Creative Gardening Ideas

I found this idea on Pintrest yesterday. So clever! I have several pallets lying around. I might just try this one!
Photo Credit: Sprittibee

 And here is another clever idea. Milk Crate Gardening! This would be space saving and if you could suspend the crate somehow or place it on the edge of a stone wall or something, you could grow vine plants right out the side! We purchased a half dozen “milk crate” from Wal-Mart last fall on clearance for $0.50 a piece. I may re-purpose a couple of them!

Source: comoneighborhoods.wordpress.com via Melissa on Pinterest

And, here’s a clever idea for watering your container gardens/ houseplants:

My garden is growing nicely. My Seeds of Change Green Arrow Peas have not done as well as hoped, but they are slowly growing, so hopefully all those seeds I planted won’t be a total waste. They took over three weeks to come up.  I planted them around February 20. They are just now about six inches tall! No blooms yet. My herb garden is looking beautiful and my lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower are all doing really well. Oh, and my strawberry patch has strawberries!

I’ll be planting my tomato seedlings, cucumbers, squash plants, eggplants, and pumpkin seedlings soon. And I still need to get the front bed tilled up and get the bush beans planted.

I  wish I had a current photo. Maybe I’ll be able to share some soon. Oh, and you can find a lot more creative gardening ideas on my Back to the Garden page on Pintrest!

Easter Menu

 

Traditionally all of our family comes to my house for the Easter (or as I prefer to call it – Resurrection Day) Celebration. I like to decorate and set a nice table and make special desserts for the children to enjoy. I’d thought I’d share some of the recipes I’ll be making this year.

Easter Dinner (or Brunch) Menu

Vegetable Pot Pie

“Sausage” and  Cheese Quiche

Butterflake Rolls

Roasted Beets with Blue Cheese and Walnuts or Spiced Beets

Carrots with Caramelized Onions and Apple Syrup

Pineapple Pretzel Salad

Broccoli Salad

Cheese Grits

Deviled Eggs

Spring Chick Cakes

What are you serving this year?

Wallpaper Love

Okay, so I’ve been wanting to redo my entryway/ hallway/ landing and dining room for years. The striped wallpaper is original to the house and wasn’t hideous, but wasn’t something I would have likely picked out on my own. However, living with it for 9 years now, I think it is time for an update, but I never could imagine anything else on the walls… until I saw this on The Painted Hive:

 

Fabulous Valentine’s Day Finds

I love to make Valentine’s Day special for my family. I have found so many wonderful freebies this year! In fact, I have found so many great ideas I’m having a difficult time trying to decide which ones to use! How about Valentine’s month? Sounds like a good idea!

Here are a few of my favorite finds – the some of the ones I’ll be using this year:

New Baby Chicks

Oh, and today was the first day we found two eggs in the chicken coop laid by… I don’t know, by I suspect that the two Golden Comets, Pixie and Peep, were the first to lay beautiful brown eggs! Even my husband was excited about it. He loves eggs. Especially beautiful brown free range chicken eggs.

If you remember, when we originally got the chickens, I had a total of fourteen. Unfortunately about two months into that, something forced its way into the coop and slaughtered ten of them in one night. The one “hen” who survived (three of the chickens were on a road trip to campmeeting with me) has now turned out to be a rooster. His name is Lucky. We then got five more chicks, one of which got sick and died of a respiratory illness, so were ended up with a total of eight chickens who are all getting ready to start laying any time.

You can see my girls here roosting on my back porch. Not necessarily a good thing. But they are just so cute!

