A Fairy Tale, Part 1

Last January, we made a gingerbread house (this one from IKEA); after sitting lonely on the top of a bookcase for a while, it was adopted to become part of our Nature Shelf.

The Little Guy decided pretty quickly that this gingerbread house was where the Fairies in our home lived, and he just loves to go and visit the shelf to see what the Fairies are up to.

So when I made a trip to IKEA last week, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy another gingerbread house kit. We quickly assembled it, and when I told The Little Guy that he (he!) could decorate it, he was thrilled.

We made a simple icing of egg white, confectioners/icing sugar and vinegar, and added to a couple of drops of food coloring. Then I just divided it between four small zip lock bags, snipped a tiny bit of corner off each bag, and hey presto! - we have icing bags!

Then The Little Guy set to decorating his new Fairy Home.

He let me decorate a little of it too, which was more fun than I had anticipated. I also found out that piping is *not* a natural skill for me ;-)

The icing dried really quickly, and TLG added a garden, a shed and a skate board to the Fairy Home.

He has a spot all picked out in his room (right next to the head of his bed), and he reported that the Fairies loved their new home.

Such sweet and simple pleasures, building a Fairy Home!

Part 2 of a Fairy Tale posting soon!

Linked to The Magic Onion

 

A Nature Shelf! {week 2, January 2013}

For this week, the second week in the month, we are introducing the Plant Kingdom to the Nature Shelf. And we are truly bringing a little of our outdoor environment inside, with a bare tree! No leaves or buds for us here in Virginia.

The frost on the trees and the smoke coming from the chimney are touches I just couldn't resist adding! Let's hope the Fairies who live on our Nature Shelf like them too :-)


What are you doing this month to bring a little of your outside environment in to your home? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

Upcycling Sunday!

Upcycling, def. the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value.

Wikipedia.org

I started 2013 with a lofty goal; to give, sell or donate 2013 items from my home in the year 2013 (without bringing a bunch of stuff in to replace it!)

As I approached this project, it seemed unbelievably large. Almost too big, something that I would struggle to achieve.

I also thought that removing 2013 items from my home would make a huge difference. The response I most often get when I tell people about this project is "I don't think I even have 2013 items in my home!"

Well, we are nearly 2 weeks in to 2013 and my 2013 items project and I've come to a big realization on both of those assumptions.

It will be much easier to get 2013 items out of my home than I had first thought. And I'm not sure it will make as big a difference as I had initially hoped either. But are we down-hearted? No!

Right now I have donated, sold or gifted 375 items, leaving just 1638 items to go.

If you are considering joining the 2013 Items challenge, I'd love to hear from you! Or maybe you just want to start a one month challenge of 168 items in a month (12 x 168 = 2013!). Or even 5 items in a day (just 5 items each day, would total 2013 at the end of the year). And don't worry that the year has already begun ... it's never too late.

For some reason, I was so focused on getting things out of the house, I totally forgot to to take any pictures, thus the random pictures of my Little Ones playing!


What have you been de-cluttering, organizing, gifting away, and donating recently? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

Food Waste Friday! Really, Very, Incredibly Not Good.

I just love The Frugal Girl blog. Really - just love!

Each week (well - most weeks) she blogs about her food waste, a kind of public declaration, aimed to reduce her own food waste. And she invites the rest of us to join her!

And ... well, the title of this post says it all really.

My only defense would be that we had house guests over the holiday period so there were lots of bits left over from meals (it's hard cooking for a large group and getting the portions just right every time!) and that we were busy-er than usual.

And now for food waste Hall of Shame ...

We have left over Chinese carry out sauce, macaroni and cheese, mushroom risotto, spicy pinto beans and (gulp) salmon.

And we're not done yet ...

Next we have a Pannetone, that had been opened and then left to go stale.

A wedge of pecan pie, bought because we all thought we would like pecan pie, only to find out that we didn't.

Asparagus that was left out on the counter overnight (which I'm usually so picky about, but this seemed distinctly slimy the next morning.

Fresh pineapple that was left to go fizzy and fermenty.

And a heel of (nice) bread that was left to go so stale, there was no use for it.

And the really, truly most awful thing about this? I started to clean out my refrigerator this morning, saw that there were more things that should really be added to the list, and decided to put off cleaning it out, so my list wouldn't have to be longer.

The title of this post says it all ... really, very, incredibly not good :-(


How was your food waste this week? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!