From this window - May 20th, 2013

Yesterday my husband and I made a trip up the river road to Hornbakers Nursery in Princeton.  It's way more pricey than buying plants at Lowes but the quality is superb and the selection is amazing.  They've planted much of their property in lovely gardens you can walk through.  They also have many different ponds and waterfalls.  It's the type of place you might want to take your lunch and stay a while - not so much a store as a destination.  I found a gorgeous honeysuckle that was almost as tall as me, four beautiful Black and Blue Salvias, and a cardinal plant.  My husband bought some shade plants for his 'forest'.  He's trying to populate his 1/4 acre with native wooded plants and Hornbakers has a nice selection.  Past purchases are doing well back there and spreading.  It's a slow process but coming along.

Yesterday I noticed our Wiegela is starting to bloom.  We have two really nice sized bushes and the hummingbirds are crazy about Wiegela.  The fence is finished around the old raised bed and ready for planting.  We're going to use it as a 'way station' for some of the plants we are moving but don't know their final resting place.  We're moving plants from bed to bed to gain a more cohesive and polished garden.  Right now it's kind of English garden-y, lots of tall plants hither and yon.  The area around the pond is tangled and has some trees that have managed to take root in spite of our best efforts.  The phlox that the deer love will go in the fenced bed along with my rose bush.

The iris are just beginning to bloom and I have one water lily that bloomed yesterday.  The Lotus has put up one leaf which is always a relief (no pun intended).  I wonder from year to year if it will survive; the blooms are absolutely breathtaking.  The wren has one egg in the house in the back flower bed, they abandoned the house on the gazebo to the house sparrows so we took that one down. 

The dirt for the new raised bed that Andrew built last week is due this week when the weather will allow.  They will be using a skid steer loader to off load the dirt, run through the yard, and dump it into the raised bed.  If the yard is too wet, the loader will leave tracks and ruin the grass.  After the bed is filled, we will start moving plants from the bed behind the raised bed and Andrew will move on to pulling out the bushes in the front yard and edging some of the other flower beds. 

 

This card is one of those that stands.  I cut a piece of 8.5" x 11" paper vertically, scored both at 5.5" and tucked one inside the other.  I glued two of the panels together and scored the front card again in half.  When it's flat it fits in an A2 envelope and hides most of the garden stamped inside.  I was pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Free Astrological Sign - Gemini

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Craft sale on May 18th

I've recently learned how to make "word" albums in Silhouette Studio.  I saw a wonderful YouTube video that was clear and easy to follow.  You can find the video here.  I didn't have any chipboard but I do have heavy card stock so I just cut every letter twice and glued them together.  I covered the top of every letter with designer card stock which added to the weight and the underside of every letter with plain card stock so there were four layers on each letter which created a pretty sturdy album.  It's about 12" wide and a little over 3" tall and has room inside for photos and journal-ling.  This would make a cute gift for a new grandmother with photos of a new baby.  I've also created several that say "mother" and several that say "football".  I'm trying to get them finished before I have to pack for the sale on May 18th.  My next sales are September and October when I will be putting some tumblers with vinyl on them out for sale.  Of course, I still have a large selection of cards that will be going.

I'm learning to like craft shows.  My husband helps me set up the awning and tables and then goes off to do whatever husbands do after they dump their wives at the school, park, fairgrounds, etc.  He comes back to help me pack up, bless his pea-picking little heart.  I always make 'rent' money and sometimes have a really good day.  I purchased my Cameo with money made from craft sales.  I keep all that money separate from household money and when I get enough, I buy something neat.  That last week before the sale is a push to get everything done.  If the tumblers and vinyl do well, next March I will take my computer and Cameo and just do vinyl. 

Happy Birthday, Jim

My husband has a cousin that turned 75 this week.  His wife called before his birthday to say that he doesn't like birthday cards, but she was asking all the cousins to call him on his birthday, which my husband did.  But then some of the other cousins decided to give him cards anyway, just to be ornery.  So, I made one:

I used my PTI alphabet dies and my Peachy Keen birthday background.  It turned out cuter than I thought it would.  Don't ever tell a card maker that you don't like birthday cards, right?

From this window - May 5, 2013

I've been trying to get ready for a craft show on the 18th.  I spend most of the day in my craft room, on my computer or looking out the window - but not getting anything done.  The window beckons...  In just the last week the crab apple has gone from deep rose pink buds to pale pink blossoms.  Dandelions have miraculously appeared across the street, their cheerful nodding heads moving with the wind.  The birdhouse right outside the window has had plenty of applicants but no takers so far.  The house sparrows, bluebirds, wrens, chickadees and titmice have all had a look inside but it remains empty.  I think a family of nesting birds gives a birdhouse a soul.  Until then, it's just a structure.

