DIY Projects in the Works

I've never been one to have a hard time coming up with ideas or finding inspiration.  On the contrary, I always have far more ideas and projects in my head than I have time to do them.  Which results in many ideas getting pushed aside, or "thrown in the vault" as I like to say.  But every once in a while, an idea hits me and I feel compelled to drop everything and do it.  This has happened to me twice recently, and although neither was a completely original idea, I was so struck with inspiration that I immediately started work on them.

The first was this outdoor music wall, which I saw pop up in my Facebook news feed a couple of months ago:  http://www.filthwizardry.com/2010/05/music-wall-rip-music-tree.html

What a brilliant idea! And so easy, too.  And I knew we had the perfect spot for it, so two days later I was already gathering junk from our basement to do it.  It's still a work in progress, but here's a little sneaky peeky:

Outdoor music wall, in progress

I still have some more things I want to add to this, but it's a pretty good start!  And literally the only thing I purchased for this was some spray paint to liven it up.  Can't beat that!  Or can you??  (Ha!  See what I did there?  Haha, eh, ahem.)

Moving on to the second idea...  Several months ago, I got the urge to paint our van.  No, not have it repainted, but to paint it myself.  Crazy?  Maybe a little, but it wouldn't be the first time I have painted a vehicle - I had a car in high school and college that I painted twice: once with random designs and the other with the solar system and stars.  In any case, I have been thinking about this off and on for many months, but hadn't really come up with a plan of how I wanted to paint it.

///Fast forward to a couple weeks ago///

I was looking at one of those silly buzzfeed articles - you know the ones:  "30 Amazing Photos That Will Change Your Outlook on Life" or "16 Animals That Are So Cute You Will Cry" or some other nonsense, seemingly always in a tidy little list format.  I see these pop up in my Facebook news feed frequently, and I rarely click on them.  But for some reason, I happened to click on one a couple weeks ago - I don't even remember what the article was now, but somewhere in the ridiculous list was a photo of a car painted with chalkboard paint.  When I first saw the pic I kind of casually thought, "Haha, that would be fun." But after a day or so, I kept gravitating back to the idea and thought, "No, wait, that really would be fun!"  And it was the perfect solution to my indecision of how to paint the van - if I painted it with chalkboard paint, we could draw on it and keep changing it! 

Sneak peek at the chalkboard van!

It didn't take me long to start gathering supplies and begin work.  And of course, as soon as I got a little section done, we had to try it out!  Even though this is a fairly big project, two weeks after deciding to do it, I'm already half way done.  When inspiration strikes like this, it really is a force to be reckoned with!  Now I just have to wait out a couple of rainy days so I can finish it.  Back to indoor projects for now!

Perfectionism and Adventures in Gardening

My perfectionism sometimes gets in the way of me actually accomplishing anything.  Lucky for me, hubby is far from a perfectionist.  While I will agonize over how exactly to do a project and scrutinize every detail, he will just grab some stuff and slap it together.  Case in point:  our garden.  We've been talking about making a vegetable garden for...oh, I don't know, years.  Several years ago, we attempted one at our old house, but it was quickly gobbled up by the groundhog that lived in the woods behind our house (he came into our yard so much, we even gave him a name:  "Pucker").  Eventually we decided it wasn't worth the effort to try to grow vegetables to feed Pucker.  So that was the last of the gardening at our old house.

Our current garden, mid-July

Last summer was the first summer at our new house, and it was then that we discovered that half our lawn was dead.  We thought it might be a good place to put a garden in, but decided to wait and see what would happen with the lawn over the summer (weeds...the answer is weeds would happen).  This spring we again discussed putting a garden in.  I, of course, wanted to plan out all of the details:  decide on the exact size and shape, get just the right boards to build raised beds, figure out precisely when to plant which seeds, etc.  Then one day hubby said, "I think I'll go outside and put together a garden bed."  I'll admit my first thought was "I don't think so."  You see, he isn't exactly the handiest of guys, and besides that, what about all my garden plans (you know...the ones I had yet to make)??  However, despite my hesitation, I agreed to it.  So, he found some boards under our deck (thank you, previous owners!), and voila - a garden bed.  It may not have been perfect, but it was done, and that's more than I can say for my garden bed (which was still entirely in my head).  We were even able to make a second one with more boards the previous owners had left.

