California weather can be fickle. Even though it’s technically still winter until March 20th, we had a glorious week or two in early February where the daytime high was hitting the high 60’s and low 70’s. It was AMAZING. I was out doing yard work in a tank top, in FEBRUARY, for crying out loud.
And then, the typical cold/wet/dreary weather returned. At first, I was annoyed. But I had to remind myself, it’s still winter. It’s not supposed to be 70 degrees just yet.
So even though the weather wasn’t quite there, I decided that it was time to hang up the spring wreath.
I have always been a fan of decorating our house for Halloween. At the same time, I will happily admit that I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to the scarier or more ghoulish decorations. I have a few neighbors who go all out and create amazing haunted houses every year. I love to walk by and check out their set-ups, but there is no way I could sleep at night if I had some of the more ghoulish decorations at my house.
A few years back, my three boys starting complaining that our house wasn’t “creepy enough.” Apparently, my “Happy Harvest” pumpkins and scarecrows weren’t getting them into the Halloween spirit.
I’ve been MIA for the past few months as I’ve been up to my eyeballs in post-season Little League baseball. Now that the Little League season is winding down, I’m excited to get back to The Lady DIY! I’m way overdue to post an update on the progress of our suburban vegetable garden; we’re now about two and a half months in, and my intention was to post every month or so. (You know what they say about good intentions.)
An update on suburban vegetable gardening: lots of zucchini, one out-of-control pumpkin plant, and some tomato-loving rats.
Considering that I haven’t had much time to devote to our little garden, there are some great things happening. We got lucky this year with the weather and actually got a few weeks of spring. (Usually, it feels like we go from winter to 100+ degree heat within about a two-week span.) The extra few weeks of gradually warming weather allowed the plants to get established before the heat of the summer arrived. It also helps that my mom is an amazing gardening and has been putting in time while I’ve been MIA.
Spring is absolutely, hands-down, my favorite time to get out in the yard and garden. After a particularly wet winter in Northern California, our landscaping is looking especially vibrant and lush. I love seeing all of the bright green, new growth covering all of the plants.
The arrival of warmer days also mean that it’s time to get our little suburban vegetable garden planted. We have a fairly typical, suburban backyard, about three-quarters of which are occupied by our patio and pool. We have limited space left for a garden, so I rely on container gardening and a small, raised bed garden.
When planning our garden each spring, I always start with the tomato plants. Not only do we eat a LOT of tomatoes throughout the year, but with the abundant sunshine and HOT weather that we get during the summer, tomatoes are some of the easiest veggies to grow in our area.
This is Part Two of my DIY staircase makeover – How to Install Wrought Iron Stair Spindles. You can find Part One – How to Gel Stain an Oak Handrail – HERE.
If you’ve read Part One of my staircase makeover, you’ll know that our house was drowning in golden oak. It was EVERYWHERE, and I couldn’t wait to see it all gone.
If you have small children, you have small accessories. A LOT of them. Depending on where you live, that can include mittens, beanies, scarves, umbrellas, sunglasses, hats to protect from the sun, flip-flops – you name it. If you’re lucky, like me, you live somewhere that gets seasonable weather and calls for both cold and warm-weather accessories – double the “stuff.”
I think it was somewhere between the arrival of Kid #2 and Kid #3, that I had finally had enough of trying to keep track of all of those teeny, tiny things. (You can only deal with so many meltdowns as a result of your three-year old not finding his absolute-favorite-can’t-live-without-it pair of sunglasses.) I needed to figure out some sort of easy closet organization system. We didn’t have any place for one of those cute, locker room-style mud rooms that have become so popular. I was stuck trying to make the most of a standard coat closet.
I consider myself fairly adventurous when it comes to home improvement and DIY projects. I’ve tackled some pretty big projects, such as removing the wood spindles on our staircase bannister and replacing them with wrought iron. I’m pretty comfortable using saws and power tools. I don’t even mind getting dirty, when the situation calls for it.
