I looked at an empty coffee-mate container one day and thought, “What a waste – surely there is something that I could do with it?” As it turns out, when you take the wrapper off, the bottle is clear. Hum. All the caps are red. It’s a nice shape. But for what??
Hummm…
Bowling pins!!
Ah-ha.
The bean didn’t have a bowling set…..so I set out to make him one. First I had to collect 10 empties. The office in one of my schools goes through at least one a week…..so they started saving them for me too. I ended up with MORE THAN ENOUGH. So, I made a set for my friend Tracy’s little boy too!
Here’s what you do…..
Save empty coffee-mate containers.
Take the wrappers off and wash them.
Now just put anything you want inside.
Some ideas I toyed with were… glitter, ribbon, feathers, colored sand, colored rice, uncooked pasta, pennies, bells. Or I thought maybe I could swirl paint in each one and make all 10 of them a different color scheme. Then, I thought about getting stickers or decals and putting numbers on them from 1-10.
All great ideas, but.. my kids LOVE peeling stickers off, so those numbers wouldn’t last long. And, I feared that any small or messy thing (sand, rice, pennies, glitter…) that I put inside would just come right back out as soon as they figured out they could open the bottles! Unless I glued all the lids on. Which could pretty easily be done.
So, what I ended up doing was ….printing pictures of family members. I decided each pin would represent one family member. I first cut a piece of paper to fit inside each pin. Then I glued the pictures to it before rolling it up and sticking it inside.
I think they turned out pretty cute.
And I got to re-purpose 20 plastic bottles!
How very green. 🙂
Ha ha – poor bean. He tried so hard. The ball is pretty bouncy, and it kept bouncing over the pins. It was so funny to watch. He was very determined.
Finally – SUCCESS!!
You know, I’ve been considering buying a set of pins at the store. This is a great idea!! You are, as always, sooo creative! Now I guess I have an excuse to buy the good creamer. It’s for the kids…right!?!
VERY cute! What a great idea!!!
Cash and Luc love it! And it’s pretty funny…they look like Sam when they play!! 🙂
Adorable! Great idea!