Don’t have the yard space for a garden? You can reuse rain gutters to create a lovely herb and salad garden right on the side of your house or garage.  Simply attach gutters to a wall, fill with topsoil, and get planting.  These gutter planters are perfect for herbs as well as lettuce, and any other vegetables that have shallow roots and don’t spread out too much.

Great Picture from Recyclart.

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Raising a family is a lesson in handling STUFF–and, if you’re a parent, you’ve muttered to yourself more than once about how your family has way too much of it. We’re all familiar with the items we can recycle at the curbside or drop-off. What about everything else? Nearly everything else is recyclable. I think you’re going to be excited to hear about the things you can recycle right in your local community.

RecycleChicken, tells you where you can take anything and everything for recycling and reuse in your area. The site, searchable by item and zipcode, lists businesses and programs in your area that accept your beyond the curbside materials. Here is a listing of seasonal waste reduction suggestions.

• Pumpkins: A few ideas here. You could, of course, make pumpkin pie. You could feed the deer. You could add to yours or a neighbor’s compost pile. Roast the seeds or plant them for next year’s crop.
• Baby: Green Island Earth Friendly Goods in Traverse City is accepting used cloth diapers and cloth diaper systems. Call 231-933-8465  for accepting conditions.
• Vacuums & vacuum parts: Check with your local vacuum repair shop about what brands and conditions they accept. Most shops rebuild and sell used vacuums–a potential deal in itself.
• #3-#7 Plastics: Check in with Bay Area Recycling for Charities or American Waste.
• Garden Plastics: Bay Area Recycling accepts black (and other color) nursery pots, trays and plastic lawn edging. The Head Hen’s personal heroes!
• Dry Cleaning Hangers & Bags: Most drycleaners will take back their own or unprinted paper hangers as well as plastic dry cleaning bags. Call ahead to your favorite cleaner to check.
• Computers & Accessories (working or not): In the Traverse City area, some easy options include Goodwill and TC eWaste. In Emmet County, take to the Recycling Center on Pleasantview Rd.
• Other Electronics: In Traverse City area, take to TC eWaste. They take a wide array and even have drop boxes at Oryana Food Co-op. In Emmet–Pleasantview Rd. center.

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Many people are starting to can their own food at home recently.  The once thought to be out of date practice is seeing a regrowth lately.  Canning is extremely beneficial and can be a very fun project as well.  Many have turned to canning as a means to save money but there are also many other health and economic benefits to canning as well.  Along with saving money canning also allows you to reuse those mason jars over and over again.  Once you have eaten all of the great pickles, jams, and sauces you made in the first batch, simply wash, sanitize and prepare to refill the jars with your newest creation.  Canning Local has written a great article on the subject and has made some great points.

Canning is a great idea because:

• Excellent quality and taste – When you use quality produce and perform the canning process correctly, you will create superior products to those for sale at the supermarket. Many recipes for home canned food are delicious and literally the quality is something that money can’t buy.
• Control over the ingredients – With home canning, you will know exactly where your food is coming from. Ideal sources of produce are your own garden and fruit trees, local organic farms, and any local farm. From any of these sources you will be able to hand select your produce at the peak of ripeness.
• Support of the local economy – By directly buying produce from local growers, you are putting money into the hands of local people. Local growers love selling from their own farms or market stands because they are not at the mercy of the big commodity buyers who set prices. This also allows local growers, especially small ones, to remain profitable, which is good for the local economy.
• Sense of accomplishment – Once you begin canning food, you will be thrilled with yourself. You will feel like you did something very meaningful to your existence because you did!  Along with that you also have the ability to reuse those jars once they are empty to cook up even more delicious canned creations.

These are all great reasons to start canning at home. Your family will love the delicious food you have cooked up and canned goods are a great gift as well. From homemade pickles to jams, and even flavored vinegars, your friends and family will be happy to unwrap a jar of something you’ve made just for them.

There are many resources on the internet that can instruct you on canning as well as thousands of recipes available.  Canning can be a little overwhelming at first but once you have done a few canning projects you should get the hang of it and it becomes quite easy.

Below is a list of resources to help you get started.

• http://www.freshpreserving.com/
• Pick Your Own
• Mountain Breeze Canning and Preserving
• Canning Pantry
• Country Home Canning

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These cabinets belong to a Barcelona couple who dubbed their new apartment the “R3 Project”—reduce, reuse, recycle, plus some extras, respect and restore. They wanted their home to be “sustainable, fun, and practical.” Their intense eco renovation is profiled in the new April/May issue of ReadyMade, which includes a short tutorial on how to build their awesome recycled wine crate kitchen cabinets.

Here are the direstions according to re-nest.

1. Take off the backs and sides of the wooden boxes and remove all the nails.
2. Lay out the fronts in your desired design to form the layout of your cabinets as a whole. Overlap and mix different kinds of wood to meet your aesthetic specifications.
3. Once you have your layout, cut the 8mm board to the size of each door. (This adds strength.) Use these pieces to mark where to cut the pieces of the wine crates so they fit exactly.
4. Mount the crate pieces to the 8mm wooden board with nails or screws (a greener option than glue). Nail from behind the wood boards so the front stays free of hardware. Use nails that are long enough to hold but not so long that they’ll poke through the front.
5. Add knobs to any drawers. Attach hinges to each door and install, making sure to level.
6. If the wood from the boxes isn’t varnished already, we recommend adding a layer or two so fingerprints and possible cooking spills can easily be removed.

