Wherever You GO, There You Are...

Be the Change...

A Fitting Earth Day Project

Here's another recycling solution story.
Two challenges. $1.25 and some ingenuity.
Our tale begins where we always leave off ...
with my hypersensitivity to my environment
and my little brain in overdrive.

It's just not me.

Imagine, if you will, one older mailbox.
Serviceable. Intact. A Little Small for Magazines.
No excuse to replace it.
But I'd rather be greeted back home
to MY home.

On Christmas day, courtesy of our Bear,
we received 3 wonderful magazine subscriptions.
{pretty exciting. It's been years.}
They just started arriving last month.
I did not like that they were folded in half
and crammed into this box.
Now I had another challenge.
So, I asked Evan to help me imagine a simple, thrifty solution.

Inspired by Zuda's handmade boxes,
I was going to construct a cardboard holder.
Easier said than done.
Not being as gifted as her,
this plan remained in the
mulling stages for a few weeks.




Destiny is a Happy Mystery

Then I misplaced my sunglasses.
When I went back to a thrift store to see if I'd left them
on their counter, I came away empty handed.
But as I was walking out
I spied this wire basket for .99.
I was thrilled.
A plan was forming.

Life is like a box of chocolates

A few days later, we walked to the new Walgreens
to buy one of Evan's birthday presents.

On the way home, we stopped by another thrift store
where I spied
this discarded & unlikely to find a home
{it was filled with crayon art}
perfect~for~my~recycled~art
vintage Little Golden Book for 25 cents.

I love cars, tucks, trains, planes & the 1950s era illustrations.
I did not connect the serendipity of
finding this book with
its use for my simmering project.

The trimmed piece

A few days later, I was de-cluttering my growing stash.
I flipped through this book and found this fabulous page.
Just the right size, too.

And can you believe the text?

My stamp collection

I decided to dress up the Magazine Rack Label Space
with a stamp ~ mail collage on
a coordinating piece of the same
safety envelope I used to frame the
mailbox illustration.

A True Mail Collage

Here it is before I laminated it.
It is setting on the reverse of the
mailbox piece.

I had only one TeXaS stamp.

Love it.

My Personalized Mail Center

I laminated both pieces and attached them
using simple rolled scotch tape.
Both the mailbox art and the
magazine rack can follow us
wherever we go
leaving no damage behind.
What will I do with them next?
We shall see.

ox joon

ps. My mailman told me this just gave him the biggest smile.
Putting a little bit of yourself out into the world
can make more of a difference
than you might think.