making lemonade

as i walk around my neighborhood after snowmagedon 2.0 i cant help but notice the vast amounts of fallen brush and branches caused by last week's heavy snow/ice combo...

many of the piles have been tagged as "too large" by our sanitation engineers, so they are laying all over the place.

why not recycle some of it into something fantastic?

canadian design group urban tree salvage showed off some of their inspired pieces at the 2011 toronto design show last week.

they need to get some trucks down here stat!

mini cactus planter

i saw this crazy cactus planter earlier today in the giddyspinster's shop on etsy and i thought "what a great way to recycle your old ho shoes!".
the stiletto shoe has since sold but the giddyspinster has other surprises in her cute shop of upcycled treasures.

garden upcycling tip: rubber hose chair

my garden hose is one-hundred feet in length and constantly gets kinked while trying to water my pots and containers around my little yard. today i tried to rinse the rotten egg from my black lab's back after he rolled in it (?) and had no flow! so, i have to replace it with something shorter and less kinkable. no need to trash the current hose, though: i can make a few pieces of garden furniture! the chair above was featured on the contemporist and instructions to make it appear on Instructables.com. i like the idea of running water through it!

grow shelter, grow!

the growshelter from brooklyn-based xlxs is this year's winner of the schuykill environmental education center's sustainable design/build competition. The shells of the GrowShelter are embedded into a 100 x 100 sq. foot space within the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, a 350-acre nature preserve near Philadelphia. Each shell is made out of lime mortar, which is 80% more environmentally friendly than regular mortar, formed around a reinforced frame, and embedded into a mixture of mud, seeds, nuts, and water. 18 species of Philadelphia native plants and flowers, along with birdseed ingredients, like peanuts, sunflower seeds, and corn, are planted in the growing layer of the shelter. that is thinking outside of the box!