The Next Chapter in my Journey with Lyme Disease and How to Protect Your Yard with DIY Tick Tubes

              

It’s been a year since I announced to the world that I have Lyme Disease and multiple co infections (see my post here). It’s also May, which is Lyme Disease awareness month, so I decided to give a quick update about my very personal journey. 

Halloween Princess Costume: DIY Light Up Cinderella Carriage from a Wagon

With Halloween fast approaching I've got a great DIY to share today that's perfect for a little princess! Most little girls love dressing up as a princess and what princess doesn't need a carriage to make her outfit complete? This easy DIY turns an ordinary wagon into a beautiful carriage that you can use for years with any princess costume!

How to Make a Compost Bin from a $9 Garbage Can

Up next in my late summer garden series is how to make your own compost bin from a $9 garbage can! Super exciting, right!?

Breaking away from the Raised Garden Craze: Vegetable Garden with a Brick Border

Happy middle/late summer everyone! My next few posts are all about gardening! I know, I know I promised I was going to do a continuation of my window post but alas my DIY ADD strikes again so my window is on hold until after I share my new found love of growing my own healthy foods. Plus I had to get this gardening series in before the fall or I’d have to wait until next year and that just won't do. So yes, I'm super late posting this "should have been springtime" project but it literally took me forever to complete my garden because well, I’m a novice gardener and I did all the backbreaking work by myself at a slower than normal pace.

My New Adventure: the Rabbit Hole of Lyme Disease

This post has been on my mind a lot since I found out at a few short months ago that I have Lyme Disease and several tick related coinfections. After debating with myself about letting my readers know, I ultimately decided that yes, Thrifty Artsy Girl is more than just a blog about my DIY crafts, home improvements and the occasional recipe. I've put my heart and soul into this blog and if I can bring awareness about something so personal and it helps even just one person, then I need to share my new journey.

How to Clean and Season a Rusty Cast Iron Skillet

I'm sharing some cleaning hacks to the blog since I'm stuck at home during the quarantine and I've been busy deep cleaning my house. I'm sure most people who are also in their houses 24/7 are doing the same thing. The situation stinks, but on the bright side I'm getting so many projects done that have sat on the backburner for years.

How Painting With Water Has Taught My Family

As you all know I love art. The name of my blog is Thrifty Artsy Girl after all, and I'm always up to some kind of artsy project. I also love involving my toddler son, Jackson, in creating his own works of art. Hopefully he will love and appreciate art as much as both of his parents do.

Oops I did it again: How to Fix Your Cracked Cell Phone Screen

I have a problem. I'll admit it. I'm a clutz. I've broken three four iPhone screens and one Galaxy screen. *sigh* Wow does that look bad in writing.

The first time it happened I almost broke down and bawled like a baby. I thought I was going to have to buy a whole new phone! But my trusty Facebook friends reassured me there were "places" that fixed cracked cell phone screens. For around $100 my phone would be good as new again. 

What?! $100! That seemed kinda pricey to me.

Since Cory is a the biggest DIYer I know and he will try to do almost anything himself first, from plumbing, to electrical, to cars, and only if the task becomes too hard to handle (or if it blows up in his face) will he call the pros (in my case I always call on Cory). 

So naturally Cory would try to fix my broken iPhone screen and save me around $80-$90. 

Here she is in all her glory. I felt like I was going to cut my ear/fingertip off every time I used my phone. Although I must say the touchscreen still worked perfect!

This isn't going to be one of my typical tutorials, it's just good old fashioned advice with a whole bunch of pictures of the process. Here is our secret weapon to success: the ever informative Internet. Anyone can learn pretty much anything (except maybe brain surgery) from the Internet.  If I wrote my own tutorial on how to fix a cracked iPhone screen, it would pale in comparison to all the great ones out there on the good ol' internet.

YouTube and Google were Cory's teachers for this, among many a project. I recommend watching as many YouTube videos as you can stand about fixing your particular phone and googling any other problems that arise while you're repairing it. The first YouTube video I watched was my favorite because it featured a guy who fixed a broken iPhone 5c screen in less than five minutes.

Yes, less than five minutes to fix my phone. Obviously these companies are making bookoo bucks off of people who think they can't fix their own phone. To prove my point even more, I bought a screen with a digitizer and tools off eBay for less than $20. I spent less than $10 for my old iPhone 4 screen that Cory fixed for me long ago. Which by the way was wayyy harder to fix than the 5 since you have to take the entire phone apart from the back all the way to the front.

So that means these companies, who probably buy screens in bulk for maybe $15 a piece or less, and then fix a phone in 5 minutes, are making crazy amounts of money for hardly any time or effort.

So needless to say Cory would love to get into this lucrative business so if your cell phone screen is broken, you can email me and we'll set it all up. Just kidding!! Ha ha...not really, Ok, yes I am kidding.

Here's some pictures of Cory fixing my iPhone. You basically take some screws out, which are the tiniest screws in the world by the way, and then pop the screen off, then take more screws out, then remove the screen and digitizer, possibly more things that I'm forgetting like the camera, then you put the new screen on, test it, and then viola fixed phone! Except it didn't work out that way this time.

Don't mind Cory's "man hands". He's such a hard worker, that man o' mine.

