Happy Lint

I walked into my room and proclaimed, "I have an idea for lint!"

My roommate thought I said, "I have an idea for Lent!"

Neither of these statements makes much sense.

My mother has always saved lint from the dryer and made it into fire starters. She stuffs lint into egg cartons, pours wax over it and you have compact cubes of lint to use in your fire. That's the first thing to learn about lint: it is incredibly flammable.

I knew that my mom was not the average mother; I didn't know anybody else who saved lint but I wasn't really bothered by it. Until this year when I first had to wash my clothes away from home. My room is conveniently located near the laundry room and I really don't mind doing wash.

One thing I do mind is throwing away anything that can be reused or recycled. After months of throwing lint into the trashcan, I decided that there had to be more to life.

There is. I discovered a whole host of ideas about what to use lint for. I'll share my favorite recipe with you:

Make Lint Clay!

• Cover 3 cups of lint with 2 cups of water in a saucepan.
• Slowly stir 1 cup of flour.
• Add a few drops of vegetable oil.
• Stir over low heat until the mixture binds together.
• Pour onto a sheet of wax, parchment, or newspaper to cool.
• After you're done molding it, the clay may take 3-7 days to dry.

You can just as easily make lint papier mache (which is very similar to clay, just use about 2/3 c flour), lint paper (just add lint to your paper pulp, it won't stand well on its own), lint animals (be careful, they're flammable!), and lint firestarters.

Most importantly, lint is compostable. So don't throw it in your trashcan! Put it outside, let it fertilize your garden or just compost in a corner of your garden or behind a bush. Hopefully we'll get the point that we all create more trash than we need to we'll make an effort to reduce unnecessary waste!

Have yourself a haircut!

I'm all about not spending money unless it's entirely necessary. I rarely go out to dinner/spend money on food unless it's a social engagement. I head straight to the clearance section of stores and usually check out with some awesome deals. And who would stay in a hotel when you could tent camp for less and for more fun?!

In keeping with this philosophy, I have probably had my hair professionally cut only 5 times in my life. Luckily, I grew up in a family who instilled in me such frugality and as a result, my mom cut my hair when I was younger. When I actually did go to professional hair appointments, the results were always nice, but no better than my mom's.

For the past two years, I have cut my own hair. It started one night when I had about 30 minutes before a required assembly, so that ended up being a pretty hasty job. Some of the girls from the dorm helped with the back and the bangs and together we had a fun time chopping it all off.

With that said, I haven't had any radical haircuts since then. I trim and shape whenever I have a bad hair day, which is more often than not. Today, however, I was really whining about my bangs, or lack thereof. I see them all the time on other people, and they look so cute, stylish and fun! After a bit of research, I found this site which gave me suggestions, as well as nice pictures for stylish bangs:

www.style-hair-magazine.com/short-bangs.html

I also wanted to take into consideration my face shape before going with a radical cut that might now complement my face shape. I found help on a Stylish Haircuts blog, which you should investigate before you take the scissors in hand.

After I had loosely decided on this style, I wanted a couple tips about cutting bangs because I didn't want to end up having to get them fixed professionally. Wikihow offered these tips:

1. Select area to be cut. Push hair on sides behind your ears, or pin back.
2. Decide how much of a bang you want to cut.
3. Use the outer edge of the eyebrows to determine where to stop.
4. Comb the desired amount of hair down.
5. Comb the desired amount of hair down.
6. Gather the desired bang hair to a point in the center of your face. (According to how long you want your bangs.) Example: If you want your bang length to be below your eyebrows, hold the hair at the bridge of the nose.
7. Hold hair securely with your non-dominant hand and cut using one snip at the desired length. (The twisting will allow for extra length that is being stretched while you are holding it, and also will give the ends a "wispy" look, with little effort.)
8. After cutting, the bangs will fall to the desired length, with the sides being slightly longer than the center.

Always remember to use a comb instead of just pinching hair between your fingers-it will allow for a more consistent cut! Other than that, a mirror might be helpful too. Take your time when snipping!