Beautiful recycling

I hope this post inspires you to look at “junk” in a different way. If we all take one old piece of furniture or a knicknack destined for the trash bin and find a new use for it, we CAN make a difference!!

It’s Earth Day 2009 — the perfect day to post about a blogger who is doing her part to help the Earth :-)

One of my favourite blogs is A Beach Cottage. Sarah lives in Australia, and she’s decorated her beach cottage with garage sale and thrift store finds. Some things she’s even picked up from the side of the road!! And guess what?? It all looks FANTASTIC once Sarah gets a couple of coats of her favourite beachy white paint on it :-) If you haven’t visited Sarah’s blog, you’re missing out on a real gem.

Here’s just a sampling of Sarah’s beautiful “recycled” cottage, starting with some vintage suitcases painted white and stacked to create a night table…

A sea chest that started out red with black writing and now has a new life as a white table…

Who knew a hamper could look so good?!

Sarah said she made these curtains in the bathroom from scrap linen in about 2 minutes!!

Simple white flowers in old bottles… beautiful…

Sit down for a bit…

You can do more with a bench than just sit on it… (am I the only one flashing back to Happy Days?!)

A cart can hold a lot of stuff!!

And some tables…

Sarah painted this table a very light blue instead of her usual white…

A good spot to make a phone call or do a bit of blogging on the laptop…

Mirrors reflecting beautiful things…

A lovely old dresser…

Some pieces are already beautiful with their peely paint and patina…

I could go on and on, but you get the point!! Sarah has created a wonderful beachy cottage by refinishing and reusing old stuff that may have otherwise ended up in a landfill if she hadn’t seen the potential. Thanks Sarah for helping out the Earth!!

Take a tour of Sarah’s house to see more of her beautiful recycling.

And before I go, I want to mention a few other blogs with green ideas…

• Green You Decor is all about eco-friendly home decor products. If you want to buy new, go green!!
• Dumbwit Tellher bid on a broken Dualit toaster on Ebay. She won it, bought a replacement switch for it, and her handy hubby fixed it. Good for the environment and for her wallet!!
• Over at kelly + olive, there’s a trivet made from wine corks and a pipe gasket! Their motto is ideas you should steal, so go ahead and steal that one!! :-)
• Karla at It’s The Little Things That Make A House A Home made these thrift store finds that ended up looking like this after she had her way with them :-)

I know there are a lot of other bloggers out there who find great stuff at garage sales and thrift stores. If your home is filled with found treasures or if you have creative ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle, please leave us a comment with a link to your blog so we can check it out :-)