The Secret Yumiverse Features — Page 3 of 17 « The Secret Yumiverse

How To: 13 Non-Lip Uses for Chapstick

Now that the weather is colder and drier than usual, you may be using Chapstick more frequently to moisturize your dry lips. Did you know that you can also use Chapstick on dry elbows, dry cuticles, dry knuckles, and even the ends of your hair?

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: 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 Ways to Get Started as a Guerrilla Street Artist

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need a gallery space or expensive art education to share your art with the rest of the world. Take a cue from today's innovative artists who share their creative experiments directly out on the streets and in public spaces for the everyday pedestrian in unique and quirky ways. And no, you don't have to be a skilled graffiti tagger, either. Just some yarn, random knick-knacks, photos, and Post-it notes as well as other basic office supplies.

How To: 10 Simple Composition Tips for Taking a Good Photograph

Now that it's easier than ever to take pictures using a digital camera or smartphone, more people should brush up on basic composition tips for taking a good photograph.

How To: 6 DIY Tips for Watering Your Houseplants While Away on Vacation

What can you do if you're about to leave for a big trip and can't find a plant-sitter to regularly water your indoor plants? Just like pets, your indoor ferns and marigolds need attention, too!

How To: 5 Clever Uses for Toothpaste (No Teeth Involved)

Almost every human being on the planet uses toothpaste daily, but typically for just one task—oral hygiene. Keeping your teeth clean is undoubtedly important, but this magical mixture of abrasives, fluoride, and detergents must be useful for more than just scrubbing your chops, right? For instance, it's great at removing scuff marks from shoes!

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: DIY Ways to Clean Your Computer Screen, Keyboard, and Mouse

Got a dirty desktop computer or laptop screen? Mix together a solution of equal parts white vinegar and purified water and place solution in a spray bottle. Spray a clean cotton rag with the solution and gently wipe the screen for simple, streak-free cleaning. For a quick clean-up of dust particles that won't scratch the glass, use clean coffee filters or a dryer sheet.

How To: 9 DIY Home Remedies for Relieving Itchy Mosquito Bites

There are few things peskier in the summer than an unexpected mosquito bite swelling up on your arms and legs. Fortunately, there are many ways to heal your body of its annoying itch, ranging from fruit (lemon slices and banana peels) to common household items (baking soda and apple cider vinegar).

How To: Grow an Avocado Tree at Home

While it is convenient to buy avocados from the local supermarket, you can also start investing in the long-term goal of having free avocados coming from your own backyard by growing an avocado tree straight from the pit.

How To: Turn a Plastic Garbage Bag into a High-Flying DIY Kite

Where one sees plastic garbage bags, I see living creatures soaring high in the windy skies—and you can too. The choice is completely yours. But, wouldn't it be nice to spare one trash bag the indignity of holding waste?

Street Art 101: How to Make Moss Graffiti

Feeling the need to creatively express yourself in a public space? Make an artistic statement with some DIY moss graffiti using moss, buttermilk, beer, a paintbrush, and some imagination.

How To: 7 Easy Mnemonic Tricks for Remembering Numbers

Whether it's your credit card, your parents' new zip code, or a new work phone number, number sequences are everywhere. Sometimes it's important to actually remember them instead of always relying on a smartphone or the internet to remind you.

How To: 8 Amazing Non-Edible Uses for Rice Grains

In their cooked form, rice is great for making spam musubi, sushi, and other amazing meals. In their uncooked form, dry rice grains are unexpectedly useful for preventing your salt from clumping in your salt shaker, cleaning out the insides of weirdly-shaped, hard-to-wash containers, weighing down your unbaked pie crust, cleaning out your coffee grinder, and—if you act quickly enough—saving your wet cell phone from cell phone death.

How To: Make DIY Rock Candy at Home

Not to be confused with Pop Rocks, rock candy, which is large chunks of crystallized sugar, is a wonderfully simple snack in and of itself, and can be used to dissolve in tea or coffee as well as on top of other desserts.

How To: 10 Unusual Uses for Your Microwave Oven

The microwave has an extraordinary number of uses that goes above and beyond reheating your cold leftovers from last night's dinner. For food-related uses, the microwave can also make your lemons more squeezable for maximum juice output, roast garlic heads, decrystallize hardened honey, dry up fresh herbs, and more.

How To: 11 Sizzling Uses for Charcoal Briquettes Besides Grilling

However much you love your summer barbecue parties, you probably won't be going through your entire bag of charcoal briquettes anytime soon. So, take advantage of your charcoal excess by putting them to good use in other ways!

