One man's trash...

Ever since I can remember, I've had virtually no money to buy people gifts, at Christmas or otherwise. Comes with the territory of assuming a career as a student, I suppose. So I've had to get creative with presents, and often those presents have come out of some sort of junk-ish item. For instance, there was the clock made out of an old record; the end table made from an old cable spool, a gallon of grout, and a few bagfulls of glass scrap from a nice stained glass maker; the $5 garage sale dresser decopauged with free rave flyers from Little 5 Points. (Actually, it's starting to sound like I only give this crap to my husband, who was the recipient of the three gifts mentioned above...should he be concerned?) Anyway, this Christmas is no exception to my trash-to-treasure (well, I can call it treasure, anyway) gifts. But I'm sooo proud of this one! My littlest brother is a huge car nut, and clearly, I can't buy him a lamborghini. He's getting ready to graduate and move out on his own, so I decided to make him a wall clock out of an old hubcap. My husband and I went to the car junkyard the other day and spent 2 hours walking around in the rain to find the "perfect" (meaning: intact, not too heavy, not from a minivan, and not too shiny) hubcap from which to make this clock. By the way, this is a pretty fun and cheap date...it's amazing what things people leave in their cars, and it's equally amazing what other people will pry off of those cars to take home with them. Anyway, I'm so stoked about this clock; almost as stoked as I am that I get to go home for Christmas (cue Michael Buble singing in the background) and give it to my bro. In fact, when I told him his gift was coming from a junkyard, he told me that was just like telling a woman her gift was coming from Tiffany's. Man, I love that boy. Hopefully this "treasure" will last longer than Mark's did (the record clock and the end table never made it out of his hell hole of a bachelor pad, but the dresser...drumroll...now has a happy home in our closet).