Hot The Secret Yumiverse How-Tos
How To: 10 Thrifty DIY Christmas Gift Ideas
When you can't quite figure out what to get someone for Christmas, turn to your inner creativity for a more personal, homemade holiday gift. To help give you some ideas, here are some DIY presents that never fail.
How To: Cheap DIY Home Remedies for Relieving Dry Skin
Is your face shriveling up from the dry winter air? Do your hands feel all scaly and gross? Are the heels of your feet shedding skin flakes? If moving to Hawaii for the winter season is out of the question, you can relieve your dry winter skin with some quick and cheap DIY home remedies.
How To: 7 Home Remedies for Relieving Common Cold Symptoms
The next time you find yourself with a stuffy nose and the beginnings of a sore throat, breathe in warm air through your nose while holding a hair dryer blowing 18 inches away from your face. (Be sure the hair dryer is set to "warm" and not "hot.")
How To: 8 DIY Home Remedies for Relieving Chapped Lips
As the weather gets colder, you may be experiencing more irritating dryness on your lips. Thankfully, if you've misplaced your favorite lip balm stick and don't like using Vaseline, you can use many common household items to relieve your kissers to make them feel soft and smooth once more.
How To: 13 Delicious Ways to Reuse Your Thanksgiving Leftovers
What's better than stuffing yourself during Thanksgiving dinner? Gorging on leftovers the next day, of course. Everybody loves a good turkey and cranberry sauce sandwich, but what are some other creative ways to re-purpose all the leftover turkey meat, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and everything else sitting in your refrigerator?
How To: 8 Last Minute Fixes for Common Thanksgiving Cooking Disasters
Lumpy gravy? Gluey mashed potatoes? Dry turkey meat? So many things can go wrong when you are bestowed the honor (and burden) of cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Thankfully, some culinary mishaps that you encounter in the kitchen can be reversed or craftily disguised right before your guests sit down to eat.
How To: Make Hanging Dried Persimmons (Hoshigaki)
A seasonal tradition brought over from Japan to America by Japanese-American farmers, making hoshigaki (as they're called in Japanese) is a fun outdoor autumn project you can do before the winter season really kicks in. Hang a bunch of peeled persimmons on a string outside, wait for three to five weeks, and harvest yourself some naturally dried persimmons during the winter months. Though peeling the fruit and then regularly massaging the fruit every few days after hanging may be more labor in...
How To: 9 DIY Tips for Staying Toasty in the Winter
How do you stay toasty warm for the winter season without having to overexert your heating bill?
How To: 7 Non-Rice Dishes You Can Cook in a Rice Cooker
As far as cooking appliances go, rice cookers are pretty fabulous. All you have to do is add rice grains and water, press a button, and wait for the magic to happen. You don't have to worry about the food burning or the pot boiling over. But what if you can apply those same lazy steps to cook other things, too?
How To: Tips for Keeping Your Flowers Fresh & Long-Lasting
Someone just gave you a bouquet of freshly cut flowers... how do you enjoy them for as long as possible before they start wilting and drooping?
How To: Carve the Perfect Halloween Pumpkin
It's not too late to carve yourself the perfect pumpkin for Halloween. This year, be fully equipped with the know-how on picking out the right pumpkin from the local pumpkin patch, having the right carving tools, tracing a stencil onto the pumpkin before carving, and keeping your pumpkin looking as fresh as possible in time for the night of October 31st. Boo-ya.
How To: 5 Easy Tips for Keeping Your Smile Pearly White
Keep your smile pearly white without buying a teeth-whitening kit or making an expensive visit to the doctor's office. One popular home remedy is to add a little bit of baking soda to your tooth paste on a weekly basis when you brush your teeth. (Do not do this more than once a week, as too much baking soda can permanently erode the enamel on your teeth).
How To: Hack a Blender with a Mason Jar
Gina Kometani posted such a cool tip to the community corkboard, I had to illustrate it!
