Garden SUNDAY!

I have decided that i need at least one day where i don't need to worry about tracking down any craft projects I've done, or working on them so its GARDEN SUNDAY! In the winter it will be look at the snow Sunday or why hasn't it snowed sunday, But i digress. I hope you enjoy the pictures and thanks for reading!


Here are some pictures of my flowers and plants over the course of the year! All of these pictures were taken in what passes as "spring" in Colorado... May!

This is my mint plants, spearmint and chocolate mint, they are planted in my garden in a bucket, i recommend this method, plants in the mint family can and will go all invasive and crowd out your other plants, get in your yard and just be really irritating to control. PLANT IN A BUCKET!

this is my tulip! I got a bunch of forced tulips at the blue store for $1.50 a pot, only a few bloomed but i was okay with that they'll come back next year!

Lilacs! Lilacs! My husband loves lilacs, this was the first bit of vegetation we bought in 2008 when we bought our house, and this was the first year it bloomed, its real close to the front (giant) window so the smell came in the living room and it was great!

One of the MANY irises that i have, I got them for free from a neighbor, I got i think 3 plants now they are everywhere and I have shared them with my friends! They are beautiful, but in my postage stamp yard you CAN have too many!

A VERY special post

I am not a highly emotional person most of the time, I don't like to show people whats going on inside a lot, so it takes a lot to admit this post made me tear up because it has a special meaning to me personally.
One of the things that has shaped me into the person that I am is when my father passed away when i was thirteen. I grew up pretty fast after that, being very young and dealing with very adult emotions. I still have a few of my father's belongings that mean a lot to me. He was a teacher, actually MY teacher when i was in 5th grade so i have his briefcase, and his favorite shirt that he wore to school almost weekly, i also have his cologne and wallet. They are very special to me, and keep me close to my daddy. So this post and giveaway at Jeremiah 29:11 had a lot of meaning to me and I just wanted to share with my readers and followers and also i wanted to post on here to thank her for sharing it, it really did mean a lot to me.

Please check out the Post HERE it is very special

My FIRST mosaic project EVER

I said I would get a picture of my first mosaic up last night but after my little dog rescuing adventure in the rain i didn't get the picture taken until just before bed and I was in SO much pain from over doing it on my poor injured knee that i wasn't going back down stairs to get the picture off my phone! So here is a few pictures of it. It is BY FAR one of my favorite projects this summer! As i said in the last post we got about 600 pounds of broken tiles from the BLUE big box hardware store for $10, I had the pot already, so we bought a tiny thing of liquid nail and a smallish bucket of white grout.

I just sat on an old beach towel on my living room floor and went to town, it took me about three hours to glue everything, mostly because it was trial and error and i was learning by doing! I let it dry over night and grouted in the morning!


Inside the pot is Oranges i dried myself at christmas, they don't really have that yummy smell anymore but they were still beautiful so i kept them! which by the way is a really easy and cheap thing to do!

I don't have a plant in it because i love it so much and i want it in my bedroom and my cat eats houseplants! So i have it on my dresser with the potpourri turtle that my husband got at a yard sale, it doesn't smell either but its adorable, he sits on top of an old storage box that i have had since college, a jar full of the dried flowers of my mother's wedding bouquet, and a little vase of fake cherry blossoms that i got a goodwill for a buck! (it still had a tag on it from pier 1, 19.95!!!) The picture in the background came from target and it had a chip in one of the upper corners so it was on clearance I fixed it with wood putty and paint!


Thanks for reading!

Sharing here

Mosaic-ing Is that a word?

That is a pictire of my FIRST mosaic ever before grout, I will get a finished picture and put it up ASAP its upstairs and stairs are evil.

I have mosaic-ed a few things, a flowerpot and the top of a wooden box from Michale's back before i decided to blog, so until i get a new one finished i thought i would give some pointers for basic mosaic-ing that i have learned as I go.

1.) you can get buckets and buckets of broken tile from the BLUE big box hardware store, i think we got like 600 POUNDS of broken tile for $10 at our local one. It may be mostly beige, but its CHEAP and I actually like the look of one of my projects where i used a mix of little white and beige tiles.

2.) the "mosaic glue" that you can get at craft stores is not so fantastic. I do not like it, hence why i am on a hiatus from mosaic-ing. I use liquid nail, to much better results, that other glue doesn't hold up to some materials, like thicker broken dishes or stone tiles. Liquid nails on the other hand... awesome.

3.) I haven't done any patterns but one little flower that fell off because of crappy glue (see above) but I like the random look of the lack of pattern, i think that is the best way to start.

