Cardboard Furniture & Cheeseburger Cupcakes!

Check out this cool, customizable kids' furniture, made with paper tubes...fun idea! (via Inhabitots)

And on a totally unrelated note, if you're looking for a fun recipe to try for your Memorial Day weekend picnics this weekend, check out my tutorial for cheeseburger cupcakes!  Super fun and tasty, too!! :-)

Eco Friendly Teething Jewelry

Does your baby love to chew on your jewelry? "Oh Plah," which is French for "here you go," is designed to stand up to your baby's teeth, and is even eco-friendly. When you're done with it, the company will pay for the shipping for it to be returned and recycled into another toy! I think it's time to go jewelry shopping...for my baby's sake, of course! (via Eco Child's Play)

Clean Up Thrift Store Finds With This Eco-Friendly, Home Made Tarnish Remover

I picked up this pitcher today at the thrift store.  I paid a little more than I normally would for a thrift store item, at $7.99.  Not because I thought it had any value whatsoever, but because I just thought it was really neat.  Not sure if or how I will ever use this to pour anything, but I just really liked the contrasting raw materials of silver and cork, and the chain that holds the little cork in the spout.  Just a cool piece!

I realized I had packed away my bottle of tarnish remover already (during a day of closet de-cluttering, since we're trying to sell our house).  But, I wanted to shine this up a bit.  So, I did some online searching for a home made tarnish remover recipe.

I found one that seemed to work pretty well, so I thought I'd share.  It may come in handy if you want to polish up some silver, or find something cool like I did at a garage sale or thrift store that needs a little TLC!

I had to triple the recipe in order to totally submerge this, because it is a large item and I had a big bowl.  But, here is the single recipe:

Dissolve 1 Tbsp salt and 1 Tbsp baking soda in 6 cups of warm water.  Pour it into a bowl that has been lined with tin foil.  (This is not to protect the bowl; the tin foil is actually a part of the recipe!)  Drop in your items to be cleaned, and let them soak for an hour.  Here's my bowl:

After an hour, remove, wash off, and buff dry!

This didn't get my pitcher completely spotless, but really did a good job of getting that blueish-black tarnish off.  I was surprised how well it worked.  I'm thinking if I had let it soak longer, it may have gotten even cleaner.  I'm sure this has been sitting around tarnished for a long time.

Here you see the before and after.  Not bad for items you have in your kitchen!  So there you have it...a cheap and eco-friendly way to remove tarnish from your silver!

Clever Lego birthday invitations

I LOVE doing creative birthday parties (see my 2-yr-old's Space/Robot party post), so this Lego birthday invitation idea really caught my eye.  In the spirit of recycling, if I did this I'd probably pick up a bag of Legos at my local thrift store...while they still often charge quite a bit for Legos at thrift stores, it would still be cheaper, greener, AND much more memorable than any paper invite!  I could totally see a kid taking this apart (after Mom has written it on the calendar and rsvp'd of course), tossing the pieces into his or her Lego stash, and remembering the fun they had that day the next time they come across one of these bricks!

Not sure if these would be the type you'd mail to someone, unless you glue the pieces together and ship in a padded envelope, but I'd definitely hand these out to family and friends in person.  Plus, it would be fun to see their reaction! This will surely go into my file of ideas to be pulled out next time I'm looking for a birthday party idea...maybe for the big oh-three! (via Inhabitots)

Repurposing Crocs: From Gardening Shoe to Garden In Itself!

Real Simple magazine recently published this fun idea for repurposing your Crocs!  I thought it was pretty clever, being that Crocs were originally designed as a shoe for gardeners that could be easily washed off after a day in the dirt.

When repurposed as a hanging planter, the air holes turn into drainage holes and heel strap into a hanger.  Of course these shoes aren't cheap, but it's a pretty cool idea, maybe if you've lost one shoe or grown out of them and can't use them on your feet anymore!

I could definitely see these hanging around a potting shed, patio, or any other place that has a theme centered around the activity of gardening!

Recycled Craft: Jug Heads!

Tossing your empty jugs into the recycle bin rather than the trash is great and all, but why not give them one more life before recycling and repurpose them into wall decor?

I just had to share this great recycled craft idea from Family Fun magazine.  Click the link to get instructions to turn the jugs and other miscellaneous plastic packaging into cute, colorful "jug heads!" I just love how they used those little plastic sock hooks to make a smiley face on the guy in the lower right corner.  So clever!

I know it's meant to be a kids' craft, but I just might have to make some of these myself. They'd really brighten up the laundry room!

Save those torn jeans!

Give your old jeans new life and more character with some simple ironing!  I recently made-over my favorite jeans when they got a hole in the knee using some inexpensive iron-on patches.  Now I love them even more!  Check out the post on my ID Mommy blog, here.  It's easier than you think to repair torn jeans!

Once they get beyond repair, of course, I'm sure I can find something else fun to turn them into.  But, for now, as long as it's just the knee, I can get a lot more use out of them as jeans for a while before I repurpose them into something else!  Stay tuned for my jeans' third life, whenever they get to the point where patching doesn't cut it...

Leaf Ties by Lufdesign

Check out these "leaf ties" by Lufdesign.  The leaf tie is designed to be used in the same way your average cable tie is used, however, in the end it transforms your ugly snarl of cables into twisted vine.

Their website has some more beautiful photography of the product in use.

Such a cool, simple way to blend something so utilitarian with something beautiful and organic, and the proceeds go to benefit causes for ecology.

Bears made from recycled clothing

I just love these cute bears from Bubs Bears, made from recycled baby clothes...not just any baby clothes, but YOUR baby's clothes.  Send them your old baby clothes and they'll turn them into a beautiful keepsake. 

You can also have them made from other fabrics of sentimental value...your old wedding dress, your grandpa's flannel shirts...whatever you just can't bear to throw away (no pun intended) or don't feel up to sewing into something else yourself.

I thought this was a pretty neat idea and a unique variation of the memory quilts we've all heard of! (via Baby Gadget)