the ReFab Diaries

This weekend involved apple picking and pumpkins and all things "fall". And I found myself, unexpectedly, in a thrift store a long way out of the city. The kind of place where nothing has been curated for (or by) a discerning eye. It's just a mishmash of great grandma's stuff that no one really wants anymore.

And there was a lot of kitsch ceramic. Dogs, horses, angels etc. What my grandma would have called "knick knacks". I guess I have some knick knacks of my own, but this stuff...wow. It still made me curious though. What can you actually do with an ugly ceramic dog? The answer, it seems, is paint it! Milk-glass paint is especially effective. So here are some ideas:

Hey - look around! I've been pretty quiet the last couple of weeks working on a big, much-needed site refab. What do you think? I'm really happy with how it looks, but the big goal was to have it be a friendlier place to visit. Hopefully things are easier to find and posts load faster.

Week 35 goals:

1. Shop cleaner. Eat cleaner.
2. Boost my immune system

Last week I explained how and why I've committed to eating differently. This week, a little insight into what I'm eating, how I'm feeling, weight loss and lots of links in case you want to try any of this yourself. Then I'll take a break from blogging about food. Just to be clear: I'm not "on diet". If you do want / need to shed pounds, this will work. But that's not why I'm doing it.

It's week 34. I'm way past the halfway mark and you may have noticed that I have not yet mentioned food shopping, cooking or eating. In the zero-waste niche, this is odd. Search #zerowaste on Instagram, and you see a lot of this:


Why not me? Well, I knew a change in my shopping habits would be the hardest to pull off. I get to the farmer's market sporadically. I squeeze in grocery shopping when I can. I feed a fruitarian 6-year old and once I know I have what she needs, I tend to buy what's convenient for me. Not junk - think pre-grilled chicken, precooked lentils, cheese, apples. Just convenient. A lot in recyclable packaging. But still. A ton of packaging.

When you commit to 51 weeks of posts and then you skip a week ... well, it feels odd. But I had to thanks to being sick. Again. My immune system has been less than effective this year.

How is this relevant to breadboxes? It's not. But it has provided the kick I needed to take a hard look at the way I eat. And I'll tell you more about the changes I've made next week because they are, actually, relevant. To both breadboxes and trimming my waste!

Meanwhile... I needed to go back to my blog roots a little to get back on this wagon. I used to do a lot of these repurposing round ups in pre-Pinterest days (remember those?). So let's have some fun with old breadboxes before I tell you about my much-lower-waste eating.

Time to send these books to a new home! As always, I used a randomizer to pick the winner and it chose entry #17 - that's Laura D.

Laura, congrats! Expect an email from me to get your shipping details.

A big thank you to everyone who entered for your interest - if you can find these books gently used, they're worth grabbing - so many good ideas for upcycling and refashioning.

1. Walk the walk at work and at home
2. Share good ideas for reducing office waste
3. Appreciate working with people who share my values.

1. Find a way to keep meaningful things around and functioning
2. Find resources for recycling cork
3. Keep it simple