Welcome to my blog. Titled Brilliant TU, with the Spanish word "tu" meaning "you". I like to write about family, service, failures, challenges, successes and our individual worth.
We are on this earth for a reason and we have a choice how we live our lives. Many things in our beautiful universe combined to make us who we are. We are brilliant!
Bienvenidos a mi blog. Quiero que sepas que todos tenemos una razon por la cual estamos aqui. Somos seres brillantes y unicos en el universo!
When we moved to this house, the water filter that had been provided to us from the organization Aaron works for, did not fit onto the faucet in the kitchen. Although we requested a different style that would work in this house, we weren't approved for one. That means we have to buy drinking water, because although we boil water for cooking and washing fruit, we can't boil all the drinking water that we consume. I wanted to show the chronology of how we use and re-use the boxes that we buy because I feel it is such a shame to use them only once. Although not ideal, the buying of water in boxes allows me to reduce the amount of labor that goes into running a home in Latin America. Additionally, I hope to show our children that even though we have to buy drinking water, we can re-use the boxes and bags that the water comes in. Whether we have a large budget or a tiny one, we can do our part to help the environment, by re-using or re-purposing items such as these.
New arrivals come wrapped in plastic.
While we drink the water, the kids enjoy coloring on the boxes; because, who wants to color just on paper all the time?
Opening them from above, I take the bags out and squeeze the last half a litre to litre of water out of the bags.
The bags are then stored and re-used on the children's water wall that we have made mostly with left over plastics and a few funnels I found at what is known here as a "plastiqueria", meaning plastic shop.
This is the third box I have made and I took a short cut by using a previously cut t-shirt of mine. The t-shirt had been used as cover for my belly when nursing. The idea is to take a t-shirt and cut it below the underarms (so it's just a tank) and you just put it on underneath any blouse. That way any blouse can become nursing friendly. It worked great on here because it was tight enough that I didn't have to use the glue gun on the whole box, just on the edges.
I had run out of re-purposed denim so I used one of Aaron's old cargo pants that no longer fit. It was not suitable to give away because of the condition it was in.
I thought it would be fun for the kids to have a pocket on the side of their storage box for treasure, so I didn't cut up all of Aaron's pants into strips this time. One lucky kid found some Canadian cash in that pocket!
These are the first two I made. The bottom box had strips added one by one and for the top one, I sewed the strips together first and then glued them onto the box.
The idea was to make them stack-able, so I originally kept one of the lids on the lowest box so that there was a bit of a raised edge at the bottom. But, there is only one kid out of five that shows the potential for neatness, so we ended up using all the boxes as pictured below.
Overall this is an easy way to spruce up a few cardboard boxes. I could have been more precise and made them less rustic looking, especially on the inside. However, as this is my temporary home, I didn't want to spend too much time on the them. When we do get to our less temporary home, I am going to try to sew removable fabric covers for my storage boxes. That way I can easily remove to clean them and possibly have different fabrics for different seasons. By upcycling the old fabric, there is a reduction in what we throw out. This is just one way which we try to re-use and recycle. The kids love the cardboard boxes for various play and learning activities, so I don't feel so guilty about having to buy so many boxes of drinking water for family consumption. Let me know what you think or post some pics of your recycling or re-using projects. I would love to see them!
We are currently in a rental in Cusco, Peru where my husband is an international development volunteer. Being a volunteer's family means finding low cost ways to beautify our surroundings. The children are learning the value of money by earning their spending money through chores and good works.
I noticed when we moved here that the grass right next to the front wall of our house was dead. Because of the way the house is built, it gets sun but not rain. One of the perks of living in this climate is having access to fresh fruit and veggies and flowers at a very low cost. It was proposed that I would be able to spend 10 soles (about 4 dollars Canadian) on cut flowers bi-weekly, however, I chose instead to save that amount and buy plants around Mother's Day as I have done for years in Canada.
So, although I haven't enjoyed cut flowers since my mom visited us in December of last year, I have been blessed to see a miniature pink rose bush bloom, a yellow rose bush crushing it despite some leaf issues (I am not an expert and my online gardening support group didn't respond to my query about why that rose bush has dried up looking leaves) and some veggie, fruit and herb plants hanging on in the clay-like soil.
I noticed some rocks in an abandoned field near our house and asked my husband and children to gather them for me so that I might make a garden bed for the plants I got at the market. This became both a frugal way to create some curb appeal and an entertaining adventure for our little kids.
Pictured below is our most enthusiastic gatherer helping her dad. Then some of the plants I got for the window boxes positioned directly over the rock garden bed. Last pic is the gathered rocks put to good use! The sunflowers in the middle were started from seeds by the little children.
Included is a short video of our family's latest update about our time in Cusco, Peru!