Seed packets, purchased from PTA fundraiser

In mid April, we sowed our first seeds:  peas and carrots.  We also planted potatoes, I think around the same time, but my memory is a little fuzzy.  Hopefully this blog post will at least give me something to look back on so I can remember what we did when next spring rolls around.  (First note to self:  take more notes!)  The peas were the first to sprout up and it quickly became evident they needed something to climb.  In an effort to be resourceful, we found some large sticks in the yard, shoved them in the soil at the edges of the rows of peas, and tied twine between them.  For the most part, this worked fairly well.  However, once they got taller it seemed like they could use more support, especially after getting drenched from the many rain showers we've had this summer.  (Note #2:  peas need more support!)  The carrots took a lot longer to sprout up, but they're doing good now.  At least I think they're doing good now (how can you tell with carrots??)  And the potatoes seem to be doing good as well.  Oh, and hubby found a strawberry plant growing elsewhere in the yard and moved it to the garden.  No sign of strawberries yet, but it is still alive at least.  We also had a few random tomato plants pop up, which we moved to the garden as well.  Cherry tomatoes were the one and only thing we grew last year - apparently they reseed themselves (bonus!).  So that's garden bed #1.

Garden bed #1

In garden bed #2, we planted green beans and cucumbers, probably in mid-May, but I can't recall for sure.  We also threw in a couple more volunteer tomato plants we found.  The green beans are doing great.  The cucumbers took a bit longer to get going, but now the vines are really starting to grow, and there's not much room for them.  Which means we're scrambling being resourceful and looking around the yard to find something for them to climb.  (Note #3:  cucumbers need something to climb, or room to sprawl!)

Garden bed #2

First garden-fresh peas!

The first week of July, we tasted our first peas, and man were they delicious!  We've been eagerly gobbling them up over the past couple weeks.  In fact, only about half of them actually make it into the house.  (Note #4:  plant more peas!)  I think it was about a week later when we got our first green beans, which were super tasty, too.  Then we were gone for 4 days, and returned to a partially wilted garden, but an excellent little harvest!

First big harvest from our garden - yippeee!

Fortunately after a good soaking, everything that was wilted snapped back.  And since I started composing this blog post a week ago, we dug up the rest of the potatoes (which were super delicious!) and picked our first cucumber (which was yummy too!).  All in all, I'm super pleased with the results of our garden so far this year, and definitely want to do even more next year!


In summary, my notes for next year:
1. Take more notes, and photos, right from the beginning.
2. Get or make something better for the peas to climb.
3. Get or make something better for the cucumbers to climb, or give them more room to sprawl.
4. Make at least one more garden bed, so we can grow lots more veggies - definitely plant more peas and potatoes!
5. Try something new - maybe broccoli??
6. And don't worry about making the garden perfect, because...
7. Everything tastes better when it's homegrown, and...
8. Even if they're not perfect, gardens are way better than lawns!

April Recap

Wow, was April ever a whirlwind of a month!  We've had a lot going on this month, and I haven't had a moment to blog about any of our house projects.  So here's a little recap of our April:

1. Realized that painting the exterior of our house might be a bit more than we are capable of doing on our own this summer.  So...
2. Got several estimates from painters.
3. Raked and bagged more leaves.
4. Seasonal allergies kicked in (ugh!)
5. Fixed our broken garage door (well, I should say a temporary quick-fix...I expect we will have to revisit this little project again soon)
6. Put up a baby gate and baby-proofed the playroom for a newly mobile baby b.
7. Discovered half of our lawn is dead (more on this another day)

