Change the Orientation of Your Rubber Gloves

For some reason, my right hand rubber gloves always seem to be the first that develop a leak. Being a right handed person, I guess that I must use my right hand a lot more. I even tried to balance the use of my hands as an experiment to see if I can get the two sides to wear out at the same rate but that did not produce any improvement. The right one always go first. Being a person with conservation in mind, I kept the good gloves when I switch to a new pair. Guess it would be cool if you have a partner that is a left handed person that you can swap with. Unfortunately, we are both right-handed.  Our left hand collection of rubber gloves became so large that I was given an ultimatum to go do something about it or else all my saved gloves go to be recycled.

In desperation, I looked at the box of gloves and an interesting idea came to me. What if I flipped a glove over? Don’t I get a right hand glove then. Well, it worked. The left hand glove turned into a right hand glove. Now I have a box full of semi new gloves to use. Problem solved!!!

Running Shoes Repair

Ever since I was young, I’ve noticed that the heels of my shoes wear out much faster than the other parts. They always wear out at the same spot, and I’ve found that I am not alone. It seems that many people have the same problem. The location may be different for each person, but there is always that one spot that is worn out before the rest of the shoes.

Make Your Own Chinese Laterns

When we were growing up in Macao, my grandfather used to buy each of us a lantern for the Mid-Autumn festival. There were lanterns in the shapes of different fruits and animals. I’m not sure if people still make make and sell lanterns like that in Macao today. Here in the US, my friend Wai and I came up with a way to make lanterns for our kids. It is a lot of fun; we get the kids involved, and we make some pretty nice looking lanterns every year.

Spicy Cucumber Chicken Salad

The Spicy Cucumber Chicken Salad is a good dish to have on a hot summer day - or any other time when you don’t want to do a lot of cooking but still want to eat a healthy, tasty dish. This is also one of our favourite things to bring to parties.

Upgrade Your Fruit Tree

If you have fruit trees but never get the quality of fruit that you can buy from the market, maybe you should use grafting to upgrade your fruit trees. I had always thought that the reason why the apples and cherries from my tress were sour and small was because I did not fertilize them enough. I tried fertilizing, watering and tending to them obsessively, but I still didn’t get much improvement.

Then I found out from a friend about grafting. He lives in northern California and has a small backyard, but was able to bring us different varieties of high quality fruits. It turns out that he started grafting different fruit trees about 15 years ago and has collected many different types of fruit, many of them exotic. It helps that he is a volunteer for a plant preservation society in Stanford. He can readily get scions (branches for grafting) of all types.

Protector for Your MP3 Player

Why are these ear buds plugged into the Altoids box? Well it turns out that said Altoids box is just the right size to become a protector for the Sansa e200R Rhapsody MP3 player.

It all started when my daughter had a cracked screen on her MP3 player. She likes to carry the player around anywhere she goes. Who doesn’t, right? Well, she is generally very careful about not carrying any sharp objects in the same pocket as the MP3 player. But between the tight jeans and probably the ear buds, what happened was probably inevitable.

Water-proof Purse from Recycled Plastic Grocery Bags

Preservation of the environment is on everybody’s mind these days. With a little bit of work, one can create different attractive and practical items out of plastic bags. The plastic bags are cut and strung together to make strong and colorful “yarns”.

These are crocheted into bags, mats, and many other things. It seems that these plastic strips can be very strong, water resistant, and can form very interesting color patterns just as you can do with other yarn.

Here is an example of the kind of purse that can be created.

Pebble Bugs

With a little bit of imagination and a set of Sharpie markers, one can turn a simple pebble into a colourful bug. The key is to pick a pebble with the right shape and size. Wash the pebble of any dirt and mud and dry it well. Then colour as desired. Permanent markers such as Sharpie work the best. The white areas for the eyes can be painted on with “White Out” solution. “White Out” is best to use since it dries quickly and is water resistant so other colours can be applied on top of it. However, smaller children should be careful when using “White Out”.

Here is an example of a couple of bugs that can be made. The one on the left is a simple bug with minimum colour applied. The right is covered with brighter colours. For older kids, it would be good to get some pictures of actual bugs and colour the pebbles to make them look like the bugs in the picture. It is also possible to make a family of bugs all with the same colours and/or design. One can also develop some signature colour schemes to generate unique species of bugs.

To get started you can find all the materials at any crafts store. The materials are not really special. The pebbles should be about 1 inch long in size and oblong in shape. Making Pebble Bugs can be a good activity for birthday parties and get-togethers with many children. Painting the pebbles keeps the kids entertained and at the same time allows them to express their creativity.