Ceiling trapdoor TV

How's this for a neat way to hide the TV when it's not in use? Not to mention a sure fire way to keep those sticky fingers off your flatscreen.

This one is part of a bedroom remodelling carried out by Dijeau & Poage construction company in San Francisco. Reckon you could do it yourself with a bit of thought and careful DIY though. Just make sure it's really, really securely fixed up there...

(via Unplggd)

Amigurumi cacti in crackle glaze pots

Julie over at Gleeful Things created these adorable amigurumi cacti for her mother and grandmother. I really should get round to making some myself - I've been thinking that a selection of ami cacti would make a great header.

Julie also did the crackle glazing on the pots - have a go yourself by following her tutorial.

If you fancy making your own ami cacti, there's a free pattern for a similar cactus over at Ana Paula's Amigurumi Patterns & Random Cuteness.

Pixellated PacMan cufflinks

Novelty cufflinks are nothing new, but these pixellated lovelies are surely something else! I love the idea of geek-chic things like this, things that most people won't notice that you can wear safe in the knowledge of your own geek supremacy.

Perhaps Mr Crafty Cactus needs some of these for Fathers' Day. If you or your man want need some of these, amble over to BeauJangles' stall on Makers Market. The Space Invaders are pretty neat too.

(via Craft)

Fabulous fireworks print chair revamp

I just love furniture revamps and here's one that features the lovely Fireworks print fabric by Jessica Jones (of How about orange...). This top job was carried out by Melissa Swanson - check out her blog post for the full details.

And don't forget to pop over to Jessica's blog while you're out and about - it's one of my RSS reader favourites.

Minesweeper pillows with sound effects!

Everyone has wasted hours playing minesweeper when they're supposed to be doing something else more productive, but few people have gone to the effort of bringing the game into their real lives. Meet instructables member BritLive who crafted these fabulously geeky pillows.

What I like about these is that  inevitably some people who come round to your house wouldn't realise what they were. So, in effect these pillows would act as geek radar. And even the non-geeks would surely be amused by a bomb explosion upon sitting.

(via Craft)

Omlet's beautiful Beehaus

I knew we could trust Omlet, the people behind the urban henhouse Eglu to come up with something equally cool for the wannabe bee keepers among us. And I just knew they'd give it a good name and they have not disappointed on that front - meet the Beehaus!

Now, I don't profess to know much, if anything, about keeping bees, but I was very surprised to learn that one Beehaus could produce 1,400kg of honey a year. That's a lot of sticky stuff. Omlet do suggest that you take honey instead of wine to dinner parties and with that volume to deal with, you'll definitely need to come up with some kind of plan to get shot of it.

Of course, you could sell it to help pay back the £500 plus start up cost. By my reckoning, you'll be laughing all the way to the bank once you've flogged 250 jars. And you'll still have 2,550 left to find homes for.

(via Wired magazine 06.10)

Knitted antique chairs by Melanie Porter

Here's something that appeals to two of my favourite things at the same time - old furniture and fibre-art. Ex-knitwear designer Melanie Porter finds old chairs in auctions and markets across the UK and gives them a new lease of life through careful restoration and reupholstering before she covers them with handknitted panels.

I've chosen Henry (see left) to demonstrate Melanie's talents - a fine chair who's on-trend to boot. Alas, there are no prices on her website, so I suspect that means Henry won't be coming to live with me. But perhaps he or one of his friends could come over to your place? Melanie takes commissions too, if you've got an old Bergere that deserves a facelift.

(via guardian weekend magazine, 08.05.10)

Lufdesign's leaf cable ties

How about this for a simple, yet brilliant idea? Cable ties with little leaves on the ends, making them both functional and attractive. With these babies on-hand you can prettify your copious cables and give up on the much harder task of hiding the messy buggers.

The Leaf Ties are the brainchild of Korea-based Lufdesign. They weren't originally planning to sell direct to the public, but because of the happy problem of lots of consumer interest they are shipping via airmail. If you're quick you might just grab some for yourself...

(via sub-studio)

RSS Reader Must Reads

Since I've neglected this blog for a couple of weeks, here are a few highlights from my RSS reader that I would have shared. Hope you enjoy them.

Crochet Eyeball Doorknob cover by bella_domanie on Craftster. She generously shares the pattern too, so you can make your own (via Cthulhu Crochet and Cousins):



Ann Wood's cardboard castle diorama caught my eye - it's cardboard box modelling for adults (via CRAFT Magazine):



I love the idea behind Fallen Fruit, a website that maps the location of fruit trees in public spaces so that people can pick and eat it. I'm all for a bit of foraging (this blog should probably be called the crafty and somewhat hippy cactus lover) ; it's a real shame that perfectly good food goes to waste. Fallen Fruit is a global site, but there's not much mapped yet - add your local trees and help kick-start it. I found out about it from 365 Days Of Trash.

I can envision these shadow decorations at an upmarket Halloween party. Create your own by following the tutorial over on Folding Trees:



The anatomist in me loves this wine carafe from Etienne Meneau (via sub-studio design blog):



I'm working on several projects of my own right now, so I'll post some WIP pics soon. I also made a major purchase yesterday which I must share...

Gorgeous Log Bowls

These log bowls from the Loyal Loot Collective are truly lovely:



Via sub-studio design blog.

Come join me on PMOG

I've just joined PMOG, The Passively Multiplayer Online Game and so far, so good. I love the concept - there's no virtual world or universe, but instead you play the entire internet. As you roam the web you encounter mines and loot left by other players, and deposit your own wherever you fancy. You can also follow quests, though I've yet to do that.

PMOG is a refreshing new MOG in what's becoming a crowded market, so it will be interesting to see how it develops. It's certainly got me quite excited. So, come and join me (I'm ione) - you can by my first friends!

