Design Inspiration

Put a bird on it!

One man's trash is another man's treasure

While going for a walk around our neighborhood, we happened upon on this:

Except it wasn't folded out like that, it was bundled up on the curb, waiting for the garbage collectors. Scavenger that he is, my husband went round a bit later with the truck to pick it up and take home for closer inspection.

While it would no longer work for its most obvious function because of this:

we had ideas of what to do with it (If it's not obvious, one of the wooden parts doesn't match up to the brass bit higher up; its screw was missing. Also not seen in this photo, the round bits that hold up the umbrella were cracked and missing a screw).

I've mentioned before that we rent this house. We visited the house on our first day in town and really didn't know anything about our new home. Some how we managed to rent a house in a really nice neighborhood. The houses around us, and the houses along the road leading up to our house are all very nice modest-sized houses. If we had explored the neighborhood a little further we would have noticed that there are some VERY nice houses here (the mayor lives in the neighborhood)- a couple mini mansions and a lot of keeping up with the Jones's.

I tell you this so you know that our neighbors have some nice trash. This umbrella was not purchased at Target or Walmart. It is made of good hard wood and brass.

We have a couple Persian rugs and a couple textile-type wall hangings. The one with the fringe I bought while I lived in Uzbekistan with the Peace Corps. The second rug I received last summer from Grandma, who was downsizing her house and belongings. The two textiles originally belonged to my Grandfather, and later my mom after he passed. Over the holidays she gave my sister and me some of the textiles she had. 

The rugs are too nice to put on the floor where pets could defecate, babies could spit up, adults could spill (and we would). We decided that these wooden rods would be a great way to hang our rugs and textiles. For each rug, we (and by we I mean my husband) took two pieces of wood, strategically placed the rug, screwed the wood together (the screws do not go through one rug, in the other they go through the space between the pile and the fringe), and screwed to the wall.

The results are as follows:

Okay, the board from the first rug shown are not from the umbrella; they were left over from another project my husband had done earlier.

My Grandfather had already had some cloth sewn to the upper back of the large textile, so we just inserted a rod, hung with picture wire, and attached to the wall.

This is hung in our living room, the rugs are hung in our bedroom. I have one small textile left, but I am not yet sure where to put it. Once that's figured out, I'll be sure to share!

Flowers

My husband picked some flowers! How pretty! Just ignore the cable.

Free Find - Frosting Buckets

Did you know that if you ask, many bakeries will give you their frosting buckets? Food-grade, frosting buckets?

Well, I didn't know either, until my husband decided to become a home brewer. He first went to Firehouse Subs to purchase one of their pickle buckets, but they only had one. After purchasing it for $3, the employees told him of another Firehouse Subs he could try.

While driving over he remembered that someone (probably from the home brewer forum he frequents) told him you could get the frosting buckets from grocery store bakeries. The second restaurant is next to a Publix, so he thought he'd step in and try. He asked, they gave.

He's been back a couple more times since then, and been to a couple other stores, and we now have who knows how many buckets. He has his ciders brewing in several of them, and the rest we plan to put to other uses.

Frosting Bucket Use #1 - Bulk food bucket
Hey, they're food grade, why not use them for food? We put flour into one. Whenever we buy some bulk sugar, we'll use another for sugar. The lids seal nice and tight to keep out anything that might want to get inside.

Frosting Bucket Use #2 - Trash can
We needed a trash can for the nursery, but with limited funds, other stuff always seemed more important. Some of the scavenged buckets didn't have lids, and we don't really need a lid here (am not sure if this will need to change once the baby is mobile, but for now all is well). We just put a trash bag in and we are good to go.

Frosting Bucket Use #3 - Toy holder
Seven months in, I think we've done a good job with keeping the toys to a reasonable limit. Our house is not overrun with plastic, but it was getting a bit cluttered. Using another bucket sans lid, we corral her dolls, rattles, rings, and anything else that isn't a block ( set inherited from my grandma, they came with a nice wooden box with dove tail joints!) or a book (we have another basket for that. The basket was used in the laundry area, but I decided it would be more useful holding the board books).

Frosting Bucket Use #4 - Home brew
There's a little more to it than just putting your would-be cider/wine/ etc inside. This is my husband's project, but it looks like he drilled a hole into the lid and attached some sort of CO2 device. We haven't tried any yet, but it seem to be working and a good use of the buckets.

Decorating Frosting Buckets
This one was a little hard to figure out, especially with the challenge of only using what I already own. The plastic is a difficult surface to attach things to- permanent marker rubs off, for example. You need special formulations of paint that won't rub off. Regular Mod Podge might work, and they also make one that works on plastic, but I own neither, so it doesn't do me any good :)

Then I realized that all the buckets have labels on them (which we removed by soaking them in soapy water and then Goo Gone), so I decided to whip something up on the computer, print it out on sheet-size labels (which I did have), cut out, and attach. And voila! No longer a plain-old frosting bucket, but a first-class flour storage container!

A handy-dandy trash can!

And a toy-clutter tamer!

Later my husband had the idea that maybe I could sew a cozy around them, similar to a coffee cup. It's an idea that I haven't ruled out, but haven't wanted to attempt. My sewing is very rudimentary and I just wanted to get it done. Maybe a project for another time.

And the best part, it only cost us the time for picking up the buckets and figuring out what to do with them!

Inspiration

To create a nicer, lovlier, cozier home is something that I've wanted to do for a while. What has held me back was not having enough money to do it. We are done with credit cards for the foreseeable future, so it must all be done with money in hand. Except it's all slated to go somewhere else (you know, things like rent, food for us, nourishment for the baby, clothing for the baby, heat, etc, etc things like that). So, I did what I could, and sort of stopped.

Until, I read the lovely Nicole's Honor Roll, which lead me to Jule's William Morris Project, which lead me to The Nester's 31 Days project. And Day 5 hit me, and of course! It seems so obvious now: use what you have!

I am taking the challenge of using what I already own, what I can find, and a whole lot of creativity and inspiration. Pretty home, here I come!

Hooray for the beginning!

Here it is, my first post!

Let's go over the basics, shall we?

Soul mate, check.

Darling baby, check.

Cute dog, check.

Purring Cat, check.

Second purring cat, for good measure, check.

House, check (rented, but that's okay for now).

Nice home... uh... it needs a bit of work.

Money to do it up nice, nope.

I have a happy home. A cozy home. But not one to be proud of, exactly. And like many other people out there, the poor economy has hit my family hard. I have a job, but my husband has been out of work for over two years now. We get by with my paycheck, but there's no extra for fun stuff, which, making our house more homey, a place to be proud of, would fall under "fun stuff."

So, here it is, my documentation of putting our nest together, one twig at a time, one twig closer to our dream nest.