Quick Mouse Pad Re-Fit

I’ve had this mousepad since I got my first MacBook about eight years ago.  With an optical mouse, of course, I don’t actually NEED a mouse pad, but I don’t like rolling my hand over the relatively rough surface of my desk.  It makes me feel icky.  This mousepad, of course, has seen better days, and the cloth on top of the foam is peeling off.

Well, I have fabric, and I have fabric glue.  How hard can a re-fit be?

So first I peeled off the old fabric, which was some form of stretchy something.

I gave the neoprene base a bit of a rinse and scrub to get rid of the now powderized ancient adhesive and let it dry.  Then I set out my equipment: paint brush, fabric glue, scissors, and a piece of fabric.  Go with a fabric that feels okay against your wrist, because you will constantly be rubbing your wrist against it. This was a scrap leftover from a previous experiment making bow ties, and it was just the right width.

I used my paintbrush to slather fabric paint across the entire surface of the mousepad. Make sure to get it right to the edges, and don’t spread it on too thick. I may have gotten mine a little thick in some places and it showed through the fabric later. Not a huge deal, but if you’re a perfectionist, use caution.

Then I simply flipped it over and trimmed around the edges with scissors. Easy peasy.

All trimmed up and sitting to dry.

And that’s it. A new look in five minutes or less.

Wingin’ It Wednesday: Leak Management

On Sunday morning we woke up to a blindingly brilliant sunny day, a definite rarity here in St. John’s, especially in the winter.  It was zero degrees, warmer in the sun, and everything was melting.  Drip, drip, drip.

But some of that dripping was coming from INSIDE the house.  The dining room to be precise.

One of the quirks of living in an older wooden house in St. John’s is that you get some weird leaks.  The strange freeze-thaw of precipitation mixed with the peculiarities of wind speed and direction means that weird things happen in your house.  We have a leak in our kitchen ceiling, for instance, that only ever leaks during the massive hurricanes in the fall.  This one in the dining room window frame, however, is a new one to us.  And after today, because we will never again get this exact confluence of weather and snow accumulation, we will probably never see it again.

So because there’s not much we can do about this particular leak, we mostly just had to figure out how to manage the drips until they stopped coming.  We laid a towel at the bottom of the sill initially to mop up the spill.

But because the drops were falling from such a height the splash was getting all over our furniture.

The Pie had an epiphany, and came up with this way to slow down the drops so we could contain them in little cups with minimal splash.  He affixed a piece of cotton twine to a thumb tack, which he then wedged in the gap where the fastest drips were coming out.

After a bit of conditioning of the string with water, the drips began to flow down the string directly into the cups, saving us splashes.

The Pie then dramatically declared, “THIS is why I would survive in a zombie apocalypse, because I’m so damned resourceful!”

Then he waltzed out of the room; in doing so, however, he managed to step on Gren’s loudest squeaky toy (and this isn’t the first time), thus alerting any zombie in the nearest county to our location.

Updated Magnets

Our refrigerator here on Elizabeth is like a hundred years old.  It’s rusty, it sweats, leaks weird green stuff when I turn it off, and produces copious amounts of black mould if I’m not around to wipe it up frequently.  It’s not my fridge, though, so I can’t really complain.  Nor am I really going to do anything about it.

But the thing is, the stuff I stick to the fridge is mine, and the rust and moisture on the fridge itself has made some of my steel magnets a little bit dirty and dull.

One afternoon when the Pie was out and I was bored, I decided to jazz up some of those old magnets.

I mean, they’re just magnets, right?

So first I took some CLR to them (actually the organic version of that ever-popular calcium/lime/rust remover).

I scrubbed off what I could, then carefully dried them.

Then I picked up some of my craft paints. I went with red and black to match the red walls, black counter, and red and black floors of my kitchen, and then a sort of white-gold metallic to touch up the rest. They’re nothing too spectacular, but they’ll do for now.

Router Incognito

I saw this post at the end of May and it was just so ridiculous that I felt I had to try it at home. You could do this with a modem, too, I suppose, or any other piece of electronica you want to keep out of sight.

Our wireless router is hidden in the chaos of the Pie’s desk, so needing to hide its unsightliness from view is not an issue for me.  I’d much rather the Pie tidied up his desk more often.  Regardless, perhaps the subtle awesomeness of this new router cover will inspire him.

