Soak Them

If your shoes are made of leather, spray the inside with a mix of rubbing alcohol and water. Wear them for about 20 to 30 minutes. This allows the shoes to mould to your natural foot shape.

Ice Them

To gradually expand and widen your shoes, fill them with bags of water and place them in the freezer overnight. Be sure the bags of water are secured from leakage.

Wear Them In

Wear thick soaks then wear your shoes in the house while doing chores or just lazying around. This way you get used to the feel of the shoe as it gradually moulds to your foot and you avoid blisters.

Heat Them Up

On a fairly high temperature, blow dry in and around your shoes to help them expand. Do this for a few minutes, really helps with leather shoes but be careful with flammable fabrics.

Ease Into Them

Instead of wearing your shoes for the whole day and risk getting blisters, wear them for shorter periods of time. So don't wear them to work, put them on for your dinner date which is a few hours vs a whole day. Be patient and soon you'll be able to run in them!

Know other ways to break in new shoes? Let us know below!

You will need

A box
Photo paper
Thin piece of metal like a can or brass shim
Black electrical tape
Xacto knife
Needle
Sand paper

Method

1. The pinhole is like the lens of the camera. Poke a tiny hole in the brass shim with a needle and sand it smooth. Trim the shim so there is a little space around the hole.
2. You can use a shoe box, oat meal box or whatever. The box must be light proof. When the lid is on and the shutter is closed the inside is completely dark. The only light comes through the pinhole. Make sure there are no holes or openings in the box. Seal it and paint it flat black. Cut a small square opening in the box for the pinhole to go in.
3. Tape the pinhole behind the square opening. Center the pinhole in the square. Then make the shutter which is just a flap that covers the pinhole from the outside. It can be made from some more tape.
4. This must be done in complete darkness. You can make a darkroom in a bathroom or closet and use it for developing and changing paper. Tape a piece of photo paper to the inside of the box across from the hole. Put lid on and make sure the shutter is closed. Now you can go out in the light.
5. Point the camera at what you want to shoot. It works best when it is bright and sunny. Depending on lighting and clouds hold shutter open for 30 seconds to 4 minutes then close. Everything has to stay perfectly still. Go back to the dark room and take paper out to develop.
6. You will need developer, fixer, water, tongs, towels, and a safe light in you dark room. It must be pitch black when safe light is off. You can use orange LED halloween lights as a safe light. It is cheaper and you get more light than a small red darkroom bulb.
7. The paper from the box will be a negative, to make the positive put another piece of photo paper under the developed negative face to face. The negative must be on top. Use a piece of glass to press them together and turn the lights on for a few seconds. Make sure your extra photo paper is safe and covered or it will all develop black. Now develop the positive. It goes in the developer then water then fixer then water then air dry.

For step-by-step images and article source, click here.
To learn more about photography at a college, click here.

What's Appropriate?

Understand your corporate culture, career, industry, etc. You don't want to dress your office desk up like your living room or bedroom. Sure, the point is to bring your personality to the office desk, however, there's a fine line between a personalised office desk and an inappropriate office desk. The key is to incorporate elements of your personality while still maintaining professionalism.

Functionality

Think of the stationery, files and documents you use often, make sure you have them closer to you than the rarely used items. Do a little clean up of what's used often and what's not. You can even place your stationery kit on the right-hand side if you're right-handed, just to be specific. Play around with all the other essentials on your desk to make it as functional as possible.

Matchy-Matchy

Pick a colour and style you want. Ok, so it may seem juvenile to have a colour-coordinated stationery kit and everything else on your desk following that colour scheme, but if you do it at home for feng shui reasons, then you can most certainly do it at your work desk. It's where you spend most of your day.

Framed Photos

Although it's a bit of a cliche, why not put some framed photos of your favourite people on your office desk? You can make it even more meaningful and choose a photo of a loved one who inspires you to work harder, makes your smile or someone you want to make proud – anything sentimental really.

Inspirational Quotes

Inspirational quotes do wonders for daily motivation to get your work done. Depending on your desk set-up you could make fun holders for your quotes or paste them somewhere you're guaranteed to see them whenever you need a bit of a push. You could even have the quotes in or on your notebook. Whatever you find most convenient and most helpful.

