Preparing for a Winter Storm - Emergency Water

There is a blizzard forecasted for my area, and I am seeing a lot of my friends stocking up on bottled water from the store. I'm sure the bottled water companies love the revenue created by a storm, but to save money, if your tap water is fine to drink, fill up pitchers and ice cream buckets full of water before the storm hits in case your pipes freeze, you're really not going to care if you are drinking brand name water in an emergency.

You can also have everyone take their baths the night before and fill up the tub with water to flush your toilet.

Make a Coyote Call out of PVC and plastic trash

Today, my hubby has been kind enough to give me some blog content! Yeah. Most likely though, most of my readers won't have a use for an animal call, but the men in your life might. He does his coyote-call-making just like my sewing, everything is eyeballing it.

This call will make a rabbit-in-distress call, coyote barks and coyote howls. Video at the end of the post will demo.

Gather materials: Scissors, 3 inches of 1/2" PVC pipe, rubber band and that heavy plastic trash containers you take off of toys, electronics etc. by screaming and yelling and ripping and jabbing and pulling, yeah that annoying stuff. Unless you get the nice ones that have the pop apart tabs.

Then mark 2" from one end. Then in a vise, make your cut diagonal length-wise from that mark to the tip with a hacksaw. See these two images for direction.

It will look like this when done.

Then perpendicular to the previous cut, cut 1/4 to 1/2 the thickness of your PVC. You're making a shelf for the reed to sit on.

Then take a file to make the cut part smooth and slightly rounded and to take out saw marks. Then sand with a 400 grit sandpaper to knock off burrs.

Take your plastic trash and find a flat piece. Cut out a rectangle about the width of the cut out area on your PVC.

Then set it on your reed shelf and cut it to the length of the end of your PVC and shape it to the end.

Wrap a rubber band around it to hold it in place on the reed shelf. The rubber band is siting on the reed shelf.

Then using a file or sand paper, sand the excess off the edges of the reed to match the sounding board. You don't want the reed to overhang the sounding board. It should look like this, click on the picture to see the nearly invisible reed.

Give it a test blow. If it doesn't make a sound, you may have to shorten the reed a little or change the angle of the reed shelf with a file to where the reed comes further away from the sounding board. And this is what you can do with it:

Not bad for making it out of trash.

Here's an audio track teaching how to blow on a coyote call. I'm sure typing into YouTube "How to use a coyote call" will get you plenty to look through.

How to get Recall Notifications

I had a reader inform me of a possible recall on a product I used on the blog. When buying thrift store items or picking up free stuff it's advisable to check out if its been recalled.

I have been for more than a year now signed up to receive daily notices of product recalls. Takes a few seconds to glance through the list to make sure I don't have anything I need to check on.

Here's the CPSC website on recalls where you can look up products. If you want to sign up for the daily recall list, scroll down to the bottom and find "Join our recall notification list."

Cheaper Medical Lab Costs

This article ran on CNN yesterday. If you are without insurance or have a high deductible, you may want to get your doctor's lab order written down for you and order it yourself for much cheaper. Evidently, you order it online, pay online, print it out, and take it to the lab.

If you have a participating lab in your area, you might want to check it out.

Here is the CNN article

Here is the lab ordering website

Bottle Top Bag "Clip"

Someone sent this to me through an email forward, so I have no idea who this idea belongs to, but thought I'd put it up here, since I've never seen it before, maybe you haven't either.

Cut up a disposable water bottle and keep the neck and top, as in photo.

Insert the plastic bag through the neck and screw the top to seal.

Track your website visitors

I don't know how many of you don't read my blog through a reader and have seen the new little map in the top right hand corner of my blog.

I use statcounter to track my visitors and where they are coming from whenever I am curious. And sometimes they are from such cool places as India, and sometimes I can even see that people of other language blogs are linking to me. I know that someone who writes in Chinese, Thai, and Spanish have all linked to my blog. Pretty fun.

So I thought I would share with my readers and show a map of people who are reading my blog. It just tracks where the readers' server is located. IPligence provided the map. In just a few days, It looks like I've had visitors from the USA, Australia, Canada, Italy, Ireland, UK, Poland, Maybe Hungary??, Germany, Brazil, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, India, Japan, OOH! Looks like really close to Dalian, China where I spent a summer, Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines and New Zealand. Fun huh?

And the blinking ones are who is looking right now.

Duct Tape your Window AC's Accordian Vinyl Panels

Do you use window AC units? We do in the upstairs in our bedrooms at night. We program the thermostat to turn the AC to a much higher temp for the whole house at night and only use the bedroom AC window units for sleeping.

