Front Garden Ideas

Spring is here, and we've picked up the garden project again! We had four cubic yards of dirt delivered a week ago Saturday, so now all we need to do is:

• finish the retaining wall
• decide on plants
• plant plants
• mulch

I'm no gardener, so Mom's coming over on Monday to help. She's great with plants. In the meantime, I've mocked up a rough idea of what I'd like. Here it is:

I LOVE hydrangea- it's my all time favorite. Hopefully the garden will also include salvia, boxwood, allium, and some sort of mini tree to fill in the tall spot in the back. We'll see.

Some other potential outdoor projects for another summer may include:

• painting the house (gray) and trim (white)
• a new front door
• different sconces

Here's a mock up:

I'm so excited to jump into this project and get it crossed off the list!

Life Recently

I've yet to photograph some more projects. In the meantime, here's some iPhone pics of life recently.

This picture is for Mom, who thinks our house is always so clean.

It isn't.

I've been paralyzed at the thought of buying the wrong shade of blue-gray. I spent too many hours narrowing down 16 paint chips to these here, and then ended up getting a different color entirely. Charlie's input: "They all look white." Thanks.

I still love my snugly buddy. This is part of our morning ritual:

My brother is awesome and created Giant Jenga. We played this a few months back (yes, not recent, but still cool).

Daniel shows the proper posture for self protection when Giant Jenga falls:

We've also got some of this stuff going up somewhere in the house... sometime soon. Very cryptic.

That's all for now, folks.

Indoor Plants

For those of you who have a black thumb like me, never fear: I've stumbled upon a new way to keep indoor plants alive. Cover them with a cloche to make an instant terrarium!

You can buy real cloches (like here and here), use things that aren't technically cloches like cake pedestal covers and cheese domes, or find a lidded class container and use it as a terrarium. Cloches and terrariums are really popular right now and are very versatile.

In the photo above, I filled a clearance bowl from target with dirt, sprinkled in some grass seed (the type you put on your yard), and poured in a little water. The grass grew within about a week and I haven't had to water since the day I plated the seeds since the cloche keeps the moisture in.

Idiot proof plants! I must kill them by over watering. But this guy (or guys? because it's lots of blades of grass and not just one?) is going strong. He even is growing so well he needs another hair cut.

Here's another version using a glass jar as a terrarium:

I got the idea here. Plop in a plant and you're done. In the last two months, I've only watered him twice. (Apparently all plants in my house are male. Maybe if I get some with any type of flower they'll be considered female).

If I can keep these plants alive, especially the ivy, then so can you.

Pinterest Inspiration

I realize I haven't posted in a while. I've got a few finished projects yet to be photographed, and another one that's still not complete. Hopefully they'll make it to the 'ol blog soon.

I'm also waiting to develop strep throat. On Thursday, two girlfriends and I went to Biaggis, ordered three desserts, and all split them. On Friday one of them emailed to say she'd come down with strep. So now I'm taking Airborne and chugging drinking elderberry juice (don't judge me- my grandma sent me this and says it's high in antioxidants and boosts your immune system). Can you ward off strep after you've already been exposed? So now it's a fun waiting game, and I'm playing psychological tricks on myself trying to figure out if I feel sick or not.

In the mean time, between no projects to share and impending strep throat, here's some fun pictures/ideas I've gathered from the web as of late. Be inspired!

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Bathroom Mirror Frame

I've finally framed the bathroom mirror. I say finally because I've wanted to do this for months and months but just never did. And it was super easy!

I searched Pinterest for DIY mirror frames (this blog was the most helpful), found that the style I liked best was a trumeau mirror (as opposed to a picture frame-like one with mitered corners.) And I'm also embarrassed to tell you that I've been calling it a truseau mirror until 30 seconds ago when I googled how to spell it, and realized it's trumeau, not truseau. Whoops.

Turns out a trumeau mirror is the easiest to make- most builder grade mirrors tend to be three by four feet. I was able to buy all of my boards in pre-cut lengths. I needed my two vertical boards a few inches shorter, and Home Depot cut them for me in-store.

