Make Your Own Drinking Glasses with Recycled Bottles

I'm really trying to get the hubby to try this. I'm too nervous to cut the glass myself, but it's a neat way to recycle if you are good with tools.

I think using an Ephrem's bottle cutter is the easiest and safest way to try this at home. You still have to heat the bottle, and cool it down for the cut, but the gadget does the etching for you.

After you cut the bottle to the desired height, it is just a matter of sanding the rim. You can recycle the top of the bottle as a candle holder.

Bodhicitta, an experienced glass worker at Etsy makes the glasses pictured, but he fire polishes the rims.

A friend's father gave me some antique champagne bottles from one of his digs near the Panama Canal. The top broke clean off along a perfect angle for a vase(pictured). I'm pretty sure you could etch and break away the top off a bottle this way with the bottle cutter.

Here are some lights made out of recycled wine bottles. It looks as if they used epoxy to glue various pieces together, but you could just use one single bottle for each light:

Spice Cake on the Fly

I couldn't be bothered with a recipe the other day, and made this simple cake with flour, sugar(white and brown) , an egg, a little milk, some oil(about a half cup), cinnamon, baking powder, and baking soda. I think I used two cups flour, one cup sugar, one egg, one tsp baking powder, one tsp baking soda, and a little cinnamon.

I can' recall how much milk I used, but I kept adding it to make the batter thinner. This cake came out really nice. I melted together a little cream cheese, powdered sugar, red food color(pink with just a drop), and water in the microwave for icing.

I think I like experimenting better than using recipes. Lately I've been almost too tired to read anything anyway... my eyes are not focusing well with all this pollen!

Recycling Glass Bottles: Self Watering Plant Devices

Those Aqua Globes are great, but free and recycled for me is even better. So I decided to try something with recycled glass bottles. The sizes and colors of glass bottles are diverse. I think you can get some pretty bottles that serve form and function, just soak the labels off.

I've only tried this with one plant, and I still have not seen if this works well. It's still a bit of an experiment, but I took a cleaned and empty plum wine bottle, filled it with water, and poked very small holes into the top. I pushed the neck of the bottle into the soil, and if this works it should drip water slowly into the plant(drip irrigation). In theory, it should work, but I may need larger or more holes. This is not the prettiest of self waterers, but it's hidden under to foliage.

Tiny vanilla bottles can be used with small plants, soda or beer bottles with medium sized plants, and wine bottles for the largest. I'm going to try this outdoors in the vegetable garden as well. I like the idea of using glass self watering devices with the edibles. I don't trust the chemicals that leech out of plastic bottles.

You can purchase plant nannies which are terracotta attachments for wine bottles, but really I think poking holes in a cork/screw top will work just as well.