plastic now - food later

I never really believed that seeds grew into true plants until I moved to Oregon. Sure, we did the bean-that-sprouts-into-a-plant thing in school. But, growing up in Colorado (with a short growing season) seeds were a LOT of work. Now that I live in the land-of-plenty, when February rolls around and things start popping out of the ground I get real hopeful about seeds. I started some tomato, basil and pepper seeds a few weeks ago (they sit in the window above the heat register) and the tomatoes are already getting pretty big. In order to encourage their growth I re-planted them today in used sour cream and yogurt containers. Like any re-user, I cannot fathom sending any plastic container to the recycle because I figure there have got to be SO many ways to re-use them. Well, my storage drawer would beg to differ since it is overflowing with the things.

To re-plant my tomatoes I poked a hole in the bottom of the containers for water flow (the hole doesn't have to be pretty) and use the container top as a saucer-like-thingy (see below).
You can do this to plant almost anything. Grow baby, grow!

Flower decorations from bottles - guest appearance

Check out this great idea from Anthropologie about making decorative flowers from left over plastic bottles. Check it out by clicking on this link (scroll down).

Bread Machine...that. is. right.

In one of the best second-hand store finds of all time I present: THE BREAD MACHINE. For $9.99, that's right $9.99 I got a fully functional Oster brand bread machine with instructions. I tried it out last night and YES, it works! This just proves, yet again, you should always look at second-hand stores first... you never know.

By the way, bread machines are GREAT. I don't know why I didn't figure this out before, but all you have to do to make the bread is put it in the ingredients in the machine! Do you know that? That's all you have to do. Copying my friend Bobbi's always great idea - I pulled the dough out of the machine before the last 'rise' setting and baked the bread in the oven... looks like I spent hours putting it together.
Um, P.S. cheapest Oster bread machine I could find online was $69.

Christmas Cookies

You might be saying: Whaaaat??? Re-use cookies? That's right - if you haven't cleaned up all your holiday cookies I recommend freezing 'em. (Plus putting them away helps with the whole eat-less-crap resolution. Cookies tend to keep really well in the freezer (for 3-4 months, I would argue.) But, instead of just throwing them in the freezer, bag your cookies in tasty combinations which you can simply pull out and serve to friends after dinner. Yum.

Clever Storage

Any old box will do - shoe/boot boxes, paper boxes, anything with a lid works best. Add a little fabric and some hot glue and you have a very presentable storage box! It's so easy - just wrap the lid and the box like you would a present and... voila.
For this box I used the fabric from an old curtain and a paper box.


The top box in this picture stores our wedding memories (CDs, dried flowers, left over invitations etc.)
So easy, so useful and so re-used!

Never Buy New - Christmas STUFF

Oh, my, gosh! There is SOOO much Christmas stuff at the Goodwill and other second-hand stores. Decorations, plates, lights, more decorations, artificial trees, mugs, new cards, cookie tins...everything. The quality of the holiday goodies is especially good - I found tons of items that looked new or very slightly used.
If you don't let yourself get distracted by the masive amounts of stuff you can really find some nice finds to decorate or gift. I found these cookie tins for .99 cents each - they still had the tags on them - super cute.

Painting a Tree

Feeling creative one day, the hubster and I decided to use some paint the previous owners left us (we think it is the accent color in our bathroom) and put a little nature in our bedroom. What was a boring wall became decorative and functional tree-hook thingy. Okay, I am working on a better name. We were pretty excited about how it turned out. We just took the paint and went crazy. The best part about this project is it doesn't take up any space, but really adds a lot to the room.