How far should I go to protect my family?
One of the weirdest conversations I’ve had as an adult was the time my husband and I talked about safety in our new home. There had been a few home invasions in the area, where men had entered houses at night and demanded money or else pistolwhipping. Our conversation wandered from deadbolt locks to mace to, “What if we got a gun?”
Building a better — and humane — mousetrap
It’s what designers and engineers joke about — some dude invented the mousetrap as we know it in 1897, and it’s continued to weather the slings and arrows of new inventions for more than 100 years.
Now, designer Onedown might be giving The Little Nipper a run for its money.
This house is off the water grid — how much do cisterns suck?
My fiance and I have been house-shopping for quite some time now, and I have fallen in love with one amazing little fixer-upper. It has three bedrooms, a fenced-in area, a pond and it’s on one beautiful acre… the only catch is that it is not hooked up to public water/sewer: it has a septic system and a cistern.
Is it time for a landline?
Like many other twentysomethings, I haven’t had a landline phone since I moved out of my parents’ house. My husband and I both use our cell phones as our primary phones, and never even considered needing a phone line for the house. It seemed like an unnecessary monthly expense.
But now that we’re getting ready to expand our family, I’m starting to wonder if a landline makes some sense. Unlike cell phones, a plain old telephone system usually works in power outages, won’t run out of battery, and may be more reliable in emergency situations.
Have you ever been thankful to have a landline for your family, or had a situation where you wish you had one?
How I watched my apartment burn — OR! — What do you grab in a fire?
Tiffany was working on her couch one day last month when a fire rudely interrupted her work day — and gutted her apartment. She had to make the quick decision of what to grab and where to go — and pick up the aftermath.
If you’re going to neglect your car, try not to neglect these three things
What do you know about your vehicle? You probably know the make and model and that it needs gas to run…but what else do you know? Skipping something as simple as your oil changes can be death to ol’ chitty-chitty bang-bang!
Four not-bummer ways to keep a memorial in the home
Since we covered memorials for missing pets, I’ve been thinking about similarly not-completely-sad ways to keep the memory of a human loved on close. I mean, if you have a gigantor oil painting of Great Aunt Emma, that’s one way to remember her at her smiling best — but if not?
Summer’s ending: what haven’t you accomplished yet?
SUMMER’S GETTING CLOSE TO DONE! Have you begun panicking yet? So many spring dreams left unfinished! So much fun left to be had! How’s your list compare to mine?