Yesterday, a friend asked me where to get an office chair. I told her about a thrift store that has been having good furniture deals lately. We went and she found a chair for $16. But she wasn’t sure it was quite right, so we went to a big office supply chain and looked at the chairs. They had a similar chair to the one in the thrift store for $50. She went back and bought the thrift store chair for $16 and saved herself $34.

On the same trip, I bought a hole puncher and a binder for a project I’m starting. They cost $2.25, combined. The same thing at the office supply store would have cost $16, according to their website. That means I saved $13.75 by buying secondhand.

I have talked about the benefits of buying secondhand before on here. Primarily, it saves money–$34 here and $14 there start to add up fast. Plus, it’s fun, kind of like a treasure hunt.

Of course, thrift stores aren’t the only options for bargain hunting. Estate sales, yard sales, consignment stores, and even antique stores yield great deals all the time. But regardless of the places you secondhand shop, some basic procedures make the shopping go smoother. Here are some tips:

Make a shopping list–I have a piece of paper in my wallet with a list of things I want for the house that I’m looking for a bargain on. It focuses my thoughts and keeps me from forgetting what I’m looking for. Sample things on my list right now: A coffee table, nickel-plated hardware for the kitchen cabinets, a glass pitcher, a vintage wall phone, and a rolling shelf to fit under my desk. The list also has dimensions for the furniture so I know how big it should be.

Put everything on the list–Well okay, not everything. Obviously you are not going to buy food at a secondhand store and personally I would never buy underwear there. (Ew.) But lots of people look at secondhand shopping as just a way to get clothes or furniture, when in fact they have everything. Thrift stores are also a great place to get wrapping paper, or frames, or, as mentioned above, office supplies. So if you want it, throw it on the list.

Be patient–The key to bargain shopping is to keep looking until the things you want show up. I just bought two never-used, restaurant-quality cookie sheets for $1.50. Great deal, right? The thing is, I’ve been looking for them for about 6 months. I didn’t need the cookie sheets right away, and the ones I wanted in the store were about $50. By keeping an eye out for them, I saved a whopping $48.50, but I had to wait 6 months. It’s a trade-off.

Carry a measuring tape–I cannot tell you how many times I have used that little measuring tape in my purse, not just for secondhand shopping but for life in general. Since I write down the dimensions of furniture I want on my list, it comes in extra handy at a thrift store.

Use your imagination–Could you take that ugly chandelier and spray paint it hot pink for your daughter’s bedroom? Maybe a golf caddy could be turned into a tool caddy for the garden? Or how about taking those old 1970s pepper mills and painting them an awesome shade of turquoise? It takes a little creativity to spot a diamond in the rough.

Don’t buy just because it’s cheap–A good deal turns to wasted money if you don’t need or want the item at hand. I had to learn this lesson about clothes. It turns out that if I don’t like some item of clothing, it doesn’t matter how cheap it is–I still won’t wear it. And nothing makes me feel dumber than buying something at a thrift store and then donating it again a few months later. So when in doubt, don’t buy it.

What are your secondhand shopping tips?

In looking at this house tour, I recognized the rugs they used in their hallway. I have the same thing in red.

They are $10 from Ikea. I really like how they have used them sort of like carpet tiles to make an effect in their hallway. It looks a little like leap pads in a pond.

Last night I made white wine sangria with a friend. It is a perfect summer drink, cool and refreshing. And it occurred to me, as I chopped a slightly browned apple and some past-their-prime strawberries, that sangria is a great way to use up oldish fruit. And because it’s a punch, there’s no need to use good wine or good brandy in the cocktail. Sangria is an economical drink that doesn’t taste like it is economical.

I punched the numbers this morning and discovered that this sangria only cost me $3.70 a pitcher, or $.62 a glass. Compare that to a bottle of white wine ($11 or so, or $2.20 a glass) or a margarita (roughly $4.50 a glass using decent tequila, I’m guessing).

More on that in a second. First, here’s the recipe.

White Wine Sangria

Ingredients:

About 2 cups fruit, chopped.
3 oz brandy*
1 bottle cheap white wine (I used Charles Shaw Chardonnay, otherwise known as $2 Chuck)
Half a liter of 7-Up, Sprite, or club soda to top

* I make strong Sangria. If you want a lighter version, use 1.5 oz, or one shot, of brandy instead.

