Shelterrific reader and fellow blogger, Debra Immergut from sent over this amazing idea. It’s taking some scrap Marimekko fabric and using it as base for some darling curtains. As Debra explains:

I had an orange, yellow, pink, and green floral Marimekko bedspread when I was a kid in the seventies. I’ve had an incessant desire for this Scandinavian-designed gorgeousness ever since. Thanks for getting me hooked on the expensive stuff, Ma!

I really can’t bring myself to spend the full 4o to 60 bucks a yard that Marimekko fabric usually costs. So to get my fix, I drop by the “clearance” section at Textile Arts, a fantastic online fabric shop that specializes in Scandinavian goods. Every so often, excellent Marimekko bits and pieces are to be found there, often for less than $20 a pop. It’s one of my most treasured secrets, but now I’m spilling the beans to you, darling blogosphere!

My collection of Marimekko pieces are all in odd sizes. Some are big enough to tack on the wall, and I do that. Some are just folded in a drawer, and occasionally I just take them out and admire them. One day, I realized I could use two of the scraps to dress up some bland white bathroom curtains. And so I did…

Click on over to Improv Home for the complete how to and a few other Marimekko scrap ideas!

A few weeks ago we were ooohing and ahhhhing over Anthropologie’s trinket candleholders — but gasping at their price! The one-of-a-kind pieces were assembled from found objects, but at $400 a pop they seemed a bit over priced. Surely, we can make these ourselves? we asked. And you answered! Reader Kathleen made these hot little numbers before the holidays as a gift idea. Here’s her take, below:

I made three, but forgot to photo one of them before giving as a gift! I used a Dremel tool to drill w a diamond bit. And it did end up costing about $40-50 each to make with lamp parts, drill bits, and all the other pieces needed. I would recommend using felt or rubber washers between the pieces where a nut is used to tighten the stick. I didn’t at first and the parts kept coming loose. The rubber or felt is good to conform to the trinkets w/out being so hard against the fragile ceramics. They came out great though!

$40 or $50 sure beats $400! Well done Kathleen. We’ll be hitting up spring yard sales for some appropriate trinkets soon.

If you enjoy beer as much as we do in our household, you probably share the love for microbrews. One of our favorite makers is Portland’s Hopworks Urban Brewery (or HUB), whose Abominable Winter Ale features art (by Martin Ontiveros) as cool as the beer is delicious. We love the Abominable so much, we’ve decided to keep him around by turning those empty bottles into snazzy drinking glasses.

Now, we’re pretty handy, but we don’t own a glass cutter, so of course I Googled for other ideas. I landed on this tutorial on cutting a bottle using string and acetone. As you may have gathered from the post headline, it was not a rousing success. It looks so easy in the video! What did we do wrong?

Step one: Tie a string around the bottle where you want the bottle to be cut.
Step two: Soak the string in nail polish remover (that’s the acetone — we used a small ramekin for this).
Step three: Place the string back on the bottle (wear gloves and keep the open acetone far away from you) and set the string on fire with a match; rotate bottle to distribute the fire. (I did the “one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand” counting thing for between counts of 12 and counts up to 20 and beyond while the string was on fire.)

Step four: plunge the bottle into a sink filled with icy water and apply pressure to both ends of the bottle — voila! the bottle should cleanly snap at the string. Except in our case, when the bottle should do NOTHING AT ALL, not matter how many times you try.

First we tried cotton string: caught on fire, but bottle did not break.

Then we tried cotton yarn: soaked up more acetone, burned better, but bottle still did not break.

Then we tried several rows of cotton twine that looked more like what they use in other videos online): burned well. Burned for an entire minute. Bottle did not break.

These bottles bear mute testimony to how many times we tried:

Next step: Anyone have a glass cutter? — Mary T.

I am always tempted to make a gingerbread house, but never get around to it. Perhaps I’m not inspired by the traditional Hanzel & Gretal cottage style they all have. Well, it looks like I have found my dream gingerbread house, The Modern Gingerbread House. It’s so cute I don’t want to eat it – I want to live in it! With classic mid-century style it comes with a rock garden and garden. Add a few teal and orange gumdrops on the roof, and you’ve got centerpiece any mod homemaker can be proud of. Get the kit at uncrate.com, $80. — Angela M.

As usual, I find myself drooling over many of Anthropolgie’s holiday-wares. There are an insane amount of gift-and-get worthy table top items. But these Trinket & Treasure candles gave me pause. A delicate tower of found objects, including thimbles and salt-n-pepper shakers, they would add whimsy to any dining experience. But the price, just shy of $400 puts them out of the realm of reality. No doubt they are hand-crafted with care, and no two pieces are alike. But couldn’t someone with a good eye craft together something similar with flea market finds? The repeated tin knobs help hold it together. What kind of glue do you think you’d need? Lets try it! Send me your suggestions and I’ll add it to my to-do list! — Angela M.