Colourful Calendar

A great addition to your desk is a colourful calendar on which to write your to-do list for the day, week and month. Use your colourful pens and pins, appeal to your inner child and make your workdays that much more interesting.

Add Some Greenery

Scientific studies have shown that having greenery in your workspace is beneficial and uplifting. Apparently, indoor plants can reduce carbon dioxide by about 10% in air-conditioned offices. Perch a small pot plant or succulent on your desk, don't forget to water it, and enjoy having a bit of nature in your workspace.

Mug Upgrade

Sure you could use the company mug but why blend in when you can stand out and let your personality shine through? Get your own mug that represents you. You're probably thinking it's just a mug but is it really? If your personality screams strong and alpha, do you really want to drink your coffee out of a puny teacup you have to keep refilling? Upgrade your mug!

Now, before you get planting your veggie garden, there are a number of basics that you need to know first – from soil preparation and planting, to seasons, weather, and watering habits. We’ll start from the very top and offer a few nifty tips along the way!

Prepare Your Soil

Firstly, you need to decide where you would like to place your veggie garden. Take a walk around your garden, look for a nice spot that has both shade and sunlight (depending on your plants' needs). Once you have found the perfect location, mark off where you want your beds to be.

Now it’s time to prepare your soil and pack it full of nutrients! This is a very important step, so keep reading. Dig out about 25cm of soil and put it aside (this is your topsoil), then dig out another 25cm of soil and keep it in a separate, second pile. Now, fill in the hole with organic material - such as manure, some dry leaves, cut grass, bone meal, wood chips, hay, etc. - and water it. Once that is done, you can replace the second batch of soil over the organic layer, then put the topsoil on top. To add more nutrients to the soil to feed your plants, top the soil with a thick layer of compost then rake it all neatly. And that’s the soil done!

Tip: For anything to grow, you need to have good quality soil that drains well. Too much water can drown your plants. To find out if you have the right soil, dig a 50cm hole, get the hosepipe and fill it with water. If there is still water at the bottom of the hole after about half an hour, then you have bad drainage. You can make the soil's drainage better by digging further into the hole and covering the bottom with some gravel and some soil.

What To Plant, When?

With the soil prepared, you now need to decide what you would love to plant in your veggie garden. You can plant whatever you like, just make sure you plant them in the right season or else they will not take. A good time to start planting a number of different vegetables is in the second half of the year, around about July and August. And, if you are feeling a little nervous about starting your own veggie garden and just want to get a feel for it first then plant easy-growing plants, such as green beans, carrots, tomatoes, bell peppers, peas and onions. Once you have those down, you can try your hand at other veggies!

Tip: When it comes to planting seeds, be sure to plant seeds at least three times its width into the ground. Also, to protect your plants and growing veggies from birds and rodents, place a chicken wire “cage” around your beds.

Watering Your Veggie Garden

To keep your veggie garden alive, you will definitely need to water it! Give it a good watering at least twice a week, or even three times a week if the weather has been extremely hot or if your soil is overly dry. If your plants wilt, then you may need to water them more often. Just be sure not to over-water your plants as you can end up drowning and killing them.

Tip: Soil must always feel damp, and if this is not, then put mulch over the soil. It will help stop moisture from evaporating.

What About The Pesky Bugs?

Along with the hobby of maintaining a veggie garden, is the problem of having pesky little critters destroying and damaging your plants! There are several options you can use in order to keep your plants healthy and bug-free. It’s a little more expensive but you can use organic insecticides and set up snail traps to keep the slimy creatures out.

Tip: You don't need to splurge on insecticides, there are many homemade alternatives that you can whip up yourself.

Feed Your Plants

When picking out fertiliser, your best bet is organic. But if you are looking to keep this hobby on a low budget, then you can easily just make your own fertiliser at home. All you will need is a plastic bag filled with manure. Fill an old dustbin or bucket with water, then place the bag in the water to soak and stew for about two weeks. After the two weeks, take the bag out of the water and store the fluid in the dustbin. When you need to fertilise your plants, use some of this fluid diluted with some water. It's that simple.

And now that you have all the tips and knowledge that you need, you can start growing your very own veggie garden! If you have any other tips or advice for fellow green thumbs, comment below! Happy gardening!