So, it’s almost Easter. And you’re making omelets. Or cookies. Or anything with eggs.
No biggie.
Just crack open those white shells and toss the whole thing, right?
Wait! Don’t toss that!
With two seconds of prep and some wheat from your food storage, those shells and carton can double as cute, FREE centerpiece for Easter brunch.
These come together in nothing flat—so easy.
* Gently crack your egg shells on the narrow end, remove the egg yolk and white, and make something delicious.
* Rinse shells in hot, soapy water and dry. Dye with natural or store-bought dyes as you would for traditional hard-boiled eggs.
* Add a tablespoon-ish of potting soil to each egg …
… and cover with sprouted wheat. *
Cover with plastic wrap and make sure soil stays moist, but not soggy.
Wheat will start to sprout in a day or two, with 4-6 inches of growth about a week later.
If the grass gets too tall or shaggy, just grab your scissors and even it out.
The carton doubles as a display tray by trimming down the sides with your nicest dollar store scissors.
And you can change up the look depending on how many eggs you use:
FULL DOZEN
HALF DOZEN
SINGLE PLACE CARD
(name written on egg)
(name on egg carton)
And when you’re done, EVERYTHING gets composted or recycled so there’s nothing wasted.
So …
Egg shells and carton?
It’s What Not To Toss this weekend!
* – Spouting wheat is easy and simply involves soaking and rinsing whole wheat kernels in water so that they start to germinate. There’s a great video of process HERE.
It’s late. You’ve got a movie on. Or Pandora. And you’re frantically happily wrapping gifts and stashing them away for Christmas.
And then you reach the end of the roll.
And if you’re using cheapie wrapping paper like me, that means you’re face to face with not a solid cardboard tube, but a 12”-18” roll of heavy paper that doubles as a tube.
Who cares, right?
Wrap the dang present and toss the faux-tube, right?
Wait! Don’t toss that!
I’ve got SEVEN reasons to hang onto to that wrapping paper center.
And to make all of them easier, do yourself a favor and reroll that paper width-wise instead of length-wise—it’s much easier to store. While you’re at it, roll several together to keep all of it in one, neat spot.
#1 – Get Your VonTrapp On
Neighbor gifts, presents or any of your “favorite things” look snazzy with minimal effort or cost.
#2 – Paper Crafts
The natural color and subtle texture are great for cards and art projects without the premium craft store price.
#3 – Make stencils and patterns for craft projects
This paper’s heavier than regular craft paper and holds it’s shape better. Sewing patterns hold up better and stencils have less bleed through from paint or marker.
#4 – Wrap Shipping Boxes
This heavy weight holds up like a champ in the mail and post office types adore it.
#5 – Protect Your Work Spaces
Painting, coloring and gluing projects just got a whole lot neater. And unlike newspaper, there’s not risk of paint soaking through.
#6 – Protect Breakables
Skip the flimsy paper towels and cut squares to layer in between holiday plates and serving platters. This paper is both pliable and thick enough to protect dishes from scratching and moving when stacked.
Thank you so much for all the love you showed my good friend Brandi. Reading how much she’s touched each of you made me float.
***
As I sit here tonight, Thanksgiving is two weeks away.
Tonight I’m sharing the first of four holiday posts as my family and friends are getting ready for Turkey Day: Being Grateful, Decorating Without Dollars, Dressed for the Occasion and Stuffed! (all about the food!).
This year in particular I’m making a deliberate decision to reclaim Thanksgiving as a holiday in it’s own right and not just the first day of Christmas. I want to linger on thankful, relish in blessings and openly rejoice for everything I have instead of what I think I need. When I’ve taken this approach in year’s past, I find I’m much less likely to be depressed by what we’re not spending on Christmas and recognize how rich and full my life is right now.
So to celebrate today’s theme of Being Grateful, I’m so excited to have another bloggy friend, Becky from Creatively Content, here from half way around the world to share a beautiful Thanksgiving tradition she enjoys with her family. She writes that her theme for this season of her life is to ‘use what we have’, and I can tell you that her blog is a beautiful testament to just that.
Becky is an American blog momma living with her husband and three beautiful children in western Turkey near the Greek border. I’m always inspired by Becky’s faith, grace and creativity as she builds a wonderfully unique life for her kids. I hope you’ll love the Thanksgiving Mailbox that she’s sharing today as much as I do.
The Thanksgiving Mailbox started because my girlies and me were sitting around making envelopes out of an old magazine and they played mail for a LONG time, sending sweet love notes to everyone in the family.
So I thought it would be fun to have a Thanksgiving mailbox where we wrote notes every morning starting 2 weeks before thanksgiving of things we are grateful for and put them in our mailbox. We used heavy duty cardboard for the bottom and the sides and a cereal box to shape the middle and back.
The stand came together using cardboard circles and toilet paper tubes.
And everything was held together using hot glue.
The kids tackled the decorating with strips of magazine pages + mod podge since my scrapbook paper supply is small and precious.
The envelopes are stored on the back of the mailbox in a little pouch with 5 little cards for each of us in the family to write what we are thankful for.
One special thing I added was that 5 envelopes have each of our families initials on it and so each of us will write (some with help) 😉 one thing we are grateful for about that person.
On Thanksgiving day we will open up all the 14 envelopes and remember what we were grateful for and each have our own envelope to open and see all the special things our family has to be grateful for about us. (The kids will love to get their own mail! We have one for Jesus, too.
Thanks Nike for including me in your Thanksgiving posts and hope you come and stop by Creatively Content.
You’re so welcome, Becky! I’m making one of your mailboxes for Family Home Evening with my Dirty Half Dozen.
I’ll hope you’ll stop by and say hi to Becky this week. Her corner of the world is literally thousands of miles from craft stores or fabric shops, yet she always finds amazing ways to use what she has and make do with what she doesn’t. Her blog is full of projects that celebrate the spirit of recognizing and being thankful for everything we do have in our lives.
Case in point:
No theatres to watch movies? Or too expensive to hit the theatre? No problem.
what are you GRATEFUL for right now as you get ready for THANKGIVING?
(Can’t wait to show you part 2 of the THRIVE Thanksgiving series on holiday outfits. Like I mentioned at the end of Brandi’s post, this has been the happiest little accident ever.)
