Step away from the party store, y’all. These Halloween party ideas will save you money and reduce the amount of trash you generate without sacrificing any of the spooky goodness. I’ve broken out the Halloween party ideas below into the key components for any Halloween party: costumes, food and treats, and decorations. We’ve got ten ideas for each for a grand total of 30 awesome Halloween party ideas. What I love most about these Halloween party ideas isn’t the money-saving and waste-reducing bit....

Well hello there, November! Where did you come from? If you’re planning to have a handmade holiday this year, now is the time to get started. We spend around $750 apiece on holiday gifts each year here in the U.S. That adds up to more than $586 billion total! For corporations, holidays are about making money, but for people, it’s supposed to be about sharing what’s in our hearts with our friends and families, isn’t it?...

Gift-giving season is just around the corner, and we’ve got a handmade holiday on our minds! If you’re going to give handmade gifts, it’s best to get an early jump on making things. The trickiest folks to shop for are the ones who seem to have everything they want already. I find that food-related gifts really win out in these situations. Here are some tasty gift ideas that are sure to please....

The talented crafters at Etsy have some very special holiday how-to tutorials to share this season. Earlier this week they featured this adorable “patchwork trivet for your table. You can spice up your home decor, whether you’re hosting Thanksgiving or a potluck with friends!” How fun! Thanksgiving celebrations are abound over at Etsy this year and they can be in your home too… The creativity shared this season by crafters is inspirational....

We are fostering a very sweet dog, and every Wednesday evening we take her to obedience training. Jenna had a rough start, so she gets a lot out of our weekly sessions. If you’ve ever done dog training, you know that it’s all about treats, especially when you’re dealing with a fearful dog. You want them to feel rewarded so they build up confidence, and having treats handy is super important....

Your kid probably wants a sword. Now, whether YOU want her to have a sword is a totally different question, but your kid? Probably wants a sword. Scavenge your local Restore or hit up Freecycle for a very few types of pipe fittings and pipe, then let your kid use some basic woodworking skills to build herself her very own sword. NOTE: NOT steel. Obviously. I prefer PVC, because the kids can cut the pipe themselves with a hand saw, but copper is also okay if you’ve got the tools to cut it yourself....

Next » Supplies

Potholders, while not as simple to make as my beeswax ornaments, are still quick to sew up, are appropriate gifts for almost everyone, including the dude at college who heats up the occasional pot of Ramen and the little kid who loves to bake cookies with her mom, and, best of all, they make good use of the decade-old ratty bath towels that I’ve been dying to replace for, oh, eight years or so?...

First and foremost, it is important to avoid using plastic water bottles if at all possible. You can recycle them, but as Becky wrote in the Ten Projects for Plastic Bottles post, all of that recycling requires energy and not all bottles can be recycled. In that same post, Becky shared the idea of using a plastic bottle as a votive holder. I had a plastic bottle after hiking this week and decided to make my own version of a water bottle candle holder!...

Do you ever see old glass bottles, maybe at a flea market, maybe scrounged from an old dump site (we have one of those back in our woods, sigh…), and think, “That bottle would be so great… IF it wasn’t covered in 50 years’ worth of grime?” Here’s how to clean old glass bottles so they’ll look like new. It’s actually not that hard to clean old glass bottles. It takes some babysitting to clean them, and some TLC, but it’s not like you’ve got to stand over the sink and scrub for half an hour like you’re dealing with a casserole dish after a delicious lasagna dinner....

Kids and their display boards, amiright? Science Fairs and History Fairs and Biography Fairs and 4-H presentations and I can’t even imagine what else, just that it all requires a display board. Years ago, I made the kids re-usable tri-fold display boards, some out of chalkboard and some out of dry erase board, and we LOVE them and use them for all of our academic fairs. We used them for two years of Girl Scout cookie booths, as well, but this year, with a super-motivated troop of Girl Scouts whose collective goal was to sell at multiple booths every weekend all season, I deeply desired something lighter and more portable, something a kid could easily carry three of at a time....

Do you want to look like Queen Elizabeth I? You want to make a Tudor-style farthingale, stiffened with cane or willow (not a bad idea!), starched rope, or whalebone (terrible idea!). Do you want to look like Marie Antoinette? That’s actually a pannier that gives you those wide, French-royalty hips. Did you escape the guillotine? Good job! What you’re now wearing is actually just a thousand petticoats under your dress!...

The one major problem with homemade greeting cards is homemade envelopes. Either you can’t find an envelope that perfectly fits your custom-sized greeting card, or the envelope fits but doesn’t match your beautiful card. This problem is easy to solve: simply make custom homemade envelopes to go with your homemade cards! Here’s how to draft a template that is exactly right for every card, and how to assemble it so that it keeps your card safe in the mail....

It’s pretty common to need to shorten a chain, and especially common to need to shorten a chain on a lovely piece of delicate jewelry, when you’re the most afraid of messing up. Fortunately, it’s totally do-able and dead simple. Here, let me walk you through how to shorten a chain! First, gather your supplies. You do want to have the right supplies for this, but they’re not hard to obtain....

Seriously, all that nastiness just to bake green cake for a kid’s dinosaur-themed birthday party? Those are some whacked priorities, I say to myself, hanging my head in shame. And yet…green cake! Pink cookies! Rainbow cupcakes! Whacked or not, I MUST occasionally have colorful baked goods, so I’ve recently switched my allegiance to India Tree natural food colors, which have no high fructose corn syrup and no synthetic dyes. India Tree food coloring has some pros and cons, and I’m not going to tell you that it’s all 100% amazeballs and you’re going to be making rainbow pancakes by morning with it, but here’s what we did with it, and here’s what we thought of it: Next » I Let the Kids Dye Cookie Dough

Alcohol! Along with vinegar, which is the second cheapest, most readily-available cleaning supply (Can you guess the first? It’s water!), alcohol can be used to clean tons of things around your home, saving you money and keeping other, more harmful chemical cleaners out. But of course, that only works if the alcohol that you’re using really is more eco-friendly than the commercial cleaner that you’re replacing. The alcohol that’s in your high-proof vodka is for sure more eco-friendly than a commercial cleaner....

Store-bought perfumes and colognes are bad news. They’re usually loaded with mystery ingredients, including one that’s particularly troublesome: “fragrance.” What’s so bad about fragrance? Because of cosmetics labeling laws, companies don’t have to disclose certain proprietary ingredients, and that includes a slough of chemicals that they use to create their signature scents. These ingredients are considered company secrets, so instead of telling consumers exactly what chemicals they use, they can lump it all together and just call it “fragrance....

Does your kid want to go green with the pros? The NBA, in partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Green Sports Alliance, has founded NBA Green, a program for raising money and awareness for environmental issues. One of the main results of this program is the existence, now, of many fetching photos of professional basketball players gardening. Such big muscles they have, pushing those heavy wheelbarrows! Such big, dirty hands, transplanting that vegetable start!...

DIY coasters also make great gifts, and since they’re so small they’re not too much trouble to whip up as a housewarming gift or, my personal favorite, a gift for a young adult. Even thrifted, dumpster-dived, or IKEA furniture deserves to be kept nice! Below, check out my list of favorite DIY coasters that don’t involve sewing. I think that you’re going to find YOUR newest favorite coaster there, too!...

The quest for organic sewing notions is a noble one, and over the years I’ve found a few good, organic alternatives to conventional notions. We’ve talked about some of these on the site before, but I thought it would be helpful to round them all up in one place, so you’ll have a one-stop spot, just for reference! Next» Organic Cotton Thread