DIY Projects Archives

Make Your Own Home Based Plant Fertilizer

5 Mins Read

Did you know that making your own home-based fertilizer for plants is as easy as making a cup of coffee? Quite Literally.

I myself was quite astonished by this in the beginning. However, after a bit of research, I was excited and could not wait to try it at home.

Now you may have guessed by now that the secret ingredient in creating an all-natural home-based fertilizer for your precious plants is coffee grounds.

So that you can understand the entire process before you go ahead and feed your plants some coffee, we shall cover the following topics today:

Why Garden Plants or Home Plants Lose Nutrients?
How Coffee Grounds Help Enrich the Soil?
How to Make Your Own Fertilizer at Home?
Important Precautions When Using Coffee Grounds as Fertilizer.

1) Why Garden Plants or Home Plants Lose Nutrients?

Instead of going into the technical details, I am going to give a very simple answer. The reason plants in your home or your garden lose nutrients is that they use up all that is there in the soil over time.

Think of a potted plant. They are relying on the soil in the pot for their nutrients. However, there is a limited supply as the roots have access only to the soil in the pot. As time goes by, the plant starts using up the nutrients, depleting them from the existing soil.

Once the soil has lost the nutrient content, you will see your plants getting weaker with each passing day. They lose their brightness, they feel pale and shed leaves.

This is the reason why you need to replenish the soil of a potted plant either in your house or in your garden with nutrients from a natural fertilizer.

2) How Coffee Grounds Help Enrich the Soil?

Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen. Apart from this, they do have several other minerals in varying quantities such as potassium, iron, calcium, phosphorus etc.

Many gardeners claim it is not just what coffee grounds add to the soil that is of benefit. What coffee grounds remove from the soil is a huge help as well. There have been reports that coffee grounds can help absorb metal contamination from the soil in a garden.

So considering the nutrients that are being added and the contamination that is being removed, coffee grounds make excellent fertilizers that enrich the soil.

3) How to Make Your Own Fertilizer at Home?

Now, this is the really easy part. At the start of this post, I mentioned making your own home-based all-natural plant fertilizer was as simple as making coffee.

Well, that is it.

Simply go ahead and brew your ideal cup of coffee as usual. However, unlike most other times, do not discard the leftover coffee grounds. Keep them in a separate jar or any kind of container. Wait till they dry and your home-based fertilizer is ready for use.

Just in case you do not make coffee at home, you can easily source coffee grounds from a café. Most cafés would be happy to get rid of their coffee grounds as it is just a waste product for them. Some even neatly pack their coffee grounds and give it to whoever wants them.

4) Important Precautions When Using Coffee Grounds as Fertilizer.

Now while coffee grounds definitely contain a lot of nutrients that enrich the soil and help plants grow, there are a few precautions you must take before using them on your plants.

Ideally use only a little at first to see how your plant reacts.

Remember coffee grounds are ultimately the same as your coffee drink. What this means is that they contain caffeine and are acidic in nature. Not all plants can thrive if the soil suddenly gets a high dose of those two elements.

So my strong advice would be to add little coffee grounds to your soil to check whether there is an adverse effect on your plant. If you see the plant is thriving, then use it regularly to mix with the soil. If you see stunted growth or any other issue, do not use it for that particular plant.

You have to do this individually for all your plants. Do not go spreading coffee grounds all over your garden as that can cause some plants to grow well and others to wither quickly.

Final Takeaway

Coffee grounds contain several nutrients that can help enrich the soil of your garden. They can also help in the removal of metal contamination.

Coffee grounds are also possibly the simplest way of making home-based plant fertilizer. They are environment friendly, do not cost anything extra and are a good example of converting waste into a useful product.

As long as you are taking the precautions as mentioned above, you should be fine. Also just in case, your garden has more plants that prefer acidic soil, then coffee grounds can be the perfect fertilizer for you.

In DIY Projects

Happy Easter Day and Here are Some Interesting Fact about the Celebration

3 Mins Read

The most apparent and significant sign that indicates the beginning of the celebration of a happy easter day is the Easter eggs. You probably wonder why eggs are closely associated with the Day. The answer turns out to be simple and the notion has its roots in the ancient view of the object itself. An egg is where a chicken comes from.