For my three by four foot mirror, this is what I needed:

• one 48" x 3 1/2" x 1/2" board (bottom)
• one 48" x 6" x 1/2" board (top)
• two 36" x 3 1/2" x 1/2" boards (sides (I had them cut down to 31 1/2"))
• three 48" long decorative trim pieces
• white paint
• liquid nails
• painters tape

Just a friendly FYI: I'm not usually loyal to any particular home center store, but Home Depot had NOTHING in terms of decorative trim (at least not what I was looking for). Lowes had a lot of options.

Also, I drew you a REALLY fancy picture in order to help explain myself:

I started out by painting my boards:

This is the inside of the unfinished laundry room. And Leo's fluff. Very glamorous.

I then used liquid nails to glue the trim to the frame boards. I glued one piece of trim to the bottom board, and two to the top board. This, obviously, is the bottom board:

After the trim had dried, I glued the bottom board to the mirror and let it dry over night. I then glued on the side boards, let them dry, and lastly glued on the top board. I'm sure you could do them all at once, but I decided to be cautious (for once). While the glue is drying, secure your board to the mirror using painter's tape. I forgot to take a picture of this.

You're almost done! Fill in any gaps with caulk. I haven't done this yet, but I betcha can't tell.

Go upgrade your mirror! You won't be sorry.

I'm linking this post up with Home Stories A to Z's linky party: go check it out!

A Sweater. Aha.

Just wanted to share that I now have something useful to do with all of Leo's hair. To think I've been vacuuming it up and throwing it away all this time...

Photo via Pinterest

Have Your Plate and Hang it Too

I want to share a quick tip with you. I've got this cute leaf platter that my sister in law bought us as a wedding gift, and wanted to hang it up on the wall without using any of those clunky metal plate holders. I ALSO still want to be able to use it for serving food . What's a girl to do? Enter these things:

They're really cheap, come in many different sizes, stick securely to your plate while still having the ability to come off without ruining anything, and mostly importantly, have a low profile. So I'm able to take my plate off the wall to use without anyone being the wiser that my plate hanging mechanisms are still in tact.

I'm sure you all loose sleep over this. But it's a neat little thing, and I wanted to share.

See? You'd never know there's anything there.

The platter has been hanging there since Tuesday, and the plate hangers are still sticking securely. I was half waiting for it to fall down and smash Leo's head while he eats, but I think we're in the clear.  :D

Cake Pops

Yum! I learned how to make these last week at my homemaking group (part of our church's Titus II ministry) and wanted to give them a try.

Here's what you need:

• Box cake mix and required ingredients (water, oil, eggs)
• Store bought frosting
• Almond Bark Chocolate (or basically any quick melting/quick setting up candy chocolate)
• Candy sticks
• Embellishments (sprinkles, white chocolate drizzle, crushed up candy, etc.)

Make the box cake according to the directions. After it cools, slice it up into tiny pieces and scoop them into a large bowl. Stir/chop the cake until it is very crumbly.

Mix in approximately 1/2 to 1 cup of frosting. The amount of frosting depends on how moist your cake is. I used about 2/3 of a cup. You'll basically be rolling the cake/frosting mixture into cake meatballs, and want just enough frosting for the cake to hold together (but no more).

Freeze the cake balls for 20 - 30 minutes until firm. Make a pilot hole in each cake ball with your candy stick, dip the tip of the stick in melted chocolate, and put it into the hole. (The melted chocolate on the end of the stick acts like glue). Put back into the freezer for 5 - 10 minutes to harden the chocolate.

Melt the almond bark chocolate according to the directions on the package.* Dip each cake ball in the chocolate, making sure it's entirely covered.

Decorate, and you're done!

*FYI: If you're tempted to use regular chocolate chips, don't do it. They'll take a long time to set up and harden (ie. you'll be sitting at the table holding each cake pop for 20 minutes until the chocolate shell is hard enough to set down without denting/smudging). Also, I am chocolate chip melting impaired. I couldn't do it- I kept ending up with a large, hardened, smelly, burnt ball of unmelted chocolate. Does this happen to you? So chocolate chips were a no go.