8. Continued sewing the rainbow quilt.
9. Started painting the play room (here's a little sneak peek:

I'm loving the blue, but I still have to get the green paint for the grassy hills, and...
10. I realized that I definitely want to paint the trim white in the play room (of course!)
11. Shuffled some furniture around.
12. Thought we had finally gotten rid of all of the squirrels above our attic (did I mention we had squirrels above our attic?  More on this another day)
13. Raked and bagged more leaves. (really?  more leaves??)
14. Washed the siding on our front porch (here's a pic of it half way done:

 


What a difference, eh?)
15. Heard something scurrying around above our attic and realized that we were wrong about #12.
16. Planted some grass seed in the mud pit (what I like to call the fenced area behind the house where there is nothing growing except for a couple hostas along the side, and apparently where some previous inhabitants had chickens!)
17. Pruned a few tree branches.
18. Passed an annoying cold around our family.
19. Realized we did not do a thorough enough job with #6 , so we moved more things around and out of the play room.  (As a side note, quite surprisingly, this is one of the most injury-producing items in our home:

because, you see, kids don't just sit on it.  They jump on it.  They climb on it.  They lean on it until it tips over and they land flat on their faces.)
20. Raked and bagged more leaves. (seriously, how many leaves do we have?!?)
21. Decided to start a children's music band. (because, you know, we don't have enough to do already!)
22. Found an almost full gallon of white semi-gloss paint in the basement. (score!)
23. Used newly found paint to paint a board for a height chart.
24. Installed newly made height chart board on wall, and began recording heights.
25. Celebrated baby b's 1st birthday!  (hooray!!)

So there you have it.  All in all, I'd say it was a good month, and I feel like we got a lot of little things accomplished.  We'll see what May brings!

Spring Clean Up and More Quilt Progress

We've been pretty lucky weather-wise so far this spring. With some unseasonably warm days last week (in the 70's in March?? Usually it's still snowy!), we were actually able to get outside and start cleaning up the yard a bit. So we raked up some leaves (9 bags full, to be exact), and unveiled some of the landscaping.

I knew we had a few crocuses, as they had already made there way up through the covering of leaves, and I was excited to see some daffodils popping up too. I think there may be some irises and lilies as well, but it's a bit early to tell since they are just barely coming up out of the ground. It will certainly be fun to see what else we have growing.

Then over the weekend we got a reality check when the weather went back to more typical March temperatures (40's and even some snow this morning!). So I decided to go back to my big indoor project of the rainbow quilt. Getting it all laid out was quite the task (1008 squares and no definite plan for how they'd fit together...what was I thinking?!?). I had to shuffle the squares around a lot to get the stripes even and blending together nicely. And of course I hadn't cut quite enough squares, and of course I didn't have quite enough of one of the colors, so I had to go pick up one more fat quarter to fill in the gap. But all in all, I'm quite happy with the progress, and also with how much of my fabric stash I have been able to use in this project.

Anyhow, I did finally get it all laid out and have even started sewing! Yippee!! And in the process, little g is getting her first sewing lessons. She was very curious about my sewing machine and iron, and asked me all kinds of questions them, wondering how they worked. I guess it's time to find a simple sewing project for her to do and start learning some mad seamstress skills. But for now, she's happy to help line up the squares after I've sewn them together. It's nice having a little assistant!

Our Front Porch

When we first looked at our house last summer, one of the first things that I fell in love with was the front porch (seriously, the columns, the bench swing...how could you not??).  It's a beautiful porch, but it certainly has seen better days (note the dirty exterior and chipping paint).  We will definitely be needing to give it some love, but living in Maine, it's just a wee bit chilly to be doing much of that kind of work outdoors right now.   So as eager as I am to start sprucing up the front porch, I guess it will have to wait a bit longer until it's consistently well above freezing.  But I still wanted to share some photos of our lovely porch, so consider these the "before" pictures.