Of the eight pictured above we have…
2 Buff Orpingtons (one is a rooster) – Buttercup, Lucky
2 Golden Comets – Pixie, Peep
3 Rhode Island Reds – Penny, Violet, K.C. (short for Kentucky Chicken)
1 Amberlink – Speckles

Now, for our new baby chicks hatched October 5, 2011…

3 Americanas (the brown striped chicks) – pink, blue, and green eggs
5 Marans (the black chicks) – dark chocolate eggs
1 Golden Comet (the yellow chick with red stripes on back) – brown eggs
2 Buff Orpingtons (the yellow chicks) – brown eggs
3 California Spotted Whites (the yellow chicks with black polka dots) – white eggs

Not sure what we’ll name these adorable little ones. I like to wait until they get their feathers and I learn more about each individual hen. Although, amazingly enough, they look different enough we can tell them apart. Hannah and Laura are already trying to come up with names for the ones they claimed as their own. It’s just so much fun!

Speaking of Mason Jars…

…it’s that time of year again. My husband went to the Farmer’s Market in Asheville, NC on Friday with plans for going back this coming Thursday for more produce. I love it, but that also means, the pressure is on! I have canned a lot of produce since January.

Some of the produce I have to get put up came from our garden including habenero peppers, bell peppers, green tomatoes:

Bell peppers, Habenero peppers and tomatoes from garden (and two of my big white radishes).

From the Farmer’s Market we have…

1 bushel tomatoes

1 bushel pablano peppers

1 bushel green bell peppers and 1 bushel red bell peppers

4 bushels of apples (Red Delicious, Gala, Arkansas Black, Honey Crisp)

I’ll share what I make with all this good stuff as I go. Are you doing any fall canning or preserving? I didn’t can anything this summer, which is unusual for me, but I did so much in January, February, and March, I was wore out. You can see what I have canned this year (so far) on my sidebar.

Happy Canning!

Mason Jars

Have you missed me? This summer flew by, oh wait, summer been over for… weeks! Yes, fall is quickly passing me by as well it seems. I have had next to no time for my blog or website, much to my great disappointment. But I have learned over the years – 10 years blogging – that life needs to come first, family needs to come first. So I live by that rule when it comes to computer time. Anyway… here is a nifty little tip.

I love Mason Jars. I mean, really, what’s not to love? I use them for drinking, food storage, canning, flower vases, organizing, and more.

I have purchased quite a few boxes of Ball plastic lids for my Mason Jars. I love them. I can’t seem to get enough of them. But then I discovered that your typical mayonnaise jar and some peanut butter jar plastic lids fit a regular mouth Mason Jar. Talk about frugal and recycling at the same time!

Bottle Cap Magnets

For decades years I have been saving bottle caps. I don’t know why. When I was a little girl I would make “pies” for my dollhouse with salt dough and a bottle cap as the pie tin. Hmmm. I like this idea from Better Homes and Gardens.

52 Weeks of Organizing – Week #6

I had a very productive yesterday! I organized my homeschool closet. I didn’t take before photos because it was just too bad. I couldn’t bring myself to be that vulnerable if you know what I mean!

Homeschooling is one of those things that really gets me when it comes to organizing. I just never can seem to find the perfect solution to #1 papers and #2 books.

We homeschool in our family room in the basement. Our family room is a very cozy place. I’ll share photos of the girls desks later. Our homeschool closet is under the stairs. It is a nice space but never seems big enough! We live in a 61 year old brick home and it has a lot of character… and my homeschool and craft closets reflect that!

All in all I feel really good about the space. I think it is better than it has ever been and I hope to keep it this way! I feel energized to keep organizing my home! It feels so good and it makes me happy.

You can find lots more ideas over at Organizing Junkie!

Laundry Buckets

I have four girls still at home. We have a lot of laundry. There are two ways I make laundry chores easier for myself are:

1. My two teen daughters do their own laundry. They have set days. Sarah’s laundry  day is Sunday and Emily’s is Monday.This means I have less to do. And they cannot complain to me if something is not washed.
2. My two younger daughters have laundry buckets. When I fold their clothes, I place them in these handy dandy buckets which are labeled with their names. Then, they can easily carry the laundry up stairs to their room. The bucket is really just a re-purposed large sized dishpan.

Next Page »