How To: Your Guide to Lazy Baking, Part 5: How to Bake Cookies Using Cake Mix
What do you do with that unused box of cake mix collecting dust in your pantry? Grab two eggs, some butter and a cup full of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and you are all ready to bake yourself a batch super quick and easy cake mix cookies.
How To: Your Guide to Lazy Baking, Part 3: How to Bake Bread in a Flower Pot
Sick of the standard bread baked in a loaf pan? Impress your family and friends by baking bread in a plain terracotta flower pot. Baking bread in a terracotta pot makes for crispy bread with a tender and moist interior. Make sure the terra cotta pot is unglazed and unpainted before using it.
How To: Your Guide to Lazy Baking, Part 2: How to Make Mini-Pizzas in Muffin Tins
Continuing the theme of using a muffin pan to quickly whip up super-simple and super-delicious baked things (see Part 1: how to make mini-pies in muffin tins), how about making yourself a savory snack in the form of a pizza cupcake?
How To: Your Guide to Lazy Baking, Part 1: How to Make Mini-Pies in Muffin Tins
Craving pie? Muffin-sized mini-pies are perfect for when you just want a couple bites for yourself. They are ridiculously easy to make, and take very little time. Using a muffin tin also gives you the luxury of creating multiple mini-pies with different fillings, which means you don't have to settle on one pie flavor.
How To: Three More Ways To Open A Wine Without A Corkscrew
Don't let a missing corkscrew deter you from uncorking your bottle of wine at your next party, picnic or romantic dinner at home. Following up on a previous post on how to open a bottle of wine using just a towel and a flat, vertical surface (a wall or a wide tree trunk), listed below are three more handy ways you can open a bottle of wine using common household objects or tools. And what better way to impress your date than taking off your shoe, placing a wine bottle between your knees, and ...
How To: Open a Wine Bottle Without Using a Corkscrew
What do you do when you have a bottle of wine ready to uncork, but no corkscrew on hand?
How To: 9 Tasty Tips for Repurposing Leftover Food
Waste not with your excess food. With a little bit of imagination and extra ingredients, your boring leftovers and extra ingredients idling in your fridge can be transformed into tasty meals, side dishes and desserts.
How To: 8 Weird, Non-Food Uses for Your Freezer
Other than keeping your popsicles and frozen veggies frosty, who would have thought that your everyday freezer had so many uses? Just like your dishwasher can be used for many non-cookware items, the freezer can be used in a variety of useful ways that don't involve perishable food.
How To: DIY Tips For Restoring Your Old, Beat Up Furniture
Are the furniture pieces in your living space starting to look faded, old and beat up? Gather some milk, vaseline, pecan nuts, lemon juice, olive oil and toothpaste, and you already have a fine assortment of tools to help you restore your wooden, leather, vinyl and glass furniture to some of its former glory.
How To: 7 Double-Duty Kitchen Tools
Contrary to what the infomercials may tell you, you don't have to own a gajillion kitchen gadgets and utensils to function properly in the kitchen when you're preparing a meal or dessert at home. To save money and space, get acquainted with the unexpected multiple functions that are possible with your everyday kitchen tools.
How To: Make Brownies in a Mug
For the next time you have a severe chocolate craving but a) don't want to go through the trouble of going through an elaborate recipe and b) don't want to go through the trouble of going to the supermarket, make yourself a microwave brownie in a mug. All you need to do is six very simple ingredients plus water, mix them up in a microwave-safe mug, nuke everything for one minute, and enjoy.
How To: 13 Handy Cooking and Baking Substitutions for Missing Ingredients
What do you do when you're right in the middle of your cooking or baking groove and realize that you're missing an extremely vital ingredient? Rather than delaying your next meal or one-person cake-eating party with a last minute trip to the supermarket, get around your missing ingredient by substituting another common ingredient. Below are 13 handy cooking and baking substitutions that just might save you time or money for your next cooking and baking adventure.
