Rubber Band Bouncy Balls Anyone?

Ever wondered what to do with all those rubber bands instead of throwing them in the bin? Make rubber band bouncy balls of course! Every day when the newspaper arrives, it has a rubber band around it, we have saved all the bands and Jen, Erin and Cady have made the most amazing bouncy balls with them. We visited my mom today, Caiden asked her if she had any rubber bands, oh what thrill and excitement ensued when she brought out two big bags of bands, saying, "You know how I can't throw anything away".... (My mom also saves her newspaper rubber bands..... what luck).

So if you feel the need to do some recycling of the rubber band kind, to make the bounciest, rubber band ball ever, this is what you do. Take a band and tie a few knots in it, roll it up, then just start wrapping single bands around and around in figure eight movements, (this can be a little tricky in the beginning, but don't give up, it's REALLY fun once you get going:) AND when you are finished, you have reused something and have an amazing rubber ball:)

The Story of a Treehouse...

I wanted to write a post about the treehouse that our children built in the front garden...

We have this beautiful tall White Stinkwood Tree in the front garden, perfect for a treehouse, we have tried to build one before but it was rather tiny. Last week our three older children decided it was time... They sat down and designed how it would look, gave Richard and I a shopping list for nails and a couple of recycled pallets and off we went to source the required items during our Saturday morning grocery shopping. They reused planks that we already had and besides the nails, all other materials were recycled.

They built the treehouse on two separate levels, with a rope pulley system to collect goods from the ground and bring them up to the top of the structure. My, they have grown up so fast... they have built something that is strong and sturdy, using their determination and imagination, they are extremely proud of their wonderful treehouse as are Richard and myself. How lovely that they worked together on something from beginning to end as a team, makes me happy...

And that is the story of our treehouse...

The Wool and Yarn Room

This is my wool and yarn room... I have been trying to organise this space somewhat and I thought I would share it here...

The glass door cupboards used to be in our lounge, but when we repainted we decided we preferred the room without them and so into the wool room they went. I love them here because of the glass, the yarn is more visable and I can quickly see what I am looking for. (They are kind of full though... so I need to find more space soon!) BUT I have decided to start knitting up my stash...

This cupboard on the left contains some of my rovings, dyes, and of course yarn. In the cupboards below, I have large bags of Alpaca roving etc...

Ok, I had to take a photo of my drum carder... time to make some batts...

Cupboard on the right... more yarn... I know so many plastic bags... whenever I buy yarn and rovings they always arrive in the post in these plastic bags, I repurpose the bags and use them to store my wool and rovings, it keeps my yarn safe from moths etc... and I use the bags over and over...  and when I no longer need them, I will once again repurpose them and crochet or recycle them into shopping bags etc... I also put soap blocks, and lavender into my cupboards to let the little insects think twice about setting up home here:) I believe you can also use cedar blocks as well.

I am going to knit a bath mat with this beautiful two ply organic cotton from here.
Wishing you all an inspired week...

Acorn Nature Sewing Cards, Recycling

When I woke up this morning, I thought  I would make some sewing cards from wood, but I didn't have the correct thickness of wood for the scroll saw, so I decided to go ahead and recycle some thick cardboard boxes instead. I will go searching for wood tomorrow but for today we used card:) This was such fun and even Kye enjoyed sewing a little Maple leaf!

Materials:
Cardboard boxes from around your home
Crayons
Yarn
Scissors
Wool needle
Nail

Draw your acorn template or whatever you would like to draw onto your card and colour in.

An acorn.

Take a sharp nail and push holes through your card, make sure your sewing holes are not too near the edge of your drawing.

Once you are finished making the holes for sewing, cut out your acorn.

Thread your wool needle and tie a knot on the end of your yarn. Start sewing in and out of the card.

And there you have your finished acorn!

This is Kye's leaf that he was sewing.

Happy sewing!
xo
Linda

Halloween Lino Prints

I saw a lovely blog post over at Farmama this morning, where they have made beautiful prints. My girls were keen to give this a try, so we went searching for materials around our home. We had some polystyrene in a  box that our dehydrator was delivered in and we thought we would recycle it to make our prints. It worked really well too:)

Materials we used:
Polystyrene
Carving tools
Ink or paint
Ink roller to roll your ink / paint
Card
Craft knife to cut your polystyrene
Pencil

First we drew our picture onto our polystyrene in pencil.

Then we took our carving tools and carved out our picture along the lines.

Roll your roller in your ink making sure it is covered completely.

Roll your ink all over your carving.

Press your polystyrene onto the card firmly. And there is your print!

These are some other prints Jenna and Erin did today.

Perfect for birthday cards etc...
Happy Monday!
xo
Linda

Natural Orange Peel Firelighters, Recycling

A few months ago my hubby, Richard gifted me with an amazing book called A Farm in my Heart such a fantastic book in every way... In this book they spoke about making natural firelighters from orange peels and we decided to make some. We juice so many oranges each day so this is a perfect way to recycle these peelings. When we juice oranges it is easier to just cut them in half and juice manually. Remove as much of the left over pulp as you can after you are finished juicing. I just lined all the halves up on our window box and let the sun do its magic for a few weeks. When they were sufficiently dry and hard, so that no more moisture was evident, I put the halves into the empty orange bags and hung these outside for a few days. We are using them now to light our fires and they give off a heavenly citrusy perfume when they are burning. It is really cold here in the Southern Hemisphere at the moment, I am definately looking forward to Spring...

Re-use, Recycle a Tree

I have been working on my blog yesterday and today and I am so excited to have discovered how to add a 3rd column! Now all my tutorials are on the right hand side for everyone to enjoy:) Early last week we discovered our beautiful Cypress tree was leaning quite dramatically towards our house. We had so much rain  at the end of our Summer and early Autumn and this poor tree just couldn't withstand the moisture in the ground. It started to lean more and more and eventually its roots were lifing out of the ground. We new we had to have it taken out, as it would definately fall on our home(I hate cutting down trees) but in this case we had no choice, we couldn't support it in any way, so it had to be taken down... We did however find a way to reuse and recycle our tree:)

There was great excitement on the day when the tree felling company came. All our children stood at a safe distance and watched for any little birds that might be nesting in the tree, luckily there were none:)

This lovely tree will not go to waste though, we had a few ideas for it:) All the small branches were put into piles and will be dried out and reused for woodwork and firewood. Parts of the bark are a rich red colour and I am sure will give us a beautiful colour in the dye pot. We are going to make planters with some of the pieces, Caiden and Jenna are looking forward to hollowing them out with a wood chisel, there were so many wood shavings and we used these for a mulch for our plants and lastly, everyone got together and designed an obstacle course to enjoy! So even though our lovely tree is not standing in the corner of our property anymore, we have found many wonderful uses for it!

Happy Saturday everyone:)
Linda