Obtainium, a New Addition to the Periodic Table?

"Obtanium" is a term that we learned from a great book by Wendy J. Temayne called The Good Life Lab, Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living. You can get it here.

Wendy, along with her partner, Mikey Sklar, also produce a great blog: Holy Scrap

Back to "Obtanium". This is a concept that we've been integrating into our lives for quite awhile now - partly because we are frugal, partly because we seek to re-purpose things for environmental sustainability reasons and partly because it's fun and rewarding and fosters creativity!

Check out this "official" definition from The Urban Dictionary:

One of our favorite uses for Obtanium is in the "whimsification" of our place. (I think I may have just coined a new word!). We first learned that one's surroundings can be whimsical when we lived in Sante Fe, NM (go visit, you'll see). One thing that people do there is make use of fences and gates to create whimsical yards. We've done that here in Ohio, using Obtanium.

One example - our garden gates - entirely created from throw-away items:

Here is another gate that we completely rebuilt using a rusty but intact gate frame and lumber salvaged from a barn that was being torn down:

What will we do with this bit of Obtanium? Stay tuned!

Oh, and go get yourself some Obtanium...