After switching Q onto a different formula, this one in tins, I found myself throwing a lot of this decent sized tins in the recycling bin and with the rubber lid it came with I found the link between always lacking boxes for storage of bits and bobs and these nifty up-cycleable tins.

This tin became a holder for all Kate's crayons....

 And this one for the coffee pads

I used acrylic paint, first a coarse white as a base (normally I would have sanded it a bit with a fine grained piece of sandpaper to get the paint to stick better but the basecoat was enough) I then just coloured away and finished it off with a shiny topcoat, also the bottom even though not painted but I didn't want to risk it rusting or something  knowing that it would be exposed to water and other liquids.

Upcycling - Kate's room

When Kate turned 3 her grandmother bought her a new bed and with me as a 'consultant' in the process of choosing we settled on a lovely white, French country style bed from Ikea which can be pulled out to a double bed, has storage underneath and when I'm turning her bedroom into a teenage bedroom, it was double as a couch. Grandmother would liked to have bought a junior bed, pink and shaped like a carriage, which would also have been lovely but let's face it, we only have her every 2nd weekend and 2-4 weeks of vacation a year, she will not be able to use that bed enough before she's grown out of it and finds it childish. Here should also be mentioned that when she has trouble sleeping it's easy to pull it out to a double and Steve lie with her until she's calm and/or sleeping.
Now for her 3 year old birthday I decided to make her room a real girl's room, to make it more like home and less like somewhere she only stays ever so often - making it more like home. I spend little money decorating it because I had a lot of paintings I did myself and the rest we had from random purchases. I would like to say that one of my more brilliant ideas was to buy decoration flags normally used for parties and I hung them from the ceiling.
 

The butterflies on the wall was something bought by my mother years ago which I never got to use and I love hos they break up the white of the wall.
The flags hanging from the ceiling cost me 3 Euroes
The plastic lei's (Hawai'an flowerbeeds) are from a beach party years back which I was going to use for a painting but never got around to.
The lovely bed is from Ikea

Her wardrobe was a hand-me-down from her grandmother and looked, well to be honest, boring so I painted it. Using acrylic paint I did a Hello Kitty which she loves and a part magical-forest inspired motive
It took me a few days to paint it all but I am happy with the result.
All in all I'm happy with the result of her room, she loves it, it's very pink and girly and after doing this one I cannot wait to make the same for Quinten when we move to a place where he can get his own room and when his little sister arrives and is ready for her own room, she gets the same.

Upcycling - the dining room set

A new trend and something that has caught my mother is upcycling - just a fancy way of saying: smarten up your old stuff and/or giving used items a new purpose. So that means anything from repolstering your old chairs to using old conserves tins as pencilholders. In a consumer, use and throw out, society and with the growing piles of waste land I think it's a good idea - not to mention the financial crises helps in seeing new purposes of old things.
When Steve and I moved into our first and present apartment we didn't have couches or a dining table so we got his grandmother's old sets and let's face it, she's halfway through her 70's and modern is not in her genes - personally I don't really care, I go by the saying: "Beggers can't be choosers" Our budget was tight and it beats sitting on the floor. Now at the local marked I found some nice furniture fabric so I repolstered the chairs and made a table cloth to match, had I had more time and money, I would have painted the wood as well but polstering did a remarkable difference.

 The chair before

The whole set before

The chair after

The whole set after

It's still an old dining room set but I think it's brightened up a bit and the reason why I made the table cloth like that is that I have children and with the ruffled edges, the little one can hold onto it for support without pulling it off the table (and everything with it) He has one time almost pulled it off but he was also hanging from it with his entire body weight (all 10 kg/22 lbs) but it still stayed on long enough for me to get a hold of him and pull him away.

Second hand

I have to say, I love thrift stores, or second hand stores as the are mostly called. I like to think that everything has a meaning and a purpose here in life and if the item is collecting dust in a drawer and just taking up space it's wasting it's purpose. It might be nothing to you but it could be something special to someone else. I have bought some of my best things in thrift stores or I have gotten it from the closet of some old relative that didn't have a use for it or hadn't used it for years. I have several times, especially just before I moved to Belgium, cleared out in my things and removed those who were: Never used, I like it, I might use it, it doesn't fit yet and so on.... Things I have had for years, months or just weeks, nothing got a chance if I was doubting if I was going to use it. I am not big on Feng Shui but I believe in a cluttered home is a stuffy home. Not here mentioned that a house full of things are messy, my in laws have a lot of things and it's nice and tidy there but it's stuffy, you can feel it when you're there.
So I am big on supporting thrift stores, one (wo)man's trash is another (wo)man's treasure plus mostly thrift stores are run by companies who send the profits to charities so it's a win-win :P