Life of a garden - March

Well today is officially the first day of spring! My husband stuck his nose out (think groundhog) and declared: "It smells like spring." Despite all that it really still looks like winter here. However I dug around a little and did see a few signs of life in my perennial beds. The Heuchera is coming back, as seen by the little green leaves. This is a garden staple for me. They do well in shade and are resistant to the slug army in our yard.

The Sedum is also coming back, despite being a succulent type plant this again is a hardy workhorse of the garden, plus it can be propagated and divided with ease - almost accidentally sometimes. I love Sedum and have it planted in various sunny locations.

Our vegetable garden is still covered in snow, will be awhile before we get in here to turn the soil and plant our veggie seeds. The garden bed is about 10 feet by 20 feet, which isn't huge, but we do manage to get a fair amount of produce out of it. We can salsa, spaghetti sauce, hot sauce, sweet relish and pickles. Plus we froze more veg last year so that it didn't go to waste. I blanched and froze lots of spinach and peppers too.

Until my next post I'll be dreaming of warm sunshine on my face and arms, and the far away sounds of the sad and beautiful mourning doves.

Recycled T-Shirt Totes

Every now and then I get the urge to create. And being the spend thrift that I am I found some cheap t-shirts with really cute designs and was inspired to try my hand at making totes out of them!  These are my first attempts, and I think they look kind of cute. The t-shirt fabric however is hard to work with if you don't have a serger. What I ended up doing was zigzagging all the raw edges and then sewing the bags together, this seemed to work out a bit better. I even did a little applique on the handle of one of the totes. Although I have to admit, the "Kiss of Death" Geisha bag was my favorite!

I also experimented with felted wool sweater totes, and determined that I liked working with the wool better, it's much more forgiving, and when you block it you can reshape it a bit if needed. I'm now sewing up more recycled t-shirt totes, and so far all materials that are going into them have been either purchased at thrift stores or rummage sales. More to come on that project!

Life of a garden

Like many others in this area, I come from a long line of farmers. My parents and theirs before them worked the rocky, loamy soil here in North Dakota.

My mom would tell stories of working in the field with grandpa and grandma, wearing hats and grandpa's long sleeved shirts they would walk among the potatoes and in order to keep pests down they would knock off destructive potato beetles into a can of kerosene. For as long as I can remember, my parents had a huge garden at our farm. My mom would buy me special "kid" seeds from Burpee that I would plant excitedly. Years after that I would help with the harvest and canning. We would have baskets full of cukes and tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce and carrots. A day of picking cukes and canning might yield 30 quarts of pickles - it was quite the job!

My own garden is not so grand, but I like digging in the dirt and watching the little seeds grow. I am dreaming of spring even though it still looks like winter here. I've already orderd a bunch of seeds, I get them locally and also order from Territorial Seed out west. They have a unique variety of flowers and vegetables. This year I'm planting Nelson carrots, London springs lettuce mix, snow peas, Kentucky wonder pole beans, beets, radicchio as well as the standard tomatoes, cukes, spinach, basil and dill. Looking forward to planting, should be getting the garden ready around Memorial Day, want to make sure we are past the point of hard frost. Once things start growing I'll take pictures and show the plant progress. Here's hoping we have sunny spring days coming our way!

Catching up

Have gotten back to my blog, so much to update you on. Have been busy making mittens (I've made about 87 pair to date), bags, thrifting and finding little treasures, and creating displays at the deli. I had fun this fall with Halloween. Found a cool old book by Penny Nichols (get it?) and "The Mystery of the Lost Key" glad the book didn't sell. I added this skeleton key, and the book now sits on a side table in our house. I also created some spooky wreaths and other fun displays. My new thing is old bottles with grungy tags, very quick and easy to do.

Also had fun working up Christmas displays both at home and the deli. Found a horse collar, for $2 and made it into a wreath. Got out all my vintage shiny brite ornaments. Love the graphics on the boxes! Decorated the tree in vintage ornaments that I've collected over the years. All the dolls and stuffed animals that my mom made for me over the years got to come out and sit under the tree, a comfortable reminder of all of her crafty work. Speaking of crafty work, want a blast from the past? Check out The Complete Book of Retro Crafts by Suzie Millions. Have made several of these projects as a kid.

House and Garden

Well spring is finally here. Although we've had a cool start, the yard and flowers are looking pretty good. I planted some Allium last fall and they came up full force this year. I really like them, they kind of look like big exclamation marks, I love the purple color too. I moved my herb garden so that the herbs are a bit closer together they were a little too spread out last year. I still have them mixed in with my flowers I kind of like the informal effect. I liked the texture of the onions against the giant leaves of the hollyhock. My sister and I gathered the hollyhock seeds from plants that were growing behind the restaurant my grandparents owned. They were originally planted by my grandma 40 or so years ago. I guess they could be considered heirloom. I'm glad to have them growing, they should bloom this year, will be interesting to see what color they are.


