Ombre Flower Pot Gift

My wonderful mom celebrated her "25th" birthday again last month. (I'm not allowed to say how many times she's turned 25, now.)  She really is young at heart.  I'm lucky to have a mom that's able to keep up with our two toddlers.  For her birthday, I made her an Ombre Flower Pot stuffed with a few goodies.  

Mom's aren't tough to buy for since you can just get them something you like! (I'm sure most mom's would say a year worth of house cleaning, meal cooking or lots and lots of diamonds are always on their list). However, this year I decided I wanted to make her a handmade gift.  I started with painting the terra cotta flower pot. I used a tube of acrylic purple paint that I had on hand and just added some darker purple and black to darken and white to lighten.  

So Many Scattered Projects

Are you the type of person who is able (and loves) to read about a half a dozen novels all at the same time?  You might read one while you're eating breakfast and another before you fall asleep at night.  Well, I'm not that type of person.  It makes me feel scattered and spread too thin.

I have that feeling though right now but it's because of too many projects around the house!  Let me tell you about a few.

You may remember me telling you about the kid's bathroom?  Well, we worked on baseboards... We got those painted, nailed to the walls, covered the nail holes, sanded, & painted them again.  We also painted the ceiling in there as well as the walls themselves.  (I just did the second coat of paint on the walls yesterday!)

Seems like things are moving along but just taking forever!  I still need to pick out new faucets that won't break the bank, towel & toilet paper rods, we need to figure out the lighting situation, put up a new exhaust fan & switches, plus, I'd like to re-do the vanity... It'll get done eventually.

On top of working in the kid's bathroom, we also decided it was a great time to cut down 8 more of our trees.  Yes, they're dead... Yes, we're planting new ones as fast as we possibly can.  In fact, we have two sitting in pots that are dying to get planted.

Here's where we took out 8 trees:

Unfortunately, I didn't take a before picture because we were running on limited time and needed to get right to work.  But, I did dig up a picture from this blog post to give you somewhat of an idea of how dead these trees really were!

Stepping Stones & Garden Update

I painted a few stepping stones for the vegetable garden so I could actually reach the tomatoes. 

Free Printable: Gardening is Cheap

I have been out in the garden like crazy the last couple of days (with plans to be out there again today...)  I feel like all of this gardening is going to cause me to need therapy... But that's not how the saying goes :)

I made a free printable for all of my lovely readers (cough, mom)... 

Feel free to pin, share, download & print! You can find the file here!

I'm looking forward to having the front yard caught up for a few days from all of the weeds, extra tree limbs, & junk that has accumulated in the flower beds out front.  Have you been playing catch up to the losing battle of weeds?  Do you have a secret to combat them?  

Enjoy your weekend!

Janice

Oh, My Achin' Back!

I know a lot of blogs like to "keep it real" by showing a pair of dirty socks on their living room floor or a dirty cup in their sink.  (I can assure you that we have that and a lot more all the time).  But today, I'm keeping it real outside in our garden jungle.  Oh yes... there are just a few weeds that need pulled.

Can you spy the Labrador Retriever hiding among the shrubs?  How about a massive Hosta?  They're both in there, I promise.

So, here's a before and after shot.

Front Porch Eye Candy

I've been looking for flower pots for our front porch for a couple years now.  The thing about getting these flower pots, was I didn't want to spend a fortune.  It seemed like anywhere I looked, the size I needed was at least $100, sometimes more!  Yeah, I don't think so!  Well, I was in Jo-Ann's looking for some durable fabric for another project and I saw the perfect flower pots!  Regularly $59.99 but they had them 50% off.  I still didn't bring them to the register because I just really wanted a better deal.  (I'm sounding so cheap right now)... Well, I asked the wonderful woman at the register when they'd be sending out coupons for discounts off of an entire purchase to include sale and clearance.  She, of course, didn't know, but she told me to text 56266 (Joann) and type in CREATE for the message.  Immediately that sent me a coupon for 20% off my entire purchase!  She then typed in the special code and I was able to save a little extra!  If you plan to do this, be sure you're making a trip to Jo-Ann's soon because the code expired after just a couple days.

Queen Anne's Lace: Not Just a Weed?

Yard work, mowing, weeds, watering, growing grass, and little baby vegetable plants are consuming all of my time.  It feels so good to be outside but my fingers hurt from pulling so many weeds!

Speaking of which, did you know that you can buy Queen Anne's Lace?!  I love this... plant? flower? weed?  But only because of sentimental reasons.

Check out all of that Queen Anne's Lace in the background! It has since become "our flower".  Every time we see it, (which is often since it's everywhere) we point it out to each other or think about one another.  

Gotta Get It In The Ground

"Gotta get it in the ground before the rain comes down!" That's a line my husband has been throwing around a lot recently from a country song he heard on the radio.  It's even cuter hearing our almost three year old say it!

Unfortunately, it started raining AS I was planting everything but I didn't let that stop me.  The rain felt strangely refreshing as I was digging in the ground.  

I picked up 7 different types of tomato plants (two of which are cherry tomatoes), 2 different cucumbers, broccoli, zucchini, summer squash, red, yellow, orange, and green bell peppers, romaine, red romaine, spinach, and a few herbs.  I am really hopeful that we'll have quite the crop this summer.

Friday Find

As I prepare to get some vegetables in the ground, I'm trying to do my homework.  Gardening does not come naturally to me.  I wish it did, but it's really like an overwhelming foreign language.  I'd much rather pick a paint color, put it on the wall, and say, "Yup... that's what I expected to happen."  With gardening, there are too many variables.  Soil condition, weather, plants, bugs, diseases...  I guess it's going to have to just be a trial and error process.

Well, in my search for vegetable garden information, I came across this set of charts that break down which vegetables do best hanging out next to each other.  I'm going to attempt to plant my veggies as close to this chart that I can, but I'm not making any promises.  Who knows what's going to happen once I start digging around in that dirt.

Download the full Companion Planting Chart Here by My Square Foot Garden

Do you try to plant your vegetables with companions?  Do you notice any differences?  What's your favorite combination?

Janice

Building a Vegetable Garden

Just checking in really quick to let you know that we've been taking advantage of this beautiful weather by being outside the entire day.  It's been wonderful.  My little brother came over to help me with a little yard work.  He did a great job getting this stubborn fire started and keeping it going all day to burn more tree stumps.