Green Options

I just came across a craft site I had not been to before- FaveCrafts.com. It’s pretty great for a free site full of crafty ideas, how-to’s and step by step tutorials.

Learn more about FaveCrafts.com after the jump.

Milk jugs will NEVER degrade if they end up in a landfill.  So its important to recycle every jug that enters your house,  sometimes we try to get crafty with them first or find a totally new way to repurpose jugs.

Some areas (*gasp*) don’t provide curbside recycling for plastics.  Please check Earth911 for places to recycle items your area doesn’t pick up curbside.  We are blessed and have mixed curbside recycling for nearly all our everyday items.  Please recycle your plastic jugs after use, industrious areas like New Jersey have used milk jugs to make a bridge.  Who knows what other uses will come of plastic recycling.

Here are some crafty ways we can reuse plastic milk jugs and divert them from the landfill.

It’s quite possible that I have found my favorite book, EVER!  (I know that’s hard to believe since I devour books like some do coffee.)

Make It! by Jane Bull is A Cleaner Greener Book, this wonderful book contains basic information (turning trash to treasure & The 3 R’s), teaches kids how to sort recyclable materials (and focuses on donating to charities).  Then it launches into numerous step by step instructions for making new things from our trash.

If your house is anything like mine, you likely have a multitude of little plastic toy parts.  I’m constantly collecting tiny doll shoes, plastic spiders, bouncy balls, etc… and TOSSING THEM IN THE TRASH.  Not anymore! 

As I was browsing one of my favorite craft sites (FamilyFun.com), I came across the perfect contest for our readers to participate in…

The Amazing Recycled Crafts Contest.  I can hardly think of a better way to spend a rainy afternoon then cruising the recycling bin and helping the kids create fun projects.  Even better, your craft could win an Energy Star approved Samsung 46″ HDTV or an Apple MacBook.

If you aren’t feeling the creative juices, check out all the great ideas on FamilyFun.com for making recycled crafts.  In addition to craft ideas, visit the “Green A Little, Save A Lot” page for green tips, advice and information geared to adults.

Isn’t the bottle giraffe super cute?

Color/pattern recognition? Check! Memory skills? Check! Additional stuff for your kids to fling onto the floor? Definitely a check! Make a matching game with your kids out of recycled materials, and you can have all that and more for the price of nothing.

STEP 1: Gather matching materials. For my matches, I used leftover paint chips from our playroom makeover (I am totally not the only one with leftover paint chips!). I cut each paint chip into two identical pairs, and used decorative scissors to cut away any writing–this will be a color matching game. For other kinds of matching games, you could make color/color word pairs, pairs of family or friends from surplus photos, alphabet pairs using cut-outs from magazines, color pairs made from painting or coloring on used typing paper, etc.

Halloween is almost upon us, then it’ll be over in a flash. But before Halloween goes into hiding until next year make one more fun, green Halloween craft to your collection. This time make it out of small yogurt containers and black craft foam. It’ll make you go batty, but it’ll be worth it.