New York Renovator

We have three adults in the house, and make a lot of coffee! I’m always keen to tips on recycling the coffee grounds and leftover coffee. Here are a few tried and true uses that I have discovered:

1. Compost the grounds, with the filter if you want. It’s great for the compost pile and the garden. One note: don’t use the coffee-tainted compost for lime-soil-loving plants (such as peas). Coffee grounds acidify the soil and lime-loving plants will not do well. Tomato plants, on the other hand, revel in coffee-flavored compost!

2. Use cooled, diluted leftover coffee to water your houseplants once a day. Of course, don’t overdo it, and be aware that coffee will acidify the plant’s soil. Don’t use on plants that require sweet, lime soil.

3. Use coffee grounds and leftover coffee to fertilize blue hydrangeas. I have some lovely Nikko blue hydrangeas near the foundation of my home. Blue hydrangeas need acidic soil; if there is lime in the soil, the blooms are pink, not blue. My home is 150 years old, so there’s a ton of lime in the soil that has leached from my limestone-mortared foundation. I was told to buy aluminum sulfate at the garden center to have blue blooms– too expensive! i don’t know what got into me a few springs ago, but I started pouring coffee over the plants every day, and I have had blue blooms. One note if you attempt this– start early in the year, when the plant is coming out of dormancy. Otherwise, the bluing won’t be as successful throughout the summer.

4. Sprinkle coffee grounds in your flower beds. This will keep the cats from using your flower beds as their litter box. :-p

If you have any other ideas, feel free to leave a comment! I’d love to know. If you found this post helpful, please stumble it with StumbleUpon! The convenient button is below. Thanks!

Need some decor ideas but don’t want to go out the door? Ahhh the wonders of the Internet. I have this little list of places I “virtually visit” to gather ideas for the home. Maybe someday I’ll buy, but I do a lot of looking. Those design and home improvement magazines are too pricey, and why purchase them when you can get ideas and read articles online?

Well, here’s another Quick Tip for ya: visit home decor websites and home improvement websites! Everything from fixing the kitchen sink to roller shades can be found online! When you visit, bookmark them and keep the bookmarks in a tidy folder. This way, on those gloomy days when you’re out of ideas, you can sift through your bookmarked sites for some inspiration. It certainly helps me!

P.S. I still hear that cardinal in the yard! He is so precious! Still haven’t spotted him yet, though…

I bought fancy NiMH batteries for my battery-eating digital camera. I expected these expensive batteries to last longer than the cheaper alkaline batteries I’ve bought in the past.

I was floored and mighty disgruntled when my camera displayed the “low battery” light! I had only used these NiMH batteries a few days! I was floored, I tell you! These NiMH didn’t even last as long as the cheapo WalMart batteries! Grrr!

Then a light bulb went off, you could say. You know where you insert the batteries? In that small compartment? Inside the compartment door are two small metal tabs. These tabs make contact with the batteries when they are inside the compartment and the little door is closed. I wondered if perhaps the tabs (which are easily bendable) had been pushed back the slightest bit, and therefore not making full contact with the batteries inside? Very carefully with my long fingernail, I gave the metal tabs a wee nudge forward. If I prodded the tabs too strongly, I risked bending those tabs or perhaps breaking them off, and then I would be out of a camera all together.

I inserted the NiMH batteries, and voila! We’re back in business! Try it at home! It’s not a big dent in the budget, not like I’ll be saving enough for fancy teak furniture or anything, but every penny counts! And it works!

This is probably old news. I don’t know why I did it, I don’t recall reading it anywhere. I just saw the jug and dumped some in. It worked!

When I boil potatoes (the plain white potatoes), they usually come out mushy. I hate that. I thought it was the potato I was buying, but it happens to all my potatoes. Today, after I added water to the pot, I dumped in a little white vinegar (I am estimating I put in about 1/2 cup to the 1 gallon of water in my pot). I boiled it as I usually do, and the potatoes came out wonderfully!

Like I said, this is probably common knowledge to all you experienced chefs out there, I don’t know. I don’t read cookbooks very often, so for all I know it could be the most basic of potato culinary skills, or I could have invented a brand-new thing. All I know is that I was pleased with the results! Try boiling a little white vinegar with your potatoes, and let me know how it turns out.

I had to install some laptop memory in one of our computers last week. Whenever you open up the computer, be sure you are grounded (have released any static electricity from your person). Any amount of static electricity released into the brains of your computer could fry the thing to death. I hate changing memory in the winter, when the air is already conducive to static. But our little HP needed a boost (we use the computer for school).

I am just too miserly to purchase one of the “anti-static” wrist bands, so I ground myself the old-fashioned way. I remove my socks and slippers (slippers especially generate static, I have noticed). I put my hair back in a ponytail. I get an old plywood board (or any kind of wood board will do) and put it on the floor where I am going to stand. Right before I open the computer, I wet my hands and dampen my shirt and pants (my knit pants can get really loaded with static). The burst of humidity helps to settle down the dry air around me. Before I open up the box, I touch the exterior of it to release any static remaining.

You don’t need to purchase those fancy geek tools like wrist straps. Just remove all static from your person, and you are good to go!

“What’s in a name?”

Remember that old line from Shakespeare?

What’s in a name?
That which we call a rose
By any other name
Would smell as sweet.

I suppose a modern-day rendition of his famous words from Romeo and Juliet might be “what is a domain name?” Ha ha!

Seriously, I have been spending a lot of time this week learning about domain names and web hosting and ftp and such stuff. There is a great website that has excellent information and articles about how to host your own website, what is a domain name, choosing a provider, and more. It’s called, appropriately, the Web Hosting Bluebook. The information is outstanding– even I can make sense of it. It has the best web hosting provider list I’ve seen so far (I love the information in their Top Ten list– very helpful!). There’s a forum, too. I still have no idea what is MySQL and database stuff, so I have to do some reading yet, lol. I’m checking into getting a separate hosting service, so that I can have my own Home, Home on the Web soon. Ha! I am just full of catchy phrases tonight! Anyway…

Check out the website, it has lots of free tips, information, and the forum can answer your questions if you have any (you have to register to post discussions at the forum). This is a great website to bookmark for future use, or as a great teaching tool for kids learning about the Internet. I have found it hard to find clear, concise websites with simple information. They are upfront with their web hosting ranking system, and it’s very comprehensive. Web Hosting Bluebook looks good!

It’s only (and *finally*) March, and we still have several inches of snow on the ground… but I am thinking about spring! More specifically, I’m thinking about my gardens! I replenish the mulch in my flower beds every other year. I have a LOT of flower beds, with more in the works (we hate mowing our 1.25 acre of land). Mulch is very, very expensive and I loathe paying for it. But there is a way to make your mulch stretch a little farther.

Lay two or three layers of newspaper down on the ground before laying the mulch down. There are a few qualifications here. First, if the layers are too thick, your plants’ roots will not be able to breathe (yes, roots take in oxygen, from the soil) and your plant will not get enough water. Keep the newspaper layers just two or three sheets thick. Secondly, when you lay it down, poke holes in the layers with a pitchfork or some tool like it. This will enable water and air to trickle down through the paper. Lay your mulch down. The instructions on most mulch bags will tell you to put down two or three inches. TWO or THREE inches?! I would have to sell my home in order to afford that much mulch for my flower beds. I only lay an inch, and I keep it fluffed. The children are FORBIDDEN to walk in my flower beds.

Finally, I recommend you use newspaper with the plain black ink, and avoid the colorized sheets. Most newspaper ink has gone organic, but the dyes from the colorized sheets may add chemicals to the soil that coould harm your plants.