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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.

My trick for low maintenance, affordable, salt-free, organic snail repellent

Fortunately, we have two good sized rosemary plants in our yard. I pulled off several long sprigs and lined the inside perimeter of our garden bed with it — what did I have to lose? If slugs do in fact have an aversion to rosemary, this should do the trick.

Doing it the hard way: What we’ve learned from buying a foreclosure

We bought a foreclosure. After sitting empty for three years, it finally came up at a real estate auction; we were brave enough to bid, and lucky enough to win. Over the past several months, we’ve learned a lot, and we’re still learning! Note that I’m an historian, not a real estate agent or legal professional, but here’s a few pearls of wisdom from what I’ve learned (and what I wish I’d known)…

Mermaid decor isn’t just for kids – The sexy siren sea bathroom

Loving mermaids isn’t just for little girls. The sexy bitches of the sea are obsessed over by adults too. I’ve done all the hard work for you, and found the perfect mermaid bathroom accessories for grown ass adults, including nine awesome shower curtains. Seriously, I couldn’t pick my favorite. Can you?…

Turn your boring white rental kitchen into a colorful fiesta

Offbeat Homie Kayla uploaded these photos to our Offbeat Home & Life Flickr pool. Unhappy with a boring white rental kitchen, Kayla rounded up a whole bunch of colorful kitchen goodies, and turned her boring rental into an colorsplotion fiesta of kick-ass kitchen-ery.

9 geometric coffee tables to perfectly align your life

If you’re wanting to geek out over more geometric tables, then check these out, and click on the ones you want to know more about…

Why we put our kids’ bunk bed in the closet

When we moved in to our home, our daughter’s bedroom was a bit of a layout conundrum since we had to work around two closets, a doorway, a window, and a baseboard electric heater PLUS a low ceiling. Then we decided to move the bunk bed into the closet…

How to prune everbearing raspberries

Learning how to prune my everbearing raspberries

The tricky thing about everbearing raspberries is that, unlike summer-bearing raspberries that produce one big crop in late summer, these plants give two smaller crops per year. You can pretty much prune summer-bearing raspberries all the way to the ground in the winter, but if you want both crops from the everbearing, you have to know which canes to cut to the ground and which to prune back carefully and by how much.

Baseboard heater safety freaks me out! How can I feel safe around baseboard heating?

There are baseboard heating units EVERYWHERE, and as lifelong book hoarders (we’re both English teachers) with small children, we have no idea how to fit all our bookshelves, furniture, and kid’s toys and playthings safely up against the walls. What are your creative work-arounds for rooms filled with baseboard heating units?