Recycled Craftiness

Ever since we moved to Wisconsin and were informed that it is illegal not to recycle and we could be fined for recyclables in the trash, Chris and I have been avid recyclers. In Wisconsin it was easy, the city provided blue bins for curbside pickup. In Texas and Virginia, it takes a little bit more work, we actually have to drive to a recycling facility and separate out our recyclables, but for the environment, we do it. We are such nuts about recycling that we will often bring home recyclables from friends houses and pick them up off the road when we're on family walks or hikes. We also compost all of our kitchen scraps and burn our mixed papers (because Radford doesn't recycle them) to then add the ashes to the compost. Basically, recycling is a big deal in our household. Unfortunately, there are some plastics that are not recyclable in Radford as well, so we find other uses for these. We have found out that we can make many useful crafts by reusing these un-recyclables. For instance, we have magazine holders from cereal boxes; book covers from crackers boxes; desk sets (pencil holders, paper clip holders, etc.) from tin cans; the kid's money banks are made from hot chocolate containers; watering cans from syrup containers; berry picking "necklaces" from sour cream containers; and most recently...a sandbox with sandbox toys! Friday was a rainy day with nothing planned so after the kids cleaned their rooms we pulled out the non-recyclable stack along with some recyclables, some paint shirts, paint, foamy stickers and our imaginations and voila!

Some rainy day sandbox fun complete with water squirters, funnels, buckets, scoops, castle turrets and more. By using a rubbermaid container, we can keep the sandbox on the covered porch and when the fun is over just sweep the excess sand through the cracks and put the lid on the sandbox to keep it fresh for the next time.

And the best part is...blue hands! Thanks to Crayola for making colored sand.