Mary Mary Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

This is the first year I'm starting some of my garden from seed indoors.  My only experience with seeds was a few years ago when someone gave me a packet of flower seeds as part of an object lesson in church.  I bought potting soil, planted the seeds, put them in my dimly lit apartment and watched them get leggy, then moldy, then dead.

Ever since I've been a bit nervous about trying to start garden veggies,with the exception of sunflowers and sugar snap peas started outside last year, which seem to be idiot-proof.  But I've been determined lately to try some things again that I have previously failed at and given up on, like bread making. First bread (going well so far), then garden seeds, then maybe pie crusts, someday...

While shopping in Menards, I saw seed starting mix and seed trays were on a big rebate, so I bought them on a whim.  I could have invested in grow lights and warming mats, etc, but I thought for this year, as a novice attempt, I'd just try my large south-facing living room window.

This time I read a lot online before I started and learned a bit more about starting seeds.  I had no idea there is such a thing as special seed-starting soil, for example.  You can't just use any potting soil from the store.  I bought jalapeno seeds, balloon flower seeds, money plant seeds, luffa seeds, moss rose seeds, and broccoli seeds.  I also had snap dragon and marigold seeds from my flowers outside that went to seed last fall, so I planted them too.

For comparison, I live in USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 5b.

Here's what the luffa looks like 19 days after I started them.  I soaked them in a shallow dish of water for two days (like this blog suggested) and then planted them in large (maybe 6 inch?) pots.  I planted two seeds in each pot, and one sprouted in each pot within 5-6 days, 50% germination rate so far.  I'm really really excited about these and I am going to be careful with them.  I want them to survive the transplant to my yard so they can grow vines of sponge-growing goodness up to 30 feet long.  I bought the seeds online from Peacefully Home Grown.

Update: Click HERE to see what the luffa looks like at the end of May.

One seed must have been damaged, because it's first leaves are all warped.  I'm waiting to see what happens with this one.

 Here is my broccoli, again at 19 days.

 And my little jalapeno.  It's not doing as well as the broccoli and luffa.  I suspect it needs more light than just a south-facing window as they have gotten a bit leggier than the other plants.

I'm excited to try these balloon flowers.  I love their little puffed up flowers and they're perennial.  They seem to be doing well in the window and haven't gotten too tall yet.

 And a surprise since the seeds were free, the marigolds are doing very well and almost all of them sprouted.

We put in some new garden beds this spring.  Apparently treated lumber no longer contains arsenic, so it's safer to use for veggie beds than it used to be.  Cutting these was a beast, but we got them finished and the beds are ready.  Strawberries are going into the one on the right.  I'm experimenting with square foot gardening in the one at the bottom, and cantaloupe, pumpkins, and some other things are going to be in the one on the top-left later in the year.  The burning bushes are also going to come out to make room for cherry bushes.  We put in a Sundance apple tree in the fall and we've got a honeycrisp one to put in this spring as well.  I love having a yard to grow edible things in.

Make Your Own Downton Abbey T-Shirt

If you're a fan of the PBS show Downton Abbey this shirt is for you.  If you haven't seen this show yet, you're missing out, and this shirt has a spoiler...sorry!

I made this one for my husband, and yes he likes the show.  What a catch, right?  I know I'm a lucky girl.  The best part?  It only cost five dollars to make.  The shirt was three dollars on clearance and I already had the paint that cost about two dollars.  It's Tulip brand fabric paint.  I wish I had drawn this myself because it is pretty awesome, but I found this design online on flickr (via pinterest).  You can get your own copy here or here.  I would not try selling this shirt without contacting the owner of the image. 

To put this on a t-shirt, you need to use the freezer paper stenciling technique.  Print out the image, trace it onto freezer paper, and ever so carefully cut it out with an X-ACTO knife.  Because there is a bit of shading in the original image, you need to use artistic judgement in simplifying your tracing just a bit.  Make sure that the eye area especially still looks like an eye.  I also simplified the tie area a bit.

If you have a dark shirt and want to use light paint, remove all of the sections of freezer paper that you want to be white.  If you have a light shirt and plan to use dark paint, then you will cut out the opposite of what you see in this picture. Iron the paper onto your shirt and paint on as many layers of paint as you need.  This took three layers of white.

If you want more detailed instructions for freezer paper stencling, check out this previous post or this tutorial.

Lemonhead Spring Wreath

Bright yellow is such a cheerful color.  It reminds me of springtime.  This wreath looks like it's made from tasty Lemonhead candy, but not to worry.  No Lemonheads were harmed in the making of this wreath.  It's made from ping pong balls, of all things.

