Acorn Studios offers up bits and bobs made from recycled circuit boards, floppies, cds, keyboards, etc. Nifty little stocking stuffers!

And be sure to check out the project page. My favorite for whimsy is the Car Mirror Shelf, and for plain old simplicity and ingenuity, the Cassete Case Business Card Holder.

Here's a little silly I threw together while gorging myself on all those fantastic fall premieres. It's easy enough that an older child could make one (with bigger "mosaic" pieces advisable), and it costs literally pennies.

Mine used:

My photo probably makes it difficult to see, but the tray had perfect shallow "wells" to comfortably hold the mosaic and orange field, which is what gave me the idea!

Via Crafster, a thread on turning your old books into bookshelf for your new books. Tres cool!

My favorite Upper Peninsula Flickr-er posted this photo of a rusty, recycled, red-breasted robin. Charming!

...that even an old crab trap could find a new, decorative life?

I admit, I probably go through more than my fair share of Hapi cans. And, since they're such a nice size, and sport such a sturdy plastic lid, I hate to just toss them in the recycling bin.

And so, I wondered... how could I use them for the Easter holiday?

I think I've got it -- a much more permanent, capacious, and attractive take on the traditional plastic egg. Stay tuned...

...as fun, funky furniture. Rumor on the street says it's all comfy and sturdy. All crafted in my favorite little city in the world, Marquette, Michigan.

There's even a prototype for a kid-sized seat. Neat.

Everybody in town seems to love our new waste collectors. They make recycling so much easier, which of course only encourages it, and that's good enough for me.

Gross said the company can already tell recycling is increasing in Petaluma, which was one of the council's goals in choosing a garbage hauler.

"It's more than we projected, which is a good thing," he said. Some residents had saved recyclables from 2005 in anticipation of the expanded list of materials Green Waste would be recycling, he added.

Glass said the new system of putting all recyclables into one bin, instead of three separate crates, is proving popular in town.

"I hear a lot of folks talking positively about single-stream recycling," he said.

The bub likes them, too:

I love this -- build a weather-resistant dome shelter out of recycled cardboard triangles (and a bit of wood and rebar).

So I was in the pantry, clearing the blades of the shredder (clogged with the latest credit offering to which my own alma mater sold us out), when I saw one solution to the bag dilemma sitting right there on the shelves:

If you can't tell from my incredibly bad photo, it's the wrapping that comes around an eight-pack of paper towels. I hacked off the top, and now, though still a bit large, it will fit inside the shredder basket. It should be clear enough for the recyclers -- they just need to be able to see the contents.

So that's one reason to feel a tiny bit less badly about the paper towel addiction...