This symbolizes the cycle of life; an egg is viewed as the bearer of new life multibetzone.com and, to an extent, rebirth. The Christ was crucified and entombed, only to be resurrected and ascended to heaven. The parallelism is so blatant between the two that the eggs are made to represents Easter, the day the Christ resurrects.

Interesting Facts about Easter

In the beginning, the eggs were stained red, as practiced by first Christian settlers in Mesopotamia-who also originated the tradition of incorporating eggs in celebrating Easter Day. The red stain was meant to symbolize the blood the Christ shed due to the crucifixion.

Traditional Easter Decorations

The tradition of decorating eggs other than red stain seems to have been originated from Pagan customs to commemorate the arrival of springtime-the Easter Day is said to coincide with the new season so the Christian incorporated the custom of decorating eggs to commemorate Christ’s Resurrection.

The link between easter day and the Easter Eggs is even more apparent if you are to observe them on a more physical level. The eggshell symbolizes Jesus’ Tomb that has been sealed shut following His death on the cross. The eggshell is then cracked, an act that represents the unsealing of the Tomb of Christ and His resurrection.

Another association with happy easter day is the Easter Bunny, a character that is comparable to Santa Claus for Christmas. As is the case with the Easter Eggs, the presence of the Easter Bunny during the Easter Day is influenced by Paganism, although the Bunny is grounded more on the myth rather than practices.

The bunny was mistaken as a hermaphrodite animal yet it can produce offspring. This caused people of the olden days to associate a bunny with Mary Mother of God. The bunny is also said to have been the beloved animal of Ostara, Goddess of the Spring, further tying the Easter Day’s connection with the coming of a new season, new life, and rebirth. The bunny was at one point a beautiful bird, which was transformed into a bunny by the Goddess, which explains why the bunny can lay eggs.

In Choose To Thrive

Girls Tights Update: Video How-To Awesomeness

1 Min Read

Remember that girls’ tights tutorial from last year?

Well I’ve had several questions from viewers about trying variations of this project and had a chance to film a video how-to with Megan from Brassy Apple over at MyCraftChannel.com.

I hope you’ll stop by and check out the video version as well as the other great episodes on MyCraftChannel.com.

If you like this project, please take a minute and share it on Facebook, twitter and Pinterest! Thank you!

In DIY Projects

How To Paint Your Stairs: Prep Work

5 Mins Read

For the record, let me say this: painting your stairs is fairly easy, but very, very time consuming.

This is not a quick weekend project.

I highly recommend painting your stairs if you’re looking for a cheap facelift and/or to buy you some time until you can do a major stair remodel.

That being said … holy cow. This project was a chore. Awesome, but a chore.

If we could have tackled this on it’s own, it would have been fairly straight forward. But since we were now launching into painting the stairs in the middle of painting the entryway floor and door …

… and trying to finish the kitchen pantry …

… and the dishwasher breaking and needing to be hauled up and down those entry stairs and across the disastrous painted floor on not-so-much dry paint …

… and the stairs off the back deck deciding to rot and fall off at the same time leaving no other way to get in and out of the house …

… and not having a working entry light which meant that all painting had to be done during the day with kids around whose bedrooms and playroom are downstairs just made everything more complicated.

So I wasn’t surprised when Mr. Thrive got home the night of the paint-down-the-stairs-onto-the-entryway fiasco and was so, so not happy.

And can you blame him?

But we were committed, so I busted it to get going to try and fix everything in the two weeks left before company rolled into town.

The first thing I did was use a hammer to pull up the carpet tack strips that were nailed to the top of the treads and front of the risers. I had to use a chisel a couple of times to get the tack strips to lift up enough for the hammer to pull them loose.

I hadn’t ripped the carpet off the sides of the stair case or along the railing that first night …

… but the remnant carpet looked lame so off it came, too.

And then hundreds of staples had to get pulled out with pliers.

The super, tiny ones needed a small screw driver hammered underneath them to lift them up enough where I could grab them with pliers.

After four solid hours of ripping out staples and tack strips, I had some wicked awesome blisters. So here’s tip ladies: wear gloves for this part.

At this point I didn’t know how to proceed since as you can see in the picture above, the treads weren’t plywood or hardwood, but rather particle board that is notorious for leaching paint like a sponge. Plus it’s a lot coarser than plywood or hardwood steps. For 30 seconds, I really considered ripping up those cheapy particle board steps and putting down something that could be stained. But at $11 a tread, I was looking at a lot of money I still didn’t have.

