Happy Mail Monday!

Hello everyone!  Hope your week is starting off fabulous.  I've been busy working on all kinds of fun projects this week.  First I tried a new recipe for cookies.  They are strawberry lemonade cookies and they are fabulous! 

 

OK, so my photography skills need work. You can see a better photo and find the recipe HERE.  

 

Next, the happy mail.  My May Day Secret Sister sent me these fun crafting goodies.  Thanks so much Joan.  Not only was Joan a fabulous May Day secret sister, she also organized the swap.  I love everything Joan and  you did a great job! 

And lastly, I made this fun little mushroom pin cushion.  I'm still learning some sewing techniques and can't quite master sewing circles, they never seem to match up perfectly for me.  But I keep trying.  Here is my latest attempt. 

 

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a fabulous week!

 

Square Foot Garden Spring Planting

We are just about finished planting our first veggies for this year.  We have just a few more spots open that will get later plantings of the same veggies. 

We have planted:

Red Onions

White Onions

Spanish Onions

Spring Onions

Cilantro

Parsley

Garlic

Spinach

Lettuce Mix

Carrots

Hot Peppers

Sweet Pepper

We will be sewing Red Beets and Radishes today in the remaining open spaces.   

We are planning on another 4X4 garden for strawberries, and a container for asparagus.  

In this smaller planter we planted chives. 

I can't wait to see what we get as a harvest.  If nothing else it's been fun learning about how different plants grow, the space they need and how much it actually costs to grow your own food. 

I've dedicated a pinterest board to gardening if you would like some additional ideas on how you can  start your own garden in the space you have.  We have a few acres of land, but I needed to keep the garden close to the house and manageable.  I'm hoping this will be the key to a successful garden, and help if only a little bit reduce our families carbon foot print. 

Thanks for stopping by and happy gardening!

Happy Monday!

I hope your week is starting off well.  I'm such a creature of habbit.  I've started laundry, had a protein bar and a cup of tea and am checking in with my online friends:)  This is a very normal start to my day, but I plan on having a fabulous week and hope you can join me. 

Today I wanted to share with you a card I made for my Secret Partner swap on the Quilting Boards.  I had to get it mailed early and forgot to take photos of the rest of the package.  This card is from a card set I made her.  Luckily I took a photo of one of the set. 

I also wanted to thank my May Day Secret Sister for the fabulous package I received Tuesday. 

I love it all!

That's it for today, short and sweet!  Have a great week and thanks for stopping by!

Happy Beautiful Spring Morning!

I know it's been a few days since I've posted and I have lots to update you on.  Now that we are home from our vacation it's back to housekeeping, paper crafting, sewing, reading and gardening.  It's interesting how the seasons tend to change as well as the amount of time you spend doing certain hobbies.  Right now it seems I'm trying to keep up on everything.  I guess a 10 day vacation does that to your best laid plans.  One thing I can't stand is a messy house, so the first thing I did was cleaned all day yesterday.  Both floors top to bottom, even washed a few walls that needed it.  2 days before vacation I lost my engagement ring. So I was hoping that cleaning would turn it up. It didn't:( It was getting loose, but I thought my knuckles would keep it on.  I cried and cried, then came to terms with it being gone.  Like my wonderful husband said, it was an expensive lesson.  Our wedding bands are both off being re sized as we speak.  And he bought me a new engagement ring the day we got back from vacation. 

Just after getting my iPhone we were out to dinner and while waiting I snapped a few photos of our rings, I'm so glad I did.  It's so much easier doing a police report if you have a photo of the item.  It's not the best pic, but at this point it's all I've got.  And I still hold out hope that my ring will turn up. 

I'll share the new ring once it's sized and I get my band back. 

Now on to vacation.  We went on a Carnival Cruise to Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and Grand Turk. The weather was perfect, the boat was spotless, and the balcony room was wonderful!  The only thing missing was Ashlyn, this is the first vacation Ed and I went on without her. 

Ed and I at our first formal dinner. 



Mom and Dad at Dinner.

My Mom and Dad in Puerto Rico

All of the beaches are public in Puerto Rico, so are beautiful! 

Then we went to my favorite, St. Thomas.  It's a tropical rain forest, and it did rain, but it was short bursts and it was warm enough it didn't bother you as you were in the water already. 

Our ship from the view at the top of St. Thomas. 

And our final stop was Grand Turk. We swam, walked on the beach and brought a conch shell home. 

If you haven't gone to the Islands, put it on your bucket list, you won't be disappointed! 

That's all for today. I'm off to work on my garden now:) 

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by. 

Happy Monday!

Hello all!  I have a quick share for you today. I participted in a hat pin swap at Split Coast Stampers and they arrived last week.  So many beautiful pins and even 2 pin cushions to add to my collection.  I wasn't a good swapper and didn't take pics of how the pins acutally came, but wanted to share with you the fabulous pins. 

