Tag Archives: recycling

New Life For A Butter Tub

by Adel Posted on July 7, 2011

We baked again recently. It has been a few weeks since we did any baking so my sweet toothed Rex was getting withdrawals from his cookie dough.

He’s always taking over something new in the baking process. Today he got to handle the mixer all by himself!

Whenever we bake chocolate chip cookies we always have way too much of it. Since we were invited over for a bbq party the next day I figured we could package up some for our hosts.

Now to dive into my growing supply of used containers. I decided to give new life to this former butter tub and yogurt container.

What I love the most about doing stuff like this is that it doubles as a craft for the little guy and keeps him busy for a little while.

I tore up som craft paper and set him up with glue and a brush.

After he was done covering as much as he could, I finished it up by trimming the edges and sealing everything with some Mod Podge.

I found some tissue in our gift wrapping stash and used it to line and nest the cookies in

I taped up the edges with some yellow vinyl tape, tied a ribbon around it and made a flower from a napkin for the top.

And there you have it. A home made gift to bring your host that doubled as a craft for your 5yo.

Posted in Crafts | Tagged cookies, recycling | Leave a comment

I found this idea browsing the Pinterest boards one day. I just HAD to find me an old printer’s tray after that. I looked on Craigslist and Ebay. Nothing on CL and all the printer’s trays on Ebay were upwards of $45 + shipping! I was so disappointed and put the idea on the backburner for awhile. Well this past Sunday while browsing the Alemany Flea Market, guess what I found?

This gorgeously framed mirror! Isn’t it beautiful??

Haha… well besides that I also stumbled upon this old printer’s tray!! When the guy told me he wanted $15 from him I almost gave him a hug and told him I’d take it for $20! Ha! But the old chinese lady in me kept my cool, asked if he would take $10 for it and when he said he’d do it for $13 I couldn’t hold back any longer. I gave him the money, grabbed the tray (well had Grizz grab it) and skipped happily away! I was SO HAPPY I found one for $13!!!

As soon as we got home I gathered the supplies and began prepping for the project. Of course I kept my Rex as involved as I could since this was going to be his. He picked the colors (we already had spray paint on hand) he wanted and waited very impatiently for me to take these TWO pictures!

He helped me tape the side and frame with painting tape since we were going to paint it a different color. And daddy helped us hammer in the lose nails.

We used my mother’s day gift (a HUGE roll of heavyweight paper Grizz found laying on the street – he thinks it fell off a truck – that he thought I’d love so he pulled over, got out and ran into oncoming traffic to pick it up. He was right. I LOVE it! Mostly because it was FREE!) to line the garage floor before we painted.

As much as I wanted to let him spray the red paint on, he just was not old enough to manage it yet. So mama did the spray painting. I did a total of 2 coats and let it dry overnight. The next day he helped me peel off the blue tape and we got to work on the next step.

He wanted the border to be black so he helped me paint the sides while I did the top edges. He was great at it. So careful and meticulous as always.

The one coat was definitely not enough. So we let it dry yet one more night and we came back and coated it again the next day. I finished it with clear acrylic spray and let it dry one final night.

And here is the finished piece. I just LOVE it!

He only wanted his Star Wars minifigs in the display for some reason. Don’t they look happy in there?

He was just as pleased with it as his mama. I love that he was part of creating it.

For now we have mounted it in his Lego area in the living room. But when he gets his own room come August it’ll be part of his Star Wars themed bedroom we’ll be creating.

Posted in Crafts | Tagged lego, paint, printers tray, recycling, star wars | 4 Comments

Going Greener

by Adel Posted on April 22, 2011

We use SO MUCH ziplock bags in our house. It seems we’re constantly stocking up on them at Costco. I figured it would be a good idea to at least try and cut down on our use of plastics by making some reusable snack sacks out of oilcloth.

I ordered a couple of yards of oilcloth online, cut them out following this tutorial and hot glued the seams together (i don’t own a sewing machine). I think they’ll hold pretty well as long as we don’t put anything too heavy in it. I used velcro to seal them instead of sewing buttons.

Check it out! I decided to use Giants colors to celebrate the new season as world champions

And for days when I pack him several sacks to take to school, I stuck on chalkboard vinyl so I could label what was in each one! Yeah, I know, I’m on a chalkboard craze right now

Posted in Crafts | Tagged chalkboard vinyl, oilcloth, recycling, snack bags | 4 Comments

Organizing The Junk Drawer

by Adel Posted on April 9, 2011

Since I had pulled out a bunch of odds and ends from our junk drawer to fill the labeled magnetic tins, I decided I had to finish the job and get that drawer organized. I cut up an Amazon shipping box, wrapped up the pieces in some colorful scrap paper, taped them up with my tape gun and voila -

Instant drawer dividers! A little sloppy but quite functional.

Seriously, I’m mostly so pleased with myself because I know I saved about $50 I would have spent on a trip to Target!

Posted in Crafts | Tagged junk drawer, kitchen, organizing, recycling | Leave a comment

Chalkboard Paint Labels

by Adel Posted on April 7, 2011

I’ve been wanting to play with chalkboard paint for awhile now. I picked up a small quart at the hardware store along with some liquid chalk markers and got busy!

Dan had bought these magnetic Ikea tins for me years ago. I’d used them for spices but really disliked that they were difficult to pour out of. So I cleaned them all out. I filled them instead with odds and ends from our junk drawer, painted and labeled them!

This bottle used to be filled with Ice Tea VODKA! (yuck!) – my niece swears it’s delicious! Well the bottle at least was too pretty to throw away so now it’s my olive oil dispenser.

I love that the chalkboard labels make it versatile for me to change contents of a bottle/tin whenever I want

Posted in Crafts | Tagged chalkboard paint, kitchen, organizing, recycling | Leave a comment

Recycling Bottle Caps

by Adel Posted on April 4, 2011

The niece had some beer-drinking friends over to watch the Giants game recently. The next morning when I found the bottle caps, I figured I’d use them for something crafty. I’d purchased some Mod Podge Dimensional Magic for another little project not too long ago and liked the results so I wanted to use it again.

I’ve gotten a little tired of the mess on our refrigerator door. For years I’ve just thrown whatever current photo or card that I did not have a place for on its door. After a while it just became an eyesore. Cute pictures but so messy it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. I took all the junk off the door and printed current photos of the family, framed them in the bottle caps and finished them with the Mod Podge. I’m much happier with the neater, more uniformed look.