Monday, September 22, 2008

Lunch Bags


What's so special about a pack of lunch bags to even blog about? Nothing. But:

- Well, I blog about anything I find in the trash that I think is not trash. This product is complete and even still sealed and clean, so definitely not trash, no matter how cheap or futile.
- I found them in Amsterdam, Holland, that is Europe! How does a USA manufactured product end up on the curb here? Because I wouldn't know where to buy this over here. Besides, any paper lunch bags are nowhere to be found in my country. We use plastic 'boterhamzakjes' or 'sacs a sandwich' as is printed on the box you buy them in.

So someone, on vacation or a business trip, flies from Holland to the US, buys paper lunch bags (maybe because we don't have them over here, I can follow it until there), drags them home, but then never uses them and (years later I presume) trashes them. I think that's amazing. Or ridiculous!

Now if you think this means I'll bring 50 lunches to work in paper instead of plastic you're wrong. Because I've recycled plastic bread bags for that for years and I won't change that. I use one bag (they're that strong) for at least a week (just shake out the crumbs and it's good for another day), then I still don't throw it away, but use it for cleaning the cat litter box. We use the lump making litter stuff, a day or two of the cats 'production' fits perfectly in one reused bread bag and it keeps the smell from my trash bag and in case I get a hole in that, no harm is done (allows me to use the thinner, cheaper and more eco-friendly trash bags as well).

The paper bags I will take to my next craft fair. With a card stapled on them they will make great and neat looking eco-friendly packaging! Brings me to my craft: if you still want a chance to win an item from my shop or a lovely (curb found) booklet, you can still enter my contest. Previous post or click here.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Cat Accessories And My Fall Contest For Cat Lovers

Sometimes all things fit perfectly together. I haven't posted in a few weeks so it's about time. I've been wanting to show our - with the help of curb finds - self constructed cat furniture for a while.

I still have to present our new cat Pepe, who showed up in our neighbour's garden last March out of nowhere. Not exactly a curb find, but a good find after all. He is the sweetest! I have a new great curb found gift to give away - and it happens to be a lovely booklet for cat lovers. A new season is coming up... So it's the perfect moment for a new guessing contest!

I'm keeping it simple this time: all you have to do is guess the number of scratching poles my BF used in his latest construction (second picture). Next - as usual - go to my Etsy shop and describe what you like. And as before there will be two winners. First prize is any item from my shop up to $10, provided it ships as a flat envelope.


Second prize this lovely booklet with the story of Tobermory and bloggers will be featured. It's unused, so you can still use it as a gift if you like.


Does that sound like fun to you? I sure hope so. You can enter your comments until: THIS CONTEST IS NOW OPEN UNTIL I HAVE ENOUGH RESPONSES TO MAKE A REASONABLE DRAW!!. Make sure I can contact you through your blog or message board account.

Now let me show you our stuff. I don't know if they sell exactly the same constructions in the US, but with mondialization it wouldn't surprise me. These fun play sleeping and scratching constructions are a must for every cat lover, but they are expensive. As it turns out sometimes they are not very strong and fall apart quickly. And people throw the pieces on the street. All we have to do is reconstruct them with the help of some old planks for a strong basis and really strong screws and bolts (the only things we bought). The fun is our structure often changes when we find new additions for it. Cats love that. They also love to get stuff from the street. They hate shop smell. It doesn't tell them anything.


This is the situation about two years ago. That's my fat Cézar on top. A few months ago we found a complete and hardly used piece. At home we soon found out why it was thrown out. Every time a cat jumped from it, it fell over.

So the BF integrated it in the existing piece and now we have this fantastic cat castle.

To make a passage from the balcony to the garden we simply connected two old ceiling beams and made little 'chicken steps' from scrap wood.


Any man (read burglar) trying to reach the balcony this way would immediately break through the connection but for our Pepe here it's strong enough!

Of course I never bought a litter box in my life. As you can read in The Cat Carrier, they come in numbers and so I even had an old one to give away. With one upstairs and one downstairs in great condition we are well provided, but I still see them regularly in the trash. Sometimes I'm tempted when I see one in a fancy colour, but it's not even worth the trouble.

I do own one cat carrier that I bought, because I wanted this model, a top loader for my difficult outdoor cats and it's easily attached to the luggage carrier of my bicycle. But I have two of these wicker carriers (and had and used up more in the past) that were nicely 'handed' for free to me by my neighbours.

One warning: do not bring stuff home from the street that has been used by other cats when you have kittens that haven't been vaccinated yet and clean all plastic items with bleach. Even though you can bring cat's disease with you from anywhere, you can't be too careful!

To end here's a little help for the contest: one of the poles is hidden behind the monkey and you can't see the top plateau. Have fun!