Happy (Belated) Easter!

I am a bit behind on my posting and photos, but I thought I would post this one first since it has to do with Easter and that is all behind us now, isn't it?  I'll never remember to post this before Easter next year and I don't want to forget this idea. For my DD's birthday last year, she and I made these decorations in July using balloons, yarn and white glue.

 It does take awhile to make them and so we made a few, then allowed them to hang and dry, then the next day, make a few more, allow them to hang and so on.  Well in the midst of all that, our weather became hotter and more humid and that was when our air conditioning unit wasn't working properly and we had the drama of the dishonest repairman.  As it grew more humid they wouldn't dry or stiffen and the final two actually distorted after we popped the balloons. So we finally stopped making them.

We couldn't bear to throw the misshapen ones out and eventually they ended up under our eves.(storage) Fast forward to Sunday morning (this morning) when I realized that I needed baskets for my teen's Easter candy!  The last couple of years I have tried to use containers that they could use for storage in their rooms after Easter as "baskets" for their sweets, but this year I've been so busy and the holiday kind of just crept up on me. Truth is, I didn't give it a second thought until that very moment. I went to the storage area and as I looked in, my eyes were drawn to the bright colors and the idea just popped into my head!  I took them out, cut off the strings tying them together and then just pushed them into themselves!  They actually look more like nests than baskets, but think of all the things you could do with them! If you were to make these specifically for nests or baskets, I would have smaller spacing between the yarn (use more yarn) I had to put the jelly beans in baggies or some would have fallen out!  The larger nests were made from the larger, better shaped decorations, the small nests from the two most misshapen decorations.  I guess this is another example of recycling or re purposing?  So glad we didn't throw them away!  So - for today it's Happy Crafting!