I learned a neat trick from Carla Emery's book The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 10th Edition (I highly recommend this book by the way, it is great!) regarding "up-cycling" glass bottles. If you have beer or wine bottles, even soy sauce bottles, cocktail sauce bottles, steak sauce bottles, or glass olive oil bottles, save them and try this neat project. Carla Emery says in her book: Old-timers made narrow-necked wine bottles into preserve holders by tying strings soaked in kerosene around the shoulders. Then they set the strings on fire. That cracked the necks so they could be knocked off and the edges filed smooth. The bottles were washed and sterilized, the hot jam poured in--and then the bottles were sealed with paraffin. You let your jelly set up (jell) and cool clear down first, before you added the paraffin. I thought this sounded neat, so I decided to try it. What I did was: Soaked the bottle in warm water to remove the labels....
From deodorant and ketchup, to raising chickens and composting.