Day 8 - Crafty Reuse

Ah, Pringles. Tasty chips inside a perfect "meant to be disposable, but oh the possibilities of reuse" container. Sadly, chips of any sort rarely make an appearance at our house due to my husband's view that they are bad for us. (What? Chips? Bad for us? Crazy talk.) As luck would have it I have a sister who is allowed to have chips in the house and at her house I tend to gorge myself on chips and then ask if I can have the container. Anyway, today's crafty reuse involves old Pringles containers and juice lids (the ones from cans of juice concentrate), which happen to fit perfectly inside the Pringles container (spooky, really). Two games came from these humble materials. On the right we have a simple game of memory, where I once again reached for the Mod Podge and decoupaged little magazine images on to one side of each lid, making sure there were two of each image. It's amazingly easy to find matching photos in magazines if you happen to get two magazines of the same genre (like decorating or gardening magazines) they will often have the same ads in both for that month. On the left we have a little word game, where each lid has a sticker letter stuck to it and kids can mess around with spelling little words. In both cases I covered the Pringles container with scrapbooking paper.

A little side story here. Last fall I was at my chip-loving sister's house and with an empty Pringles container on our hands, my nephews and I made noisemakers for the Wisconsin vs. Illinois football game by filling the container with coins and pebbles (not a terribly pretty noise, but it worked, in that it made noise). My youngest nephew, who was two at the time kept bringing the noisemaker to me and asking for a chip, despite the fact that we had covered the outside with decorated paper, it still had the unique shape of a Pringles container. I had to explain several times that all the chips were gone and that there were just rocks inside, much to his (and my) disappointment. When my dad came over to watch the game, my nephew took it upon himself to break the sad news to his grandpa by bringing the noisemaker to him and saying "no chips, no chips" with a very sad look on his face. So, the lesson here is, only tackle these Pringles projects if your kids can handle the heartache of opening the can and finding, not chips, but juice lids.