Unfortunately, my adventurous nature goes out the window when it comes to installing anything electrical.
Even though I know that I can check (and double-check) that there is no power left going to the wires on which I’m working, the (totally improbable and quite possibly crazy) idea that somehow, someway, the power MIGHT come back on really freaks me out. Like any wise woman, I save all electrical-wiring projects for my husband.
Our office tends to be the dumping ground for our family. Anything that doesn’t have a home seems to wind up getting stored in the office, leading to a large accumulation of crap stuff-I’m-sure-I’ll-need-some-day-and-can’t-possibly-throw-away.
One of the things that was taking over the office was a large amount of gift-wrapping supplies. Not only was it all over the place, it wasn’t pretty to look at and was causing a large amount of visual clutter.
Me + Visual Clutter = NOT good bed-fellows
My kitchen counters tend to be a magnet for clutter.
Mail that needs to be opened and sorted. Paperwork coming home from school. Random odds and ends that are going to some other final destination. During baseball season, I probably remove at least three baseballs per week from the counter. (I’m pretty sure that baseballs are breeding and reproducing somewhere nearby – that is the only explanation for their seemingly ever-increasing numbers.)
My boys come home from school and my kitchen island is instantly full of binders, books, reading logs, lunch boxes, water bottles and whatever else they pull out of their clown-car-esque backpacks.
I’ve loved miniatures since I was a kid.
One of my earliest DIY projects was building a dollhouse from a kit. I spent hours and hours painting, assembling, and crafting tiny, little accessories. I still have that dollhouse; in true DIY style, it’s still a work in progress.
My love of gardening also started when I was young. I loved helping my mom put new plants in the ground each spring, and watching how they grew. We had lots of edibles in our garden (including my absolute favorites, raspberries); even as a child, I could appreciate the satisfaction of eating something that I had planted. (And to this day, there is very little that compares to eating fresh raspberries that are still warm from the sun.) [read more=”Read More” less=”Read Less”]
The increasing popularity of fairy gardens over the last couple of years is a match made in heaven of these two distinctive hobbies. I love seeing all of the creative ideas that people have come up with to personalize their own fairy gardens, as well as the tiny, DIY accessories tucked in among tiny, fairy-sized plants.
Unfortunately, my three boys have little-to-no interest in anything related to fairies. However, when I suggested that we plant a Leprechaun Garden, I found some willing and eager participants. My thirteen year old said, “That’s actually kind of cool.” I’m calling that a Mom Win.
How to Make a Leprechaun Garden
Supplies Needed:
- Planter or pot (mine is about 12″ in diameter)
- Potting soil
- “Tiny” Plants (I used Red Thyme, Alssum, and Spike Dracaena, found in the outdoor section of the home supply store)
- Rocks – spray-painted gold
- Small plastic cauldron (found at a party supply store)
- Any other accessories that you think a Leprechaun would like. I used some glass gems (leftover from a floral project) to create a path.
Let’s Get Started!
- Start by adding a layer of potting soil in your planter or pot. You’ll want to add enough soil so that when you add the plants, the top of the root ball is about 1” below the top of the pot.
- Figure out the best arrangement of the plants. If you leave the plants in their plastic pots to start, you can move them around and figure out what works best. A good rule of thumb to follow:
- Taller plants (the “thrillers”) towards the back of the pot
- Mid-height plants (the “fillers”) in the middle of the pot
- Short plants that will grow over and down sides of the pot placed in the front (the “spillers”)
As you’re moving the plants around, keep in mind how any accessories will fit into the final arrangement.
- Once you’ve figured out the best arrangement of your plants, remove each plant from it’s plastic pot, loosen the root ball a little and add it to the planter. When all of the plants have been added, add more potting soil to fill in any holes.
- Now it’s time to add accessories: I added a meandering garden path, made out of glass gems. All Leprechauns love a pot o’ gold, so I made sure to include a pot in our garden.
Your local craft store is a great place to find fun accessories for your Leprechaun garden!
[/read]