We got our veggie garden planted around Memorial Day. Planted the usual tomatoes, variety of peppers including: red bell, cayenne, jalapeno, hot banana and habenero. Now we need a little heat to make these babies pop. I also tried some red and green leaf lettuce, spinach, radishes and carrots. Everything looks pretty good except the carrots came in a bit spotty. Another week or so our lettuce should be ready to eat! We never had much luck at our old house with lettuce and spinach. I think our yard was too shaded by all the big trees. Our new house gets more sun, so it seems the plants do much better. The underground sprinkler system doesn't hurt either!




I did a bit of work in Jon's bathroom. I scraped off the wallpaper border (goodbye lighthouses!) and painted. I was kind of inspired to make him a travel themed bath. Nothing too over the top tho. I repainted a dresser that had been in the bathroom, black and added some cool checkerboard type knobs - they look kind of vintage. Added some new soft white towels in his suitcase, gave him some new rugs and a shaving mirror, plus the new black and white shower curtain. I think it updates the bathroom a bit, and Jon seems to like it as well. I even added some little baskets under the dresser so he could put his slippers and other items in there to stow. I made him some new artwork by framing some old maps of California. It was super easy and I like the pop of color.

June Bride

Well I guess I'm into weddings this month! I just finished the display for the deli. I was looking at Martha Stewart on-line and found a last minute project that (I think) really makes the window. Martha had the templates for the letters in the banner, it was so easy all you had to do was download A-Z letters, print out and cut out with a big 3" circular punch. Then I punched 2 adjacent holes in the circles so I could string them on a pretty ribbon. I think this idea would be cute for Halloween as well, on orange paper, strung on black ribbon!

Kind of a cute side note: after I had finished the window, a young couple walking down the street with their photographer stopped by. And he took their engagement picture as they gazed into the window and held hands. I'm assuming he caught their reflection. It will probably be a neat picture. Wish I could see it!

I also wanted to make something that looked like a wedding cake, so I pondered how to do that using exising materials I had. So I used some cardboard from a beer case box, formed it into 2 cylindars, and then topped off each cylindar with a circle so I could stack the 2 "cake" sections on top of each other. Then I wrapped it in lace-look paper, added flowers, ribbon and tulle and voila! The cake stand I made as well. The base is a plate I got at a rummage sale, and the stem is a glass candle holder - just a little hot glue holds it together.

For the tables this month I used old wedding patterns that I purchased for about 30 cents each, some color copy bride images and bits and pieces of lace. I pulled out the directions, some of the pattern pieces and just kind of layered everything together and put the glass back on the tables. On some of the larger tables I even used the patterns for the trains, the were still pretty long, so folded them in half. I had an afterthought of maybe sticking the lyrics for the song: by the light of the silvery moon in there as well, but we'll see. The lyrics are kind of neat, such old fashioned romance:

By the light, of the silvery moon,
I want to spoon,
To my honey I'll croon love's tune.
Honey moon, keep a-shinin' in June.
Your silv'ry beams will bring love's dreams,
We'll be cuddlin' soon,
By the silvery moon.

Mother's Day

Haven't blogged for awhile, so thought I better get busy. Have done a few crafts, mostly pertaining to displays for Mother's Day. I made up flower arrangements in mismatched china cups and saucers. I had enough in my stash to make 9 arrangements. These will sit on the tables at the deli. I hit a rummage sale this weekend and found 4 more cups and saucers for 50 cents/set. So I nabbed those to replenish my supply!

For the Mother's Day holiday, I wanted to use my stock of aprons and put them under the glass of the tables. I ironed up the old aprons gathered some apron patterns and printed off some mom type poems as well as My Mother's apron poem: by Marie Marshall:

My Mother wore an apron a clean one every day,
a part of daily living it served in many ways,
when she hung the wash to dry, her pockets held the pins,
the apron was a washcloth that cleaned our dirty chins,
when days were hot and humid twas used to mop her brow,
when hands were wet from laundry the apron was a towel,
here pocket hid the needle to sew the rips we'd get,

in Mother and her apron, our many needs were met,

sometimes it was a basket for eggs or baby chicks,

a bag for garden bounty and apples that she picked,
at suppertime the apron protected Mother's hands,
when taking bread from the oven or lifting lids from pans,
it was a fan in the evening to shoo away the flies,
but the apron's greatest gift was to wipe tears from childish eyes.

I also asked all the ladies at the deli to bring in photos of their mom's (and they really brought in some neat old photos) and I put all the items together under the glass, I like the the way it turned out, see the pictures. I guess I always knew I'd have a use for all of these aprons. I picked up most at garage sales and thrift stores and some are just too neat to get rid of! Speaking of neat aprons, check out the blog of Apron queen she has some awsome aprons, recipes and links.