So you take a hard cover book.  Like these ones. They’re old editions from the library at work that are now out of date.

Then you cut out all the pages.  Like so.

And you’re left with the cover.

Which you then slide over your router.

I used a slightly bigger book than my router, because the air vents are on top.  And so I made some wee supports out of skewers to hold up the top of the cover for air flow purposes.

So if you feel that your router is unsightly, here’s an idea for you!

Drawing on the Furniture

On one of our various moves, my brother-in-law Rusty scratched the headboard of our bed.  Big time.  You can see it here.

Fortunately, until recently we had been using a box spring on our bed, which pushed the mattress up and concealed the scratch from view. Now, however, in preparation for our new memory foam mattress that will be arriving any day now, we have ditched the box spring (it’s gone into my office to make it into a guest room) and are using slats.  This makes the mattress wayyyy lower on the bed, and now, If I haven’t plumped the pillows up, you can see the scratch.

I’m not sure exactly what the finish is on our bed.  It’s something that’s not quite a veneer, not quite just paint.  Either way, I came up with an easy solution.  It turns out that Crayola’s black coloured pencil is the exact colour of our bed.  How convenient.

So I just coloured in the scratch.  It was that simple.  I mean the scratch is still there, because it’s pretty deep and shows up quite strongly in relief, but it’s a bit less obvious.  I also took the pencil around the bed and coloured in all the chips and nicks from the past seven years.  It worked beautifully.

If you have wood finish, why not try it with some brown coloured pencils?  I have heard as well that rubbing a walnut over wood scratches helps to hide them.  Try it!

Put a Lid on It!

Like my mother, containers are my passion.  Bowls.  Vases.  Tins.  Boxes.  Jars.  I love them all, vintage ones especially.

I used to have a number of vintage jars to store various items in my pantry.  The Pie has broken two of them (*I* only break things that are new and expensive), but I’ve got some left.

The lids are a little finicky, though, I guess from years of denting and twisting and probably a faint patina of rust and grime on the lid itself.  It’s hard to get everything to thread properly sometimes.

So my trick is pretty simple.  I take a piece of paper towel and I put a drop or two of vegetable oil on it.

Then I rub it on the inside edge of the threaded part of the lid, making sure that it doesn’t come into contact with anything that might touch the contents of the jar.

It’s the same sort of logic as spritzing cooking spray on a recalcitrant zipper.  A little lubrication goes a long way.

Filing Facelift

Happy 400th post!

After I finished reorganizing the library at work I ended up with about two dozen of those cardboard magazine files that I no longer needed at the office.  I thought I could use a few in my home office, to keep my teaching stuff separate from my thesis stuff, and the Pie could always use some organizational aids.

The problem is, of course, that these are old, ugly, and UGLY.  So they needed a bit of a facelift.

First I took the suckers outside and used a can of spray-paint on them in an attempt to make them less ugly.

Unfortunately they were SO ugly that I went through an entire can of paint and the ugliness shone through still.  I did, however, forget to wear gloves and thus my hands (and my rings) became encrusted with paint.

Luckily a bit of vinegar, baking soda, and a pipe cleaner got them shiny again.

Can’t say as much for my hands though.

Anyway, I also had a can of spray gesso, and so I went with that, and it worked a lot better.  I only focused on the front part of the holder, the part you were going to see, so I didn’t feel I was wasting it on surfaces I wasn’t planning on showing.

Then I painted.  I stuck four together, upside-down so the angle was a good one for working, and got going with some acrylic craft paint.

A few vines and some grass.

Fun with rubber stamps.

More rubber stamps.

And the finished product, on my shelf.  Okay, it’s not my best effort, but I’ve been a little preoccupied recently and it’s better than what was there before.

Here are two little ‘uns that are going to play host to all of the Pie’s fighting games.  When I get more paint I’m going to do the Street Fighter logo across them to make him happy.

You can also use wrapping paper or wallpaper or even fabric to jazz up your holders.  Just trace the outline of the box onto the paper or fabric.

Cut it out.

Grab yourself some double-sided tape and slap it on. I am a huge fan of double-sided tape. I put that *%#! on everything.

You might have to trim the edges a bit afterwards but it’s easy peasy.

