Some Home Renovations

If you have been following our blog for a while you might remember this shed. It had a new door and path a few years ago. With the thought that I would also organize the inside a bit I took an inside photo back then but never got to the organizing.

This shed holds our warm water boiler, washer, dryer, lawn mower, a toilet, garden tools, and general tools. A tiny place with lots of stuff. On top of that, the shed is not a straight rectangle but instead, polygon shaped, hence why the washer and dryer were so oddly placed. I actually thought it wouldn't fit side by side or if it did we would lose a lot of space as we can't put them all the way against the back wall but during one sleepless night I thought about something and the next morning I measured it up and turned out my plan was doable.

While the washer was almost against the toilet before, now there is plenty of space between those two things to easily open and use the washer.

It was a simple solution. I measured the odd space and had a white MDF cut in shape, this gave a large table space for detergents and sorting laundry, the lost space in the back was not such a loss because of that. Besides the general space got much larger so we actually won space.

Mum also wanted a faucet there, so I dug up this sink we had at the attic (given to us ages ago), I bought brackets for it, and I took the old faucet from our kitchen (we wanted new ones in the kitchen for ages anyway so that got done in the procress as well). As I did all the plumbing work etc it hardly costed a thing.

When the floor got so open the ugly gray floor bothered me so I painted it teal for some fresh color. And even though we added a sink the space is still bigger then it was before with all the same stuff in it. It is still a weird mixture of stuff but it is a handy space which we use all the time.

The shelves I also completely reorganized before there was all kind of bags, boxes and old drawers, just when I started this project I found these crates at the curb, which were perfect! Total cost for this entire makeover was 48$ (paint, MDF, plumbing tools, new trash bin to fit the space at the left and brackets to hang the sink), the value for us; a million bucks :D

And it seems renovations are contagious as I decided to also tackle our entry stairs, which you can also see here when I did some other TLC in this area.

There are some small finishing touches to do but it is a much cleaner and fresher entry now :)

DIY in your home is so satisfying when you see the before and after, a house is like a living thing, it constantly needs work and attention :D

Recycled Spoon Mermaid Necklace

This weekend I've made something I've been wanting to do for ages, creating a mermaid tail out of a vintage spoon. I also filmed it, and posted it on YouTube, going to try to make creative process videos a habit, will try to make some with the furniture as well. I got this black border around the video not sure if it was because of my phone setting or the video editor settings, will try to avoid it next time :) Please subscribe if you have not yet, more videos will come soon!

The necklace is available at Staroftheeast :) The chain and shell are sterling silver.

Tender Loving Care

I have been giving some TLC around the house. Last Winter I have finished quite some projects and we are still enjoying the results so I thought it was best to continue fixing up the things I can fix up on a budget :)
This is our garden door, we actually have two. This way if any of the dogs escape they don't end up on the street. It's not that they would want to run away but they are curious and can wander off and get lost.
It was in a very sad state, the door actually has started to hang, cracking the wall in the process and making it almost impossible to close it, it was beside ugly super annoying.
But let me get in to the details :)

Our sad little postbox. It is hardly ever used, all our phone, internet and credit card bills come through email to save paper. Normal post comes in a PO box at the postoffice. Only thing that comes in there is are the electricity and water bills as they are read every month.

After a metal worker fixed the door and also all 4 other metal doors that we have in the garden got some care and new door handles. The slide locks where a hell to open and were ugly too. As to answer your mental question of 5 doors, they separate the garden in parts. With 10 dogs, no man can get in our garden. But sometime someone needs to get in, like an electrician to fix something. We then lock them up in the back garden. The garden can be divided in 3 different ways which is handy :)
I filled up the crack in the wall, brushed the postal box and painted it with anti rust paint. Same goes for the iron door, with its pretty new door handle :)

So much better :)
You know for you it doesn't seem much, but when you pass these doors every day it is super annoying and after wards very satisfying (yes I am satisfied with small things in life, p.s. Happy Thanksgiving :)!)

Between the two front doors are our water and electricity meters. We had to move both of them as the guys coming to read them just can't get in. Our doggies are feminists, they can get along with ladies (if they are nice) but guys get always a few nibbles :D

The electricity meter was also rusting and got two coats of paint.

The second door got stuck all the time, and a very difficult sliding lock, was rusting and the white plastic that was attached to it looked miserable.

The new lock was a huge improvement, one of the hinge got replaced so that the door doesn't get stuck anymore. I painted the door and then sewed a beautiful natural looking fiber stuff and attached it to the door. This door has never worked so smoothly and never looked so nice in the 15 years we had it, yaaay!