State Art: Minnesota Love!

I've got a super easy (and cheap!) project for you: state art. Anyone seen these on etsy before? My guess is not... no one that I've told about this project has any idea what I'm talking about. Crazy DIY craft girl. I thought the idea was really cute, and wanted to give it a shot.

Here's what you need:

•  Some type of blank surface (that was very vague... a canvas would work as well as an old picture frame or painting... or even a bulletin board. Paint it white and you're good to go.)
• Wrapping paper in the color you want your state to be
• Card stock for the heart
• Glue or double sided tape
• State template: To make a state template: I found a basic outline of Minnesota online. I copied it into publisher into a document the size of my canvas (2' x 3'), resized it until I liked how it fit on the page, and then brought the document on flash drive to Office Max. I had it printed out on a 2' x 3' document- this only costs $4.00. I cut out the state, traced it onto my teal wrapping paper, and cut my Minnesota out of the wrapping paper.

I found a beat up canvas print at Homegoods for $5.00 (SCORE!) and painted over it with a few coats for a blank, white surface. Here it is in it's whitewashing:

Woot woot! The painting wasn't actually too bad... I felt a little bad painting over it. After the paint dried, I attached my Minnesota cut out with scrapbooking double sided tape squares. Glue or double stick tape would work just as well. I attached the heart the same way.

This was so easy, folks! Since I didn't even glue on the Minnesota cut out, if I get sick of it in a year or two, I can peel it off and use the canvas for something else.

I'm linking this project up with Home Stories A to Z's Linky Party- go check it out!

Argyle Throw Blanket

I sewed this blanket for Charlie for Valentine's Day. It had been six years since I made him one, and it was high time for another! I used this photo as inspiration, but made mine completely differently.

Here's a shot of the entire thing:

Isn't it cute? It was fairly simple to make. Here's what you need to make a 60" x 90" blanket:

• 5 yards of yellow polar fleece
• 2 1/2 yards of white polar fleece
• Small ball of teal yarn
• Yellow thread
• Large eyed needle (one that the yarn will fit through)
• Sewing machine, scissors, pins, etc.

To begin, I washed and shrunk my fabric. Then I made a template and cut out my pieces.

To make a template, I figured I wanted my blanket to have three diamonds width wise and height wise. For a 60" x 90" blanket, each diamond was 20 inches wide by 30 inches tall. Simple math is always a smart choice while sewing.

I cut my diamond template out of paper, and then followed it to cut out 9 yellow diamonds from the yellow. For the white, I needed 4 whole white diamonds, 4 half diamonds cut width wise (or the hamburger way if this language was used in your elementary school:), 4 half diamonds cut height wise (the hot dog way), and 4 quarters of diamonds. Just look at the large picture above if this sounds confusing. For the backside of the blanket, cut out a 60" x 90" piece of yellow.

I thought the easiest way to sew all the diamonds together would be to sew them in strips, like so:

Make sense? When all the strips were sewn, then I sewed the strips together. This part went pretty quickly. Here's what it should look like (mine is folded in half):

Now comes the putzy part. I laid my blanket out and sewed on the yarn. This is the part that gives it the most "argyle-ly" feel. The stitches should be in a straight line and should intersect in the middle of each diamond. (As you can see, mine didn't always land perfectly:)

This part would probably be easy with the right equipment. Between the size of the needle eye and the bulk of the yarn, I had to pull each stinking stitch through the fabric with a pliers. That's right. EACH STITCH. I needed the grip of the needle nose to simple pull it all through the polar fleece. So I'm game to hear if any of you have a better suggestion, because I'll take it.

Needless to say, this part was a bit time consuming. But it looked great in the end! When I'd finished the stitching, I pinned the argyle side and the plain side together (inside out, of course), sewed them together, flipped it the right way out, and finished the last foot by hand.

And once again, here she is in action:

I am linking this project up with Home Stories A to Z's linky party, here and here. Go check it out!