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!

How to budget, save, and still have a life

If life trips you up, will you be ready? These days you never know when a job loss, medical emergency, or even a cavity will suck your bank account dry and shriveled. You know how important it is to build up an emergency fund, but you need extra money before you can save any money, right? You might be surprised about the answer.

Edit songs yourself to be karaoke party-friendly

If you’re the at-home karaoke party type then you KNOW you want to get the how-to’s, to rid yourself of those awkward solos moments, over on Offbeat Bride.

But I don’t cook meth: overcoming my own “trailer trash” misconceptions

We were scrambling to get out of the nest, but didn’t know where to start. So we developed three requirements for our future home, and somehow a trailer fit them all. Now I just needed to get over my “trailer trash” stigma to be able to enjoy my new home.

10 things I want to tell every teenage goddess

Leonie Dawson is an author and blogger who is well known for her “Goddess”-themed life coaching. She recently wrote a short post about mentoring eight and nine-year-olds, and came up with this list of things she’d like to tell teens.

We live above the freeway: how can we cultivate quiet?

My husband and I are about to apply for an apartment. It’s almost perfect! Except for the interstate being a stone’s throw from the balcony. Are there any non-damaging but permanent ways to help keep our apartment relatively quiet and calm?

My unglamorous life in an artist’s loft

The loft was 1500 wide open square feet, shaped like an L. Rent was about the same as what we’d been paying for our studio, which is to say relatively affordable considering the space, but perhaps not when you consider the lack of kitchen, bathroom, and heat. It was cavernous, freezing, and filthy. WE WERE IN. We would live the dream!

How to make the time to host a party, even when you’re super busy

Frequent Offbeat Home contributor Helen Jane just wrote an excellent post on how she and her husband James manage to regularly throw what she calls “Porch Parties” — despite the fact that she works full-time (with an insanely long commute), has two toddlers, doesn’t have a fairy godmother, etc.

How do they do it? Well, like so many things, it boils down to priorities…

DIY rainbow bling for a Pride parade (or any ol’ day!)

One of the side-effects of being in a burlesque troupe is having buckets and buckets of rhinestones laying about. I had wanted to have this necklace finished in time to for the Pride Parade. As you can see in my inspiration picture above, the necklace that inspired this one is also rainbow-themed, but I wanted to take it in a more over-the-top rainbow direction. Here’s how you can over in a more over-the-top rainbow direction, too…

(With bonus applications like rainbow stagecoach robber, and rainbow garden gnome!)