Getting my Craft On! Fall style!

I am a crafty person. I enjoy making crafts. My problem is a lack of time. A few weeks ago, however, while TroubleMaker was spending the night at his Gran's, I got busy... It took a ton more time than it should have as I still have a wounded wing. Using wire cutters with your non-dominant hand is tiresome, painful and not very productive. I also learned I cannot make a bow single handed...

All that aside, it is the best wreath I've ever made. It turned out exactly how I'd envisioned it and I'm immensely proud of the work! I was inspired by this wreath - when I priced out sunflowers at my local craft shop, I rethought my plan and opted for a single sunflower (they were $14 each). My sunflower was actually a napkin ring that I popped off the ring.

I hung it on our front door and it is SO fall! Not wanting to stop there, since I was on a roll, I decided we also needed a centre piece for Thanksgiving... Ten minutes and an existing vase, I whipped it up. I thought I struck pure genius - I always have issues with my silk arrangements staying upright. I've been collecting (not hoarding) rolls - paper towel, toilet, ribbon. I stuck one in the middle of the vase and filled it with leftover bird seed, old popcorn and nuts! I then wrapped it with plastic wrap as my cat, as sweet as she is, cannot leave anything alone and I knew I needed to slow down the eventual spill. See the bumpy green gourds? WE GREW THOSE!!! In fact, we grew like 16 of them!


I'm going to steal a line from the Slap Chop Guy... But WAIT! There's more! Canadian Thanksgiving doesn't have much to do with turkeys (as turkeys are not indigenous to Alberta), but we traditionally eat turkey on Thanksgiving - so why not make some yummy turkey desserts! Inspired by OurBestBites.com and their wonderful homage to the noble turkey, TroubleMaker and I are proud to present our rafter of candy cookie turkeys!

Thanks for stopping by!

Linking up at a few fun places - please check them out for more inspiration!

Funky Junk Interiors SNS!

Chic on a Shoestring Decorating

52 Week Organizing Challenge: Week 21 - The Outdoor Organizing Project

There are lots of things on my list of things to organize. Some are big... Ok, most are big but every so often something creeps up and says "ORGANIZE ME!"

That is what happened this week. My original intent was to get back into my office and do some more cleaning an purging, however, it is the end of May and we are most likely free from frost and snow. So it means GARDENING season is upon us! I'll add now that there is a frost warning tonight. GRRR!!!! My poor tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, marigolds, petunias and gerbera daisies!!!!

How does one organize a garden? Well, you see... I'm botanically challenged - and before you Google it, it is a real affliction. ;) My green thumb is green enough but I often have a hard time differentiating weeds and plants. Case in point - our gardens. When we moved in, the former owners had mad gardening skills. They had the side garden all decked out in shrubs and colour. We quickly dug up many of the plants, mistaking them for weeds...

the pretty German Statice I dug up by accident during year two

We added a few, killed a few more but mostly, it's just overrun with dandelions and weed-like plants such as Yarrow, Lamb's Ear and the rogue poppies and sunflowers that grow like weeds (such as wild onions and dill) in this neighbourhood.

Poppies - grow like weeds

This year, I've had enough. With my full time job, blogging, crafting and home renovation projects, something had to go. So I chose flower bed. I spent this weekend on a backyard mission to tidy, purge and organize the yard into a user friendly, attractive, kid friendly place that I can sit and enjoy once and while instead of spending every weekend morning weeding, thinning and filling bag after bag with weeds.

The East garden was simple enough. It's the one I've done the most damage too over the years. What remains are day lilies, tiger lilies, hyacinth, tulips, some weird tulip like plant with teeny little flowers and the very hardy Nanking Cherry tree I got as a Mother's Day gift from my niece, sister and brother in law. I also added some Hens & chicks a couple years ago that took over... I thinned those last year only to see they had babies... Like 100 babies!

So I pulled up all the new edging I pounded in last year, encircled the plants I want to keep (there were six) and that's it. We're digging up the weeds and planting grass. I then hope to get add a couple of fence mounted flower baskets for colour.

I planted four pots of flowers and decided to overhaul our patio. Every thing came off, I washed it (yes, I actually washed paving stones) and then reorganized everything! It looks amazing! I finally feel like we are starting to make our house ours!

I didn't take any before pictures... Too much to do and no camera handy! And I don't have any 'after pictures' either... I know - after Laura suggested always taking pictures to make your story pop and have it be an inspiration! But I figure since the 'finished' project isn't exactly finished, once I get the grass in, I'll update!

Thanks for popping by and I hope you think 'out of the ordinary' for one of your upcoming projects - gardens, like drawers and clsoets, need our love too!

For more great inspiration, check out all of us participating in the 52 Week Challenge at the Organizing Junkie's site!

The Things That Keep you Awake at night...

Ok. I'm an insomniac - I have been for as long as I can remember. I do sleep but if my mind starts to work, there is no shutting it off until I get the idea that's keeping me awake out of my head.

