Tag Archives: Make-It-Yourself

How To Make An All-Natural Air Freshener For Pennies

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by Texas Homesteader ~

Years ago I did away with artificial scents in our home. Oh how I used to love those reed diffusers, plug-in room fresheners and scented candles! But I decided those artificial scents just weren’t right for me or my family.

These days I’m more apt to use essential oils for room fresheners than a plastic-packaged plug-in delivering a sometimes overpowering artificial scent. Recently I made a super-cute room freshener using a repurposed canning jar and leftover lace. So easy, so inexpensive!

I don't want artificial air fresheners & scented candles in our home. So I easily made my own air freshener with baking soda, essential oil, a repurposed canning jar & leftover lace #TexasHomesteader

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All-Natural Lavender Scented Gardener’s Hand Scrub

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by Texas Homesteader ~

RancherMan & I like to make our Christmas gifts ourselves to give to loved ones. This year we’d been working HARD for several months making different flavors of homemade cheese for our gifts. But my aunt is on a special diet, so cheese wouldn’t be a thoughtful gift for her at all. Hummm…

I know – she loves to garden and she’s always planting and tending to the flowers in her amazing garden. (Let me tell ya, her landscape is breath-taking!) I’ll make a hand scrub for her!

All-Natural Lavender Scented Gardener's Hand Scrub. The perfect gift for the gardeners in your life. Includes crushed lavender blooms. #TexasHomesteader

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How to Make a Christmas Santa Sleigh with Candy

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by Texas Homesteader ~

Several years ago our kids requested no more toys for Christmas for our grandkids. They already had so many toys that the mountains of additional toys they received each Christmas was beginning to be overwhelming. So we started a tradition of Experience Gifts for them. We’ll gather them all up and go do something fun with them. We’ll take them out to eat, do a fun activity together and bring them to the Homestead to have a slumber party with their cousins.

Sometimes the activity is a live Christmas play, the Children’s museum or a drive-through Christmas light display at the lake. This year we took them to a Ninja Warrior Obstacle Course and also Rock Climbing. This annual experience gift is so much fun for them and us too!

But when we gather as a family on Christmas day, although the grandkids already  received their gift a couple of weeks earlier,  I hate that there’s no gift for them on this day. So I decided to make Santa Sleighs for them this year. A cute gift and a little sumpin’ sweet for them too.

You can make a cute Santa sleigh using candy canes and candy bars. A cute gift for kids, teachers, or anyone else! #TexasHomesteader

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Top 10 Best Homesteading Posts – Yearly Roundup Edition

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by Texas Homesteader ~

Y’all know I started this little ole blog of mine back in 2013. It was a hard year for us, I’d just been diagnosed with breast cancer. But RancherMan suggested I begin writing about our lives here on our Homestead. So we started a blog, I started writing and even all these years later I’m still here. I love writing about our lives and sharing snippets of our days!

I started doing a feature at the end of each year where I share my post popular homesteading posts of the year. Of course I’ll do that this year as well but I thought it would be fun to share a recap of all the post popular posts by year.  Each year’s top 10 homesteading posts right here in one place!

Here are the Top 10 Homesteading Posts on our page for each year since 2013. This is the yearly roundup version - each year's top 10 in one place!

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Use A Laser Printer For Cute Customized Labels

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by Texas Homesteader ~

I’m always looking for easy ways to label repurposed glass storage jars in my kitchen or pantry. And I especially like the jars to look nice when they remain out on our countertop, such as our popcorn jar.

I stumbled upon an idea of using regular packing tape (you know, the wide tape you use for sealing boxes for shipping) and a laser printer to make a transparent image label. Since we have a laser printer I was intrigued & decided to give it a go. It worked perfectly!

You can make a cute image label using a laser printer and regular shipping tape. REALLY?!! Yeah, it turned out really cute and was easy! #TexasHomesteader

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Cute Decorative Pillow Made With A Flannel Shirt

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by Texas Homesteader ~

Fall is here, y’all! Now I know some folks relish in changing the decor for their homes or porch with each changing season. Although it looks great, seasonal decor changing has never appealed to me. I guess I’m just not a Pinterest-worthy decorator.  LOL

But still, there’s just something about the arrival of cool temperatures after a long, blisteringly-hot summer…  I started getting the hankering for some cute flannel and/or plaid accents. So I thought it would be fun to make flannel-shirt decorative pillows for our guest bedroom.  It was easy, even for my novice sewing skills. And here’s the kicker: I use those decorative pillows in my guest bedroom to store my spare sheets. Clever, no?

