Upcycling

I'm about half way through the 2013 Freshmen Common Read for Purdue, No Impact Man.  It's been quite a good read so far.  I'm not sure if I'm surprised or not, but many of the everyday things the author attempts to do to reduce his carbon footprint, we already do as a family.  But, like the book is designed to do, it got me thinking about more ways we could attempt to reduce our trash output.

With two young kiddos in the house, we go through a lot of paper napkins.  I mean, A LOT.  However, whenever we're down at Gran and Beep Beep's for a meal we always use cloth napkins; I've got a dining room hutch full of cloth napkins, rarely used, so why not dig those bad boys out?  We started with those and the complaint department (me) did not field any calls.  However, I wanted to make the napkins a little more personalized and family friendly so I started digging through everyone's t-shirt piles to look for a little upcycling project.  Within only a few minutes, this

turned into this

(I wasn't quite ready to convert Bryce's Stanford shirt just yet.)  I'm yet to make Kevin's napkin yet, but both Kari and Bryce are so excited to have a napkin of their own and from a t-shirt they recognize.  My Purdue pride swells every time I look at Bryce's napkin.

So, it's only a little something, but I also see this as a great project for Kari to get some sewing experience on our next round of napkins.