Wood utensils aren't too difficult to care for. but over time however, even the best wooden spoons, bowls, cutting boards, and even furniture like desks and chairs start to show their age. Thankfully you can bring them back to life with this recipe for "wood butter," which is essentially a canned mix of beeswax and mineral oil. Keep it in a jar or form it into bars and apply to any wood utensil you own that needs a little restoration.

Over at Creative Culinary, this recipe for a huge batch of wood butter calls for 8 ounces of pure beeswax (they reccomend beeswax pellets, available at Amazon) and 32 ounces of mineral oil. Melt your beeswax in a container sitting in boiling water, and warm up the mineral oil just a bit so it'll mix. Then mix the two together, pour into jars or molds, and set aside to cool and set up. Your final product, once cool and firm, will be soft enough that you can rub it onto your wooden utensils and cutting boards, or even scratched up chair legs and furniture. Plus, the application will give them all a good, healthy shine and help protect them from further wear and tear.

We've discussed how mineral oil is essential to good care for your cutting boards (and Alton Brown agrees), but the addition of beeswax gives you a nice solid that moisturizes and coats at the same time. What do you think? Many of the commenters at Creative Culinary propose making wood butter, putting it in jars, and giving it away with artisan cutting boards. Worth a shot? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Wood Butter Helps Renew Wood Utensils and Bowls | Creative Culinary

A lot of electronics use up power even when they're turned off and that wastes energy. The easy fix for this is to simply flip off a power strip, but if you want to root out and identify the source, Popular Mechanics shows you how to build your own Electromagnetic Interface (EMI) detector.

According to Popular Mechanics, standby power adds as much as 10 percent to your electric bill. Their DIY build should cost around $42 and is pretty easy to make yourself. You only need an Arduino, a USB cable, a small speaker, a resistor, breadboard, insulated wire, a 9-volt battery and pack, and a wire stripper. When you're finished with the build you walk around the house with the Arduino and it will make a loud, fast noise when high levels of electromagnetic interference are detected. Yes, it's a bit more complex than just flipping off your power strips, but you'll be able to root out the true power suckers in your house. Hit up the post on Popular Mechanics for a full guide and the Arduino source code.

Build Your Own Electromagnetic Interface Detector | Popular Mechanics

A good carabiner or s-biner makes a great keychain—it can clip to your belt or your bag so you never lose it, and you can keep more than one ring of keys on it if you have to. Plus, it hangs up nicely on hooks or magnetic holders with no fuss. Evem so, Instructables user elplatt lost a keyfob from one because the carabiner latch came open one day. Committed to never let that happen again, he grabbed some heat shrink tubing, a heat gun, and went to work.

Full disclosure: I keep my keys on an s-biner as well—it's not climbing grade, and it doesn't have the twist-lock that you'll find on climber's carabiners, but I have had the latch one one side pop open at the wrong time, leading me to pull out my keys only to find one of the rings—and the keys attached—still in my pocket. This hack fixes all of that. Elplatt slipped some heat shrink tubing around the top of his s-biner, closed it, and slid the tubing down over the latch. Then, with a heat gun, he shank the tubing so it would keep the latch shut. That's all there is to it—no more lost keys or slipped rings.

Admittedly, you lose some of the benefit of having a carabiner or s-biner with this trick, since part of the beauty is how easy it is to add new rings, but if you have all the keys you're going to get, this is a great way to keep them all secure. Plus, if you ever need to take a whole ring off, heat shrink tubing is cheap enough to replace, and easily cut off so you can open the latch. What do you think? Have a better solution (because personally, I'd love to hear it too)? Sound off in the comments below.

Carabiner Keychain Mod: Stop Dropping Your Keys | Instructables

Syrup for pancakes and waffles at the grocery store can get pretty expensive by the bottle for something that's caramel color, corn syrup, and a few stabilizers and additives. There's no reason to buy it, even if you like the flavor—making your own at home is easy, gets you more syrup for the cost of your ingredients, and with this recipe, you can even doctor it up a bit to make a delicious breakfast treat.

If you like the sweeter, smoother taste of sugar syrup, you can make your own at home that tastes just like the stuff you'll at the grocery store with some sugar, molasses, water, vanilla extract, and a dash of maple syrup. The full recipe from the folks at Savvy Housekeeping is at the link below, but even though it looks like a lot of ingredients to buy just to make pancake syrup, they're all good items to keep in a well-stocked pantry anyway. You could even swap out the vanilla for almond or hazelnut extract to change up the flavor. The real kicker though is the dash of vodka that they suggest for the recipe. It's supposed to extend the shelf-life of the syrup, but if you prefer your syrup completely booze-free, you can omit it.

Granted, part of me wants to suggest you give up syrup entirely and go all maple syrup or go home, but there's always room for options. Plus, Savvy Housekeeping points out that we may be looking at a maple syrup shortage soon, so it's time to get creative. What do you think? Too much fuss for something you can get off the shelf? How would you improve the recipe? Let's hear it in the comments below.

Make Your Own Pancake Syrup | Savvy Housekeeping

Photo by aaron vazquez.