The Homegrown Cigar
Let me preface this by saying I don’t smoke. (Militantly so.) But I do have to understand how everything is made. So when I learned that the flowering tobacco I had […]
Category Archives: DIY
Old-Fashioned Birch Beer Soda
Scrape black birch and it smells like wintergreen. Boil it and you’ve got the basis for an old-fashioned Americana soda that’s somewhere in the root beer family.
Mint Hydrosol
Sometimes called floral waters, hydrosols are a very rudimentary eau de toilette. Or a different way to think about it: the beginner’s foray into essential oil extraction. Common uses for hydrosols […]
Apple Cider Vinegar
I go through a lot of apple cider vinegar. Like, a lot. But buying the good stuff was starting to add up, and I thought: Can’t I just make this myself? So […]
Pure Mint Extract
Extracts are one of those things where the moment you realize how simple they are to make, you kick yourself for ever thinking you needed to buy them. This example […]
Urban Farming: Vertical Tomatoes
Here in New York, a garden is a lot like a walk-in closet — most of us gave up praying for one ages ago. But for those of us hell-bent […]
Soap Rebatching
Soap rebatching: because sometimes s#!t happens. Why rebatch soap? Well, for any number of reasons. Maybe it cooled too quickly the first round and still needs a couple more hours. […]
Coffee Soap
I’m constantly on the lookout for new and exciting ways to cover my body in coffee. If you’ve got a half-finished pot, some spent grounds, and a basic understanding of safe soap-making […]
Homemade Organic Sunscreen
I have a confession: I frigging love the sun. As health-conscious as I try to be, I will happily run around outside all summer long until I turn a deep mahogany. […]
All-Natural Toothpaste
For many of us, toothpaste was our first foray into the world of DIY personal-care products. We glumped some wet baking soda onto a toothbrush and never looked back. Making […]
The Crunchy Urbanite 