No matter how many times we go through it, winter always seems to catch us by surprise—a chilly, costly, inconvenient surprise. Prepare yourself for the rest of this season with helpful and healthy projects, clever tricks, and energy savers.

Photo by Roby Ferrari.

10. Make your own lip balm

Sure, Blistex and all the other lip balms found at the checkout counter ...

Readers offer their best tips for creating your own personal telemarketer blacklist using Google Voice, defrosting the ice in your fridge and freezer, and making a healthy chocolate-like pudding.

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About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. G...

Digital cameras are fantastic for letting us experiment, take tons of photos, and search for the perfect shot. Digital picture frames and at-home prints are often poor substitutes for real photos. Get a great print at one of these five photo-printing sites.

Photo by Shermeee.

Once upon a time people took photos and dutifully carted their film down to the photo shop to get developed, waiting to see how the photos turned out. Now people immediately check whether or not the shot was good on the display of their digital camera, and more often than not stuff the photos onto their har...

Readers offer their best tips for keeping your mind off the pain while exercising, getting knots out of your back without someone else's help, and keeping a secret stash of greeting cards for forgotten occasions.

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About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tip...

If you've been sitting around all week wondering how you could combine smoke, speakers, and a love of novel physics experiments into an excuse to tinker in your workshop this weekend, building a smoke-shooting vortex cannon should cover everything nicely.

Over at Make, the DIY-centric magazine, they've put together a video tutorial on how to build your own vortex cannons. The first cannon is essentially a super size version of the DIY Airzooka we shared with you years ago—bigger is better! The second model they create however is powered not by an elastic m...