4.) Mosaic-ing as therapy: there is something very therapeutic about breaking dishes. Its awesome. I get stacks of dishes at yard sales or The Goodwill, and i have a blast the next couple days breaking them.

5.) Dishes/broken tiles to use- ceramic, stoneware stone Dishes/tiles not to use- Porcelain, Porcelain breaks weird, and sometimes the pattern really just peels off and it isn't pretty

6.) Safety while breaking- wrap what you are breaking in some form of cloth i used an old scrub top, wear safety glasses, Use tile nippers to clean up edges you don't like.

7.) Get Messy with the grout, wear gloves though and i do it oustide on a tarp cause i am messy!

8.) AND MOST IMPORTANT! HAVE FUN! Its fun to get messy, its fun to create something from basically TRASH. If you like it who cares what anyone else thinks?

on another note... we just had one heckofa storm here and i am an idiot or insane or just a pushover cause i spent 15 min in the rain trying to catch a lost scared dog that was out in the torrential downpour, i succeeded he is in my garage and dryish.
poor baby


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So I somehow broke my glue gun I couldn't finish my project last night but the husband is bringing one home for me tonight to finish up so i have nothing to do today cause i REALLY REALLY want to finish this up first cause its turning out insanely cute.


ON ANOTHER NOTE
as i was going through my dashboard I found this amazing giveaway at Bird Crafts for flirty aprons HERE, you should go check it out! I would LOVE to have on of the Woman's original Scarlet blossoms aprons they are sooo soo cute and all my favorite colors!


Check out the giveaway at Bird Crafts

I can't CONCENTRATE!

So I am working on redoing a vase thingy i got at a yard sale today, but i have been so distracted all day by REALLY irritating phone calls from "cardholder services" and I have gotten to a human twice and when they answer and I ask them to remove me from the list I get hung up on, PLUS they shouldn't be calling at all since i don't know who they are, have never worked with them and I have been on the do not call list since I think 2005. So I had to navigate the "menu" at the Do Not Call Registry to report the number, again. Lets see how long the peace lasts. A week maybe.

When the husband comes home tonight i am planning on working on sanding the couch some more too, It's just easier if husband is home in case i get on the floor to sand and my knee locks up and I can't get back up. I learned that lesson last week when i ended up stranded on my garage floor for 45 minutes until the knee decided to work again. I couldn't even keep sanding cause the piece of sandpaper i was using was SPENT, and i was about a foot too far away from the pack of new sandpaper, it was really boring just being stuck there. Garage floors are none too exciting really.

Tomorrow i should have the vase finished up thus far i am quite pleased with how it is turning out so we shall see tomorrow how the end results look!

Nothing too exciting going on today

So I took yesterday off from my projects after an allergic incident involving watermelon (REALLY? why watermelon? Who has THAT allergy?) i was feeling pretty nasty all day so i just hung out on the couch. I'm feeling much better today so i figured i would get around to posting the picture frame that i refurbished.

I got the frame and the print from a guy on craigslist, the print is kind of kincade-esc with that shiny color shift thing and it is of an English Cottage with basically my DREAM garden on it. The problem being the frame was stained a dark walnut like color and instead of seeing the beautiful cottage you saw the frame, but the frame was in really good shape except for a few little scratches.

So i decided that since the sander was ALREADY out and i had already removed the glass and the print, I snuck the sander from the ugly couch area while husband was shoring up the bracing and sanded down the frame and out came a surprisingly lovely wood grain not a PERFECT grain, but it had beautiful movement and a big interesting knot. I hadn't decided up until then if i would stain it or paint it, we had already bought stain for the couch so I just used a little bit of that.

It came out BEAUTIFUL. The stain has a orangy-red tinge to it but not overpowering and it looks good on pine! After letting it dry for a day or two and while I reassembled the glass, print and matting, and cut my finger putting the glass back in, so i made my husband finish with that part. I absolutely LOVE how it turned out and I LOVE how i see the print first now! I can't wait until I can get it hung up in my master bathroom, but with the knee I won't be balancing on anything to get it up unsupervised.

*note in the picture you'll see the husbands arms because he didn't want to take pictures.. ugh.

Here is the Before picture.





Here's the sanding




Heres the bare wood





Here's the stain






and HERE is the finished product I LOVE it!







Thanks for reading!





COST BREAK DOWN
FRAME AND PRINT $5
Stain- Already had
Sandpaper-Already had
bandaid- 5 cents
Cost $5.05