Via Community Guy - Jake McKee.

Rasterbate and then take photos!

Quite possibly the coolest thing ever (at least until the next cool thing that catches my attention...) - Rasterburation. A simple idea (always the way), but with many possibilities. The Rasterbator rasterizes any image you upload, so that you can enlarge it. And that's where the fun begins - you enlarge your image and then print out your image on multiple sheets of paper. Each sheet looks like nothing much, just a bunch of dots, but put together and viewed from a distance and you've got yourself a masterpiece!

Here's a cool example from the Rasterburation gallery:



I've got the inklings of a crafty idea brewing in my brain - surely there's a way to make dots out of something 3D or doing something stitchy. Ponder, ponder...

via My Weblog

Gorilla Tactics

I'm hoping my new Gorillapod is going to improve my somewhat shoddy photos. Here's what it looks like in all its prehensile glory:



Check out my posts later in the week to see if this tactic has indeed improved my photos...

A Sun for our Son

Hubby made a great lampshade, modelled on the Sun, to replace the Moon that I smashed to smithereens a while back:



VV loves it and we're pretty keen too - if I switch the light on first thing, it gives us a few extra minutes in bed in the morning.

No Junk For Us

Meant to post this a while ago - Hubby made a ransom-note style sign for our front door:



It says "Ei mainoksia kiitos", which is Finnish for "No advertisements thank you", and it works a treat. Not only that, it looks cool and is - somewhat ironically - created from said junk.

Nationwide Super Secure Emailing

I received this email from my UK bank, Nationwide (OK, it's actually a building society) recently. An admirable effort on their part to improve security and combat phishing attempts. But can you spot the glaring stupidity? That's right, my postcode is not XXXX XXX. I'm not telling you what it is, but it certainly is not that.

So, the whole point of the email - if your postcode is not shown like it is here the email isn't from us - is totally lost. I know why my postcode isn't shown: I'm an ex-pat with an overseas address, so my postcode isn't UK format. But really that's no excuse. Just flag any overseas addresses first and then leave them out of the mailing. How difficult is that?

Sending an email like this is laughable, and makes Nationwide look silly. It's very poor marketing too, from what is normally a most excellent building society.

Two Tricky Tables

As in tables that do tricks! First up, The Flip Table from flipfurniture, which turns from a neat coffee table into a dining table with stools. Excuse the pic size, but I couldn't work out how to save the full size photos from their site. Mosey on over to their site to check out the high quality pics yourself and to catch the video.






And second, a ingenious expanding circular table from DB Fletcher Design, best illustrated by this video, but you can also get the gist from these photos:



I just love furniture that transforms, hides away or otherwise does nifty things!

Milk ethics

As a vegetarian I have long been concerned with the ethics of drinking milk, but, as anyone who knows me will attest, I would probably die without it, given the amount I consume. I've tried various substitutes in the past, but they either taste too sweet (Rice Dream) or of mashed up beans (hardly surprising).

Photo by Ian Britton at FreeFoto.com

So, we've switched to organic milk. Organic dairy cows supposedly have a better time of it and the milk certainly tastes better than standard milk. I know this because hubby loves to conduct taste tests on me and this time I chose organic. Same happened with eggs too. Both the milk and eggs cost 50% more, but I think it's worth it and since I stopped going out (no beer) and hubby stopped smoking, we can afford it. Who said having babies was expensive?

While I'm on the milk subject, Sainsbury's in the UK has started doing milk bags (thanks for the tip-off Jude, via Google Reader's great share function). Great idea, hope it catches on this time - it's been tried before, but failed. And it's a good reason to use an old fashioned milk jug, which I've always wanted to do, but couldn't justify transferring the milk from perfectly usable containers.

He gave me the moon...

...and I broke it! Super talented hubby turned a boring white globe ceiling lamp into a moon a while back and last week I trashed it in a spectacular sheet changing accident (it was hanging over our bed). Thankfully no one was hurt in the shower of glass shards, but sadly the lamp is no more. So this post pays homage to the amazing, but short-lived, moon lamp.

Things I want to do...

There are so many things I want to do, all rattling around in my head, that I thought it prudent to note them down. Here goes, in no particular order:

1. Catalogue all my books in Library Thing. Totally anal I know, but I love it. Have persuaded myself that there is a point to this wanton time-user - if our books ever get lost, burnt or otherwise destroyed we can work out a sensible insurance claim. Of course, that will require household contents insurance.
2. Get household contents insurance (see #1).
3. Post more often to my blog. See, I'm doing this one already!
4. Finish making the rest of the fleece nappies. They have already been cut out by hubby, so it's not that much work.
5. Make a nappy bag that both of us will use (no flowers, then). Needs to have cunning strap arrangement so that it works with the baby wrap.
   
6. Make a boring wrap for hubby to use. Again, no flowers.
7. Get on with The Tapeworm. Progress thus far has been slow.
8. Declutter. No small task, but I'm getting great tips from Unclutterer. My hubby pointed out that nearly all the clutter is mine and I have to agree. We started today with a new rule - nothing new can come in without something going out. So, we took a vase to the Salvation Army shop before we set off on our Saturday Adventure.
9. Become more ethical. Very large task, but we've already started. We use washable nappies and we've just signed up to an organic veg box scheme. Yep, there is one here in Finland, but it doesn't run in the winter, when nothing grows. We also just bought some biodegradable nappies to use during the journey to and from my Dad's place in Spain at the end of the month. Sadly we're flying, but next time we'll go by train. I've been thinking ethical for a while, but Leo Hickman's Life Stripped Bare: My Year Trying to Live Ethically has just spurred me into action.

That's all I can think of right now, more to follow and hopefully progress reports too...