Directions:

Cut up fruit and put in a pitcher. I used strawberries, peaches, champagne grapes, and half an apple. The only “new” fruit I added to the mix were the peaches–everything else came from the garden or were on the old side.

Pour brandy and wine in the pitcher. Refrigerate for at least an hour so the alcohol can work on the fruit and release their juices.

Add about half a liter of 7-Up to the mix. Pour into wine glasses and serve. It makes about 6 glasses of Sangria, enough to share with friends.

Cost of Dish: Brandy: $1.20 (or $.60 if you do the lighter version); Wine: $2; Peaches: $.25; Other fruit: Free from the garden or about to be thrown out; 7-Up: $.25.
Total Cost: $3.70 or $.62 per serving. (For lighter Sangria: $3.10 or $.52 per serving.)

Pretty good for an entire pitcher of drinks.

If, like me, you are being inundated by vegetables from the garden, or if you just want to eat more fresh food or lose weight or any number of reasons to eat salads, the NYTimes has you covered. It has 101 salad recipes for you to try, handily grouped into different categories–vegan, vegetarian, seafood, salads with meat, salads with noodles, and salads with grains.

If that’s not enough, it has links to articles about how to make your own salad dressing, including basic vinaigrette and ranch.

What a gold mine of simple recipes. I printed it out and plan to try a lot of them. Here’s a few that caught my eye:

1. Cube watermelon and combine with tomato chunks, basil and basic vinaigrette. You can substitute peach for the watermelon or the tomato (but not both, O.K.?). You can also add bacon or feta, but there goes the vegan-ness.

37. Cube smoked tofu, then brush it with a mixture of honey and orange juice; broil until browned. Toss with chopped cucumbers, radishes and peas or pea shoots; drizzle with soy sauce and lime juice.

28. Toss mâche or another soft green with toasted slivered almonds and roughly chopped fresh figs. Thin some almond butter with water and sherry vinegar to taste anduse as a dressing. Some will like this with fresh goat cheese.

84. Spring rolls, unrolled: One at a time, soften a few sheets of rice paper in warm water. Drain, pat dry, cut into strips and toss with chopped cucumber, grated carrots, chopped cilantro, bean sprouts, chili flakes and chopped roasted peanuts. Dress with toasted sesame oil, fish sauce or soy sauce, and rice vinegar or lime juice. A few shrimp are a nice addition.

44. Make a crisp grilled cheese sandwich, with good bread and not too much good cheese. Let it cool, then cut into croutons. Put them on anything, but especially tomato and basil salad. This you will do forever.

I bet I will, too. Oh NYTimes, you know me so well…

The above are ivy-shaped solar panels. They are being developed by Brooklyn based SMIT (Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology). They are designed to flutter on a house, thus collecting both wind AND solar power.

According to Inhabitat:

The Solar Ivy system is modular in nature and made up of ‘bricks’ of 5 leaves which may be scaled to any size necessary. A 4 x 7 foot strip of Solar Ivy is capable of generating 85 Watts of solar power. The advantage of this type of system is that it may be easily mounted on a vertical wall due to its light weight. Another ingenious attribute of Solar Ivy is that its light-sourcing leaves are not static, allowing them to move around and catch the sun from many directions. Due to the organic shape of each panel, they look and act like real leaves, providing a more authentic climbing ivy aesthetic.

Pretty neat! I can’t wait for some of these new solar technologies to come on the market. This one is actually kind of attractive. Here they are on a house:

The grocery store had a sale on Annie Chun’s Sushi Wraps, for making your own sushi. I was under the impression sushi was difficult to make, and now they had a kit to do it for $2.99? Ok, I would try it.

The kit came with surprisingly few things–a bowl of sticky rice, some rectangular sushi wraps, and a packet of soy sauce. The rice used a fancy-pants technology where you pull back the wrapper about a half inch and microwave it for a minute and somehow end up with pretty darn good sticky rice. After doing that, all you had to do was assemble the sushi.

