ReadyMade Magazine has a loft tour of Philadelphia couple Shauna Alterio and Stephen Loidolt. They live in a 2,300-square-foot loft in a converted tire factory. They are very DIY.

Most of the furniture that wasn’t thrifted is simple, inexpensive Ikea stock, often in wood to balance out the painted finishes. “Everything is super low-budget,” Alterio says, noting that their Ikea bed is the most expensive purchase they’ve ever made for the home. Most of their receipts, Loidolt adds, come from hardware stores.

Also:

“I’ll see something, and I want to make it for myself, even if it’s available for sale,” he says. It’s an itch that comes in handy for a couple on a budget. Loidolt taught himself upholstery by taking apart the living room sofa—a long-ago thrift store find—and reassembling it, painting the frame, and refinishing the seats in a rustic child’s-nursery print of French peasants.

Clearly, these are people after my own heart.

Here they are in the porch swing that dangles from the industrial rafters of their loft. “The swing was Loidolt’s 2008 Valentine’s Day gift to Alterio.” Better than a couch!

The collection of globes was what caught my eye. There’s something about the repeating pattern of blue that is so uplifting and interesting. Apparently it is one of their collections.

“A cutout chandelier and wall mural add interest to the minimalist dining area.”

I like this idea for a chest of drawers. It is a set of Ikea drawers on top of a “painted thrift-store base.”

I like how the headboard incorporated their collection of plastic deers. It is a “movable plywood wall built by Loidolt, with a niche that houses the small plastic deer that Alterio began collecting in Michigan. Finished in yellow floral wallpaper, it epitomizes their fun, yet polished, look.”

Again, when you have skills and creativity, you don’t really need much money to have a cool living space.

When I transplanted my nectarine tree I cut off a few of the branches and put them in a large vase. After a few days, they blossomed and I found myself with an unexpectedly beautiful flower arrangement in my house. So far it has lasted two weeks.

Even if they don’t blossom, branches make elegant display during the winter. Just take some clippers and cut a few off the nearest tree. Then cut them down to roughly the same size and arrange in some water in a vase. Who knows, they just might blossom for you too.

Tiny Decor has a great tutorial on how to cover a light switch plate with fabric. It looks pretty simple. All you do is pick the fabric, cut it so that it fits the plate, glue it on, and then cover it with a coat of gloss. The last time I saw one of those decorative switch plates in the store, it cost $24. (Via)

Thanks to Cathy at Cathy’s Kitchen Journey for giving SavvyHousekeeping its very own Lemonade Award. I display it with pride:

Now the rules are as follows:
- Add the logo in your blog.
- Add a link to the person who gave you the award.
- Nominate 10 other (refreshing…like lemonade) blogs of your choice.
- Don’t forget to add links to those blogs in yours.
- Also leave a message for your nominees in their blogs, informing them about the award.

In no particular order:

1. FatFree Vegan Kitchen
2. Angry Chicken
3. Everything and Nothing
4. needle book
5. 80 Breakfasts
6. Smart Kitty
7. The Glass Doorknob
8. CraftyPod
9. Chocolate & Zucchini
10. Orangette

Yesterday I finally got around to using up that half box of falafel. I made the falafel and some fresh hummus, then grilled up some bell peppers and onions to serve with them. But I needed something to serve the falafel in, so I made some pita bread too.

I had never made pita pockets before. I had tried naan several times, and it has never come out exactly how I wanted. Luckily, it turns out that pita bread is easier than naan. Homemade pita is softer and tenderer than the store stuff. Here’s the recipe courtesy of the Joy of Cooking:

Pita Bread

Ingredients:

3 c flour
1 1/2 Tbs sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp yeast
2 Tbs melted butter
1 1/4 c warmish water

Directions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together. Add the water and butter. Mix to combine.

2. Knead for 10 minutes by hand, or on medium speed in the mixer using a dough hook. (I did the latter.) The dough tends to get sticky. You want it to be a little tacky, but not incredibly sticky. I added extra flour to get it to the right consistency.

3. Spray a bowl with pam, roll the dough around to cover in the oil. Put plastic wrap on top and let the dough sit for about 2 hours.

4. Punch the dough down. Divide it into 8 small balls. Cover with a dish towel and let them rest for 20 minutes.

5. Now it’s time to cook the pita. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. I used a pizza stone, although the book says you can also turn a baking sheet upside down as a cooking surface. With a floured rolling pin, roll out each of the 8 balls until they are about 8 inches in diameter and 1/8 of an inch thick.

6. When the oven is hot, spray some water on the pizza stone. Wait 30 seconds. Now put the dough on the pizza stone. I had to work in batches, cooking three pitas at the time.

7. The pitas cook very quickly. What you want is them to inflate into a little balloon, like the pita in the picture above. When they get like that, wait 30 seconds and take them out. When they come out of the oven, they deflate and become pita pockets. It you wait too long, they will not deflate and you will have a pita balloon. Total cooking time is about 2-3 minutes per pocket.

