Blog Transfer #7: Kitchen Fun and Bowl Covers
Upcycling Boxes and Jars
I’ve gotten creative in my kitchen recently with different ideas I’ve gotten from Pinterest.
My husband seems to enjoy the results.
The other day he came in and said, “I bet you can’t find a diy project to do with the piece that holds the bread bags together” and I immediately gave him an idea. TOO much time on Pinterest… nursing a very hungry Baby G will do that.
Anyhow, I decided to start using all the glass bottles and jars that we recycle so I’ve been soaking them in hot soapy water to get the labels off, then letting them gather dust in the corner of the kitchen. I must repeat: “I will NOT become a hoarder, I will NOT become a hoarder.”
I keep saying that I’ll just freecycle all of the things that I’m not using. I’ve got some ideas for most of them, but I started using one (pictured on the left) to hold our dish detergent (so much cuter!)… the top from the original detergent bottle screws onto the top so it requires no extra cost.
The other two (pictured on the right) are just collecting OTHER things that I’ve been hoarding… err… collecting… for crafts. There’s a lot of crafts that use wine corks… so I guess I need to drink for a good cause!
Small boxes make good storage too… wrapping them with cute wrapping paper makes them even better, but I was lazy and I’m not very talented with wrapping paper.
The hot tamales box is collecting all of our coupons and the vanilla extract box is for pens… not sure why I need so many pens in the kitchen when I have so few in the desk area, but there they are. I just cut off the tops of these boxes, and put them on the fridge, held up by a magnet (which is inside the box). I also have these great strips of magnet tape that I could have used, but I wasn’t sure if they’d hold as well as the magnets I have on there.
My husband has some magnets he’s taken off from inside hard drives and they’re really strong. In fact, I can’t easily get them off the fridge.
On the right, I have a couple larger boxes that I use to hold everything waiting to be filed. A little wrapping paper can turn any cardboard box into something decorative for use around the house. This isn’t the best looking item I’ve made (I ran out of wrapping paper), but it’s working well to hold paperwork that needs to be filed. I just took the empty taco kit box to use, cut out parts of the box that I wanted to look a certain way, and then wrapped it with some floral wrapping paper. You could also use fabric or modge podge it all.
Homemade Dishwasher Rinse
This was a project that I saw on the Whole New Mom website to make homemade dishwasher rinse. As I refuse to spend a fortune on actual dishwasher rinse, I can’t tell you how it compares. But it was a low cost, environmentally friendly, and easy trick to getting my dishes cleaner.
Get your ingredients together (any color of food coloring will work), mix them up, shake your bottle, make a label, pour into the dishwasher rinse container in your dishwasher. The food coloring is just so you can tell when you’re running low.
If it doesn’t work, I don’t really have much to lose. I am not convinced that it will stand up to Daddy B’s tendency to put dishes into the dishwasher without rinsing them first (I try not to complain about this because I don’t want him to remind me that I’m welcome to do all the dishwasher loading myself, even though I probably spend excessive amounts of time redoing his loading and rinsing), but I’m hoping that it works! He likes to remind me that it defeats the purpose of having a dishwasher if I have to wash the dishes first before putting them through… valid point.
It seemed to do a good job on our first run here:
A Couple Household Tips
Originally Posted February 19, 2012
Ripening Avocados!
My husband picked up some avocados for me to use to make a quick easy healthy lunch with (avocado, mango, grilled chicken, a few drops of lime juice, and a pinch of salt- yum!), but the avocados weren’t ripe enough.
Take your unripened avocado, place it in a paper bag with an apple (or banana), leave it in there for 1-3 days and you’re avocado will be ripe.
It worked. Unfortunately, we bought the wrong avocados (doh, we’re not awesome at picking out veggies and fruits).
Keeping Berries from Molding Immediately
It never fails. Daddy B buys berries from the grocery store and they’re molded about 10 minutes after arriving home from the grocery store. I found this cool trick on Pinterest- mix 1 part vinegar and 10 parts water. Put your berries in the mixture, swish them around, and then rinse. It’s February, Daddy B bought these strawberries on Tuesday, and it’s already Sunday night and still no mold! Woohoo! They really haven’t even gotten soft. We ate them all though so I have no idea how long this yummy goodness would have lasted… sorry.
Update: I think we’ve gotten to a week and a half of fresh berries this way. Yay!
Bowl Covers
Originally posted February 24, 2012
I made this bowl cover using Pul fabric. It was difficult to sew it without it being all lopsided so I’m going to try making the next two differently to see if that helps. I may try FOE (fold over elastic) around the edges to see if that helps, even though I’m not a huge fan of FOE. This is the tutorial that I followed to make this.
Or you can just buy bowl covers… clearly I didn’t realize how affordable they were when I made these. But Pul ones can be prettier if you want different fabrics, such as this pretty floral girly Pul.
These were nice quick projects that I could complete quickly after Baby G went to bed, leaving me with more time to work on other projects (or sleep, sleep is good too). I love sifting through all the Pinterest and other DIY projects that I’ve found and actually taking time to complete them!