It's rained here a lot but today the sky is that soft pale blue that I can never find in a marker.  The clouds are white and fluffy, the wind is soft and warm.  I've seen no deer, turkeys or foxes in weeks, perhaps they've all moved out of the neighborhood.    The birds sing at dawn now and through the morning hours.  A male wren has taken up residence in the birdhouse on the gazebo.  He may already have a mate because I've seen two of them.  The water lily leaves are on the surface of the pond now.  Carl saw a hummingbird on the deck yesterday so I put the feeder out this morning but I haven't seen any at the feeder.

We have plans for the gardens this year.  There are some bushes in our front yard that have outlived their attractiveness so we're going to have them removed and replaced with a wildflower garden.  We're going to have a raised bed built in the backyard and some of the flowers from the bed next to the pines moved into it and revert the bed by the pines to grass because the pines are taking it over.  We are moving a lot of the plants from the pond area to the front yard and ones that are already in the front yard to pond area.  There is a method to my madness.  While I love a wildflower look, the plants around the pond have taken it over.  We built the pond to be a focal point but it just looks overgrown.  The plants in the front yard are mostly daylilies and autumn joy sedum, both clumping plants.  I have five peonies, eight large daylilies and a dozen sedums.  After planting those around the pond we will mulch it really good.  With plants that clump, we can weed - and walk.  Hopefully, we'll get all this work done by early June so we don't have to transplant in the heat of the summer.   And in case you're worried I might strain myself, we've hired a young man to work and I'm just exercising my pointing finger.

Vinyl, vinyl, vinyl

I've just discovered vinyl.  No, that's not quite right, I discovered vinyl last year, I have a collection of colors and transfer tapes but I've never used it except to print some signs for a friend's business window. 

When we decided to remodel the bathrooms, I wanted the Queen Anne's Lace in my bathroom.  But after the bathroom was finished, it was so sophisticated, I thought the vinyl would be wrong for it.  But....it would be perfect for the laundry room especially around the litter box.  And now that we've adopted a new cat, a long-haired domestic we've named Sadie, we wanted to brighten up the box area a bit.  With Sassy's help I managed to get it all cut and adhered and learned a lot along the way.

I learned that when you work with vinyl, work slowly.  If you think you're working slowly, slow down.  Rushing will ruin a project in a heartbeat.  Use an exacto knife to cut elements you want to adhere separately, not scissors (I actually cut part of a design off by lifting it up and not watching what I was doing).  The right kind of transfer paper will work wonders.  I had two types, one would not release the vinyl, the other, a re-positionable, worked so well that I was angry at myself for not using it first.  I felt like I was rubbing the paint off of the wall, I rubbed so hard.  With the re-positionable, I just rubbed it on the wall a few times, taking care to make sure the edges were stuck and took off the transfer paper - piece of cake.  This is especially important when you have a million tiny pieces like the flowers had.  I'll know better on my next project.  I'm not sure if I'm done with this yet, I may add to it.  I have some more of this vinyl and it looks wonderful on this wall color. 

I'm thinking of some butterflies and as a crafter suggested, another cat on the other side.

 Don't you love the rats?

Sassy gives her seal of approval, I think she was trying to play with the rats.

My next project may be my kitchen.  I have a soffit I could decorate with the names of our favorite recipes or ingredients or....jeez, Louise, the sky is the limit, isn't it?

Classy litter box...

I have had a project "on the drawing board" since we started the first bathroom remodel.  I finally finished it today.  I planned to place a garden in our laundry room bathroom around Sassy's litter box.  I used matte black vinyl and this is what it looks like now.

This room is painted a goldy yellow (my term), very bright and just a lovely color.  This was quite the learning experience.  First, I had to learn how to cut something this intricate out of vinyl and then I learned you need to keep a firm hold on your transfer tape before it sticks everywhere with a million wrinkles and must be pulled from the vinyl with tweezers so it could be smoothed out.  New rule:  just unroll a few inches, place it down, smooth it out and unroll another few inches.  What a nightmare.  But I so love the result.  And I may even add another Queen Anne's Lace above the register to fill out the corner.  Perhaps a silhouette of a black cat might be nice?