Hi everyone! Welcome to my first ever blog. I hope you enjoy it here.


Well this blog is about how to entertain the kids while promoting an earth friendly lifestyle.

I have one kid She's 6 years old, She loves ballet.

Okay so on to the blog, We make a lot of stuff, we buy a lot of stuff, we use a lot of stuff and then we throw a lot of stuff away. Most of us try to recycle it, its not always easy, some towns do not have really good recycling programs. Whats an earth parent to do?

Grab an assortment of tools, glue tape, whatever and let's get to work.

Here's my current problem, my family and I moved in with a friend, we have very limited space but a lot of stuff.  We have a shelf that is basicly a wire rack. Its very pretty mind you, but its also very bad for holding books.

A seemingly unrelated problem would be my cat liter jugs. ei Tidy cat, cat's pride, basically they look like elongated milk jugs.

The solution I find is to cut in to said milk jugs, remove the top and one side of it to create a book basket. Which would actually last longer then one made from a cereal box. What do I cut with? Box cutters, Xacto knives, really really good scissors... Needless to say this is not the kid part.

I cut along the top which can be difficult, warming the plastic in hot water first might yield better results, well we got to make sure they are clean anyway.

But what  about sharp edges? Plastic will have sharp edges and with small children you probably don't want that. When I worked in a plastic's factory we used to cut what we called the flash with a knife. We'd run it along side and cut off the sharp edges. But a safer route might be to cover it up,

Tape works great in fact I found boxing tape has a lot of sticking power. Duct tape is another candidate. Scotch tape is also a great stand by. Once you get the tape on, lets pretty it up.

We can use any paper, when I can I like to try and save holiday gift wrap. That stuff never gets recycled, perhaps you might use a paper bag, or you might even use a piece of clothing that is so holey and worn no charity would ever take it.

What do we do with it? This is were the fun for the kids come in. Its time to glue. Grab the scissors, pinking shears, safety scissors and I personally recommend decoupage glue. You can get some that in a spray bottle. It'll stick to plastic, paper, metal, and children so you probably do not want to make a snack or check your email while they have at it.

Once its dry and the sharp edges have been successfully covered, let them decorate it. Lots of great sites to down load pics your kids might want on it, or they can use stickers or even pull favorite comics out of the news paper and decorate with them.

Bottom line the list of tools you'll need for this project are:
Good reliable knife or scissors.
Decoupage glue
Tape 
 paper, or cloth you plan to recycle

Bonus tip:
Your probably wondering what to do with the leftover plastic. With a sharpie marker you can make shapes to cut out and make in to mobiles. All you need is some old hangers, a wire cutter, some wire or string, thumb tacks, and a cutting board.

Tie the hangers together so they crisscross. remove one of the hooks of the hanger with a wire cutter.
Poke a hole in the shapes you cut out with a thumb tack. Feed the string through the holes loop it and tie it. Then tie the other end to the hangers. You'll have a nice homemade mobile that you can decorate and display.

Good luck and next week we go over what to do with those pesky empty butter tubs and egg cartoons.