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: 12 NASA-Approved Houseplants for Improving Indoor Air Quality

Back in the '80s, NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America did a study where they discovered which houseplants were the most effective in purifying the air in space facilities. Though you may not be living in a rocket ship, you can definitely benefit from having one or more of these plants in your home.

How To: 12 Handy Uses for Clothespins

Originally invented by the Shaker community in the 1700s, clothespins are incredibly useful for hanging wet clothing on a clothesline, but also can be used to organize your cable cords, keep your pair of socks together, hold down the used end of your toothpaste tube, and decrease the possibility of you accidentally hammering your finger while pounding down on a nail.

How To: 11 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism

Metabolism is the process by which your physical body converts what you eat and drink into energy that your body needs to function.

How To: 4 Cheap & Easy Ways to Unclog Your Kitchen Sink Without Any Nasty Chemicals

Oh, boy. A stopped-up drain. It'll inevitably happen with any home plumbing system and your kitchen sink is no exception. That clog won't go away on its own and will require immediate attention to keep any standing water from rising. But you don't have to resort to calling an expensive plumber or using a bottle of hazardous chemicals. Using simple kitchen staples or common household objects, as well as some determination, you can unclog your kitchen sink on your own without paying a dime.

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: 13 Unexpected Uses for Baking Soda You've Probably Never Heard Of

When it comes to common household items with a million practical uses, baking soda reigns supreme. We all know that baking soda is great for deodorizing stinky things, whitening your teeth, and helping with clean-up around the house, but did you know about the other weirdly unexpected and esoteric uses for baking soda?

How To: Remove Gum from Your Hair, Shoes, Clothes, and Carpet

While it is common knowledge that peanut butter can help ease chewed-up gum out of your hair, what happens if you don't have any peanut butter—or you have somehow gotten gum stuck on your shoes, clothes, or carpet?

How To: 5 DIY Mosquito Repellent Secrets

Want to avoid getting your blood sucked by annoying little insects without breathing in toxic bug spray? Below are 5 DIY ways to create mosquito repellents with 100 percent all natural ingredients to avoid that annoying summertime itch.

How To: 8 Weirdly Practical Uses for Uncooked Spaghetti Noodles

Other than serving as the raw ingredients for your epic spaghetti and meatball feast, uncooked spaghetti noodles can also be used to make a DIY knife block for your kitchen knives, light a candle with a deep holder, check the done-ness of your baked goods, and double as a DIY toothpick or skewer you can break into your desired length for cooking or serving.

How To: Make Your Own DIY Leaf Skeleton

Making your own leaf skeleton is a fun, DIY project where you strip green leaves of their outer coating and tissue, leaving behind the "skeleton" of delicate veins underneath. Leaf skeletons can then be used as framed art pieces, or delicate decor for homemade cards or ornaments.

How To: 8 Cool Things You Can Do with Rocks

Are your paper clips, pushpins, and other metallic objects always in a disarray on your work desk or drawer? To organize them more efficiently and in a visually cool way, paint over medium-sized rocks with magnetic paint and then use its magnetic surface to keep clips and other metallic items in place.

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: 10 Broken or Worn Out Things That Can Be Made into Something Useful

Despite the tremendous increase in recycling programs across the states, 136 million tons of municipal solid waste still ends up in landfills. So, the next time you throw away something, conjure up your DIY spirit and ask that trash, "Are you really trash, or just the beginning of my next ingenious project?"

How To: 11 Non-Dental Uses for Your Old Toothbrush

We all know to should swap out our toothbrushes one every three to four months, but did you know your used Toothbrush still has a number of handy uses once its time in your bathroom is done? You can use an old toothbrush indefinitely to remove silk from corn, exfoliate your lips, tame your unruly eyebrows or clean your cheese grater before sticking it in the dishwasher.

How To: 6 Unexpected Beauty, Health, & Home Uses for Rice Water

Rice water refers to the cloudy water that is leftover after washing rice in a bowl, or the excess water drained from a pot used for cooking rice in boiling water. Whichever method you prefer, rice water can be saved in a separate container once cooled, then used for a number of beauty, health, and home uses.

How To: 3 More Ways to Make Homemade Ice Cream on a Hot Summer Day

Ice cream never gets old in hot weather, especially if it's super cheap and made within the comforts of your own home!

How To: Breathing Exercises to Help You De-Stress

While breathing is a simple and automatic physical act we take for granted every moment of our lives, consciously breathing in a particular way for five to ten minutes can greatly reduce your stress, clear your head, and bring more energy to your body. Think of it as meditation through breathing.