Re/Upcycling Brown Paper Bags

I confessed a few posts ago that I am a certified TRASH LOVER. I keep toilet paper rolls, old newspapers,   shoe boxes, grocery cartons, paper bags, and all sorts of retaso aside thinking I will find a great use for them in the future. So far, they have been quite useful in most of our arts and crafts activities. Although my husband is not very fond of this, it seems to be growing in him already. Some days, I'd find him absentmindedly folding an empty Pan De Manila paper bag and hand them over to me to keep. Funny hubby.

Of late, the little miss's classmates have had back to back birthday party celebrations in school and at first I worried most about the presents (as I was never the planning kind and more of the cramming kind). To save my face from more wrinkles (I'm all for simple, useful stuff anyways), I decided to just stick to books to giveaway as presents. Adarna, Tahanan and Lampara has a lot of published books already I don't think we will ever run out of gifts to give (there's only 23 in class anyways). When I buy the gifts however, I always try to bring her with me because I prefer that she picks the presents herself rather than me choosing for her. Luckily, the birthday celebrations always fall after a weekend or a holiday so we have plenty of time to scour the bookstores. I limit the choices to 2 though so we won't spend the entire day looking.

We live in an area where plastic bags are not allowed in stores anymore. I always bring reusable bags with me but for small books and stationary supplies, I prefer to have them in brown paper bags. Coming home with one of the books in a paper bag one day, I realized the bags themselves can serve as gift wrappers already. What I did was have the little miss decorate them first by finger painting on them, putting glitter glue or stamping decos on them before putting the final touches of recycled ribbons and the like. It turned out to be one fun activity that the little miss is now always looking forward to doing everytime we come home with a present to give to a classmate. (don't you just love accidental discoveries?)

I wasn't able to take photos of the first 2 we did but here is the most recent brown paper bag wrapper we made:

had to take a photo of this because this was the first time she wrote on the gift tags neatly and correctly.
i just had to spell out the letters but this was written with no assistance from me :) 

It doesn't look fancy. Nothing Martha Stewart-ish. But these days, the only standards I'm really aiming to pass is those set by my little girl. This one passed with a big wide grin to boot. So when the little miss is happy, I am happy (100x more if you ask me).

Earth Day Special: Tree Planting - A Family Bonding

April 4, 2012
Hamungaya Sugarmill,
Durog, Belison, Antique

A few days before we left for Antique, my dad (Maia's lolo) called to tell his apo that he's already prepared the seedlings that they will be using for their tree planting project. For several years now (three if I remember correctly), my dad made sure the little girl and her cousin Gogol plants something to commemorate their summer together. Planting a tree is I guess my dad's way of celebrating lent. And Earth day after all is also celebrated in April so everything is just so timely. And trees and plants have played a big role in our agricultural family so it's only fitting that we always give back.

In the past, the kids would just plant their trees in my parents' backyard. My dad has been growing fruit trees since we were little kids and each time he anticipates our home coming, he would set aside a fruit tree for Maia and her cousin Gogol to plant together.

This year was different however. My dad prepared something that we could do as a family. And it turned out to be one great familly bonding experience for all of us. I just let the photos speak for themselves

top (left to right): me digging a hole for my banana plant, maia kissing her banana before we moved on with the planting,
Gogol digging a hole to plant his own tree.
bottom: our very own Kalumpit tree. hopefully next year it's going to be bigger and stronger (rawwwr hehehe sorry can't help it)

Lolo's treeplanting 101 with the kids

lolo's idea of a perfect bonding activity with maia

And here's a funny clip of my sister and dad teaching Gogol and Maia how to plant a tree. Maia was initially hesitating to touch the soil because she found it 'icky' and 'yucky' (a city kid eh?) but when she saw Gogol handling the soil like a pro, she dove right in and started throwing in some soil unto the pit too (such a competitive kid).