This organic pesticide won’t kill all the bugs in your garden, but may annoy them enough so that they move over to your neighbour’s.  I personally think that if you don’t want to use any chemicals in your garden, you need to arrange your plants carefully, to exploit the fact that certain plants naturally repel various insects.  This can help too, but from experience, you do need to spray often as this product isn’t deadly, but just mildly annoying.

Make an All-Purpose Organic Pesticide from Vegetables [link]

What’s the perfect remedy to winter? Tomato/cucumber salad, with basil and a homemade balsamic vinaigrette. It’s even better when you grow your own herbs. With this homemade greenhouse, you can have your own mini-garden year-round.

Homemade mini-greenhouse [link]

«There are many situations where you might need a small amount of electricity, for instance running gate openers, safety lights, water level indicators and other low-power devices.»

These two articles will show you how to harness wind power.

Making a simple Savonius wind turbine [link & link]

This is yet another gift wrapping post. This one focuses on reusing old newspapers (or this morning’s newspaper) to wrap gifts.

Wrapping gifts with newspapers is a great idea considering that most wrapping papers are produced overseas, with little or no recycled content, and are used to re-package something that’s already packaged! The general idea is to wrap the gifts as nicely as you can. If you wrap them sloppily, they won’t look good. If done properly, you can make a statement and feel even better about giving.

Remember the 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Something that isn’t consumed never needs to get Recycled at all. Whatever you do, recycle all wrapping papers. Keep and reuse gift bags and nice wrapper decorations, such as ribbons. It’s as easy as putting them away for next year instead of tossing them. You’ll also save a trip to the store come next holiday season.

Green Gift Wrapping [link]