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Fobots are the work of Raleigh, North Carolina artist Amy Flynn.  Amy started making robots to fill the time between illustration jobs. Now, it’s her passion, as it combines two of her favorite pastimes; making things and shopping. She scours flea markets, basements, internet auctions, and scrapyards for cool old junk. Amy then solders and bolts the pieces together to create sturdy, one-of-a-kind sculptures, never to be duplicated.

Each Fobot is numbered, with a copper plate on its back bearing the word “FOBOT” and its individual number. They call them butt tags.

Amy Flyn would also like to issue a Warning: Fobots are not toys, they are not functional, and they will not go on a rampage while you sleep. May contain lead solder, so don’t eat them.

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Make your own bowls and glasses out of empty wine bottles using a bottle cutter.  You can also etch the glass giving your glasses additional character.  Curbly.com has a few suggestions to keep in mind while making your own custom glasses and bowls.

1. The bottle has to be perfectly round to roll on the rollers
2. Clean off all of the labels, you can cut through painted glass just fine
3. Adjust to your desired length and firmly hold the bottle while you rotate it towards yourself.
4. Do not go over the scored glass more than once. If you go over your score more than once you will create deeper cuts that could result in pathways for the glass to take off on
5. Slowly roll your scored glass above a candle heating it up. The thicker the bottle the hotter you should get it. It should be too hot to rest your finger on.
6. Instead of rolling the score with an ice cube I found a better way. Get a bucket or something that will hold ice water tall enough to cover your score vertically. When you feel the bottle is hot enough place the bottle in the ice water vertically and pop the bottle will split almost perfectly every time.

• Now you have cut your first bottle. You now have to deal with the sharp edge. I simply took my hand sander and used a little water and wet sanded the edge.
• You can etch the glass by using vinyl stencils and a sand blaster or there are also chemical etching kits that are available from most craft stores.

These great suggestions come from Curbly.com

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These easels are a great way to display pictures as well as recipe cards.  They have been created by bending the tines of vintage silver forks to make them stand upright.  It looks like the metal has been heated in order to be manipulated so that the tines serve as support legs.

RecycleChicken found thes great idea at Inherited Values

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Every piece of furniture True Connection creates is made from reclaimed cedar. The wood colors range from brown to gray and each piece is totally unique.

You can purchase these items and many other cool furniture items at Etsy.

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Natasha’s Babydoll Coat Rack

To create this cool/creepy coat rack you will need a few things.  These are listed below.

• Soft body doll with hard plastic hands and feet (they will have a backing on them)

• Piece of wood, about 2 feet long

• 12 screws

• Heavy duty keyhole hangers

• Drywall anchors and screws

• GE Silicone II household glue

• Pen or pencil

• Sand paper

• Paint

• Drill

• Screwdriver

• X-acto knife with chisel like blade (#17)

Now that you have collected all of your materials, Natasha says this is how you put it all together.

1. Dismember your doll

2. Arrange hands and feet on board in an order you like. Space them evenly apart, marking their positions with a pen or pencil. Set limbs aside.

3. Drill 3 holes per limb. I counter sank the holes so the board would lie flat against the wall. Make sure your holes will not come too close to the edge of the limb, because the screw make poke out of the side of a hand or foot.

4. Position keyhole hanger and mark the spot. Chisel out the wood until the hanger fits snugly and until the drywall screws’ heads fit.

5. Sand your wood a little and paint it. Let dry.

6. Put some glue on limbs. Screw them on. Let dry.

7. Put anchors and screws in your wall and hang up your new coat rack. Hang up your coats and jackets.

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All you need is a glass jar with a screw on lid, a little soil, some moss you found in the back yard, and a small plant found in the back yard as well.  Put it all together and you have a beautiful little terrarium.

1. Go on a short walk around the yard or maybe through the woods and be on the look out for some moss. As soon as you find some scoop it up and place it in a plastic bag.

2. Now that you have your moss, be on the look out for small plants that look like they would fit into the jar that you have selected for you terrarium.  They don’t have to be flowering plants, as you can see they have used clovers in this picture.  Now hurry back to the house with your plant as they do not survive that long out of the soil.

3. Once you are back at the house, examine your moss to make sure there are not any unwanted plants or other debris you don’t want in your terrarium.

4. Make sure that you have cleaned your jar very well. Also, make sure that any labels have been completely removed.

5. Mound up a little soil on the inside of the lid and place your moss on top of it.  You can now gently place the small plant that you have collected carefully into the moss.  Once you have created the perfect arrangement you can sprinkle some water over it.

6. Now for the hardest part of the whole project.  Gently slide the glass jar over your mound of moss and plants.  Once you have done that screw on the lid tightly and your terrarium is complete.

According to Design Sponge, the water level should be fairly self-sustaining after the first watering (depending on the tightness of the seal). If it looks a little dry, half unscrew the lid and run under the faucet for a minute.

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