How do you guarantee a white Christmas?
By building a homemade snow machine. This Instructable has all the info.
A Beastlie, shotgun shells used in decor, and Darth Vader snowflakes in this week’s reader photos
Start your week with our collection of interesting articles on the web and photos from our readers. In these Clicky Links you’ll find lots of sites to waste a little time on.
Click through, too, to find our links on submitting YOUR stuff to Offbeat Home!
Non-sucky Christmas songs to take back your ears
Scenario: I’m having a holiday party and need party-music-that-sounds-cool-but-also-wintry.
Scenario: My cube-mate’s been playing Christmas tunes since Dec. 1. If I hear Mariah Carey sing All I Want for Christmas is You once more I will snap. I’d like to take over the airwaves with my own mix for a day — what’s a good list to work from?
Scenario: I JUST LOVE CHRISTMAS SONGSSS!
Offbeat Home has solutions to all the scenarios — songs to stream and songs to buy that are full of jinglebells.
How to build a Festivus Pole: 6′ tall, aluminum, unadorned
FESTIVUS IS THIS WEEKEND! It’s my household’s most-anticipated party of the year. We drink mulled wine, air our grievances with each other, perform feats of strength, eat donuts, and then all guests must wrestle my husband before they may leave. It all happens in the cold aura of the Festivus Pole.
This is how you build a pole. The right way. All these supplies are available at your local hardware store — and they’ll be cheaper than Amazon, so use this list for familiarity or the odd bit you can’t find in town.
How can we weatherize our drafty busted-ass house without using plastic?
How can we weatherize our drafty busted-ass house without using plastic? Because we’re using plastic right now, but… you know. IT’S PLASTIC.
And I don’t mean rugs on the wall like people do in Russia, because rugs are expensive.
3 options for easy and relatively non-cheezy holiday greeting cards
Can you imagine what it must have been like to be offbeat and try to send holiday cards 15 years ago? I can picture the aisles of stationary stores, where a sad looking proto-hipster can’t find a box of holiday cards to fit his family. Hokey Christmas angel? Goofy reindeer poop humor? He picks up box after box of beautiful cards, but they just don’t feel right.
Thank you, internet, for solving this problem for us. Now you have fine-grain control over precisely how sappy or serious or nerded out or swear-filled your end-of-year cards are. These three services will get you started on making a card PERFECT for your household.
Use your wedding decorations for double-duty Christmas decor
Juniper Zombie started my unusual Christmas tree hunt on the right foot when she pinged us about showing off her mad rad purple and black tree. We’ve got pics of it, more ideas on ways to recycle your wedding stuff.
Undersea creature Christmas ornaments (including a Seussian fish, and a sexy merman)
My Christmas decorations are all ocean-themed. The santa on our stocking isn’t on a sleigh, but paddling a canoe, our tree is covered in shells and ocean critters, and our color scheme is turquoise, green, and silver. So, I set out to find some of the best ocean-themed Christmas tree ornaments out there — and came away with a big haul, all sea creatures, some more fantastical than others.