Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2016

meritaten

mrs mp - those books are gorgeous!
decided to reduce my baby wool stash - bit difficult as the 'baby' is now rather large and I need to knit 2yr old size! and was only stashing away 200grams of each colour. so found a pattern that only uses about 150 gram - and hope I have enough!

117pauline

I have had a busy day emptying my bedroom as I am taking delivery of a new bed tomorrow!!!! I bought the last one over 16 years ago so I think it is about time.

So I tidied, sorted, charity shopped and tidied some more. I did get someone round to clean the cream (why, cream OH choice!!) carpet and also asked her to do a silvery green velour chair. All I can say is WOW. She did a fantastic job and has made the carpet look brighter and the chair definitely doesn't look 30 years old.

In fact I was going to replace the furniture but after a bit of elbow grease, I now have clean furniture which has new life in it.

Had to take my Miele vacuum to a local shop to be mended because we couldn't work out how to sort it ourselves. I must remember NOT to take it out on inanimate objects when the shredder dies!!

I am now exhausted and have decided that I just can't find the energy to go swimming. I have managed the last five evenings but tonight, I just can't get off the settee

mrs-moneypenny

Mended my nightie this morning, then did some patchwork squares from my stash.
Food tonight was all from the store cupboards so some minimising going on there.

misstara

Not much MMMing to report really other than had the last of the leftovers from Sunday's roast today for tea, did 4 meals I've been on training for the last 2 days so have been very tired in the evenings and not doing much. Great to read how much everyone is doing though, it inspires me (or at least it will when I'm not quite so tired :rotfl:). Night everyone, off for an early night.

savingpennies

beautiful_ravens wrote: »

Hello all,
On the 'making do' front, Ive realised that one of the most useful things I have for quickly 'revamping' tatty stuff or finishing off things I've made out of other things is spray paint. Not exactly a massive shock I know!
We have a local shop thats just like a pound land [except things arent all a pound] where I get this car spray paint for £1.29 a can
It looks like this -

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AUbxljdsL._SX300_.jpg

I have loads of it now in various colours, and have upcycled many things; one of my faves is respraying honey/jam jar lids to make matching sets of storage jars for beads, craft stuff, kitchen things etc.

Other re-sprays -

Resprayed an ugly brown-painted plaster dragon ornament, a white plaster mirror frame and 2 white plaster bookend things to make them all look like pewter

Many jam jar lids to make sets!

An old tobacco tin I was using for keeping needles in

A large Pandoro cake tin that was transformed into a waste bin

A metal stool makeover

The ironing board legs when they looked a bit tatty.

Its got to the point where I look at something I might chuck away and think ''hang on, I could spray this a different colour and then use it for...''

So todays [7.30am] make do was spraying a very tatty lid from an old glass storage jar so I can re-use it to keep rice in. The original chrome paint had half worn away, revealing white plastic underneath, so it got a quick respray in silver and is already dry and in the cupboard containing the rice.

Good luck MMMing today

What a great idea! I was eying up some copper lanterns and vases today in a sale but resisted. But this has got me thinking that some of the things I already have could be sprayed a copper colour instead. So that's me off to the poundshops and wilkos tomorrow to see what I can find.

MrsCD

DD made some soup with bendy veggies and took some to work today, so that's minimized the fridge veg drawer.
I've finished hand sewing the zips into the 4 Christmas cushions at last!
And I've made a shopping bag from a tea towel I bought in a sale instead of paying £14 - ish for 3 at CathK :eek:

Just a reminder, as I'm sure it's been mentioned before, to squash your toilet rolls, especially if you have littlies, then they can't just be pulled out like those puppies do in the adverts!

nursemaggie

meritaten 200gms should be enough yarn for a two year old my DGS is 2 1/2 but the hight of a 4 year old. I only need more than 200gms if I make him a hoodie.

Lynplatinum

Evening all

Feel that I ve not done much today but when I think about it I suppose I have really:
Make do - lunch and tea all from stocks and yummy special offer gammon
Minimise - did a sweep of the house for recycling items - loo roll innards; newspapers;flippin through the door leaflets (:mad: why cant we stop em - lets save the planet!) and also paid bills thus minimising the pile of 'to do ' items
Mend - does finally cutting the price labels off the jogging bottoms I bought on Sunday count??? After all it renders them wearable :rotfl::rotfl:
Really admire all you busily knitting folks! Brilliant!
Busy day tomorrow - defo getting to bed on time!!
Nite all

camelot1001

I've finished the baby knitting, well all but the pom-poms that I'm not sure how to do (how do I get to 53 and not know how to do them?!). The poncho was the easiest thing in the world to knit and the hardest to sew up, I felt like a right twit trying to work it out and took me ages, even had to walk away for a while.

Mended a cover for a cold pack for school, washed it too as it wasn't looking very hygenic.

Made do with stuff from fridge for tea, will do the same later.

FairyPrincessk

Morning all,

I was awake around 40 minutes before the alarm this morning, mind already whirring. I'm going to attempt to find 30 minutes to knit and watch something on iplayer during my lunch break today and see if I can quiet my mind a bit. I'm enjoying the programme about Victorian Bakers, not sure if the third episode is up yet.

A long day at work yesterday, so not much MMM accomplished. I have the WI tonight so we'll be eating veggie chilli from the freezer. Instead of making rice to go with it we'll use up some of the cous cous going spare from two days ago as OH seems to have cooked enough to feed most of Manchester. I think that is both making do and minimizing.

I'll head to the gym at some point today and other than that I'll be minimizing my giant pile of marking and a few other work tasks. I'm not sure I'll get around to any mending today.