Diverting Disaster and Things I Learned from Christina Aguilera

Sorry for the lackluster posts this week, my trusty readers.  At the beginning of the week, my pantry looked like this:

So The Pie put his foot down and demanded some reorganization.  But with school and work and some ridiculous snowstorms, we had to do it piecemeal.  As a result, all available surfaces in my kitchen, including the floor, looked like this for a while:

At one point there was absolutely no counter space at all and so when the Pie did the dishes he had to put the drying rack on the floor, near Gren’s food and water.  Gren was seriously not amused with the disruption.

Now, however, my pantry looks like this:

Finally I can put all my spices on the same shelf, which appeals to the OCD in me.

Who’s to say how long this state of apparent tidiness will last?  Not me.

Anyway, I have a tip for you today, and it comes from pop singer/actress Christina Aguilera.  Actually, I don’t really know if it comes from her or not, but I saw her do it in Burlesque and I thought it was a neat trick.

I don’t know why this is, but sometimes I have trouble opening the lids of household aerosols (actually, the only household aerosol I have is cooking spray, but I’m sure this works with other things).  They’re not like spray paint, which has places you press to get them open.  So sometimes I struggle.

The trick, according to Ms. Aguilera, who did it with a can of hairspray, is to smartly rap the  bottom of the can on the counter top.  Then the lid will open easy peasy.  And strangely enough, it works!

The Empty Ocean Spray Bottle

Like a good little girl who suffers from frequent UTIs, I consume some form of cranberry juice on a daily basis.  In my experience, Ocean Spray has the right amount of cranberry goodness in their juice to make me feel all right.

As a result, I end up with a lot of empty Ocean Spray bottles.

So as a result of THAT, I recycle a lot of empty Ocean Spray bottles.

But you can do more than that.  The lovely squareness of the Ocean Spray bottle makes it a good fit for many things.

Currently, there is one, filled with water, inside the tank of my toilet.  It tricks my ancient toilet into thinking that it’s fuller sooner and so I don’t waste as much water every time I flush.

You can use them as  cooling packs as well.  Fill one about 2/3 full of water (because water expands when it freezes) and chuck it in the freezer.  Not only will it help you to keep your freezer full and thus working at peak efficiency (this is not a problem I have) but it will also make a handy cooler addition for picnics and camping.  The squareness of the bottle means it will fit anywhere, and as the water melts, it will keep your food fresh and provide a nice refreshing drink at the end.

Let’s not forget that you can re-use them for their original purpose, and put more juice, like the stuff you make from powder or concentrate, back in them.  They’re also a good way to store iced tea that you’ve brewed, or to flavour water.  I like to have an extra container of filtered water in the fridge for dinner parties, because we tend to get thirsty with all that talking and eating and my Brita pitcher just can’t keep up.

The squareness, again, lends itself to storage just as nicely.  Small pastas, like macaroni, or rice or any other small nodule-like dry good (jelly beans?), will be easy to find and compactly stored in your pantry — just make sure the bottle is fully dried out before you pour in your foodstuffs.

And if you want to get really creative, you can turn the empty bottle into a bird feeder to help out your avian friends over the winter.  Make it into a giant spare change holder.  Or  drum.  Or use it as a float (filled with air) or a weight (filled with sand) for keeping track of your dock moorings at the cottage.

Cut off the bottom and use the top as a funnel for birdseed, cat litter, sand … whatever you need to funnel.  Fill it with water and bury it in your garden to keep your tomatoes watered.

Use the square bottoms as drawer organizers that you can move around at your whimsy and fill with all your odds and ends.  Decorate them and keep them on your desk, in plain sight.  Make them hold pencils or buttons.

Many years ago I had a client who was a bit of a hoarder, and he had kept all his bottles, filled with water, and lining the shelves that ran near the ceiling in every room.  He was preparing for the apocalypse, I suppose.

That’s about all I can think of.  If you have any other uses, please feel free to add them in the comments section.  I would love to have more things to do with all my empty bottles!

Spray-Painting Indoors

Here’s a tip for the next time you need to do some spray painting and you have no choice but to do it inside.

To keep the mist of paint off everything else you own, do your painting inside a box.  It will catch most of the stuff that doesn’t land on the object you’re painting.

Just make sure to tape up any holes so you don’t have leaks.