Give it the old Reuse!

While I love finding things second hand, even better is when I can reuse something that I've had for a while in an entirely new way. Halloween generally allows all sorts of creative reuses of items. The old riding boots that I salvaged from my grandpa's closet after he died have worked wonders with several costumes. Hell, those boots fit right in with today's boot obsessed look. Probably not what my grandpa thought during his years of wearing them at the race track.

Don't worry - it was washed. Twice!

Anyway, I've been excited by several good examples of reuse that I've seen lately. First and foremost is the cute Halloween costume worn by the almost one year old son of my friends Sarah and JB. Doesn't he look cute like a cute crocodile? Well he should. He's in a an old Halloween costume worn by their chocolate lab during the pre-children years of their marriage. Yes, that's right. That baby is in a dog outfit. LOVE IT. Share and share alike, I say!

For me?!!?

A potentially less cute but more hilarious reuse was Steady J's costume consisting of a sport coat, slacks, sunglasses and a strategically placed wrapped gift. Cost? Nothing. He reused everything he already had. Curious to what he was? Here you go. Just remember, I had nothing to do with it.

And finally, totally unrelated to Halloween but still one of the coolest things I've seen: Wrapagain! It's a square of pretty fabric that has ribbon strategically placed so that you can fold the fabric around an item, tie it, and have a beautifully wrapped gift! The fabric wrap can be reused as many times as you want and it even has a tracking number sewn in so you can see how far your fabric has traveled as it has been reused. Too cool!  Taking it a bit further, it would be really easy to make these out of scrap fabric and old ribbon. Don't have fabric or ribbon? I find a ton of it at second hand stores. Goodwill always has lots of spools of ribbon and some of it is quite nice. Or cut up some of your old table cloths or runners. Or even those old t-shirts! These wrappings look so much classier than the paper I salvaged from the recycling at work and the bows I made from holiday candy wrappers last year. Guess it might be time to take it up a notch!

Bite the battery

You know that Weezer blue album song with the lines, "My name is Wakefield, Gotta box full of your toys. They're fresh out of batteries. But they're still makin' noise, makin' noise." I love this song! It's been stuck in my head for days - ever since I had to break down and buy batteries.Yes. Yes. I. bought. batteries. I never thought in the world that it would be batteries that would demolish my plan to buy nothing new for a year. You'd think I would have gone for something more interesting!


Sadly, batteries are some of those weird little things you can't really do without in some situations. What got me was my need for a bright headlamp when I'm riding my bike after dark, which is pretty much every day on my way home from work and most weekends on the way home from Squirrels! My batteries finally gave up the ghost after two years and neither Steady J or I had any AAA size. He and I co-purchased an 8 pack of Energizer Re-chargeable batteries to share - I already had a charger. (Side note: Energizer Rechargeable batteries hold a charge for way longer than the Sanyo batteries that came with my charger.) So now my headlamp is super bright and safe which is great, but I had to buy something new and that felt incredibly weird!!! 

I'm just not sure what to think. Really, I have not interest in buying anything else new any time soon. I sort of enjoy all this money saving and thrift store shopping. I've lately had some quite serendipitous second hand shopping experiences - last week I was looking on Amazon.com for a used down coat because I'm tired of wearing my wool coat out in the woods when it is cold, but of course there was nothing used listed. A half hour later I walked into Second Glance, my favorite consignment shop in Corvallis and there was a used North Face Down Jacket in my size. It's $199 new. I got it for $80.Score! I had a similar situation on the weekend of thinking about how I needed a bottle crowner to put the cap on my bottles of hard cider and then I found one for $3 at the OSU Folk Thrift Store. Another awesome occurrence! I'm looking forward to seeing what else I run across. Perhaps some pants that actually fit will work their way into my life!

I went to Denmark.....

And all I got were these photos. For real! And have a history of searching for the perfect souvenirs so this was quite a stretch for me!

Actually, Steady J and I went to Sweden as well. The reason for the hop over the ocean was to visit my good friends Jenny (aka Hot Dish) and Jacob (aka The Dane) who live in Copenhagen. Our good buddy Party Jon was also Copenhagen bound so we had a mini reunion of Corvallis in Copenhagen. Very nice!

Below is a brief synopsis of our trip in 11 photos.

We took our bikes on the S-train and headed for the 'burbs to the Dyre Haven (Deer Park) which was the royal hunting grounds. It was sunny and warm! We saw lots of bikes, deer and dogs!

Party Jon and Hot Dish soak up the rays at the beach. That's the Baltic sea - the bridge to Sweden is in the background.

We rode bikes around Christiania, the hippie settlement in the center of Copenhagen.

Commentary in Christiania.

Visited the elephants at the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen.

Learned Kubb, a viking game (apparently) from Party Jon.

Bikes, Beers, Kubb and Friends in the park.

This is Sweden, on the island of Vrango outside of Gothenburg (birthplace to Volvo).

This is the Vrango baguette and it was delicious (lobster, shrimp and assorted seafood salad with dill). The Fanta was also amazing.

Outside of the duty free shop in the Copenhagen airport on the way home.