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Plan And Install A Low-Voltage Lighting System For Your Yard
1:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Installing accent and security lighting in your yard shouldn’t require an electrician and lots of expensive labour. Low-voltage lighting systems make it easy to plan and install yard lights without a professional. More »
Design
3:00PM Angus Kidman | Prolific Photoshop expert Helen Bradley (who last featured at Lifehacker explaining how to touch up photographs taken from planes) offers up another useful tutorial, this time on how to check what different paint colours look like on your house before committing. On-screen testing isn’t a complete substitute for using a test pot or two, of course, but at least you can narrow down the possibilities before you hit the hardware store.
Photoshop – change the colour of your house [Projectwoman]
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Check How Paint Will Look On Your House With Photoshop
3:00PM Angus Kidman | Prolific Photoshop expert Helen Bradley (who last featured at Lifehacker explaining how to touch up photographs taken from planes) offers up another useful tutorial, this time on how to check what different paint colours look like on your house before committing. On-screen testing isn’t a complete substitute for using a test pot or two, of course, but at least you can narrow down the possibilities before you hit the hardware store.
Photoshop – change the colour of your house [Projectwoman]
More »
Design
PlanningWiz Maps Your Floor Plan
1:30AM Lifehacker US Edition | Plan out your next redecoration or plot the layout of your next furniture rearrangement with online room mapping tool PlanningWiz. You can either load pre-made plans and modify them to suit your space or create your own plan from scratch. There are templates for furniture covering everything from couches to tables to beds and cribs. Save the plans you create, share them via email, or print them out. You can even customise the background of your floor plan, if you just can’t visualize your new living room layout knowing the default flooring just doesn’t match your swanky green shag carpeting. PlanningWiz is similar to previously mentioned Furnish or even Google SketchUp, but there’s no download—all the magic happens in your web browser. PlanningWiz [via Download Squad] More »
Keep Weeds from Sprouting with Corn Meal
6:15AM Kevin Purdy | Spring brings with it eager thoughts of planting for gardeners, along with ominous thoughts of keeping weeds at bay. If you’re planning on using pre-potted plants or want to protect an entire area from the ever-growing menace, try corn meal, according to the This Garden is Illegal blog: Corn Gluten is a pre-emergent, which is a fancy way of saying that is it is a seed birth-control. Corn meal scattered around an area will keep any seed in that area from growing into a plant. This means a weed seed or a desirable seed. This method is a good option for areas that you plan on planting grown plants in. Hit the link for six more ways to kill unwanted growth in your garden, and share your own weed-stomping tips in the comments. Photo by Cyrstl. The 7 Deadly Homemade Weed Killers [This Garden is Illegal via Get Rich Slowly] More »
Make Your Own Wrinkle Releaser from Liquid Fabric Softener
1:00AM Kevin Purdy | Need an on-the-go, no-time-to-iron solution for wrinkled clothes, but loathe paying a premium for spray bottles of liquid wrinkle releaser? The TipNut blog has a recipe for a homebrew version. Pour one teaspooon of liquid fabric softener and one cup of water (distilled, preferably) into a spray bottle with a nozzle that can produce a fine mist, shake it up, and, just as with the commercial stuff, apply it to a small patch first to make sure it won’t stain or discolour. The bonus is that you can halve the mixture if you want to save room while traveling, which is when this magic elixir really comes in handy. Hit the link below for more iron-less tips for smoothing out clothes. Photo by sometimesdee. DIY & Homemade Wrinkle Release Tips [TipNut.com] More »Best Non-Obvious Tip for Setting Up a Home Office?
9:00AM Gina Trapani | The Productivity 501 weblog asked several work-at-homers what the most important, non-intuitive piece of advice they had for anyone setting up a home office. Their points ranged from making sure you have a door you can close, investing in a comfortable chair, and keeping an egg timer on hand to remind yourself to take breaks. Having set up a few home offices in my career, I’d add this: store stuff in a way that makes it easy to use (put stamps with envelopes, paper by the printer, fresh folders on or in the filing cabinet, pens and paper within reach, etc.) What’s your best tip for making your workspace (at home or at the office) better? Let us know in the comments. Advice for Setting up a Home Office – Group Interview [Productivity 501] More »
Make Your House Rules Stick
3:00AM Tamar Weinberg | Do you find it difficult to get your family members to adhere to your house rules? Blogger and parent Vanessa Van Petten says that you can make your house rules stick by clearly explaining why these rules are in place. “Because I said so” is no longer a sufficient answer. Also, don’t cheat. If you’re going to create a rule that specifies that you cannot have a snack right before bedtime, don’t let your partner or child discover you noshing late at night. You need to abide by the rules too. Additionally, write the rules down on paper to make them be more permanent. Otherwise, they might be “forgotten.” Finally, reward those who follow the rules with positive reinforcement. Good behaviour deserves praise. Don’t always point out the negatives. Instead, focus on the positive. What are your favorite rule-enforcing strategies? Share your best approaches in the comments. 4 Seriously Underutilized Ways to Make Your House Rules Stick [Vanessa Van Petten] More »
Separate Work and Play with User Identities
12:10PM Adam Pash | You’re no doubt aware of how easy it is to let work and play bleed into one another—especially if you use the same computer for both. Weblog Hack Your Day suggests a simple-yet-effective solution: Create distinct work/play computing boundaries with different user identities. When I recently reinstalled Vista, I created three accounts. The one labeled “Daniel” is where I keep all my personal stuff, like photos, music and so on. The one labelled blog is where I manage everything related to my online stuff like posts, guest posts, other articles, website promotion and so on. The third is where I have all the stuff related to my dayjob. More »Create a Calmer Household
9:40AM Tamar Weinberg | Are the holidays causing an uncontrollable noisy ruckus in your house? Maybe it’s time to calm everyone down. WikiHow explains ways to achieve the much-needed peace that should overcome your humble abode. What’s causing the havoc? Is it late-night phone calls or unannounced visitors at inopportune times? It may be time to start limiting your calls and visits to specific hours. Enforcing rules (such as bedtimes) could also minimise the sense of disarray at home. Envision a calmer household and set goals on how to achieve each element of calm you’re aiming for. Beyond the noise, you should clean and declutter as much as possible to create a sense of openness and relaxation in your household. Slowly but surely, you can regain control and make your household a much more restful and enjoyable place to be. Create a Calmer Household [wikiHow] More »
