Reusing and Recycling Also

Today Rhonda is having a link up of recycling and re-using ideas and hoping to create a trail of inspiration. I agree with her and think visuals provide a more lasting or re-callable memory.

Here are some of ours.

Above is where the grapevine grows and looks so lush and green in summer but in the winter, it's a boring old fence. I took some saucepan lids and made butterflies so that I have something bright and happy to see from my kitchen window during the winter. They are simply screwed on. You could make simple art on your boring fence too by recycling waste metal and wood items.

The chook shed itself is the old wood/garden shed recycled. It is fully lined for insulation with recycled building materials like dado removed from the hallway inside and old reject fence palings.  The nesting boxes were made entirely from a wooden pallet that something was freighted on. On the floor of the house we also use shredded paper from my work at the doctors' surgery. It is then recycled again into compost. 

In the chicken "nursery" which is itself made from an old tin sign that can be looped and and clamped into a circle. As the chicks grow, so can the enclosure by un-clamping and making it larger. The warming light is an  old bed head light suspended over. Click on the picture to enlarge and look at the clever water set up and feeder that Craig has made from milk containers. We store the feed in an old milk churn where it is safely secured from rodents and kept dry.

Of course there are all sorts of sewing projects from old curtains, upholstery fabric, buttons,

sheets, towelling and my all time favourite pillowcases. Pillowcases I seem to find regularly in hardly worn condition and for about 50cents.

Also old woollen blankets and scraps.

Much of the iron fencing around our place has been made from old stair and porch railings that we sourced from the tip shop at a fraction of the price of buying new materials.

Including this arch (since painted and looks a treat) that Craig gave me for Christmas one year.

These buckets I sourced from a cafe (they are mayonnaise pots etc) and and they are ideal for picking berries and olives as the little handle slips over the wrist. Come olive curing time, they are handy containers for the brining process too and the perfect size for slipping a bread and butter plate just inside to keep the olives submerged.

What about sheep fat into soap. An otherwise wasted product. 

The list could go on...

You're only limited by your imagination sometimes.