Fun Friday Finds

Okay, I got to this a little late this week but have some more fun Friday finds for you!  Today's finds are especially colorful, which will hopefully cheer up my fellow Twin-Citians on this dreary, rainy day!  Enjoy!

This super cute crocheted baby hat from born 2 impress makes me almost want to try a third time for a girl.  Almost.  (via MomFinds)  Their little flower clips are just adorable.

Check out this cool water bottle filtering system from Bobble. Each bottle comes with it's own carbon filtering system, giving you the equivalent of 300 bottles of expensive bottled water..  (via green mommy review)

I just love these cute bears from Bubs Bears, made from recycled baby clothes...not just any baby clothes, but YOUR baby's clothes.  Send them your old baby clothes and they'll turn them into a beautiful keepsake.  You can also have them made from other fabrics of sentimental value...your old wedding dress, your grandpa's flannel shirts...whatever you just can't bear to throw away (pardon the pun) or don't feel up to sewing into something else yourself. I thought this was a pretty neat idea and a unique variation of the memory quilts we've all heard of! (via Baby Gadget)

Yesterday I painted over the bold, bright, cobalt blue walls in my kitchen with...drumroll please...BEIGE.  Ugh.  It's SO not me, but then that's the idea...to make it more appealing to more buyers, now that our house is on the market.  I'm still debating whether I paint over Toby's bug nursery.  So, it was really fun to see this cool nursery online, and see that there are other people out there who like things bold and unique!

In addition to painting things neutral, with a house on the market, I'm also finding myself sweeping even more than I already do.  So, this fun product design idea caught my eye. I totally agree with the Core 77 blogger's skepticism of the chunky lip picking up anything other than uniformly crumpled pieces of clean, white paper.  But, the idea behind something that can double as a dustpan and a trash can via a simple 90 degree rotation is pretty neat. The only problem I see here though, besides the chunky lip, is if you already have garbage in the can and then want to sweep up some more, tipping it over would spill things back on the floor. It's pretty obvious (to my Photoshop user's eye anyway) that these are 3D computer models dropped into real background photos, so I'm guessing it hasn't been tested in the real world.  But, like I said, the concept behind it is very cool, and that's what "conceptual design" is for!   (via Core77)

I do love the "leaf ties," by the same company.  Such a cool, simple way to blend something so utilitarian with something beautiful and organic, and the proceeds go to benefit causes for ecology.

"Green" Your Kids' Lunches!

Today is St. Patty's day, and while I don't have anything to post related to shamrocks or green beer, I am going another route and posting something that is "green" in another sense of the word...



What do you think this contraption is? A scalp massager? A rocket launcher? Nope...it's a plastic bag dryer! Designed by Gary Poolman, this product concept is the winner of Axion Polymer's green product design competition. It is designed to help dry plastic sandwich bags after they've been washed, so they can be re-used. While Axion is optimistic about this product reaching a potential market of 6 million, I'm not quite so sure that many people would go through the trouble of washing bags that are designed to be used once and tossed away. I do sometimes re-use ziploc bags for dry snack foods when I'm re-filling them with the same thing, which works well when you're toting around dry cereal or goldfish crackers for your kids. I could see myself maybe using this to dry the bags that I use in my vacuum sealer...those at least are durable enough and designed to be washed and re-used.

Of course, you can always just not use the plastic bags and make or purchase your own re-useable food storage solutions.

Here's a tutorial for making your own super cute fabric, re-useable lunch bag by Purlbee:


Snack Taxi makes some really cute reuseable pouches for snacks and sandwiches:


Or, you can go all out with this cool waste-free lunch kit from Kids Konserve:


When I was little I remember feeling like an outcast using my insulated lunch bags and boxes, even though they had my favorite character Garfield on them...just because everyone else used those throw-away paper bags. I think this lunch kit is pretty sweet though...I'm curious how kids feel about using things like this today, being that "going green" is so "in" these days! I'll definitely be revisiting some of these products once my boys get old enough to go to school and bring lunches!