I’ve heard tales of these amazing cooks who can make half a dozen meals (or more!) out of one chicken. A roast, a casserole, a salad, stock for soup – not one bit of the bird goes to waste. Amazing and so in sync with the way I try to live my life.

Because my microwave doesn’t have the setting necessary to work such wonders, I decided to try something similar with a pair of jeans. Remember the denim tote bags I made? I only used half a leg or so for each bag, leaving me lots of great scraps, and a quick search of Pinterest gave me scads of good ideas.

The simplest and most appealing (to me) was a set of denim coasters, made from the seams of old jeans. My glue gun and I cranked out six adorable coasters last night. You can buy these on Etsy, but I like mine too much to part with them – plus, I could only get one coaster out one pair of jeans, so unless my boys hit a growth spurt or tear up several pair in the next month or so, it’ll be a while before I can make more.

Now I just need to make one more project with what’s left in my denim pile and I’ll feel like I’ve made good use of the whole chicken. Stay tuned!