With only a little cost and many hours of painting, I am happy with the results :) The other 3 doors are still in progress, I have to paint them in bits because of the doggies, but the end is near. Also some metal garden furniture is getting some love.
Do you do any work around the house yourself? Don't you just love giving stuff some attention?

9 Great Ways to Recycle Toilet Paper Rolls

I have to be honest here, I never have recycled a toilet paper roll. We use and throw them away all the time, but lets face it: the 'toilet' part of its name is not something we like to think about :)
Nonetheless I decided to make a toilet paper roll recycle post, see if it will motivate me and others to use them, most likely not all, but at least some :)

• I like the idea of bird feeders, the glue is peanut butter, you make birds happy and the roll gets a second life, here is an easy tutorial for a bird feeder.

• Make biodegradable seed starters with the help of scissors, you can see it here, very easy and you can plant the entire thing in the ground later on.

• Use them to package small gifts, wrap them with a piece of cute paper or magazine clipping and you are ready to go, I also saw an non painted version of them here.

• Make toys with TP rolls, or make a project of it with your kid. I have seen many many wonderful toys, the mermaid and these race cars are just two examples, I've seen castles and monsters and you can find many more here.

• I've seen many beautiful frame projects, this mirror is one of my favorites, I also liked this art project. But there are many more projects to explore and I'm sure you could come up with your own ideas :)

• Although I do love the creative ideas I actually love the more simple daily usable things better. Like an open cut roll to hold paper rolls, wrapping paper and such neatly together. Or using rolls to keep all sorts of cables organized in your drawer, without them getting all tangled up.

• You can use TP rolls to organize ribbons but also pencils, pens and markers.

• Although we do not have a fireplace I love the idea of these eco friendly firestarters made with a toilet roll, newspaper and dryer lint, if you have a dryer you'll know how much lint comes out of those! 
• Once you have your cozy fire and decide to have a special event, make some cute crowns to go with it :)

And finally an honorary mention of artist Anastassia Elias who makes little worlds shadow boxes in toilet rolls, so cool!

  So what do you think? Will you do any of these projects?
See more recycle posts here.

9 Great Ways To Recycle Old Sweaters

So besides the obvious that re-cycling sweaters and any other textile product is good instead of trowing them away, another thing to think about: 1 kilogram of cotton can take up to 20.000 liters of water to produce (2 lb 2.3 oz cotton = 5283 gallons of water)! You can read more about the impact of cotton on the WWF website. This is about the amount needed for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt!

So not only our food takes a lot of water to produce but also our clothes. Thus another good reason to recycle clothes, and if you are not handy you can always find people in need or places to donate the clothes you want to toss away, and make someone else very happy with the things you do not use anymore.

Our clothing shop and bag shop are both 95% made of recycled materials, which feels good and the pieces become unique. This bag has an upcycled sweater top, we had more but they all sold as they all turned out very cool :)

• Make pet clothing and bedding out of old sweaters. We made a whole bunch of doggy sweaters as they are so expensive to buy, a win-win, great for our budget, warm doggies and recycled sweaters :) We made ours by cutting it according to Toffee's body but not all doggies will sit still like him so I found a few tutorials for you, here is one with good explanation and pictures, here is one made out of a sweater sleeve good for small doggies. I even found a tutorial on how to make a easy to make doggy (or kitty) bed out of a sweater.

Here some more ideas to recycle your sweaters:

• Keep your hands warm and toasty with mittens or fingerless gloves, find instructions here for the fingerless ones and here for the mittens. And here is another cool mitten pattern.

• Keep your feet warm with leg warmers (made of the arms), socks and slippers. If your sweater is 100% wool you can wash it warm in the machine first to get a nice thick felt for slippers. Here is one of many sock tutorials, and I love these slippers with a step by step explanation and these slippers are very cute :)

• I'm sure you have seen them before, knitted pillows. Often very expensive in shops and can be made free from upcycled sweaters. How adorable is that monster pillow? If you have a kid you could even make it of their favorite but now too small sweater so that s/he can still keep it! And here a tutorial on how to make a simple one for a cozy couch look.

• Cover some pencil holders and plant pots to cover up some ugly things or make baskets to hold your craft supplies and other things.

• Cover your old chairs with a beautiful old sweater or make poufs with a sweater and filling (you could fill them with old rags for an entirely eco friendly project).

• If you think that these are all cute and useful but you have a whole bunch of sweaters, how about a patchwork blanket, and they look super beautiful too! You can find a step by step tutorial here in case you have no idea where to begin with :)

• And if you still think that upcycling is too shabby or so, check this post on Country Living with beautiful decorative projects looking very chic! You can cover vases, lamp caps, anything you want!