Voila! Homemade pita!

I haven’t mentioned Valentine’s Day on here because I’m going out to dinner and spending a lot more than I should. However, it’s true that it’s just as memorable to make your own fun for Valentine’s Day. Here are some cheap-but-romantic dates that have worked for me:

* You cook something you’ve never tried/made before and you eat it by candlelight

* He cooks you a romantic dinner and you eat it by candlelight

* You spend the day (or evening) in bed

* You go on a hike and have a picnic

* You go to the beach and have a picnic

* You have a picnic in your living room, preferably in front of a fire

* You get in the car and drive to a town/place you’ve never been before

* You try a new sport together, like ice skating or kayaking

* You put on some old music and dance in the living room

* You get a fondue pot from the thrift store and make fondue

* You buy a bottle of fancy liquor and have a glass in front of the fire

* You buy a fancy dessert and eat it in some sexy fashion

There’s some ideas. What dates have worked for you?

It’s not that I don’t have store-bought dishes. In fact, I have a brand new set of white dinnerware, complete with mugs, bowls, and salad plates. But increasingly I seem to be buying dishes secondhand from thrift stores. Almost all my glasses come from there, as well as my teacups, mugs, liqueur glasses, dutch oven, mixing bowls, and even some utensils like salad tongs and a potato masher.

When buying from a thrift store, look for things that are clean, barely used, and that will fit in with your existing dishes. Even though it’s kind of gross to look through all those used kitchen supplies, you will be amazed what you can find. Here’s five reasons to start buying dishes secondhand:

1. It’s Cheaper–Buying dishes secondhand costs anywhere between a nickel and $5. Compare to store prices, the savings are astronomical. For example, I recently needed teacups to match my two Bee House Teapots, which are red and blue, respectively. I kept shopping around until I found four red-and-blue cups that match both teapots. I like them a lot better than the matching cups Bee House offers, and they cost $.10 each, or $.40 total. A Bee House teacup costs $8, or $32 for four. I saved $31.60 by shopping at the thrift store.

2. If You Break It, It Doesn’t Matter—The other day, I broke a “brand new” glass that I just got home from the store. But because it cost $.10, I didn’t care at all. The same goes for if you get tired of something. There’s very little guilt in giving away a dish you paid a nickel for.

3. Your Dishes Will Be Unique—After a couple of years of buying secondhand, my dishes are brightly colored and full of character. No one is going to have the same set, that’s for sure. I get lots of compliments on various dishes and people are always impressed when you say you got them at a thrift store. What can I say; it’s good for the ego.

4. It’s Better For The Environment—Buying something used is extending its life, which in turn means that fewer things are produced and fewer things end up in landfills. This is a nice thing to think about when you’re drinking out of a coffee mug that’s older than you are.

5. Once In Awhile, Something Is Valuable—My vintage dishes collection is becoming quite a portfolio. I’ve seen bowls that I purchased for $2 selling in antique stores for $35. I’ve seen frying pans that I picked up on a whim going on eBay for $35. One mixing bowl I bought for $3 is selling for $60 on a vintage dishes site. If you’ve got a good eye, you might be surprised by how much some things are worth. Of course, that’s not the reason you’re buying them—at least, that’s not my reason—but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

I recently discovered LibriVox.org, a site with an elaborate catalog of audio books that you can download and listen to for free. They have a mission to record every book in the public domain, i.e. books that are no longer protected by copyright. That means every book before 1923.

It’s quite a big goal, but they are well on their way. So far I have listened to David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, The Anti-Christ by Nietzsche (I was curious), and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. I usually listen to audio books when I’m cleaning the house or gardening or cooking because I find they make the menial tasks go a lot faster.

To get the books, I saved each Mp3 in a file on my desktop and then transfered those files onto my Sansa, my iPod-like device. The only downside of LibriVox is that the books are recorded by volunteers, many of whom don’t seem to speak English very well. If you are sensitive to that kind of thing, this is not the site for you. However, you get what you pay for when things are free, and I think this is a wonderful project. Since it’s all legal and above board, it takes the guilt out of downloading audio books.

I think I would sew more clothes if I had a dress form suited to my exact size. The worst part of sewing for me is taking seams out and re-doing them a zillion time to get the clothes to look right on my body. Of course, personalized dress forms are expensive. It never occurred to me to make my own, but that’s exactly what Amy at Craftlog did with duct tape.

Apparently, she got a close-fitting turtle neck and essentially covered herself in duct tape, making a mold of her body. Then she cut the mold off, stuffed it with a “combination of an old pillow and fiberfill.” Then they mounted the form on a pipe and plywood base. Here’s some more detailed instructions from Threads Magazine.

Here’s a tip to get some free green onions. Next time you get a batch from the grocery store, don’t throw out the roots. Instead, put them in a pot of dirt. They will soon sprout up new onions for you. I’ve done this multiple times–in fact, as you can see, I have two new green onions starting in my kitchen.