So painting it was.

The nice thing about having particle board steps is that you don’t have to sand them down at all—in fact it’s a nightmare to even try. So the stained areas on the steps got a quick spot coat of KILZ …

… and then the whole thing got two heavy coats of oil-based primer.

And I was pleasantly surprised — the particle board took the paint very well. The first coat of primer sucked up a lot of paint and dried very light, but the second coat covered beautifully.

I had hoped two heavy coats of primer would hide all the staple holes everywhere.

Um, no.

After the first coat of primer it was pretty clear that no amount of paint was going to cover those bad boys.

So, tip #2: fill all the holes with wood putty and then sand smooth before priming and painting. It’s a total pain to have to go back to do that step after the painting has started.

Between my super-cautiousness-on-the-drying-times-after-the-floor-mess thing and the afore-mentioned issues with the rotting-back-stairs-and-dishwasher-and-painting-only-during-daylight thing, the prep work took a full week to complete before we were ready to start painting the finish colors.

Phew.

So for anyone wanting to paint their stairs – especially stairs with particle board treads, let’s recap how to do this the smart way.

Painting Your Stairs: Prep Work

1. Remove carpet and pad using pliers and the claw on the back of the hammer.

2. Remove the carpet tack strips with a hammer and chisel.

3. Remove staples using pliers.

4. Patch staple/nail holes with wood putty, allow to dry thoroughly, sand smooth.

5. Sand non-particle board areas like the risers/kick boards and sides of stairs lightly.

6. Sweep stairs and wipe clean.

7. Spot treat any stained areas with KILZ and allow to dry at least 30 minutes.

8. Coat stairs with two coats of oil-based primer, allowing each coat dry thoroughly.

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Back on Friday with the fun part – painting the finish colors!

In DIY Projects

In Every Thing Give …

3 Mins Read

~ 1 Thessalonians 5:18

New today at Choose To Thrive, a simple and elegant word art display for your Thanksgiving decor or table. And you can use this same idea for all kinds of word ideas and displays. Here’s the version I made for my kitchen table:

Ready to make a set for your home?

Here’s what you’ll need:

As always, I hope you’ll Rock-What-Ya-Got and adapt this project as necessary to make it work with what you have on hand. See tips at the end of the post for more ideas.

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Start with any bottle with a great shape. DH found these at our local Associated Foods grocery store.

bottle.12

Remove as much of the front and back labels as possible, then soak for 12-20 minutes in warm water.

The remaining paper and glue should wipe off easily with a rag or scrub pad.

If your bottle has a stamped expiration date (and most do) …

… gently scrub it off with a scrub pad. Mine came off in two seconds flat.

bottle.4

Allow to dry thoroughly inside and out.

For the words, having access to a CriCut or one of these lovelies helps a ton.

(And just in case anyone is curious, I used one of my favorite fonts, JSL Ancient, available as a free download here.)

bottle.7

Apply vinyl lettering to bottles as you would for any other project …

(And remember: if you’re using these for a table, make sure to cut two sets of letters so that your guests can see the letters on both sides of the table!)

To prepare your wheat, remove any weeds and leaves (if using home-grown) or remove outer wrapping from store-brought bundles.

Gather a bunch of stems roughly the same width as the bottle opening into a nice, tight cluster.

Carefully insert wheat, removing any stems that won’t quite fit. You want the wheat to fit snuggly and not move around.

And that’s it! Quick, easy, DONE!

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A few THRIVE tips to Rock What Ya Got:

What if I don’t have a CriCut or Silhouette machine?

1) Cut letters from vinyl sheets or contact paper with regular craft scissors. 2) Barter, trade or just talk one of your really awesome neighbor-friend-cousin-coworkers into cutting letters for you. 3)Paint letters with craft paints using a stencil.

How can I get wheat for cheap? It’s so expensive at craft stores, even with a coupon.

Free wheat is easier to find that you might think. The wheat I used was from my neighbor’s garden. She wanted to see if she could actually grow this stuff and it worked great. If you like this look, consider planting a section next to the tomatoes or flowers next spring. Also, many farmers will let you glean left-over wheat along the edges of their fields as long as you ask first. I live in a large metro area of a million people, but was surprised how many fields I saw within 15 minutes of my house. Your local city or county clerk can get you the owner’s name and contact information. Good luck!

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Wishing everyone the start of a magical holiday season!

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