Materials needed:

• 98 ping pong balls - Buy a gross (12 dozen) online.  They don't have to be fancy ones, just cheap craft ones are fine.  I bought mine on Amazon.  Ebay is a good source too.
• 12 inch styrofoam wreath 
• Yellow spray paint - I bought one that said it is meant for plastic.  Look for a color that reminds you of lemons.
• White glitter
• Spray glue
• silk flowers
• ribbon
• hot glue

Spray your foam wreath with the yellow spray paint and let it fully dry.  Take that hot glue gun and glue on all of the ping pong balls.  This is trickier than it looks.  You would think that they would all line up perfectly, but because they're on a round wreath you need to leave little gaps to get the right spacing.  You might want to line them all up to make sure the spacing will work before you start gluing.  You will make five rows of balls.  I started with the inside row and then the outside one.  I worked toward the center row.  That way you can make sure the back of your wreath will lie flat.  The center row ended up not lying flat on the wreath, so several balls in that row are glued to other rows rather than to the wreath itself, which is fine.  You can't tell after it's all painted.

Next go to town with that yellow spray paint.  I painted it outside, even though it's still cold and wintery.  We were lucky enough to have a day around 50 degrees, which was just warm enough to paint.  I brought it inside after I did several coats so I could be sure the temperature was warm enough to fully dry the paint for 24 hours.

After the paint has fully dried, take some spray adhesive and spray small sections of the wreath and immediately sprinkle with your white glitter.  Spray adhesive dries quickly, so it's better to do a small bit at a time.  You could probably use spray glitter instead if you have some.

After the paint and glitter is fully dry, you can attach flowers or ribbon or other decorations.  Then hang it on your door.  I used a flat thumb tack to attach the hanging ribbon to the top of my wood door.

Spring is almost here!

Here are a few other Lemonhead wreaths I found online that inspired me to make this one.   

{Lil' Luna} {Sweet Pea}.

Letter S Preschool Ideas

We've been doing a small preschool home group with two other families for the last few months.  Every week we rotate houses and work on one letter of the alphabet.  This week was letter "S" at our house, which was really exciting for me because I had a ton of letter "S" ideas.  This was so much easier than the mom that had to think up stuff for the letter Q a few weeks ago (but she did an awesome job with quiche as a snack, yum!).


This is what we decided to do:

1) Make Sparkle Soap!

You need:
-plastic cups (or an ice cube tray, or candy molds, or soap molds),
-a microwave safe container,
-glitter (the finer the better to make sure it washes down the sink with no problems),
-food coloring,
-non-stick spray (not in the picture, oops),
-and pure glycerin soap that you can buy in craft stores.  This kind comes in little bricks from Hobby Lobby.

Spray down your cups/molds with cooking spray.  Melt the glycerine in the microwave according to package directions.  This brand took exactly 33 seconds per brick to fully melt without getting too hot, and I stirred after 15 seconds.  Add one drop of the food coloring of your choice.  You can also use soap colorings, but I didn't want to buy that just for this one project.  Food coloring seems to work well for this purpose.  I have read that it can bleed if you're trying to make multi-colored layered soaps, so use the soap dye if you're going to get fancy with this project.  Pour in a bit of glitter and let the kids stir it up with a spoon.  Make sure to carefully supervise because this stuff can get hot!  We have a small group so that was no problem.

Then pour it into your cup/mold/ice cube tray and let it sit.  They were firm within 1/2 an hour.  We used the cups so we could cut them off if the soaps got stuck inside, and they make a little number six on the soap, which also starts with the letter "S".  Bonus.

 The glitter will settle a bit to make the top extra sparkly.

Wrap them in plastic wrap for the kids to take home.  I must say, my child has never been so excited to take her next bath.  Green is her favorite color ever.

We also did a few other projects.

2) Do-it-yourself Shrinky-dink

This is a good way to learn the "sh" sound.   Remember shrinky-dinks?  Well it turns out that all you need to make one at home is #6 plastic and some permanent markers.  Over at the Curbly you can find the directions for making your own shrinky-dink.  We used clear plastic trays that hold cupcakes at our local grocery store.  They gave me one for free when I asked at the counter.  I pre-cut the plastic in a circle shape and let the kids color whatever design they wanted.  My daughter drew a green dog on hers.  Then you pop them in the oven and watch them shrink.

3) Snack Time

We made Spaghetti dogs.  Basically you take hot dogs and let the kids spear them with pieces of spaghetti.  Then you boil them until the noodles are done.  I think they were a hit. More photos (and the source of this photo) can be found at Plum Pudding.  They were tasty with a side of cucumber slices.


And I made Jello Spirals ahead of time to eat with the spaghetti dogs.  Directions can be found at Joy of Jello (pic source) and the Kraft recipe webpage.  They're kind of like fruit-rollups, without any of the actual... fruit... um yeah but very tasty.  You could also call them Jello Snails for another letter "S".


All of this stuff took about an hour to do.  We've had so much fun doing preschool at home with our friends.  I'm going to miss these days when my little girl goes to Kindergarten in the fall.