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: 10 DIY Remedies for Common Cooking Disasters
So many things can go wrong when you cook or bake for yourself. Mushy veggies, overcooked pasta, dry meat, crumbly cakes—not to mention too spicy, too acidic, and the ever-dreaded too salty.
How To: 8 Jury-Rigged Fitness Tools for Cheap At-Home Workouts
Work it without breaking the bank—with a couple of household items and a little ingenuity, you can transform your old junk into effective gym equipment for both cardiovascular workouts and strength training within the comforts of your own home.
Natural First Aid Box: 9 Household Items for Minor Medical Needs
Itchy bee stings, sore throats, swelling muscles, minor scraps, splinters... all of these common ailments can easily be fixed with things you've probably got lying around at home in your kitchen and bathroom cabinets. Honey, ginger, castor oil, garlic, baking soda, aloe vera, white vinegar, and chamomile tea are all great natural remedies for your next minor medical need. No drugstore trips required (except for maybe some Elmer's glue).
How To: Display Photos in Your Home Without Any Frames
You can take a bajillion photos on your smartphone or digital camera, but they'll eventually end up lost on your computer hiding within folders within folders within folders... you get the picture. To bring them to the physical world, you've got to print them, but you don't have to settle on a boring ol' picture frame.
Dress to the Nines: 7 DIY Tricks for Keeping Your Wardrobe Looking Shiny and New
Refresh your wardrobe without buying a single new article of clothing. Yep, it can be done. Because who really has the money these days to splurge on new clothes? And no, you don't have to be a DIY sewing genius to work with what you already have. Sometimes it's a matter of simple improvements, like making your dingy white tank top look super white again, or fixing those embarrassing scratches on your formerly spotless leather shoes.
How To: 9 Things You Can Throw in Your Dishwasher Besides Dishes
Not only does a dishwasher save you the manual labor of physically washing your dirty kitchenware, it can sterilize your make-up brushes, launder your favorite baseball cap, and even cook up your next dinner.
How To: 7 DIY Cures for Headaches
What can you do when you're suffering from a pounding headache and you're in too much pain to drive to the nearest drugstore? Fill a large plastic bowl with hot water, add one tablespoon of dry mustard powder, and soak your feet for twenty minutes.
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: 9 DIY Cooking Staples You Never Need to Buy Again
Never buy pasta sauce from the supermarket again. Or salad dressing. Or pie crusts, chicken stock, hummus, bread crumbs and other common cooking staples that can be easily replicated within the comfort of your own kitchen.
How To: 5 Secret Tricks for Alleviating an Achy Back
Got an achy back that won't go away? Not all of us have the money to splurge on a massage therapist, but there are several DIY techniques that may help alleviate your back pain and muscle discomfort without completely breaking the bank. Thank goodness for those spare socks with missing pairs and old tennis balls.
How To: 8 DIY Beauty Tips for Exterminating Zits
Acne medication can get expensive, but there are many common household items lying around your kitchen and bathroom that are perfect to use as a facial, face wash, or on-the-spot zit treatment to decrease the redness of acne and, more importantly, prevent future pimples from cropping up on your beautiful face.
How To: 10 Amazing Uses for Dental Floss
Sturdier than sewing thread and far less cumbersome than metal wire, dental floss has an amazing multitude of practical uses that can be used for baking, cooking, interior decorating, and more.
How To: Normally Trashed Items That Are Actually Garden Gold
If you've got a knack for gardening and an inclination for recycling, then you need to know about these six garden hacks. Some of the trash inside your bathroom and kitchen is actually garden gold, so get your recycling hats on.
How To: Your DIY Bug Repellent Guide to Common Household Pests
Contrary to popular belief, eliminating household pests from your home can be accomplished without completely bombing your living space with a mess of toxic fumes. Whether you have annoying fruit flies in the kitchen, fleas on your beloved pet or silverfish lurking around your bathroom, it is very likely that a DIY, non-toxic and super inexpensive solution exists for your household bug problem.