Total Randomness

It's Sunday morning and all I have are seriously random thoughts bouncing around in my head.

:: We watched the movie Up last night. It was incredible! I've never seen such a brilliant five minutes as the one where Carl and Ellie meet, marry, have a life together and age, with Ellie eventually dying – all without words and in an animated movie. It was remarkable and I loved the whole thing.

From director Pete Docter:

Basically, the message of the film is that the real adventure of life is the relationship we have with other people, and it's so easy to lose sight of the things we have and the people that are around us until they're gone. More often than not, I don't really realize how lucky I was to have known someone until they're either moved or passed away. So, if you can kind of wake up a little bit and go, "Wow, I've got some really cool stuff around me every day", then that's what the movie's about.

:: We stopped in a beauty supply place yesterday. Ali was looking for some specific product for her hair and I was just wandering around when I saw Triple Lanolin Body Lotion on the shelf. I didn't know they still made the stuff! (I've written about it before. It's what my gramma smelled like and when I get a whiff of it I'm back with her, feeling incredibly loved.)

So yesterday, I'm standing in the aisle sniffing the hand lotion, trying not to cry, when Ali finds me. She understands. After a minute or so, however she must be beginning to worry because she quietly asks, "Are you gonna buy that or just smell it all day??"

I bought it.

:: After a nice long nap yesterday afternoon I spent the rest of the day up-cycling three old t-shirts into a cute little skirt! It was the perfect, rainy afternoon project. Pictures to come this week, when there's actually good light to photograph! In the meantime, did you know. .

• Conventional cotton is the most toxin intensive fiber on earth? It requires a pound of poison to produce the cotton used in just three t-shirts?

• In one year the average American throws away 70 pounds of clothing? More than three-quarters of our discarded clothing goes to landfills to be plowed under.

:: That's all I got today. No deep thoughts. No interesting pictures. Guess I'll go sniff some hand lotion and color my hair. You know – flush a bunch of toxins into the groundwater in the name of vanity and all. . .hey, I'm nothing if not at least a little self aware. . .

Upcycled Spoons

Two summers ago, while poking around a church garage sale I came upon a plastic bag of silver serving spoons. The bag of about 15 was marked $2. I couldn't resist. I had no immediate use for them and they languished, tarnished and lonely in my silverware drawer, awaiting redemption.

Until last week.

I took a rubber mallet to 'em! I released all my inner anxiety by flattening the bowls as best I could and then flattening the curve in the handle that appears just before you reach the bowl. Then, with some inexpensive metal stamping sets I made some simple plant identification markers!

I think they are pretty awesomely amazing. . .if I do say so myself!

It's actually harder than I thought it would be to do the stamping. The spoons still aren't completely flat and they jumped around as I pounded on the top of the letters.

This little upcycling endeavor also required a little more planning than I anticipated –

Seriously. . . you know what they say about lack of proper planning. . . My usual reaction to something like this would be to chuck the whole project in the trash and chalk it up to another failure. But, I looked at it again and it made me laugh. Out loud. At myself. How bad can that be? And what's more. . . I laugh every time I look at it. So it's staying!

You better lock your spoon drawer if I'm coming over. . . I got a lot of herbs to go!

Upcycling

Upcycling ::

1. a practice to prevent the wasting of potentially useful materials by making use of existing ones;

2. the practice of making functional items from waste materials often on their way to the landfill

{the new shower curtain, as seen through the bathroom mirror}

{the old shower curtain, as seen on Sunday afternoon}

{the old shower curtain, upcycled!}

{the gratuitous cat photo – because no project is ever complete until it's covered in cat hair!}

The fun in this sewing project wasn't that I had to do it. . .it was that I could. . .