I learned how to sew on a Singer when I was seven or eight. Not just any Singer though — a before there was electricity Singer treadle machine — that my mother wisely purchased, thinking that I was too impatient for her Bernina. (She was right, of course, but that’s a whole other post.) When I finally graduated to sewing on her Bernina, I was forever spoiled. So spoiled, that until last month, I never purchased my own sewing machine, fearing that a cheap machine would just be more trouble than it was worth. With Halloween looming and my grandmother’s old machine (not that old, this one is electric) wheezing and snapping threads every couple of inches or so, I decided to look for an interim machine. (I still have my grandmother’s but repair will be slow and costly). Enter the Singer 4423 Heavy Duty Sewing Machine. Listed for $132 on Amazon, it boasted a speed of 1,100 stitches a minute. Perfect for the impatient sewer. After sewing two vampire dresses out of slippery, shiny material and making various minor repairs on pillows, curtains and such, I’m sold. The stitch range is basic. No fancy embroidery package. And it’s not the sexiest thing ever but oh is it fast. The one annoyance? The release lever for the foot that I kept knocking into the first day, causing the foot to fall off. But for the intermittent or beginner sewer, it’ll do everything you ask of it and will handle glittery polyesters and satins with the greatest of ease. Although with any luck, I won’t have to deal with any of those until this time next year. — Sarah L.

Have we told how excited we are for Halloween this year? Our three-old daughter is combating the princess storm by dressing as the ONLY female Disney character with a job: Mary Poppins! It’s all about the accessories: hat, umbrella, carpet bag. Not easy, but the payoff will be worth it. Her dad and I will dress as obligatory chimney sweeps and allow her to steal the spotlight. After showing off our duds in the neighborhood parade, we’ll lure trick-or-treaters into a makeshift porchside photo studio to capture their portraits. Last year, Batman fell into our lair. Can’t wait to see who will stumble by this year. What will you be dressed as? — Angela M.

Photo by Chad Hunt

More Halloween costume posts:

What was your best homemade costume?

If you’re like us, you spent a glorious fall weekend leaping around pumpkin patches and picking apples right off the tree. Divine! But before we start carving our jack-o-lantern masterpieces, we thought it’d be a good idea to remind ourselves what we learned last year. As you may recall, our 2010 porch pumpkins had a tough time. First, they got nibbled on by some squirrels. Then, they got moldy and basically caved in.

1. Don’t put your pumpkins out too soon. Rainy damp days can be deadly. Take them inside when it’s moist out!
2. After you carve it, soak it in cold water for a bit.
3. Smear some Vaseline on the carved, exposed edges.
4. If you’re worried about hungry critters taking a bite, mist it with a diluted cayenne pepper mix or try some Bitter Apple.

Got any other tips? Tell us here — and send us photos of your carved pumpkins! We’ll be sharing ours soon.

When I saw the glowing eyeball wreath in this month’s “Country Living,” my heart skipped a beat. Then I did the math — eight dozen glowing eye balls at $7.99/dozen — and my heart did something else. Since I made Martha’s slithering wreath last year, I couldn’t justify the cost of making a new one, but I did file away the idea. Luckily, there were a lot of other great ideas, including creepy crow window decals, in this month’s Country Living. You can download the illustrations free from the magazine’s site. Then all you need is an inkjet printer and window decal sheets. I found them on Amazon for $7.49/pack. There are three sheets included, so I flipped the image horizontally after I printed the first two sheets. Total cost? Eighty-three cents a decal. Unfortunately, making the decals was a lot easier than getting a decent picture. You’ll find better images on the magazine’s website, along with a lot more fun ideas. — Sarah L.

As you know from previous posts, it’s been a summer filled with popsicles. And as the last long weekend approaches, I feel the need to suck every sweet drop from the end of the popsicle stick. Then, I’m gonna take a pile of those popsicle sticks and do something crafty with them and a bottle of glue. Of course, Martha Stewart has some serious suggestions. I love the little house, above, from their site, and suspect our daughter will, too. But there are some grown up ideas out there as well (after all, not just the little ones like popsicles). On Etsy, I spotted this adorable cutlery holder. (The lazy can buy one for $10.) And Reader’s Digest offers these ingenious uses for popsicle sticks. Be warned though. There are some heated debates on gardening forums about how using the leftover wooden planks for plant labels is a bad idea. Apparently, they get moldy? Yuck.

What about you? Got any fun projects to keep us busy over the long weekend? I sense rain in the forecast. — Angela M.