My dream house: Snow White’s Los Angeles tiki-style bungalow
Can we take a minute to talk about our dream homes? I believe we all have (at least) one, right? You know, that one house that you always drive by on your way to work/the grocery store/your favorite vacation spot. That one house that you day dream about owning. You know… if you suddenly came into a million (or more) dollars. That house?
Well, torture upon tortures, my dream house is on the market right now. This is MY “that house”:
Tiny monuments to geekiness: nerdy terrarium ideas
Offbeat Bride has a post up today that made my heart pitter patter: itty bitty dioramas of nerdy scenes.
My hopelessly-hooked-on-Craigslist home tour
We moved in a month ago and have worked extremely hard to make it feel like a home. We are strong believers in “reduce, reuse and recycle” and try to apply it to our home as much as possible. We tend to shop at thrift stores and garage sales — and love a good Craigslist deal. Take a look around and I hope you find inspiration in what you see.
A home hearth, a colorful living room YAHOO!, and lots of Trekkie goodness in this week’s reader photos
Start your week with our collection of interesting articles on the web and photos from our readers. This week: see LEGO portraits, and the USS Enterprise is in trouble! In these Clicky Links you’ll find lots of sites to waste a little time on — and help you start your gardens.
Click through, too, to find our links on submitting YOUR stuff to Offbeat Home!
Spring clean your computer in 6 steps
Spring might be a ways off (especially in the Southern Hemisphere) but any time is good for a clean-up — for your computer as well as your home. This advice is for Windows XP, Vista or 7 (sorry Mac/Linux users but I wouldn’t know where to start!) and should be super-easy for anyone to follow.
Will future homes be open source and Creative Commons-licensed?
I am so in love with open source solutions, but I’m used to free, group-edited projects being relegated to the tech world: Gooogle plugins for my Gmail and Chrome, Wikipedia…the number of ways humans have found to work together to improve our world is astounding and effing impressive. Could you imagine what Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, would think of the accumulation of information that is Wikipedia?!
It seems that the trend is breaking into the real world. Enter The Ekinoid Project: an open-source plan for housing based in the UK.
How to build a Japanese-style heated floor desk
I’m all about floor-furniture like the kotatsu, a 14th-century invention used in many Japanese homes all winter. It’s like the floor-oriented table often associated with Japanese homes, but with the added convenience of a heater and blanket. Sometimes I have daydreams about how awesome it would be to have one of these suckers. SO WARM. So cozy. None of the crampy discomfort of a western-style desk!
I’ve got a little floor-desk of my own going on, and this IKEA hack came just in time for me to play with.
How to go from an apartment set up to a functional furnished house
When we moved from an apartment to a house, things started to slip away from us. We tripped over boxes, forgot to clean anything, and we floundered. Until I came up with a plan — and a tool that you might find helpful, too!