One Man's Trash...

...inevitably gets put to use by someone in my husband's family. Kris still blushes when he talks about his childhood memories of his dad picking "treasures" out of trash piles. I have to be honest that the first time we went on a bike ride as a family and Mr. Eric made the return trip with a vacuum laying across the handlebars, I was grateful I was new to the area and didn't know anyone.

Two major items that have come directly out of the trash or have been brought home when someone else was going to throw it away are the weed-eater and the lawn mower. Mr. Eric is genius when it comes to fixing things. I can't list all the things that Kris and Mr. Eric have made out of wood that has been salvaged from a dump at new construction. This is seriously just the short list.

So, the other day, we were heading to the ball field for Kris to play his softball game, and we saw a tractor in a trash pile by the road. Kris says, "Million bucks says my dad sees that and picks it up." Sure enough, they get to the ball field with a smile on their faces and a green tractor in the back of their truck.

Therefore, without further ado...



And after having been married for over five years, I have been sucked in. These are the "treasures" I picked up yesterday.

On the way out somewhere I called Kris and told him that the neighbors had put this shelf in the trash and that it looked like it was in good shape. He rearranged our entire garage and gave the boys their own shelf for their toys. They LOVED it, and really enjoy taking their toys from the shelf and putting them back.

And I saw this fabulously cute bed in a trash pile when I went to visit some friends yesterday. What I had to do to wrangle it into my car was positively shameful, so I'm trying to forget about that and focus on what a cute bed this is.