I made some cute decorative throw pillows for our guest bedroom from repurposed flannel shirts. And I use them to store our spare sheets! #TexasHomesteader

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How To Make A Cute Porch Lantern

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by Texas Homesteader ~

RancherMan & I had a wonderful porch addition built to augment our back porch.  Even before the porch addition, we’ve always spent our evenings out there enjoying that Texas sunset.  And when we have company, we all naturally congregated on the back porch.  But now with the addition there’s even more room to spill outside & visit.  And I’ve landscaped it up (on the cheap though, y’all) so it really is an oasis!

Now living out in the country without city lighting & all, it gets really dark at night.  So a bright light outside will certainly attract every flying bug in sight!  So I prefer a soft, gentle light. Recently I found several cute glass jar lantern lights at various craft & antique shops when we took a fun quick trip to Granbury, Texas.  Of course I thought to myself: “I can make that!”

I used an old broken flip-top jar, some gravel and a small votive candle to make the cutest porch lantern ever. Come see! #TexasHomesteader

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Beeswax Wraps – The Sustainable Answer to Plastic Wrap

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by Texas Homesteader ~

Y’all know I shun plastic like a banshee, right? I haven’t accepted a plastic shopping bag from the store in years, much preferring my pretty shopping basket anyway. And I refuse to buy over-packaged items too. I’ve learned that recycling isn’t the answer to our landfill problems – PRE-Cycling is! But what is precycling? Well that’s shunning trash from coming into your home in the first place.

But today I’m talking about cling film. You know the stuff, it’s always sticking to itself and hardly ever sticking to the item you’re trying to wrap. Use it once & throw it away.  But whaddyagonnado??  Well, I’ve started using beeswax wraps!

Beeswax Wraps are the sustainable answer to plastic cling film. I use beeswax harvested directly from the comb in our beehives. #TexasHomesteader

 

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How To Make Homemade Tri-Colored Pasta Noodles

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by Texas Homesteader ~

I remember when I first found out how easy homemade pasta is to make.  Now pasta purists typically use a special pasta flour called semolina.  And of course when I first started making homemade pasta I did too.  But y’all know I’m far from a purist with anything, especially in the kitchen!  I want quick, easy & delicious without special ingredients.  So I now just typically use plain ole all-purpose flour for my homemade pasta noodles and they always turn out great!

Flour – salt – egg – water and BOOM! 

Now don’t tell anyone else how easy it really is – people always seem to be impressed to find out that someone makes their own pasta!  So don’t rat me out, m’kay??  Pinky swear??

Recently I decided I’d try to make colored/flavored pasta using powdered dehydrated vegetables from my garden last year.  I knew I had dehydrated Malabar Spinach in the pantry, and dehydrated carrots too!  Come see what I did.

I love homemade pasta, but I wanted tri-colored pasta. So to my usual pasta dough recipe I added dehydrated & powdered spinach or carrots, leaving 1/3 plain. Delicious! #TexasHomesteader

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Solar Light Feature Using Aged Bois D’Arc Wood

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by Texas Homesteader ~

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Y’all know that by making our gifts ourselves, RancherMan & I just feel we’re sharing our love more fully.  Yes it takes much more time & effort than just going out & buying something, but to us the effort’s well worth it. We make our own Christmas gifts and I often bring fresh-cut flowers from our homestead to loved ones in the hospital.  The gifts are always well received and the flowers are always gorgeous.  And a little bit of our hearts are always wrapped up in those gifts!

Recently RancherMan & I sat out to make a special gift for our daughter & son-in-law-to-be.   We wanted something beautiful that was also functional and personalized just for them.  Hummmmm…  They both love nature and are interested in woodworking, so we put on our thinking caps and came up with a great idea.  A solar light feature!

Solar light feature using old, aged Bois D'Arc wood and rustic old 1880's barbed wire, a metal elephant embellishment and decorative solar light. Perfect! #TexasHomesteader

 

 

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