sparkle craft has a nice page of links to crafty chicks

papercandy.com has some cool rubber stamps. I like Abbey Someone on this page, and the Skully Head is making me miss The Mr. Skullhead Show. They’re not all Halloween related, there are a lot in the swank category.

I have decided to try the flat beer and epsom salt frosted window idea next — see my notes on this project. I admit it is an excuse to buy some beer. How long should beer sit in order to be relatively flat?

Lipglosslolita has instructions for the perfect home pedicure and a yummy veggie stir fry

I Troll Martha Stewart So You Don’t Have To

making a shaped bubble wand

recipe for homemade granola

stretchy ribbon headbands

lavender eye mask

diy baby!

• shannon makes amazing quilts

  (check out the antics of her dog while you’re there!)

• meg offers a clever trick to keep pasta warm!
• jennie nicely improvises onion rings
• rebecca points us to a build-your-own hello kitty laptop page

Jennie pointed me to allrecipes – which has a nice personal recipe box. Bonus points: in the category of Food That Looks Like Other Food they have a whole page, yay!

SOAR is moving into a roomier, faster machine, yay recipe source! They have a pages of recipes for special diets but no low-protein listings (my brother has PKU). And take a look at the miscellaneous section, and recipes for crafts and bath products. Nice.

There is a pretty good thread going on at Glitter about making your own salt scrubs. [ there are quite a few people out there trying to recreate Origin’s Ginger Body Scrub^TM ]

Yay! mena has started sew wrong: “a weblog that documents my attempts to sew my own clothes”

Wholesale Supplies Plus carries a few things in the area of soap making which I have found a bit harder to find:

• massage nubbies soap mold
• Venus of Willendorf soap mold
• mini tubes soap mold
• tiny rubber duckies
• tiny rubber froggies

From Nature With Love also carries a massage bar soap mold [ first column — grumble grumble pop up window grumble grumble ]

So excited! I have committed myself to a few temporary home improvement projects this weekend: rice paper over the kitchen window, pressed crayon meltings in the dining “room” window to block out the naked neighbors below (thanks to Melika for the memory jog!), rigging a smaller version of a shower curtain to stop water from destroying the window in the bathroom altogether (I am beginning to be afraid of it falling out of the side of the building, actually), and making muffins of some sort. Muffins, I realize, hardly count as home improvement in most cases, but considering the lack of muffins in my place lately I think it qualifies. Suspense lies in this question: will any of this actually get done?

oooh cocktail mermaids

Bust magazine commerce:

• Venus of Marmalade Soap shaped like the Venus of Willendorf!
• nice little apron
• Ladies’ Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society T-shirt I wish this one came as a patch I could stick on a bag or something
• hand knit cell phone cozy
• Vinnie’s Tampon Case

But the all-pink tool set seems to be all sold out, darn.

to eat

biggerhand on the proper way to make a grilled cheese sandwich

and

girlwonder on the best way to make pasta sauce

and

jennie’s delicious cookie recipe and frosting! (I’ve had the pleasure of eating these, they are cookie perfection)

and of course

loobylu’s collection of celebrity chef recipes!