Category Archive

Home

Our homes are made up of lots of working parts — bedrooms, redecorated kitchens, upgraded baths, ogle-worthy renos, ticks and tricks for cleaning and organizing, and real home tours all live here to represent the spaces of your Offbeat Home.

3747142786 22d078754c

Learn a new skill: Make white milk paint at home

The paint we all have in our homes is often quite toxic, but you don’t have to buy a petroleum based paint — you can make your own and have it be totally toxin free: I’m talking about milk paint. Powdered milk paint can be purchased and just mixed with water. This would be convientent but would cost about $36.00 a gallon.

Making your own milk paint is relatively easy and half the cost of buying the ready mixed. The lime powder and the pigment are available at paint stores or craft stores. The results are amazing, flat muted color that resembles old-world plaster. Many artists still use this ancient paint because of its workability and the tone of color.

witch legs

Five silly-easy Halloween crafts that I’mma do this weekend

I haven’t decorated for Halloween at ALL — but I totally plan to. It’s on the list for this weekend — and these ideas are the bullet points on that list.

hardcore ironing 1

Ironing boards go hardcore and high decor

Wim Delvoye is pure High Art. He’s known for making projects like Cloaca, a digestive machine which turns food into feces and Art Farm, a Chinese farm on which Wim tattoos the backs of pigs. I know these ironing boards are an installation piece, but I still covet them.

glow stick jars

Make a creepy, glowing light for your yard or a party

Halloween rocks, but it can be hard to find time to do anything around the house when you have limited time and money. In this post you’ll learn how to make a spooky light for a party or to set up a creepy yard.

3367090957 651be83a1c

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.

pastel rainbow basket on offbeat bride scaled

Housekeeping realization: put your toiletries in baskets to keep your bathroom organized

My housemate Darby and I — we’re very similar — seem to be constantly figuring out really simple things, like what people use baskets for. Sometimes we feel like our brains just don’t work, especially when it comes to putting things away. If that makes sense to you, this is the thread in which to share the incredibly dumb things you’re incredibly proud of having figured out.

6225086260 c744ff9c40 b

Tricks and treats: Make Star Wars Ouija boards and apple cinnamon vodka

Let’s get in the Halloween spirit with a look at two awesome photos from the Offbeat Home Flickr group… Make yourself some apple cinnamon vodka, and call up the Star Wars spirits!

cheesecloth webs 1010sip1054 vert

Hack Halloween: Add dread to a space with gauzy cheesecloth shapes

Do you need a convincingly decrepit room on a budget? Do you want to pull off a haunting Halloween look on the cheap and easy? You’ll love today’s halloween hack: cheesecloth.