Andy's Idea Factory

Since living on a "sustainable community" in Oregon I have had a very strict rule on body products and their usual "fillers" and preservatives; I use organic and natural products, from toothpaste to shampoo, and I don't budge on it. Thankfully now those products easier to find and even makeup can be found au - naturale , but it wasn't always so. Even still, those products are usually more expensive than non-natural products depending on brand name, and now is the time to consider shrinking your budget while you can. A great way to do this is to make your own face scrub and toner. I had this idea last February and hosted a "Girls Night" where we actually made it together, making it even more fun, and I still have "leftovers!" I'm going to break this Idea into two posts, so first, while that Valentines bouquet is just starting to wither, let's make the toner. I got this recipe from The Woman's Book of Healing Herbs ( Harra...

IDEA: This summer I made a temporary vegetable storage "device" in my master bathroom window. The premise is that we joined a vegetable co-op last spring that brought fresh organic veg up from Palisade, CO every week from June until December, and while we got just enough of some items, potatoes, squash, peppers, and others were so plentiful we had to start thinking about storage. We have a small ranch style house with a carport and minimal storage. No basement, attic, garage, etc. We have plenty of closet space, but after further research with thermometer and humidity gauge, the closets weren't optimal for storage. Temperature and humidity are the key to storing home grown vegetables. The three combinations for long-term storage are cool and dry (50-60˚F / 10-15˚C, 60% relative humidity), cold and dry (32-40˚F / 0-4˚C, 65% relative humidity), and cold and moist (32-40˚F / 0-4˚C, 95% relative humidity). In ideal circumstances, vegetables can store up to 4 to ...

We travel a LOT. And I come up with a lot of quick and easy ideas for traveling when we do! So I'm starting a Travel Solution series that I'll dip in and out of on this blog for you, let's get rolling with number 1! The Baggage Claim Tags as Lint Roller! This idea came to me when we were in New York last year. I had a lot of fuzz on one of my suits and forgot bring our travel lint roller. I began looking around the room for something with tape on it, because I remembered as a makeshift roller in college, we would roll masking tape on our hands and use that to get cat hairs, lint, and fuzz off our clothes before going out. Then I saw the baggage tags on the suitcase. I was sold on this idea immediately. I peeled the two sides apart and started sticking it to my suit and voila! It worked- not only did it work, the glue on these is so strong, it actually pulls those sweater-pull balls off your knitted items as well! My husband said I should submit this to Real Simple Magaz...

The best way to start pinching pennies out of your budget is to start small, and what better way than to find what doesn't seem to cost that much money and what won't be missed, and to remove it? Today I finally took all the cards I've saved over the past few years and recycled them. No, I didn't put them in the paper bin under my desk... these were cards I'd saved because they were either so beautiful, so cute, so catchy, and so memorable that I couldn't possibly throw them away. I'm not a pack rat, I'm crafty. This is one of the few things I'd saved, and I've always been a big believer in making your own cards. First of all, cards are expensive. You can spend from $2 to $6 on just one card these days, and although that doesn't seem so bad on one day, $4 for a friend who you rarely talk to, or grandma who doesn't have email, or to go along with that package you're sending. But those days add up, and if you count all the cards you bou...