Thanks everyone for the fabulous swap, pins and pin cushions! 

Square Foot Garden

Hello everyone!  Woohoo it's Friday!  For me it means my husband is officially on VACATION!  And we leave for a cruise very soon!  

One of my stamping friends had mentioned Square Foot Gardening, I had never heard of it so I googled it to find a very interesting concept.  You can have a garden, grow 80% more vegies in 20 % of the space that it would take to row garden.  There is minimal weeding, uses very little water, and no fertilizer.  I mentioned it to my husband and that night he built the box and we filled it with the required soil and even planted some onions already. 

We reused plywood, it's not as pretty as the ones you buy, but will totally serve the purpose and didn't cost anything to build. We chose the area at the top of the driveway where we had previously mulched but didn't have anything growing that we liked. Besides Ed likes to tear thing up with his tractor. 

 We then we added a soil mixture of 1/3 blended compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite.

Its a very loose soil, that is very easy to plant in.  Really no tools needed.  Then we used twine from my craft room to mark off the squares and it was all ready to go! 

I picked up a bag of mixed onions at Lowes while we were shopping for the soils.  It was the only thing I could think of that could be planted this early in our area.  I just added a row of each kind of onion for now.  I plan on spreading out the planting so we have a continuous harvest.  Literally overnight we had onions sprouting. 

It is still very cold here at night.  So on nights that it has the potential to freeze or frost I cover it with a tarp.  I won't add the next rows of onions until after the 15th when our area shouldn't have to worry much about frost.  I'll keep you posted as to how it goes. 

Have a great weekend! 



 

Wonderful Wednesday!

Hello everyone, hope your week is going great so far.  I've been busy in the craft room.  I have several secret swaps I'm in.  Most of them revolve around sewing and the one I'm working on right now is for a pin case swap.  Now, I know what your thinking...a pin case is something small and holds a few pins, right?  Well, I'm taking a creative liberties with my pin case and making a pin album of sorts.  I've had this very cool chipboard book laying around for a while.  Really since the first Twilight movie came out.  I thought I would make a book for each movie, but that kind of fizzelout out once 50 shades came about;)  So, my re purpose of this little jem of a book is this....

I stamped the front with every single stamp from PTI Button Boutique along with the dressform stamp in classic kraft ink for this weeks Papertrey Ink MIM challenge. 

I'm a little bummed that the fabric looks discolored on my first page so may have to start the inside over.  It kind of looks vintage tea died, but I'm not sure how that happened :(  It looks worse in the photo then irl, any idea how to fix that? 

Just Another Manic Monday.....

but I really don't wish it were Sunday, because I just prefer fundays!  Ok, ok I'll stop now and get to the important stuff! 

I wanted to share with you the pincushion I made out of a vintage perfume decanter.  At least that's what I think it was. Ed and I went antiquing just to look for some fun things to re purpose. Now I want to find several different size decanters and make a few of them to decorate my craft room.  Luckily I live in central PA where there is no shortage of antique malls. 

And here she is just sitting on my desk.

I just love it!  I think I squealed when she turned out perfect the first time!

 I didn't have to touch my seem ripper once! 

The fabric is from  fat quarter bundle from the Rose of Sharin Quilt shop in Danville, PA. 

If your ever in the area be sure to stop in.  It's a great quilt shop and they have an awesome sale room with fat quarter bundles for 6$. I get a few every time I go.  It's like candy;) 

I trimmed the bottom with a piece of vintage lace, held on with stick pins.

 I can't remember where they are from, they have pearl tops and clear jem tops. 

The waist trim is Webster's Pages, and the stamped tag is a Papertrey Ink Stamp and die cut tag, tied with twine and held in place with a Websters Pages stick pin.  Gotta say <3 nbsp="" p="" those="">

And finally a little cluster of items to finish my pretty little dress form pin cushion. There is a little bit of everything in there, but the cut ribbon in back is Webster's trim, then burlap from PTI, then a Webster's doily in black, a prima blosom, a little piece of ribbon and finished with a Webster's accent.  Can you tell I'm a fan of Webster's embellies?! 

 Have you found the Webster's sprinkles box yet?  I am in no way affiliated with or compensated for saying this.  But it's the best 10$ I've spent in a long time! Truly it was like sending a little gift to myself! First the box they send it in is so darn cute I had to reuse it to send my SS a gift.  Then the paper that they use to pack the box is a 24inch piece of Webster's paper that you can totally use.  Then the March box had a full box of the most beautiful stick pins, a card of doilies, and a little spring colored cookie treat complete with SPRINKLES!  I can't wait for April! 

Thanks for stopping by and hope your week is SPRINKLED with happiness! 

I added a few more photos, I seem to be taking very dark pics and not sure why.  One day I'll take a photo 101 course!