained, self-sustained miniature garden.
How To: 11 Awesome Uses for Hydrogen Peroxide
Commonly found in the medicine aisle in grocery stores near the bandages, hydrogen peroxide is best known for disinfecting wounds, but it's also extremely useful for a number of cleaning and health uses, such as removing sweat and blood stains from clothes, disinfecting cutting boards, removing bacteria from your produce before consumption, and more.
How To: Remove Wrinkles from Clothing Without Ironing
Need to remove wrinkles from your shirt but don't want to bust out the iron and ironing board (or don't even have one)? Well, with a little bit of do-it-yourself ingenuity, you can "iron out" that wrinkly top in no time.
How To: 10 Alternative Uses for Your Old Oatmeal
Oatmeal may not be the most exciting breakfast option in the world, but in uncooked form the oats can be used to neutralize odors in your refrigerator, relieve your dog's itchy skin, soak up kitchen oil spills and treat your poison ivy or chicken pox itch.
How To: Make Your Own DIY Snow Cone Syrup
Making your own snow cone syrup requires only three ingredients: sugar, water, and a packet of your favorite Kool-Aid flavor. Simply combine sugar and water until it's boiling, then let it simmer for three minutes. Gradually add a packet of Kool-Aid until it's completely dissolved, then pour the syrup with a funnel into a separate container, which can then be chilled in a fridge until it's ready to use.
How To: 9 Ways to Cut an Onion Without Shedding Tears
Is it possible to cut or chop onions in the kitchen without stinging eyes and looking as if you just watched the saddest movie ever? Before we get to that answer, it's important to know why we tear up when cutting raw onions in the first place. What is this irritant? Are you reacting to the odor? The answer to the latter question is "no," and the irritant responsible is amino acid sulfoxides.
How To: Your Guide to Lazy Baking, Part 4: How to Make Cupcakes for Two Using One Bowl
The most dangerous thing about having a bunch of baked goods in your home is the possibility that you will gorge on all of them. If you are in a cupcake-y mood, but want to keep your sugar-happy gluttonous side in check, just make enough batter for two cupcakes in a single mixing bowl. Sharing is optional.
How To: 13 Non-Edible Uses for Bread
The best thing since the creation of bread may just be... sliced bread. Soft bread slices have the perfect absorbent texture for picking up tiny pieces of broken glass, gently cleaning dust off your precious oil paintings, and even safely removing splinters from your finger when soaked with milk and taped to your skin with a bandage.
Recipe for Horror: How to Make Fake Blood Capsules for Halloween
Want to go the extra mile with your scary costume this Halloween? Use fake blood capsules. At an opportune moment, fake blood can slowly dribble out of your vampiric mouth like you've just finished sucking blood out of an innocent bystander's neck. Or, if you're a zombie, it'll look like you've just finished feasting on the flesh of some poor non-zombie sap.
CONTEST WINNER: How to Peel an Orange in Just One Piece
Thank you to everybody who submitted entries to last week's Secret Tips Of The Yumiverse: DIY Contest!
How To: 7 Non-Shower Uses for Shower Curtains
Shower curtains and shower curtain liners are great for making sure that your bathroom floor doesn't collect water, but eventually you'll want to replace them. When you do, the old one can be repurposed for a number of practical uses around the house and outdoors.
How To: 13 Awesome Household Cleaning Hacks
Need to vacuum, but hate the smell your vacuum makes? Soak a cotton ball in your favorite essential oil and place in the vacuum bag. The next time you vacuum, the air in your living space will be filled with a much more pleasant smell.
How To: Make a Cheap, DIY Fog Machine for Your Halloween Party
Need to add some spooky ambient fog to your super-scary Halloween party? Rather than shelling out money for a fog machine you'll probably only use once a year, make a trip to the nearest drug store and pick up a bottle of glycerin, a gallon of distilled water, a 2-liter bottle of cola, a disposable mini-pie tin, and a big candle in a jar.
How To: 9 DIY Home Remedies for Neck Pain
If you are like most people and spend most of your day hunched over a computer, you may be experiencing soreness and pain in your neck muscles. Before you schedule an appointment with a chiropractor or massage therapist, try some of the DIY home remedies below to alleviate the pain.
How To: 16 Cool and Unusual Uses for Ice Cubes
In addition to keeping your cold drink from turning lukewarm, ice cubes are also surprisingly useful for removing gum from your carpet, keeping your hollandaise sauce from curdling, skimming fat off your soup, and watering your hard-to-reach hanging plants.
How To: Make an Easy No-Sew Pet Bed for Your Cat or Dog
Want to treat your furry best friend to a new pet bed? All you need are two identical pieces of fleece, batting, and a pair of fabric scissors. The best part is that there is zero sewing involved.