Throughout the years, my husband and I have inherited some interesting pieces of furnture. None of them would be considered antiques, and some are just hand-me-downs that we took without really knowing why. Two of these pieces of furntire were in our art/guest room, and every time we looked at them we wondered what we could do to make them more appealing. We realized that the answer was to sand them down and stain them, which definitely did the trick!
I received a Page A Day calender this last Christmas, and I was saving the pages that I pulled each day wondering what I could do with them. I didn’t want to recycle them, since it is an adorable calendar… I had a pile sitting on my desk until I realized this morning what I could do with them: make a notepad!
There is something that happens to most women every month, regardless of if they talk about it, hide it, or pretend it doesn’t exist. That is our periods. It’s arguably the lamest part of any given month, and few women that I know talk about it with excitement. Well, I just found a great pattern for a washable pad that could make periods a little less of a pain.
Everyone has had experience with the Sock Monster. This beast generally takes socks from you while your clothes are in the dryer, or they could mysteriously disappear under the bed never to be seen again. What you’re left with is a bunch of socks without their mates, and if they have any sort of design or color, it’s hard to find a decent replacement mate to go with it. I originally saw a little blurb in the recent Rachael Ray magazine about lost socks, and how you can use them to make your planters a little more exciting. Since I have quite a few of these mateless socks myself, I decided to give it a shot.
Even though the weather is still gloomy, and there aren’t any real signs that Spring is on the way, I have started to clean and organize my house in preparation. One of the first rooms that I tackled recently was my art room, and I realized that in one drawer I had a ton of paint brushes rolling around all willy-nilly, with no organization at all. Some of my brushes were even getting damaged that way, and so I decided to remedy the situation. I happened to have a pile of old clothes laying about, for my next “t-shirt rug project” so I grabbed one from the pile and decided to sew myself a t-shirt caddy.
I love coloring. All of my best creative ideas come while I’m coloring on the pages of my day planner, or the grocery list, or my husband’s left arm. I have tins and tins of crayons that I’ve collected throughout the years. I am, also, a crayon purist. Once a crayon breaks, I throw it in the tin and it is officially “out of commision.” After realizing that these crayons are just as good as the unbroken ones, I started thinking about how I could breathe new life into them. That’s how I came up with the idea to make new crayons out of old ones, with the help of some silicone molds.
I see fat, winged babies in the gift card aisle. I see rows upon rows of pink wrapped chocolates at every store I go to, even if it’s a tire shop. I start seeing ads for “single awareness” parties. This could only mean one thing… Valentine’s Day. With V-day rapidly approaching, and no one forgetting about it, I started to struggle for ideas to give to my husband that are cute and fun while being green and sustainable at the same time. Here are a few of the ideas I came up with, and will pass them along to you! Regardless of if you’re single, partnered, or in one of those “it’s complicated” relationships, these are fun gift ideas that could be used for any day of the year.
Shoes are something that most people have around. There are the pair that lurk in your closet for months and you never wear, and there are shoes that you wear every day and now have big gaping holes. When your shoes reach the end of their lifespan, here is a creative way to reuse the soles of the shoes by making customized rubber stamps.
After writing yesterday’s post about making a rag rug with extra fabric, I started thinking… “What about the pieces not big enough for a rug, but are big enough that I don’t want to toss them?” Well, self, here is the answer! For scraps at least 6 inches by 4 inches, you can make an iPod cover! They’re easy, simple, and are a nice way to personalize your mp3 player and keep it from getting dirty or scratched.
We’re in the process of making a long-distance move here at my house, from Northern Idaho to Central Oregon. With that comes a lot of random pieces of clothing, old towels, or scraps of fabric that we don’t want to throw away, but aren’t in good enough shape to send off to Goodwill. I was grasping for something to do with these scraps when the idea hit me like a ton of bricks… Make a rag rug! They’re easy to make, and they’re a good way to use all these random pieces without letting them go to waste.