When Cory went to "push" the new screen back into the frame the corner cracked. Bummer. But the screen was still a million percent better than before!!

 I used my phone like normal not really caring about the few little cracks, knowing I'd buy another screen someday to replace this one. But then my phone started acting crazy, like a ghost was controlling it, and I couldn't do anything to stop it except lock my phone. It wasn't all the time but it was really annoying when it happened. I'm pretty sure the "ghost" changed a bunch of notes into gibberish that I had in Evernote about Jackson's first steps...

So needless to say I got back on eBay and bought another screen. This time I bought a pink one. Hey, why not. I like pink and it makes my phone more personalized and worth more money if I ever decide to sell it. Who am I kidding, I'll probably break that sucker into a million pieces before I get a chance to sell it. I'm honest, what can I say.

Apparently my phone's ghost was friendly, I call him Casper, and stopped controlling my phone so much. So I went on with my busy life using my phone like always. Until one day I bent over to look at some hot wheels and my phone slipped from my butter fingers and completely busted the corner out. A bunch of pretty lines appeared on the screen. Darn, I didn't get so lucky this time and only the left side of my phone worked, and poorly at that. Also Casper was back with a vengeance.

I guess you never realize how much you need your phone until you can't use it. I could barely make phone calls, I couldn't text and I couldn't check my voicemail. My phone needed to be fixed NOW! So I (not so) patiently waited for Cory to have some spare time. I even kicked around fixing it myself. But I'm just not that confident in my techy skills and I knew Cory could do it so I waited.

My bestie Mel was kind enough to loan me her old Galaxy phone to use until my iPhone was repaired. As I was saying goodbye she jokingly called out, "Don't break my phone!" Not even two seconds later as her garage door closed behind me, Jackson wriggling in my arms, accidentally kicked the phone out of my hands and it landed face down on the driveway. Yep. Just my luck. The whole screen was a spiderweb of cracks.

Thank goodness her phone still worked perfect and it got me by until my phone was fixed. I now know I'm an iPhone lifer after using the android system for a week. It's just not for me, no offense to any android lovers.

Cory fixed my phone a few days later. Here's a picture of him working on it. You can see how teeny tiny the screws are. He used shot glasses to store them in so they wouldn't get lost.

Here's a pic of my brand spankin new pink phone!! I put some tempered glass on the new screen and a pink case and called it a day. A bright shiny day. I can't tell you how happy I am to have my phone back. In one piece. Now if I could just stop dropping it!! In the words of my co worker Chris, "You could encase your phone in cement and you'd still find a way to break it." I hope that isn't true this time...

Now that my phone is fixed Cory is going to try his hand at fixing Melissa's Galaxy. If he masters that he can fix his own cracked Galaxy(see picture above of him fixing my phone). See, I'm not the only one. I often wonder how many people out there have broken cell phone screens...

In my honest opinion I think anyone who is technically savvy can probably fix their broken cell phone screen and save lots of $$$. Cory has for me, three times now. So he's saved me around $300!! He's either an amateur techy genius or it's just not the most difficult task to fix a cracked iPhone screen with a video tutorial. I'm going with both on that one folks. I'm too chicken to try it myself but if it can be done in less than 5 minutes by a youTuber then a novice can do it too, it just might take them three hours.

-Sherri

Hometalk- the new Pinterest?

I first discovered Hometalk by opening a link in Pinterest. The first couple times it happened I just closed the link thinking: What is this?! Some kind of spam? When it happened a third time I started looking around the site.

I immediately loved it! So much like Pinterest but yet so different at the same time! Real people post and discuss projects they have done and DIY issues they want help with. No recipes, jokes or baby stuff, just simply, home talk.

Don't get me wrong I still LOVE Pinterest (I could easily blow half a day on there). It has always been my go to for inspiration DIY. So, so many of my projects have been influenced because of an awesome Pin!

Now Hometalk is a GREAT additional go to for all things DIY for me!

I do feel like Hometalk is so much more personal than Pinterest though. With Pinterest you just pin stuff you like and it may or may not link to a blog or website with a tutorial. Some of the Pins are dead ends or linked to stores like Etsy, which is fine, you just have to figure out your own way to make things if you're trying to DIY instead of buying a product.

With Hometalk you can not only see the finished product/project but you can talk to the maker. Usually there is a step by step tutorial right there or you can click on a link to a blog or site and find more info. You can also ask the maker questions or let them know you like what they did.

Not only is Hometalk a great place to get home improvement ideas, but it's a great place to inspire others! I posted a couple of projects on Hometalk and got such great responses it was one of my main motivations to start this blog.

Hometalk has definitely helped my blogging experience, they have featured a couple of my projects: my owl artwork and my heart wreath. This week they are featuring one of my boards: kids wall décor. This board has given me tons of new ideas for decorating Jackson's room!

If you are a Pinterest fan (who isn't?!) and you have yet to check out Hometalk, just click on the picture of my board below and take a look around!

As Hometalk would say: Happy Hometalking! Hope you find something that will inspire you!

 

To Blog or Not to Blog

So I sat here staring at the screen for a while and then I thought, just go for it, dive in, head first.

I debated with myself on starting a blog.

A LOT

I went back and forth: