My seven year old daughter is crushed: her Tangled lunch-box-purse-thing is toast.

Frankly I’m surprised it lasted this long.

My daughter loves–LOVES–this little box, but is terrible at putting it away. So in the last few months it has been stepped on, knocked down the stairs, left outside and dumped in the toys box dozens of times. This week she finally admitted through tears that there was no way to uncrinkle the metal or replace the busted off latch. The bottom of the box had a steel logo so I marched it straight to our recycling bins.

Time to toss the box, right?

Wait! Don’t Toss That!

Since I was going to have to cut the handle off her most favoritest toy ever before I could recycle the box, I let her come up with something new to make with the left-over materials.

And the result?

Clear, stretchy plastic cording + the left-over handle beads

=

a quick princess bracelet.

My daughter was thrilled to both save her princess jewels and have something princess-y to wear just for her.

And because we were so focused on the bracelet save, I didn’t even think to save the metal from the box sides.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

What I should have done was *carefully* cut the side panels from each side of the box, crimp the edges together and make a little cup for pencils or stickers for my daughter’s desk.

 Oh well.

At least it’s been recycled and the beads live on as a bracelet on the arm of one very happy seven year old.

Now please remember to put your new bracelet away kiddo.

Busted lunch box / purse?

It’s What Not To Toss this weekend.

Today’s post is brought to you by my ten-year-old son who managed to put not one, but two holes in his cheapie just-for-the-summer shoes that I bought two weeks ago.

Really kid? Not even a month of wear?

Just as I started into Mom Lectures 15 & 18: Money Does Not Grown On Trees and You Need To Take Better Care Of Your Stuff, Kid 1 interrupted to suggest we just fix the shoes with duct tape.

Duct tape?

My initial reaction was HECK NO, kid.

Taping shoes together has to bring thrifty to a new low (and not in a good way). But just as I was coming up with the reasons why duct tape would never work, I stopped short and did a 180.

Because thanks to Myth Busters and time to kill to during my hospital stay with kid 6, I know that duct tape can actually do anything.

You can make sailboats that actually sail. And cannons that fire actual cannon balls. And patch sinking boats while you’re in them on the water.

And that’s before you even get into the whole wallet-purse-prom-dress-out-of-duct-tape craze.

Image from NYDailyNews.com

So I said yes … and cut a few patches out of cardboard to level out the bottom of the shoe where the holes were … and added a bajillion (or four) layers of the brightest duct tape we had in the house …

… and just like that—Kid 1 was back to having dry feet.  Well, dry ugly feet.

After seeing how the purple looked, my son decided he wanted to change the brown canvas to black “just like the cool kids.” Whatever that means.

So he gave Sharpies a whirl and ended up with two busted pens and shoes that were still brown. Awesome.

But since I was experimenting with mixing house paint in the middle of all this, he asked if he could use some, too.

Sure. Why not.

So off came the classy decorative duct tape trim and out came a foam brush.

Worked pretty well. The paint dried nicely and wasn’t stiff at all. Apparently Olympic Premium Indoor Latex paint in satin finish is the way to go here people.

And as for Kid 1, he’s ridiculously proud of his sad little house-painted-duct-taped wonders, proudly showing them off at Walmart today while I kept checking to make sure no one was getting a cell photo of us for thepeopleofwalmart.com – ha!

And despite how conflicted I feel about these things, he’s gotten compliments on them from other kids who think they’re so cool!

And maybe it’s a good thing that his shoes gave out so fast so that he could start a wave of duct tape art that rocks fifth grade like no body’s business. (And it saves me $10-$20 bucks for at least a few more weeks. 🙂

So…

Shoes With Holes?

They’re what not to toss this weekend.