Here’s a few things that I’ve found to be helpful.
In my opinion, most zippers are a bit pricey. I don’t mind so much if I’m buying a specific zipper to match fabric to make a piece of clothing, special projects or home decor type stuff, however, there’s some craft projects that need a zipper and I’d rather not sink a lot of money in them. After thinking about the problem awhile, I figured out an inexpensive way to buy zippers . I buy the really cheap zipper bags and take the zippers out of them. When I want to use the zippers, I can cut them to whatever length I need. The bags in the photo were a dollar each. The smaller one has 2 in it, so I got two 16 inch zippers for a dollar. The other 2 bags are of really long and extra long lengths, I don’t know their exact lengths, I haven’t disassembled the bags yet to measure them. These zippers probably won’t last in a heavy duty project like jeans or sleeping bags… and then again I could be wrong and they might hold up well. This is a relatively new idea of mine and I haven’t used them yet. But even so, I think it’s a good idea anyway. (as for the plastic part of the bags, I fold it neatly and store it away because I hope to find some uses for it too someday)
Here’s an idea for an inexpensive and small heavy duty hand-fan (duel duty if you want). It’s a small cutting board. lol I discovered what a great fan it made, when a hot-flash hit and it was the smallest lightest weight thing in my reach that I could use to wave in the air and help cool me off. lol Seriously, though, you can’t tell it from the photo, but it’s not very big. The handle is a nice advantage; it’s light weight enough to tote around the house or take outside or most anywhere.
I bought these ‘Incredible Hooks’ at a dollar store. You may have seen commercials for hooks like them. You may have wondered if they’re as easy to use and handy as the commercials say. I’m here to tell you that they most definitely work for me in drywall (Sheetrock). I love the ease of putting them where I want and removing them if I want too. I was truly surprised these work. These are great. There’s 20 in the pack and I haven’t needed to buy anymore, but I won’t hesitate to buy more if/when I run out.
I usually have several projects going at the same time. I find it’s handy to keep them in 2 gallon Ziploc bags with their supplies. This makes them easy to pick up and take with me to work on them most anywhere. I use much bigger plastic bags for my crochet blanket projects. Keeping the projects in plastic bags helps keep them cleaner too.
I hope one of these ideas may be helpful to you or may spark an idea for you to build on.
Wishing you all a great rest of the week!
🙂
We had another good harvest of squash and beans. I figure we’ll get one more squash harvest about half this size. Right now I have more squash than Carter’s 
As for the beans, we put up a couple dozen quarts. We have enough to do through the winter. We don’t plan on picking any more beans. We figure it’d be stupid to let the plants stay and get completely infested with bean beetles, so my husband pulled up all the bean plants and tossed them away.
My dahlias are blooming real pretty.
If you look to the left of the dahlias you can see a volunteer cherry tomato plant. It already has several tomatoes on it. I can hardly wait for them ripen.
A lot of the flowers in my husband’s 
You’ll notice that there’s sparse spots where the Gerber daisies are. The rabbits and squirrels have been hard on them.
On a final note, our walnut tree is loaded with walnuts. It looks like it’s going to be a bumper crop year. We don’t use the walnuts for anything, but it’s still a joy to watch them grow. We leave them for the squirrels to eat or store for the winter. There’s been many times we’ve watched 
Our weekend didn’t really start off on a positive note. We had an invasion of tiny sugar ants. Oh my them buggers were into everything. We cleared out everything from the cabinets and cleaned out all the ants we could catch with our clorox wipes. We then sprinkled Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth in the cabinets to keep the ants controlled until we were able to get to the store and buy some bug spray. We vacuumed up the DE and my husband gave the cabinets a good spraying. We let them set for a couple of days. Until yesterday, my counter tops and dining room table was crowded with the contents from the lower cabinets and it was a relief to finally be able to put the stuff back in the cabinets. I used a bottom half of a shoe box to make it easier to tote more stuff at once back to the cabinets. When we were done. I left the box in the floor with the intention of tossing it away later.
On the bright side, We were blessed with a gorgeous weekend. The blue sky was filled with clouds and contrails and sometimes nothing at all. The temps were really nice and allowed us to spend more time outside than normal. The 4th we sat out and watched fireworks from the surrounding neighborhoods. Oddly there was a chill in the air and we had to wear our heavy jackets. I don’t think I remember a night so cold in July before. It was an enjoyable evening just the same.
The resident wild life was in their best element this weekend. I was right about the Doe that I mentioned in an 
I saw one of the garden bunnies sitting near the garden. I thought something was wrong with it’s head, it’s cheek looked really swollen. I clicked off a few photos and hurriedly loaded them on my pc to see what was wrong with the bunny. Well, it had a big mouth of grass and so explains the puffy cheeks. lol
One of the local male hummingbirds lit in our pear tree. He stayed still just long enough for me to click off one photo. Luckily it’s turned out okay enough to post on my blog.
And last but not least, we had a surprise visit from 
Joys Of Creating 