plastic bottles, plastic bottles, and more plastic bottles

I have found my new obsession, plastic bottles!

So many plastic bottles are wasted and thrown away, some recycled, but mostly thrown away. I recently started to cut them in half and use the bottom halves as planters to transplant my growing jalapeno plants. I was saving the tops and have come up with a few ideas of uses for them like:

• tea light lanterns...filling them with and and putting a tea light in them and hanging them in my back patio
• cutting them up and turning them into hanging deocrations
• cutting them in shapes and and creating mobiles

I began to search for what other ideas are out there and came across all these cool sites...

Re-Nest
Crafting Green World
Dollar Store Crafts

Enjoy!!!

Reduse, Reuse, Recycle

a far way to have come in a year

Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of my first date with my amazing husband! Wow!
It is hard to believe that it has only been a year since I made aliyah and met my husband.
Just 5 days after arrived and officially became an Israeli I went on my first date with my husband.
To celebrate last night I made yummy black bean burgers and then we went out for ice cream. After enjoying my cone of Ferrero Rocher and Mint Chip we walked past Cafe Hillel, the site of our first date. My husband thought I was cheesy, but I don't care I thought it was cute, and was delighted that he even remembered exactly where we sat.

A year can be filled with so many surprises!

so many plastic bags

I have so many plastic bags every time I go to buy something I get an other bag. Its just part of the culture, here so much so that when I say I don't need a bag I get a funny look. For years now I have been wanting to make a reusable plastic shopping bag our of old plastic bags. Recently I had the idea to make a basket for toiletries our of plastic bags but couldn't find a pattern. Two days ago I came across AltUse and the daily product was plastic bags and one of the uses is little storage baskets.

On AltUse they have a link to NezumiWorld with many uses for plastic bags. What a good way to reuse these bags, besides of course trashbags!

aliyaversary #1

One year ago today I made Aliyah and officially became an Israeli Citizen.

It is hard to believe that a year has passed already since I landed in Israel and received my Teudat Zehut (Israeli ID card) and Teudat Oleh (Immigrant ID Card). This year has been full of so many new and exciting things, of course the biggest, my marriage to my husband!

I love living in Israel, although I am far from my family I know that this is the place to live. Here I can live a true Jewish life in the Holy Land, the land that God gave to us! Israel is full of its ups and downs but I wouldn't give it up for anything. Ridiculous things are always happening, juts the other day someone from the Electric Company came to turn our electricity off because we had a bill from last year that we didn't pay. We had never heard abut this until then and when inquiring why we had never heard about this bill and why our new bill was exorbitantly high, we were told that there was a strike and so no one received their bills and no one was checking the meters. So instead of sending us a bill for what we owed they send someone out to collect the money or turn the electricity off, Thank God we were home. And apparently our new bill was SO high because in their estimation they said we used 3000 kilowatts when apparently we used only 300. We only learned all of this after a lot of question asking. RIDICULOUS! But still I love this small little turmoil filled country that is ours!

B'Shanah Ha'Ba'ah B'Yirushalayim!

vestish

I love this look, I tried it with my own brown scarf which I can buy here for about 15 Shekels = $3.75. Everyone loved it and couldn't believe it was a scarf just tied around my kneck when i showed them!

In the same spirit I found this pattern on knitty.com and can't wait to make it. Knitty.com has great patterns, always something fun to knit!

Holy Hevron Wedding

What a Holy place for a wedding!!!
Mazal Tov Sarah and Eli!!!

Right here in Hevron in front of Ma'arat Ha'Machpela are the kvarim (graves) of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, and even Esau's head is buried there.

abu gosh wedding

on the way there...

Mazal Tov Jordana and Raphael!