First, I'm behind in my 52 Weeks of Organizing. Second, the wind has been banging everything around at night and I don't like it. Third, I want a pond and fish and a nicely landscaped yard. Fourth, I can't have a pond because my husband pointed out some problems: first, the neighbour has 8 cats second: we have a child third: I have to be responsible for it. Fifth, I've got a lot of stuff. Sixth, as much as I want a new house (my friend is placing an offer tomorrow on a brand new build) with everything brand new inside, I can't justify the cost of a new house. Less house, less yard (then we have now) and MORE money. Seventh - which is the real reason I'm awake - we've decided (sort of, maybe, kind of) to improve our house and make it ours.

Which has my brain working in 1000% overdrive. A new look inside and out. It's totally overwhelming to think that I/we can make changes to our home... It's been our home for seven years and now we might be really making it our home and I can't sleep... What colours will I chose? We will change the facade? Will it be too cramped with the conversion of the main floor for the studio?! It's all swirling away in my head and just keeping me up.

And don't get me going on the landscaping... I'm not much of a gardener - I don't have time to spend hours pulling weeks and watering stuff. Tonight we decided to seed lawn in the front part of the East (flower) beds that we dug up a few years ago. This got me toying with the idea of doing the same with the remainder of the East bed. Then I could get hanging baskets and small planters to do flowers in. I could then transplant the few plans we have (that I like) into an expanded West bed just off the patio. Then I wouldn't have the maintenance of such a large flower bed and I could do hits of colour with nice baskets or planters. And do not get me going on the front yard...

I better stop there or I will get no sleep tonight. It's going to be hard enough to shut the brain down from trying to figure out how to make our 1981 bungalow not have the frontage of a typical infill house... And being we have to re-roof this year, i have to make sure I have it moderately planned so the colour of the new shingles will 'go with' my eventual plan for the rest of the exterior renovation.

On second thought... Maybe we should just find a new house!

How does my garden grow?

I have a garden. It is a small garden – only measuring 22’x20’ (6.7m x 6.1m) – or about 440 square feet… When I think about it, my current garden is only a few square feet smaller than the apartment I had when I met my Husband.. I loved that apartment – it was probably my favourite of all the places I’ve lived… The only shortcoming was no garden!

But I digress… My little garden – it has fed us and it has starved us… Neither of which has anything to do with the garden itself but more to do with my lack of gardening skill. I remember when we bought the house – my husband was seriously worried… The new house had a vegetable garden, extensive (by our definition) flower gardens, plum, apple and crabapple trees. And I was not known for my ‘green thumb’. Our first year we hurried and put in a vegetable garden – we ate like kings! And the plum tree – oh my God, did we have plums. Tons of them… Enough to give several of my former co-workers a very upset stomach (from eating far too many ripe yellow plums)! And apples. So many apples our kitchen table has permanent damage (from a temper tantrum over pie crust) and if I’d had an axe that day, we would not longer have an apple tree.

This is one of the plants that mysteriously dissapeared a few years after we moved in... I think I dug it up one spring by mistake thinking it was a weed.









Our second year we had an issue with ants - they damaged the roots of several plants and then we used an all natural product on the hills but it seemed to have a weird effect on the soil and anything that grew in the affected area was stunted and shriveled. We did send our soil away for testing (I used to work for a major research facility that specialized in agriculture) but it was inconclusive and all the soil experts and agrarians assured us that nothing we applied would cause what we were seeing. Regardless, it affected our harvest the next two years. Which was ok – we dumped all our bins of compost on the garden and worked it into the soil. Then we got pregnant, had a baby and really weren’t ready to start gardening again until this year.

And it’s going well – save for the nearly 120 cubic litres of weeds TroubleMaker and I pulled out of the little vegetable patch three weeks ago… Needless to say, I’m a little embarrassed that our garden got so overran by weeds that it choked the cucumbers into extinction! We had a funny season here this year. Early in the spring, we were suffering draught conditions. Then it was cold – unseasonably cold and we couldn’t plant for fear of frost. By the time my Husband, his Mom and TroubleMaker seeded our garden it was the second week in June and we still had frost that nearly killed our four tomato plants! It then rained constantly and steadily for a month. It would just dry out enough to get into and it’d start raining again – hence the weeds that nearly took over.

But we’ve eaten from the garden. Two picks of peas (and another to come), green beans twice, a few carrots, new potatoes and enough dill to supply the most ambitious of picklers. I didn’t plant the dill; by the way, it’s a byproduct of living in an old part of town. Things just grow here, whether you plant them or not. Poppies - one of those things that just keep growing without any input from me...

Yes, that reminds me, we had a spinach salad too this year – but we didn’t plant it this year! Last year, we had spaghetti squash – it grew out of our compost.
Relatively speaking, we have amazing soil. The neighbourhood we’re in used to all be farm land so the dirt is supple and fertile. Things grow big and green and honestly, I don’t have to do too much to it. And this year, the credit really needs to go to my Husband and TroubleMaker – they made the garden the success it is!
We are thinking and planning of uprooting (haha) our little vegetable patch so we can build a new garage with apartment studio for Blackstone Images and for the most part, I was ok with that… until last night when I realized that it would be the end of my gardening. Sure, I’d already decided to dig up the few flowers I haven’t killed and put in vegetables, but my little patch of sunshine will be gone…

And I don’t know if I’m really ready for that.