Cole and Son’s Woods Wallpaper has shown up all over design sites as an example of a tasteful and graphically interesting wallpaper.

But at the steep price of $200 a roll, it isn’t something most of us can easily afford. So Katie from My Pencil Box took matters into her own hands. Her husband, a tattoo artist, sketched the birch trees on the walls and then Katie went over them with a magic marker.

The result looks great, maybe even better than this DIY branch wallpaper reproduction. A little elbow grease can save a lot of money sometimes. [Apartment Therapy]

I am reading At Home by Bill Bryson, a room-by-room history of the house. I’m not done with the book but I can already say that I recommend it. It is exhaustively researched and manages to cover great swaths of human history and facts I haven’t heard before.

For example, did you know that before modern lighting, the total amount of light in the average home at night would be equal to the amount of light you get when you open your refrigerator door? As Bryson said, “The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.”

One of the most interesting chapters in the book is the “Study” chapter, where Bryson talks about the pests that live in a house, including lice, mites, and bacteria. The information he gives about these creatures is perfectly timed with spring cleaning, which I’m about to start around here. Here are some tips I came up with:

Replace Your Pillows—By the time a pillow is six years old, about 1/10th of its weight is made up of dead skin, living and dead mites, and mite dung. Yuck

Turn Your Mattress—The average mattress is home to 2 million tiny bed mites. To counteract this, clean your mattress and flip it regularly—it will help the mattress to wear evenly and last longer, too.

Rethink the Cold Water Wash–The increase of body and head lice in this country may have to do with people washing their clothes in cold water–the cool temperature doesn’t kill the bugs. “If you wash lousy clothing in low temperature, all you get is cleaner lice,” Bryson quotes someone as saying. This is probably true with others bugs as well.

Use Kitchen Rags Only Once–“Most kitchen cloths are drenched in bacteria, and using them to wipe counters (or plates of breadboards or greasy china or any other surface) merely transfers microbes from one place to another, affording them new chances to breed and proliferate.”

Flush the Toilet With The Lid Down–When you flush with the lid up, “billions of microbes” spew into the air and float around, waiting for your to breathe them in or landing on your toothbrush.

Yeah. Pretty nasty stuff.

Here’s an interview with Bryson if you would like to know more about At Home.

(Image courtesy Watblog)

I work at home, so I always notice when telemarketers call. The worst are those automatic machines that call you over and over and then leave hang-up messages on your voice mail. If you ask me, those things should be banned, but in California at least, they are not.

The good news is that the law says you don’t have to be harassed by telemarketers. You can stop them from calling you by getting on the National Do Not Call List. Once you are on there, you can take steps to keep any telemarketer from calling you–even those automatic machines. Here’s how I do it:

1. Register for the Do Not Call List. It take five minutes of your time and is well worth it. Click here to do it now.

2. Wait 31 Days. Yes, it takes a month for your name to go on the list, so you have to endure the telemarketers in the meantime. The good news is, when the 30 days are up, many of the calls will cease automatically.

3. Note The Details of the Remaining Telemarketers. Put a pad of paper by the phone and note the name of the company, the phone number, and the date and time of the call. You need this information to file a complaint. Sometimes you have to be sneaky about this because they understand that if you don’t know who is calling, then they can keep calling you–strange but true. So talk to the person on the line as much as necessary to get this information.

4. Tell the Company To Stop Calling You. Finish the call by saying, “Put my number on your don’t-call list.” The law requires the company to comply with your request. They are not supposed to call you again for something like 10 years after you say this.

5. File A Complaint. You can also file a complaint with the FTC to keep companies from calling you. Personally, I do this a. if a company calls me after I have asked them not to and b. whenever I get called by an automatic machine. The complaint takes one minute of my time and seem to work. After filing a complaint, I never hear from that company again.

This system works well for me. I rarely get calls from telemarketers anymore, and when I do, filing a complaint takes care of it. The trick is to remain vigilant and attack the call the first time you get it.

Also, be careful who you give your phone number out to. I rarely give anyone my real phone number and I never give out my cell phone number. After all, they can’t call you if they can’t find you.

What are your tricks for getting rid of telemarketers?

The first time I flew by myself, the airline lost my luggage. Since then I have made a point to carry my suitcase on the plane as much as possible. It is more efficient, protects my belongings, and saves money now that airlines are charging fees for checking your baggage.

But while I always use a carry-on for shorter trips, for longer trips I am still forced to check my bags. However, now that I’ve seen this slideshow on how to get 10 days worth of clothes into one carry-on bag, that may be changing.

According to The New York Times, travel expert Heather Poole can get 10 days worth of clothes into one small bag. This includes “three pairs of shorts, three pairs of dress pants, one skirt, three pairs of casual pants or jeans, three nightgowns, three bathing suits, one sarong, three lightweight sweaters, four dresses, 10 casual shirts, six dress shirts, a clutch, toiletries and two pairs of shoes.”

