We’ve had a message on our suggest-an-item page from Kaye:

what can i do to reuse/create something useful out of old sports trophies? i have only seen ideas for coat racks, but i already have one. these are the “plastic-people frozen in place and mounted on a block of stone” type ones.

i’ve also heard about giving them to a trophy shop to recycle. but what else??

Coat rack = awesome! As I mentioned on Things To Do Today last Friday, we need a new coat rack – if either John or I had ever achieved any sporting prowess, you can pretty much guarantee that’s what I’d be doing with our trophies around about now. Unfortunately we both preferred sitting to running about on fields and they don’t give out anywhere near as many trophies for that.

Anyway though, Kaye’s not up for a coatrack so any other ideas?

(Photo by coldphase)

As I mentioned yesterday, and alluded to the other week when asking about how to make a recycling bin thing, John and I have decided to tidy up our garden. “Garden” is quite a grand word for it because it’s really just a small yard that we’ve tried growing things in – but been unsuccessful because it’s north-facing in a not exactly warm or sheltered part of the country.

Over the years, I’ve tried growing all sorts of bits of veg in the not even 2m by 3m soily bit but not had much success because of the north-facing-ness, the resulting slugs of doom and our horrible clay-y soil which even repeated emptyings of the compost bin hasn’t really helped. I’m going to keep growing shrubs and anything else I can keep alive in pots but we’ve decided to “pave” it over so we can use the area in different ways (more space for drying clothes, entertaining friends and having space to do large scale, messy craft/building projects) – at the moment it’s a good-for-little muddy mess.

For obvious reasons, we’re reluctant to use newly cut stone for the job and have been on the lookout for patio flags that other people are replacing – but I’m wondering if anyone has any fun suggestions for us to use instead.

We’ve got some flat-tish pieces of york stone that we salvaged a few of years ago (they’ve actually been used as edging on the soil bed – shown in the picture the day we put it in) which we can use as crazy paving, but we don’t think we’ve got enough for the full job. So any suggestions of things we can use to pad the paving out a bit? Or put between the cracks?

We’ve had an email from Valerie:

Recently, the uneven brick front steps to my house were knocked out in order to put in a sidewalk. Now I have single bricks, pieces of bricks, chips of bricks, and sections/blocks of several bricks mortared together. Almost all of the bricks still have mortar on them. Can anyone suggest a practical use for these?

We salvaged some bricks when a friend removed a 1970s style brick fireplace recently* and plan to use them to make a small (two-brick high) wall to hold back some shrubs off our path – the shrubs will hang over the wall so it doesn’t really matter what the bricks look like. We also have a random old brick on top of our compost bin to stop the lid blowing away. I hear that they’re also useful to put at the bottom of garden tubs – to stop them being as easily stolen/blown over.

But they’re mostly just ideas for full bricks? What about bits of bricks and chips?

* “recently” is an utter lie. It was about two years ago and they’ve been sat in our garden since then. We’re in a tidying the garden phase at the moment – hence the recycling bin thing I wanted ideas for the other week – though so maybe they’ll get used soon…

(Photo by jazza)

We went out for a Mexican meal the other day (mmm, mexican food) and while eating a giant pile of guacamole (mmm, guacamole), we had one of those wonderings about what must happen to the many, many leftover avocado stones. From that, our wonderings went onto other fruit stones – what could we do with plum stones, or peach pits?

They could be planted to grow a new fruit plant (although trees from seeds don’t tend to be that productive) or composted (they’d take a good while to break down) but aside from that, are there any fun ways to use them? What do you use fruit stones and pits for?

Avocado stones are usually beautifully smooth so could they be made into (GIANT) beads? Any other suggestions?
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We’ve had an email from John B:

I was recently bought some beer which came in stone/clay bottles. Having now drunk all the beer I am looking for something to do with the bottles. I wanted to reuse them for home brew but I am unable to get the corks back in as my corking machine only works with wine bottles.

The only thing I can think of is to break them up for crocks in plant pots but this seems like a waste of all their bottliness. Any suggestions?