Use What You Have

I don't know if you have noticed, but one of my favorite things to do in the whole world is to "use what I have" to make something new. In other words, I really like to recycle.

Currently, if you were to come over for a tall glass of water, or some yummy pink lemonade, you would drink out of recycled sauce jars. That's right we use glass jars for our drinking glasses. Nothing really outstanding about that, people have been doing that for years. Some might think that looks "ghetto" and to them I would say, in a very mature fashion..."You're ghetto!"

Another thing we recycled recently were some old cabinet doors. We took these cabinet doors that had a perfect square in the middle and painted that square with chalk paint. Then we decorated the outside border with craft paper and modge podge glue and, Wha-lah! Christmas gifts for the whole family :) Cause everyone needs their own chalk board.

I love to recycle old picture frames and use them to put my favorite quotes in them. The one pictured below was a frame that was outside of my favorite thrift store, sitting on top of the trash can. The people who bought it obviously took what they needed from it and left it there to die. I rescued the frame and put this quote in it; "Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now, and make a brand new ending."

What makes me really happy is that my children have taken this "use what you have principle" and have come up with some of their own favorite things to recycle. The picture below is a city scape of Seattle that Solomon made out of the cardboard that came with some gadget. He gave this masterpiece away to a friend, and well... I was a little jealous, cause I wanted it for my recycled collection.

I guess somehow he picked up generosity as well. Dag-nab-it! I mean whoo hoo!

I am determined learn how to build with all the scrap wood we have around this place, because the possibilities are endless. My Giant built a whole fence from the trees and branches around here. Solomon built his tree house from scrap wood. And I have so many pins, on pinterest... so many pins... so little time for future items I want to keep this trend going with.

To share with you how giddy I get when we are able to use everything that we have for something else is what I am trying to express here.
William Morris famously instructed that you should “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

That, and I hope to redeem myself in the Hippie department. In case after this post;
Hippie Wanna Be you were beginning to doubt that I really do have an ounce or two of hippie in me.
Well, now ya know I do :)