Recycle, Recycle, Recycle....

What a brilliant day I have had! The children and I pottered around this morning and then made our way to see my friend Alison. Thomas is a little older than Elizabeth and they are great friends, Hannah and Francesca are the same age and are both pink and princess mad! And with her lovely husband around to bring regular refreshment and entertain Nathaniel what more could a girl ask for?!

She gave me all her Christmas cards (she too has done the removal of decorations and a mega clean), I'm hoping for many more bundles from people. I cut the nice fronts whole to make the tags for next years presents and nick the embellishments for new cards, tags and Christmassy collages.

Here's what they looked like when Francesca and I had finished with our scissors;



There's even a musical disc in there too! Wonder which unfortunate person will get that next year?!

And while we were chatting Alison was sorting the washing and she went to fold a pair of her hubby's undies to find that the seat of them was see-through! Now the urge to laugh was huge and we both succumbed to hilarity (especially at this point as Phil was complaining about things in the kitchen cupboards, a thing a man should never do), I felt bad as I'm sure that some of the remnants in Simon's undie drawer are circa 1976! Anyhoo, the laughter brought the man in question in to see what was soooo funny. He went to put them in the bin and I demanded to know if they had a button on, and if so, could I have it? There was a small pearly blue button that is now mine :-)

This prompted Alison to go and get a bag of 'spare' buttons from her bedroom. You know the ones that come in small plastic bags on the inside seam of your posh new cardi/blouse/coat etc. You cut it free and put it 'somewhere safe' only to be unable to find it when said garment loses a button!!

Here they are;

Some of them are very bog standard dark simple buttons but some are very fancy indeed. There is a beautiful mother of pearl one that is just begging for a brooch to sit on. There are also some tiny bags of spare sequins (Alison is very posh!!) and beads too.

These and the little ribbons from the neck of new garments are my very favourite crafty find.

Recycle, recycle, recycle, that's what I say!! And thanks Alison!!

Daisie xxx