I didn’t want to mess with raw fish, so I decided to go with vegetarian sushi. I got a cucumber and a zucchini and cut them into matchstick-sized slices. The instructions were a little vague, but it seemed that my task was to first spread the rice on the sushi wrap, like so:

And then put the vegetables in the center and roll the sushi. The instructions didn’t say how to roll, and it turned out to be difficult. I found that if I used a piece of plastic wrap to roll around the sushi, it stuck together better. Still, I couldn’t get the sushi tight enough that I could have it sitting up on the plate. I had to lay them on their side. (How do they get sushi to stay shut, anyway?)

In the end, I did end up with something vaguely sushi-like:

The bad: The sushi didn’t hold together, so I had to kind of squeeze it to eat it. Also, as mentioned, rolling was hard.

The good: The rice tasted right and had the correct texture, which helped a lot in pretending I was eating real sushi. I also had some wasabi in the fridge and mixed it with the soy sauce to add to the sushi experience. It was a surprisingly filling lunch for being all rice and vegetables, and I had that satisfied after-sushi feeling I get after eating real sushi. It was also better and fresher than supermarket sushi.

The verdict: Definitely fun to try, but not something I would get again.

I’ve talked a lot about my struggles with cat hair on here. An update on the situation: keeping the cats out of the bedroom has worked wonders–no more cat hair on the bed. We have a leather couch now, which has made it easier to clean up the cat hair that gets on it. Tennis balls do seem to work in the dryer for getting cat hair off clothes, and the microfiber glove does a pretty good job of finishing up the rest.

All and all, I’d say I’m 55% less inundated with cat hair than I was a year ago. Those are good odds, but I can’t help wishing it was more like 90%. Impossible without getting rid of the cats, you say? Maybe so. Still, my search for the perfect cat hair remover goes on.

Which brings me to the Pet Hair Magnet, which sells for $12.99 at major pet stores. It is being touted as a green alternative to lint sheets for getting cat hair off of things. Here’s what it looks like:

Apparently, it has ribbed rubber blades that pull up the cat hair for you, which you then rinse or wipe it away. It is a “greener” solution than lint rollers because you are not pulling sheet after sheet of sticky roller paper off and throwing it away, thus saving money and pressure on the landfill. While that’s nice and all, I have to point out that the microfiber glove is the same concept and costs half the price of the Pet Hair Magnet.

However, one advantage to this gadget I can see: because the surface is rubber and not microfiber, it might be easier to get the pet hair off the Pet Hair Magnet than the glove. With this, it sounds like it comes right off. With the glove, you have to push the hair off by working it in the direction of the fiber. And because I hate doing that, the Pet Hair Magnet is intriguing, indeed. But the real question is, how well does it work?

I like this idea from Instructables–an Anti-Boredom kit for waiting in lines, doctor’s offices, church, and other less-than-thrilling situations. It seems like it would be especially useful if you have kids. In the kit:

-Tiny deck of cards
-Small vile of touchable bubbles
-Two tubes of plastic bubbles
-Tiny colored pencils
-Note pad
-String for cats cradle
-Quarter to vend treats (a dollar fits nicely too for bigger treats)
-Balloon (for playing don’t touch the ground or keep away)

I am surprised all that fits in one Altoids tin! (Via Craft)

I recently discovered that Dwell has some house tours on its site, including this one by Parisian gallery director Didier Krzentowski. Their house looks luxurious–note the view of the Eiffel Tower in one picture–but also fun. I like seeing how people with large art collections put them on display. It’s harder than you think to balance so many bright colors and strong statements in a room.

Looks like Krzentowski has done it with lots of light, lots of whimsy, and lots of totally expensive/awesome designer pieces. Here is one room in the house:

The office portion

The living part of the room

Also the living room, with some sort of elaborate art installation (one that doesn’t look difficult to imitate for yourself, if you are so inclined).

See the rest of the slideshow here.

(Courtesy of Flickr)

I make a latte every morning. I’ve been doing this so long that I have been stumbling onto making latte art. Without really trying, I have started to be able to make some pretty ripples in the foam. It pleased me, so I decided to look up how other people do it.

It turns out I am pretty close to the technique–you sort of pour the milk into the bottom of the coffee and then lift it up and shake it through the surface to create the ripple. Here is a how-to on latte art. I also found a couple of little videos on the subject. Pretty cool stuff!

Heart

Tulip

Leaf

Big heart and leaf