Custom Build Your Own Sofa/Bed

Plan here(advanced). The fabric is painter's drop cloth, and the filling is from recycled pillows and stuffed animals. This one lifts for storage.

Easy: This could be made simply with a twin bed - screw wooden legs into the box spring and add the back to a wooden support box behind the bed.

Or one mattress on a platform with a wedge bolster:












Another easy idea - wrap cinder blocks and plywood with heavy fabric for a platform bed/couch.








Stained rustic wood beams as supports :






We made our own recently. See here.

Inexpensive DIY Truss Wood Bookshelves

Detailed plans here, or just wing it. This is easy enough to make to your own measurements just by looking at the finished picture.

Indoor Winter Gardening: Cucumbers

This is an experiment, so I don't know if I'll have cucumbers anytime soon, but my potted indoor cucumbers are blooming in a sunny window with southwestern exposure.

Fabric Scrap Softie Doll Tutorials

See here.(Image at left is from tutorial)

Super thrifty sources of fabric:

Thrift stores
Old clothes
Old sheets
Socks
Towels(bath and dish)

Some other favorites:

Mr Seahorse softie doll
Frog softie
Terry cloth cat softie
Sock kitty(easy)

Readable Online: Vintage January Editions of Boys' Life Magazine

Boys' Life is the official youth magazine for the Boy Scouts of America. Published since 1911, it contains a proven mix of news, nature, sports, history, fiction, science, comics, and Scouting.Published by Boy Scouts of America, Inc.

Jan 1913

Jan 1914

Jan 1915

Jan 1916

Jan 1917

Jan 1918

Jan 1919

Jan 1920

Browse more here.

Easy Homemade Sculpting Clay

"In a salad bowl (or non-stick pan) mix 3 cups of white glue and 3 cups of cornstarch. Add one tablespoon of white vinegar, one tablespoon of glycerin*, 2 tablespoons of canola oil." See here for remaining instructions. The results are called cold porcelain. Image from esprit cabane site.

The link mentions that glycerin can be found at crafting stores; however, I get mine at Walmart or drugstores in the vitamin aisle. The store brand or off-brand is very inexpensive.

HT to Tipnut for leading me to this site.

Repost from 2009.

Vintage Children's Winter Paper Cutting(Advanced)

Found at Google Books from a January 1912 copy of Primary Education. Free and in public domain. Just click on image to enlarge and save or print.

Vintage Blackboard Calendar for January

This 1910 calendar is free to use. I found them at Google Books. Click on image to enlarge and save, or download(right click on image) the original at the link.

Another from 1910 which has the same beginning day of the week as January 2011:









And another(blank):










And an Eskimo calendar:

Classic British and American Essays and Speeches Online

Classic British and American Essays and Speeches

I saw this at About.com Grammar & Composition. Available free online "from the works of Francis Bacon and Daniel Defoe to those of Virginia Woolf and Martin Luther King, Jr., are more than 150 of the greatest essays and speeches composed by British and American writers over the past four centuries."

Each are easy to copy and paste - great reading and copy work examples for students learning essay writing.

~ Of Studies, Francis Bacon (1561-1626): "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man."

Downloadable Calendar: Best Months To Buy Things

A downloadable monthly calendar of the best times to purchase items inexpensively:


Found here. Full size is available at link.

Printable Informational Resources for Student Essays and Reports

See vintage texts from my Google Books library. I've collected over 5000 vintage educational texts from which to draw homeschool curriculum. It has been really helpful for books reports, research, lessons, and other homeschool materials. I use the search box at the link; however, I also use the general Google Book search to expand my searches.

All books in my library are free to download(PDF). Some of the magazines like Life and Boys Life are viewable online only, and not available for download.

Printing individual pages used to be very simple, but they no longer have a button to switch the text to HTML. You can still do it though. Simply use the Plain Text button on the top right of any page in the book, then scroll to the end of the web address, delete the "text" after output=text, which will be at the end of the address. Type in "html" in lieu of the word "text", load the page with this address, and you'll have a page which can be right clicked to save or print.

Pages can be copied and pasted in plain text, but sometimes there are problems with the conversion at Google Books - missed words, gibberish, etc.

Here are some pages my son(age 13) will be using for an essay on How Bees Make Honey. They cover the topic of bees more broadly if you click back to previous pages, or go forward within the section. I've saved these links in HTML, so you don't need to change them. To save or print, right click only on the image of the book pages at the links or you'll get the entire screen.

THE ANATOMY OF THE HONEY BEE.

Do Bees Make or Gather Honey?

A Manual of Natural History: Bees Contradicts above contention that honey is made.

Compare and contrast: modern answer to this question here - How Do Bees Make Honey? About.com

Lessons in Nature, Volume 1: Bees(plain text - copy and paste) or HTML(several pages).

Short essay on bees with fill-in-the-blank prepositions... just for fun. ; )

Observations by Apiarists(Best nectar producing plants)

The Kitchen Table, Honey and the Honey Bee

A Dictionary of General Knowledge: Honey

The Bee-keeper's Guide(very scientific with detailed anatomy)

• Illustration of tongue
• Illustration of bee head and tongue
• Illustration of glands for digesting nectar
• Illustration of honey stomach
  

More on bees in my library here(405 general references to bees). Nice illustrations too.

How to Draw a Hen(Easy)

My daughter(age five) asked me how to draw a hen on a nest today. We found a helpful printable online with several steps for drawing a hen, eggs, and chicks. It turns out she wanted the hen to sit on some of her oval shaped blocks. So I cut out a stand of folded cardboard(dry food box) for her, she then decided to tell me a story about the hen. : ) She is getting good at using scissors; however, I still need to store them away because she'll cut her hair(and who knows what else) if left unsupervised with scissors.

Original here.

Free Printable Math Toys

Multiplication and skip counter here.

Clever Jeans Repair Idea for Torn Knees

See here for tutorial.

Cute Children's Felt Sewing Crafts

Many more ideas, tons of them for the holidays and beyond, here at Craft Gossip.

Children's Short Story: How the Poinsettia Came to the United States and the Origin of its Name

The Flower of Christmas, Boys' Life magazine, 1967. Readable online only - one page article.

Abstract Three Kings/Wise Men Printable Coloring Page

Click to enlarge and save/print.

Original