• Once you have done your project(s) you will have a bunch of leftovers which are fun too, maybe these two will inspire you, adorable balls and mug cozies, and I'm sure your creative juices have started to flow, have fun and if you want to share your upcycling sweater project please share in the comments!

I limited my post with 9 ideas but there are many more like ear warmers, hats, bags, teapot cozies, you can get lots of ideas on Pinterest, you'll never throw away a sweater ever again!

See more recycle posts here, and more are coming up so stay tuned :)
And if you like this post, please share it on Pinterest!

Globe Collection

Today I got a delightful package in the mail. A few days ago I found an adorable vintage globe online on a Turkish website and bought it. You see I have always loved loved loved globes, but my collection is not much growing as globes are not very common here and where they are either they are out of my budget or they do not ship overseas. So I keep on drooling over globes on Pinterest, where I have a board entirely dedicated to Globes and Maps.

I love how these bookshelves pop with color because of the globes, and hope to have such a collection one day, if you ever want to get rid of a globe please let me know :))) You should check out this blogpost on Beauty&Bedlam where you will see many more beautiful globes all showcased in a wonderful way.

If I ever find an old, cheap battered one I would like to do a project like this floral globe. I wouldn't have the heart to paint a good one, but one in bad shape could get a make over.

And I could easily adopt this entire cabinet with everything included. Love the painted and not painted globes equally, and you can see how the white one was done on I spy DIY and admire the bookshelves from more angles.

I also love maps, but globes have a special place in my heart. Therefor we have a small collection of vintage maps in our decor shop for sale, so that someone else can enjoy it, someone who actually has some walls to hang them on as ours are all full :)

9 Great Ways to Recycle Plastic Bottles

(source: blomsterverkstad)

For my second post on how to recycle daily garbage (first was how to recycle eggshells) I choose plastic bottles, no matter what we do we use lots of them and I found some small and big projects to re-use them. It takes hunderds of years for plastic bottles to decay so your projects will be usefull for many years.

I found some amazing planting / gardening uses for them, actually there are so many of them that I am only showing a few examples:

• Cut a bottle in half to cover pots, this will protect newly sprouting plants against cold and snails, the damp inside the bottle will let the plant grow quicker.
• Hang a whole bunch of bottles in front of a window, filled with soil and plants it will create a green curtain in your room, and the plants will get plenty of sunlight.

(sources: angelofernandes and elinepellinkhof)

• Make a bunch of holes in a plastic bottle, dig it in soil near vegetable or normal plants and create a slow watering system. Your roots will not rot and your plants won't dry out.
• Create a self watering seed starter pot simply by cutting a bottle in half, again perfect to avoid that your seeds and roots won't rot while they won't dry out when you do not water them every day.

(source: thegardeningcook and seattlesundries)

Now that we had a few garden related projects, I thought it was fun to show some creative projects, you will be amazed by what people have done with plastic bottles:

• Make amazing flowers simply by cutting the plastic in flower shapes and heating them a little near a candle to make the petals curly. I also saw some amazing Christmas decorations during my search, even a Christmas tree entirely decorated with plastic and it looks fantastic! You can make smaller flowers, leaves and shapes to create jewelry.
• Michelle Brand makes Chandeliers all with plastic bottles, and they do not look like 'trash' at all, they are amazing, and you could make them yourself, double win. I've also seen cool room screens and curtains made out of plastic bottles.

(sources: sabiiwabii and Michelle Brand)

• Make a cool jewelry organizer, I really like this one where you can storage any kind of jewelry, and there is a great tutorial for it.
• There are also plenty ideas to use them as storage containers, like this cute and easy to make peg basket, these hanging baskets would be great for craft and hobby rooms and even book and magazine storage.

(sources: Epbot and makeit-loveit)

I have only scratched the surface but this will get your inspiration flowing I hope :)

As the last idea I'm showing a big one, which you might never do but it is too cool not to show.

• You can make a greenhouse of bottles, it will have the same effect as glass only won't cost you a thing and hail and such are not such a threat as with a glass greenhouse. Here you can read what you would need (mostly handy hands and a huge amount of bottles), maybe a nice family project.

Have you ever done such a project, maybe something different you would like to share? I hope this will inspire you to not throw these away but making use of them :)

I have also read about several house projects built in Nigeria, and now also in some other countries. Some mentioned filled with sand but it can also be dry dirt. These filled bottles are 20 times stronger than bricks and are even said to be bullet proof! They become great isolated houses for not much money and for each one bedroom, living room and kitchen house 7800 bottles are used, so less trash and more roofs for people, such a great project!