(Well, currently, we're trying to go as long as possible without it, so it's a toasty 85 in the house, but with the windows open it feels not so bad)

So that cuts us down from trying to cool 2500 square feet to 200 square feet for about 10 hours.

But, those accordion panels on the sides let in outside air and let out cool air. Not good, so how can you make that better? Duct tape. And what's nice, is duct tape comes in colors, pick the color right for you (most likely white) and seal that puppy off. No more tacky than the accordion thing. Energy efficiency goes up the less drafts you have coming from the outside (see my caulking post)

More Dog Food Bag Reuses, Butcher Paper and Hunting Seat

Just thought I'd share two more uses that we use our Chicken Feed or Cat Food bags for.

Last week, we butchered a chicken, but had to bring it inside because it was too dark. I cut open a cat food bag and did it on the kitchen table. No mess! After finished, just wrapped the unused carcass bits up in the bag to transport it back outside.

I have now learned that my husband, when going out hunting, uses his food bag apron as a seat. Silly man. Now, I just roll one up for him and he takes it with him and unrolls the bag to sit on the ground so his tush doesn't get wet. This could be used for fishing or camping or whenever you might be sitting on the ground. Compact water barrier.

Belt Refashion

So I saw this really cool belt that would fit an outfit I intend to refashion at home, but it was meant for a woman 3 times my size. No problem for a quarter!

I cut the seam that was holding the end of the belt to the buckle and pulled it through til it was the size I wanted.

Then I sewed it along the edge as close to the buckle as possible. Obviously, without the specialized machine they use, you will see the seam, but I'm ok with that. I got it as close as possible and tried to stay straight (I'm so bad at that, I almost did it) and cut off the excess.

Now the 2X belt is a size M.

Free Random Picking Software and Book Winner

If you need to pick something at random, or put a list in random order, I use this free software called "The Hat." Now, if you have a blog giveway, like I did, this makes it totally fair by randomly picking one name. Or what if you want to shuffle an entire list? Let's say you have several children and you need to decide who cleans toilets which week. You can type in each name and shuffle the names and then you didn't decide what order they have to go in, the hat did. Or you have the option of importing names from a file. So lets say you want to encourage your kiddos to do something in order to win a prize. So if they wash the car, you can import your reward list from where you saved it, the kid can press the hat button and out pops either "Get $5" or "Choose a movie to watch" etc.

But that does require typing (If you are going to use the list again, save it).

If the list will never be used again, you could easily take a count of how many comments you have on a particular blog post (just look on your dashboard) and go to random.org, change the number parameters and whatever number it generates, is the winner.


Using Random.org, the winner of The Country House Courtship is WENDY.

Hole in Wall turned into Vent

My house's duct work is worthless, but it will cost $4,000 to redo. Not the kind of money we have at the moment for this. Essentially, the people who built our house were not that bright. But I won't go there.

So, the wall in between our h/ac unit and the stairwell gets hot because the ductwork they put in leaks so bad that this is where the heat goes. In the summer that wall is cold, in the winter hot.

Well, hubby tripped going up stairs last fall and made a hole with his shoulder or head or something (This is not the first time he has made holes in things just by walking, I've lost track on how he did this one, don't worry, we don't visit china shops). And I've been lazy and putting off pulling out the joint compound just to patch this.

Well, we took a break from using the wood stove this past week and I noticed that this hole let all that stuck furnace heat out. It helped tremendously to heat the upstairs; it's almost too hot up there! So I'm thinking, why patch it up, let's use it!

So, I found the nearest stud and cut the hole to be even with it.

Took a register cover we salvaged from another house, painted it with the closest colored spray paint in our inventory, and screwed it in. Viola!

Now, I'm thinking, I'll put another one in on the other side of the wall for the downstairs and when I want the heat or cooling that gets stuck in that wall to go up or downstairs, I'll open one and shut the other. One of these days we have to pay for new ducting, but this will work to make use of the lost energy for now.

Clothes Drying as Humidifier

We mostly use wood heat to heat our house with a lovely soapstone stove my Mother and Stepfather graciously let us have. But it's a dry heat. So! Another reason to dry your clothes inside, put some of that moisture back into the air sans electricity.

(No, I don't put the clothes that close to the fire, they're just their temporarily for the photo op.)

