Necessty is the mother of invention, household items being used in new ways... beyond the snow

So, the snow got me thinking (that's right, it only takes a foot of snow to make that happen). Back in the olden days, when I moved from Alabama (a state that until my last year there had NO snowplows state-wide) to Pennsylvania, I had never owned a snow shovel. And then... we got 2.5 feet of snow. Knee-deep snow and Southern bred gals don't mix, in case you are ever asked. So, lacking a snow shovel (or any shovel in fact, as apartment dwellers often do), we had to improvise. We took out our handy large (13 gallon) plastic kitchen trash can and two small trash cans and started to dig out our cars.

Yes, imagine if you will, El 3atal and MommaBean (pre-beans, that is), digging out 2 feet of snow with trash cans :). Living in apartments, as we did, all of our neighbors ere also digging out their cars. At some point, the guy two cars down was smart and realized that if everyone worked together to dig out one car at a time it would go faster. His wife gave E 3atal his shovel and within about 30 minutes they had dug out the 5 cars of the coop participants (we'd spent far more than that amount of time moving the snow about). Of course (as always) there was that one guy in our building. You know the one, he would speed through the parking lot narrowly missing children. He would also park blocking the entire road and leave his car over night (I wonder if maybe he hailed from Jordan, come to think of his parking habits). So, as they were clearing the snow, naturally, some extra snow managed to find its way onto his car for all the trouble he had caused his neighbors. (We had to stop the snow plow fromplowingright into his car, he thoughts it was an empty lot and piled all of the snow he cleared from the roadway onto the car, teehee.) So, there we employed trash cans as snow shovels.

Last week, Junior Bean (while being helped by JujuBean) fell and cut his lip rather badly while I was at the office with them. No ice, no washcloths, nothing. So, I thought, what do I have that is cold. My mind hit upon the Diet 7 Ups in the fridge and I pulled one out to serveas an icepack to keep the swelling down. Talk about necesity... poor Junior Bean.

Then, today, after we built our big snowman (since the snow today was real snow not sleet pieces and it was not so windy and blowing sleet), we decided to turn our steps into a sled path. Yep of course, I'm adding a picture for those who don't believe me. And, for those who don't recognize it, that's a cookie sheet we're using as the sled.

Happy necessity!