Make it do

You know that old adage:

Use it up;

Wear it out;

Make it do;

Or do without.

Well, my kids have learned to make it do.

Paris has a collection of pewter landmarks: the Eiffel tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, the Empire State Building, etc. Well, there wasn't any Teardrop Memorial souvenirs, so he made his own with cardboard and tape. (Unfortunately, it looked a lot more like cardboard and tape than the Teardrop Memorial and Mom threw it away when she Clean Sweep-ed his room).

Athena has wanted a sewing box all summer. But that didn't get done this year so she improvised with an old pencil box and some cardboard.

And then there was the cell phone. They have wanted a cell phone for a while now and it doesn't help that most of their friends have one already. They have made cell phones out of cardboard and paper before, but Paris hit the jack pot when he found one of Brian's old cell phones, and then found the charger. Never mind that it doesn't have a SIM card. They hit ring tones when they want to hear it ring. They play the sample game up to Level 2 (which is as high as you can get without downloading the whole game). They write messages to each other and pretend to text their friends. Mostly they just carry it around and annoy me by hitting ring tone after ring tone. I told them that driving me crazy with a non-working cell phone is not the best strategy for getting a working one, but I think they know there's a slim chance for getting one either way so they just shrug and hit the "Hello Mortal" ring-tone again.