Category Archive

Life

We launched as Offbeat Home in 2011, but it has become clear that the site is about much more. In 2013, we relaunched as Offbeat Home & Life, with an expanded focus on Relationships, Budget & Career, Travel, and Style. This is the category for the non-home/rest of life stuff!

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Dress your house in the spirit of the Death Star

This isn’t just about lining a rad collection of figures up on the wall — this is about having a house that oozes Star Wars with every fiber. As if somehow you managed to get a set dresser from the original Star Wars flicks to do up your place.

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Theme parties aren’t just for kiddies

If you haven’t thrown a theme party since you were eight, you’re overdue. Use these guidelines and ideas to get going on imaginative grown-up themed throwdowns.

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Biracial lesbian seeking known donor of color

At the beginning of my journey, “brown” was at the top of my list. I wanted, as much as it was (im)possible to control, to have a baby with whom I shared a skin color. I have struggled with this desire for a brown child on and off the entire first year of my search for a known donor.

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The best online invitations: get party details across without looking froofy or cookie-cutter

Hand-written invites are lovely but face it: you don’t have time to mess with them for every little get-together.

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Repair as rebellion

Check it: the DIY movement can help us learn to cut our consumption and make more conscientious buying decisions.

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We want to move into an up-and-coming neighborhood, but our family’s putting us off!

I need to convince my family that living downtown doesn’t mean raising our kids in a crack den!

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How can we change institutional housing into a home?

People with impaired eyesight and hearing and those with limited mobility have come a long way since the days of homes for the enfeebled. What does it look like when we make it easier people with developmental and cognitive disabilites to live independently as well?

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You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here

When guests won’t go and you’re too Midwestern polite to ask them to leave, are there other options?