Custom calendar

Recently I started working out regularly and to help with motivation I decided I want to mark my workouts in a calendar. So I needed a simple calendar with enough room.
I thought I would have to do everything manually in photoshop (which would have taken me hours and hours), but! Luckily I have a friend named Google who I can turn to in these situations :D
And Google didn't disappoint! Right away I found this great site: https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/
(Click on More Options -> Advanced Customization)
Took me only about 15 minutes to get everything the way I wanted. Ohh how I love the Internet for always having what I need!

Smartphone 3D hologram

So there's this video called Make your own 3d hologram projector using CD case & smartphone
(I know it was uploaded a year ago but... But I just found it only now)
Seems like a super easy and quick project to do, right. Right? HECK NO!!
1. The template wasn't the right size for printing, had to zoom in and out until it was big enough but not too big
2. Cutting a CD case is NOT easy at all!! I gave up after it broke right away so I asked my mother to try one (also broke but we were able to save it)
3.  Gluing it together with super glue is not possible!! It all fell apart all the time and eventually the glue got everywhere so the plastic wasn't even transparent anymore.

But yes, after replacing the super glue with a glue gun, we did finally get it all glued together and luckily it did work! And I have to admit, it does look cool!

Cat tree out of cable spools

I admit that I'm a crazy cat person. And it even rubbed off on my mother - there was some renovation going on at her workplace and when she saw some empty cable spools lying around, she immediately thought that we could make a cat tree out of them!

I actually had a store-bought cat tree which my cats loved. It cost about 200€. It lasted for about two years - then it got very wobbly, the fabric started ripping and the wooden parts were breaking.
Even after I tried to fix it, it looked like this:

Anyway... I took it apart and thought I could use some parts of it (like the rope) to make a new cat tree out of those cable spools. And then... I waited 7 months for inspiration :D
It took a while but finally it was ready:

Although cats like it (especially the long scratching part), I think it's not worth the effort. Doesn't look very nice and it was also very very wobbly so I had to screw it to the wall - which means I can't move it around.
I'll just save up money and buy a normal one when this one breaks.

Compost hole

A little while after we moved from an apartment to a house, it started feeling wrong when I would throw away biodegradable stuff (like potato peels and cat litter) in the regular trash bin. And since we have a large part of our yard that we don't use, I decided to make a compost hole there.
And it works pretty well!
The first one I made lasted for 7 months

So now I dug another one, just bigger. Took me a couple hours.

 

I was actually a little worried my neighbors would call the police... because it does look like a grave more than anything else :D

Cat house out of fruit crates

I have three cats. And I'm a very light sleeper. Which means that I have to put the cats away for the night (otherwise they start running around like crazy when I turn the lights off). So at night they live in the bathroom. But we have heated floors there so I can't just put down a box or a soft house for them to sleep in.
So what did I come up with?
I walked around the house... And outside... And then in the garage (which I use to store stuff I don't need but don't want to throw away either), where I found these fruit crates!
I painted them white and made... kind of a bunk bed (flipped the first crate upside down so there's minimal contact with the floor and it won't overheat).

 

Easy! 

But the scariest part was yet to come. Will the cats use it?? Cats are known to ignore human effort and choose some random place to sleep in instead (one of my cats sleeps in the sink...).
But I was lucky this time and they use it every night!

Small Christmas gift boxes

This year we thought of a bunch of small gifts to give to the family so I searched for a bit and found some interesting box templates on the internet. And then I found some awesome Photoshop designs from Deviantart user roula33. So I merged the two and here's the result.

Even for me it was very easy to assemble them (after going over the lines with a ruler and scissors) and the only thing that didn't go as planned was printing - my printer didn't like the thicker paper and I had to persuade him to print (reload the paper) 2-5 times for each paper...

Here are the templates if you would like to make some gift boxes yourself:

Squirrel feeder

I love squirrels. So I decided I need to make a feeder for them, which the birds won't empty within a day (a lot of birds here).
I found this picture which inspired me:

To get to the nuts, the lid has to be lifted, so that would mean the birds won't be able to get in there. 

I'm not good with woodwork and don't have the tools for it so I just looked around my drawers full of "maybe I'll need it later" stuff and found this tea box. 

To make the lid and the "window" (honestly I have no idea if it's for squirrels or for me) I used a plastic ice cream container. 

Here's what it came out like

So far I haven't see any squirrels, but there are generally not a lot of them here, I have only seen them in our yard a couple times. So I hope if they decide to visit us again sometime, they'll find the nuts and start coming here more often. I hope the feeder won't fall apart until then... :)

EDIT:  It's been almost a year, no squirrels and the feeder started getting moldy so I sent it to squirrel-feeder-heaven