News and Updates about Home & Garden

For anyone who has spent an entire afternoon attempting to assemble a set of IKEA chairs, these wooden masterpieces probably seem pretty appealing.

The force is strong with this project.

Have you seen all the adorable miniature garden ideas? Containers of some sort (wood boxes, planters, drawers, wheel barrows, bird baths…) hold a little scene full of tiny living plants along with little adornments like garden benches, hardscapes and paths. They are absolutely enchanting for all ages and how fun to shop the house and find special little things to decorate your tiny garden whether indoors or out.

Today I'm going to show you 7 easy ways to organize your room. They are really simple and cheap so I hope you find them useful!

DIY foldable table for small apartments and workshops. It has unique way of folding. This one is made from old computer desk. It is an easy do-it-yourself project, even for woodworking beginners.

I make silk flowers for personal use as of now. My sister suddenly passed away 18 yr ago, & I try to make sure she has a very nice flower arrangement for every season. I dont have alot of money but she deserves to have a nice flower arrangement. She was only 19 when she passed so I have been doing this for 18 yr. I would like to make a business of this , I just dont know how to get started

What if your fridge knew your food and expiration dates?

With severed, angled gaps in three out of four legs, it looks like the work of a chainsaw-wielding maniac. But those gaps are clean cut and without blood, despite the redness of the slices, and definitely not the work of Leatherface.

After stumbling across an interesting article by Hanne Blank—(apparent) hobbyist chef and widely known activist on the issues of weight, bisexuality, and sexuality—I've become even more fascinated by kitchen shortcuts. Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold's recently released Modernist Cuisine also spurred a similar interest, particularly after reading a WSJ piece in which Myhrvold attests —by law of science, of course— that a ¼-inch-thick sheet of steel is more than adequate in place of an...

You've seen his explanation of a combination lock's inner workings. You'll never lose another game of Jenga, thanks to his winning wooden pistol. And nearly 4 million YouTube users have marveled at his wooden marble machine sculpture. He's Matthias Wandel, and he's accomplished what most only dream of—turning a hobby into a career.

Don't you love those simple little tricks that just make life easier? Like quick solution for a pesky stripped screw? Apartment Therapy says,

As someone who keeps an electric drill in the same 5 foot proximity of a manual wall pencil sharpener, here's a clear cut case of "Why didn't they think of this sooner?!"... Introducing, the coolest drill bit ever:

For most bibliophiles, a bookshelf-lined house as beautiful as the Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio's Shelf Pod house is a dream come true. The interior of the space consists of an endless grid of interlocking laminated pine-boards, which slot together to form latticed shelving units:

ApartmentTherapy reminds us of a fine fix for scratches on glassy surfaces like mirrors and windows—toothpaste!

If it takes a village to raise a child, you can imagine what it takes to raise a village! In brief: a whole lot! Thanks to the folks behind the Open Source Ecology movement, however, starting your own self-sufficient community has never been easier! Taking free software as a model, the group is working on what they call the Global Village Construction Set—"a fully integrated [and freely reproducible] set of machines for creating a self-sufficient modern life from the resources of a small amount...

If you only see one power tool-related YouTube clip this year, make it WoodWorkingInAction's "Bandsaw Magic." We give this one two totally-not-severed thumbs way up!

Yep, it's that easy. From Re-Nest:

Think you're more green by going artificial? Think again. The New York Times reports that the most definitive study shows you would have to use your artificial tree for 20 years before it has less impact on the environment than a real tree.

Tricycle + simple plow blade = true yankee ingenuity. (Who needs a pricey snow plow vehicle?)

With the aid of America's top botanical experts, Michael Tortorello of the New York Times has compiled a wonderful list of 15 hard-to-kill houseplants for the green thumb inept.

Gotta get myself one of these walking crab tables. (Now if only it came on command. Life would be complete.) Question is, how does one build something like this? Post ideas below.

Here in Los Angeles, there are a plethora of amazing houses precariously perched on the hillsides of Hollywood, Pacific Palisades and Malibu. Striking to look at, the thought "earthquake" is never far from one's mind, however.

The resourceful fisherman of Holy Island (Lindisfarne, Northumberland, UK) are upcycling beautiful old fishing vessels into storage sheds. Flip it upside down, add a door, and the result is striking.

What appears to be an impossibly boundless volume of water is really an illusion created with the aid of a largely invisible acrylic cylinder. William Pye's "reverse fountain", entitled Charybdis (referring to the sea monster of Greek myth), was designed for Seaham Hall of Sunderland, England.

If you were to look on the roof of your local city bus, what would you find? A little bit of dirt, most likely, and a whole lot of space. Precisely the stuff you'd find in an empty container garden! Enter NYU graduate student Marco Castro Cosio's Bus Roots, a project which, through installing gardens on the rooftops of New York City buses, seeks to "reclaim forgotten space, increase quality of life and grow the amount of green spaces in the city."

Lawnmower racing is a yankee sport, gosh darnit, so when British racer Don Wales stole the title for record speed (87.833 mph) back in May, former American champ Bobby Cleveland was challenged to win it back. And that he did.

Say hello to "Meet Eater," the world's most social garden. Seriously — say hello! Its life may depend on it:

UK designers Fresh West's "Lazy Chair" is a prototype designed to collapse by lever, and then slowly, automatically stand back up.

Well suited for loft living, Studio Gorm's Flow Kitchen offers an extremely eco-friendly and efficient solution to all your daily actions in the kitchen. The Netherlands based design studio focuses on three major areas: Waste, Water and Energy. My favorite element? A cutting board that sits above a compost bin. Slide it forward, and sweep your scraps right into the (eco-friendly) trash.

All hail "The William".

A group of New Zealand students have designed the ultimate green addition for eco-friendly living: a "clip-on" Plant Room.

How would you like to live like Tarzan, except in a sustainable, organic treehouse?  Check out TED Fellow and urban designer Mitchell Joachim and his plan for homes of the future.  Read the full article here.

These Dutch architects fear that those Chinese drivers might get confused! You may think I'm making a cheap joke about Chinese drivers. But I'm not. The Hong Kong-Zhuai-Macau bridge is a 31-mile, $10.7 billion project and this unique design is meant to address a clash of two driving conventions.

55-year-old Peruvian inventor, Eduardo Gold, was one of 26 winners of the "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" competition of 2009. His winning plan? To whitewash a mountain in order to restore it to a glacier.

Experimental house, "Roll It", is a collaborative project within Germany's University of Karlsruhe. The basic concept is as follows: using a cylindrical design to maximize space within a minimum housing unit. Not sure how "space efficient" this would actually be, but using it as transport could be fun (until the nausea inevitably sets in).