Yesterday dooce showed some adorable recycled-magazine coasters her husband had given her for Christmas, $18 for a set of six. Since a) I need some new coasters, b) I have a stack of magazines ready for the recycling bin, c) my brain is hardwired these days to think of ways to reuse, d) I haven't done much crafting in the past and was insane enough to think this would be a quick and easy project — I decided to make myself a set.
After a web search I was able to find instructions for similar projects, although none for the exact pattern as the coasters dooce showed, so I decided to wing it. It took me a couple false starts, more than two hours, and half a glue stick, but I am now the proud owner of ONE beautiful, homemade, free recycled-magazine coaster. I'm not going to bother giving the instructions. If you want to make these yourself, I'm sure you could find better instructions on a nice crafts blog somewhere. I'm also not going to bother adding a "DIY" category to my blog; I'm starting to think crafting won't be a frequent topic for me. I will probably make a few more to round out my set one of these days; I'm guessing that once I get on a roll I'll be able to make a coaster in about 30 minutes.
I only recycled about a dozen pages of a magazine to make this coaster, but I'm giving myself an A for effort and credit for green change #8.
I snuck in green change #9 today, too. Glen and I have decided to try to eat one organic, vegetarian meal each week. We both used to be vegetarians long before we knew each other. I was vegetarian for more than 10 years, although a better name for my particular brand of eating would have been cheese-atarian or soy-products-sculpted-to-look-like-meat-atarian. I was never willing to put the effort into being a really healthy, organized, creative vegetarian, so after a decade I gave it up.
I don't see myself ever becoming completely vegetarian again, but I'd like to make meat less of a central part of my diet, and eating one or two vegetarian meals a week is a good start. Tonight I made an Asian tofu, noodle, vegetable soup that Glen and I both really liked. I bought all organic ingredients from Everybody's earlier today and even remembered to have the checker put my groceries in the canvas bags I had brought with me (well, to be honest, I stopped her halfway through putting the groceries in plastic bags and asked her to use mine instead; progress, right?). I love shopping at Everybody's; they even carry your bags out to your car like I remember from when I was a kid.
Love the coasters. Check out this. You could do this in a heart beat, Missy! I am going to try it, myself. -sak
http://www.craftypod.com/?p=278
Posted by: Scott | January 21, 2008 at 12:09 AM