Her method is to roll the clothes, like so:

Then she tightly layers the suitcase with the heavier clothes on the bottom, lighter clothes on top.

Everything fits in with no trouble. By contrast, here are the same items packed the usual way:

I am going to have to try this out.

Great tips on how to do things like tying your shoes or wrapping a cord faster. My husband has been doing the shirt folding trick for awhile now and it works great. Personally, I’m going to try the speed-peeling the potato and the cooking spray on nail polish tricks.

I wouldn’t recommend parking your car that way, however. [snotr]

In viewing Liv and Jeff’s house tour on Apartment Therapy, I was struck by this Dead Trees wallpaper they have put up in their dining room. It is designed by Geoff McFetridge and can be purchased here. A closer look:

I love the fanciful fairy-tale-esque nature of this wallpaper.

If not done right, this wallpaper could look too busy, but Jeff and Liv took the smart (and cheaper) option of breaking the wallpaper up through by only putting it on half the wall. Nicely done and worth the money, I think.

(Image courtesy Save on Crafts)

When wrapping Christmas presents this year, I will be reusing the bag of bows I bought at a thrift store five years ago. I’m curious to see how long it will last before I have to buy some more. But I confess, I have always wanted to be able to make those gorgeous floral bows you see on fancy gifts. Since I have some wire ribbon (my mom always calls it French ribbon) lying around, I decided to give it a try this year.

By learning this skill, you can make a nice topper anytime you want with just ribbon, a pair of scissors, and something to tie the bow off with. The bows can also go on banisters, wreaths, and even the tree itself. And you can reuse your loopy bow year after year simply by saving the ribbon.

Here’s a video going over how to make a loopy bow topper for a Christmas present. It goes through how to do a simple bow to a complicated multi-loop bow.

This lady shows another method for making a loopy bow for a gift that looks like it would work too:

Growing up, my parents always had a nativity set out at Christmas time. As an adult, I would like to continue this tradition, but most nativity sets are so tacky, you know? I don’t want to display porcelain dolls or badly carved figurines in my house. Maybe this is one of the reasons why so few young people put out nativities when they are decorating for the holidays–they often seem like something your Grandmother would display.

However, attractive nativity sets are out there. Here are some that I found:

Designer Valerie Atkisson makes these Nativity sets by laser cutting metal. “The two pieces connect in the middle, creating a cross, with the baby Jesus lying in his manager at the center, adored by Mary and Joseph, shepherds and animals, the three Kings and an angel.” $130-$280, depending on the metal you choose.

This Alessi Nativity set is a “contemporary spin on the Holy Family.” I’ll say! It comes in either red or white and costs $90.

This is probably my favorite, but to tell the truth, I am not sure if this German Nativity Set is still available. However, they have lots of other options on their website if it’s not.

Finally, this candle holder is maybe all the nativity set I need–and it’s easy to store. It costs £26.50 and looks like it can be shipped to the United States.

Apartment Therapy has a round up of inviting dining rooms, which is certainly timely since Thanksgiving is next week. Common things I notice in the rooms:

A chandelier over the table
Large windows
Table runners
Art on the walls

Which one is your favorite?

(Image via Ruche)

A friend of mine is moving and ran into a common problem for renters: she can’t paint her walls. What’s worse, her new place is full of very dark wood paneling. She is looking for a way to cover it up that doesn’t use paint or will put a lot of holes in the wall.

I remember this dilemma from my renting days. You have a wall in your house that you can’t stand to look at, but you can’t do anything about it. Hanging curtains over it doesn’t look good. Putting up shelving or hanging large paintings only partially covers it. What do you do?

I think I have found a solution: removable fabric wallpaper. You get yourself a fabric that you like enough to cover a wall with, dip it or spray it with a starch solution, and smooth it over the wall like wallpaper. When it comes time to take it down, you just peel the fabric right off the wall. It leaves no trace behind.

(Image via Apartment Therapy)

Not only does this solve the renter’s problem of not being able to paint the walls, it allows you to change things up when you get tired of looking at it. And covering a wall this way can be very inexpensive. I have read of some people doing this with muslin they bought for $.89/yard and a mixture of cornstarch and water. Apparently laundry starch also works well.

As for the type of fabric to use, they say lightweight cotton works best.

The downside of covering a wall with fabric is that it is labor intensive and messy. But it could be worth it not to have to look at that ugly wall anymore.

You can read more about how to put up your own fabric wallpaper here and here and here.

This method can also be used to make your own wall decals on the cheap. Here is the only video I could find that shows how to do it and actually has a nice result (although the girl in it is kind of awkward–sorry about that!):

If you have tried covering a wall up this way, how did it go?