Chicken Plucker

May not help too many of you, but if you have your own chickens for eggs and meat and you pluck them (we just skin them whole, I buy skinless chicken when I buy at the grocery store, so what's the point of keeping them with skin), look at this guy's cheap chicken plucker. Now, if you are like a friend of mine and kill a hundred at a time, you might want to invest in something much better, but if you are like us and only kill a handful at a time to put in the freezer and want to pluck them, check this out:

Forum Thread and Video

Tshirt Laminate Floor Underlayment

We took out a fireplace downstairs and it left us with hole in our floor. One day, I want to redo the entire downstairs flooring, but that time is not now. So what to do with the floor?

I went to our local cheap house fixtures and flooring place and asked if they had any mismatched laminate flooring in the back. There was a pallet of left over laminate flooring. I found one that was super close to the piece I had brought in and so instead of paying $1.78 sq. ft for the closest match up front, I paid 50 cents a square foot for last 3 boxes that was enough to cover my hole. (Now they don't totally match, but my plan is for it to make it just a few years until I decide what I want to do with the floor and save the money to do so.)

But, you don't get the underlayment cushion when you buy out of the scrap pile. I thought we could just do without, but it made a crunchy sandy like noise when you stepped on it. So, instead of going out and buying a big roll of it on special order since I didn't need flooring with it, I cut up t-shirts and an ugly flowery t-shirt material scrap to fill the hole. Just cut to cover the majority of it, gaps were fine.

Perfect, no more crunchy noises.

Food Bag Waterproof Barrier

Use animal feed bags anytime you need a waterproof barrier, like:

Under indoor plants so the water doesn't seep into the object it's sitting on
As a crib protector between the mattress and the sheets
As a drop cloth
Under messy kid paint projects
Under a sand box to make a barrier between the sand and the ground so weeds don't come up through

Can you think of other similar uses? Put them in the comments to share.

Food Bag Arrow Target

Are you an archer? Turn a feed bag into a target. Get together an animal feed bag, cushions or old clothing, duct tape and a sharpee.

I have cushions from an old couch, long story on why I still have them, but I do. But clothing or leftover carpet padding (Oooo! I have leftover carpet padding, that's what I am using next time!) or something similar will work I am sure. Turn the bag inside out to show off the white plain surface. Then cut your material to size if it's a cushion or pack it with your material until it's tight.

Then, fold up the top and secure close with duct tape and draw on whatever kind of target you want.

Then have at it. I had to go take it for a few shots to see how it went. I did poorly since I couldn't find the arrows that went with my bow. (I know excuses excuses, but got to brag on hubby, they were both hand made, I just didn't want to wield the 60 pound bow that went with the arrow I found that evening.), but you can see the holes. It's not exactly self healing, you will have to redo it in the future, but I think you will only have to replace the bag, the inside would be just fine to reuse.

Food Bag Tarp

Do you need a tarp in a hurry? Or did the last one get a hole and you're frugal enough to make your own? Forgot to buy one to cover up your yard sale tables the night before so they don't get damp?

Well, just cut open a whole bunch of animal food bags and duct tape them together until you get the size you want. Easy!

Food Bag Apron

Hubby's going deer hunting and we're planning on processing the meat ourselves. Big mess calls for extra tough apron. So....

I took a chicken feed bag (any animal food bag will be of the same plastic canvas material) and cut it open.

I then held it up to hubby and drew out the armpit for where he wants it to hit him. I also cut off two strips from the bottom of the bag.

Then I folded over the bag and cut out the arm hole so it is identical on both sides.

Then I took the arm hole hole and cut off about a two inch section along the outer edge, this will be the neck thing, whatever its called.

Decided to be lazy and not sew, I'm sure you could sew it, but I got out the white duct tape I happened to have and taped the neck tie together and held it around hubby's neck to see how long he wanted it. And then duct taped on the two strips for ties.

I reinforced on the back with more duct tape.

So hubby is now ready to handle a butcher's mess if he gets lucky enough to get a deer with the bow and arrows he has been busy making all year.

Outdoor Faucet Soap

Did you try out the soap carving and want to know what to do with all the hunks of wasted soap?

Do you have slivers of soap and a run in your hose?

Take the slivers and place in the ruined hose. Tie the hose onto your outdoor spigot. Then when you want to wash your hands outside, just rub on the hose covered soap.

Soap Carving or Whittling

Do you have a young boy who would enjoy whittling but you aren't so sure you want to trust him with a knife, but you's be ok with him handling a plastic one?

Or maybe you like fancy shaped soaps in the guest room, or want to make a friend a bath gift set (along with the homemade bath salts).

Then Ivory soap carving might be a fun project for you or your kids.

Here are instructions from Ivory.

If your child really gets into it, there is a book for children.