Genius

Every now and then, I have a stroke of genius. More often, I see someone else's genius though... inspired by these, the girls and I had this for a treat today:



We just melted some milk chocolate chips (I bet frosting would work equally well) and crushed up some graham crackers. You just take your marshmallow, swirl in chocolate, and dip in graham cracker crumbs. Not as messy as a real s'more, and not quite as tasty because it's missing that toasted bit, but still... Yum. :)

This Year's Garden

So in years past, my garden has looked like this:


Now, there's nothing wrong with having a garden built like that in a normal place, but you wouldn't believe the weed issues I have here! As far as I can tell, the area I'm using as a garden has never been anything but a weed patch, and as a result, getting rid of all the weeds, with their seeds everywhere in the soil, and their runners, and however else they reproduce, was practically impossible. It didn't seem to matter how many times I sprayed, they just wouldn't die. Add to that our bad soil, and I was ready to try something new this year.

After researching things a bit, I decided I wanted to do some boxes. I thought at first I'd do the square foot gardening method, but I don't need as much produce as I feel like that would actually produce. Plus, I'm starting way late this year, and I'm just not confident enough that my plants will mature quickly enough to justify purchasing all the plants that method would require. So, for this year at least, I just planted the plants that I would like the produce from.

For the last few days, my garden has been pretty much all I've been working on. I bought 2 x 6's and had them chopped down to be 8 ftrs and 3 ftrs, then used those to build my boxes (my dad and Cory actually did most of this work, but only because there were only 2 hammers. I did hammer in one nail... :)). I placed the boxes, and then Jake pounded in my stakes (because he likes to use a sledge hammer...). Then I found soil and mulch and had it delivered to my house--5 cubic yards worth of materials, if you're wondering. That's a LOT, I promise. I've spent the last two days moving dirt and mulch while my kids ran around the yard and generally played in the dirt. I am so impressed with how well they've done outside--makes me want to fence off my yard so they can just go play out there all the time. Maybe some day... Anyway. Without further ado, here is my beautiful new garden--I'm so excited about it!



The pile of dirt left over... to be used in a flower bed in the back yard, among other things, I guess...


How the girls entertained themselves:


and the remains of where the mulch was...


So glad it's done, the garden's in, and I am able enough to do this. I really, really love accomplishing such a project, and I can't get over how beautiful I think it is.

New Bag

So I bought a bit of fabric to make a bag for my mom for mother's day. It came out pretty cute, I thought, and I was excited to give it to her. She seemed to like it, so I thought all was good.

Yesterday, I realized I didn't have a gift for bunco last night, and I didn't feel like going to buy anything, so I decided to use my leftover fabric from my mom's bag to make into my gift. Now I just have to apologize to my mom, because this bag came out so much better than hers... Sorry mom! If you want me to make yours better, I totally will.

I've been wanting to participate in amylouwho's Sew and Tell for a while now, but rarely have anything great to post. I'm excited today to actually have something to add. :)

A few pics--

Smocks

So ever since I saw these smocks over at Make It and Love It, I've wanted to make some for our kids. I wasn't sure about the cotton material, though, or the ruffle. Seemed like those things would cause it to hold on to paint/playdoh/whatever else they were using for their creations. Then when my friend E. talked about making a raincoat for her daughter out of a vinyl tablecloth, an idea struck me. What if I just made my smocks out of a vinyl tablecloth? So I did. I bought the tablecloth at Walmart for a whopping $4, and have enough to make a ton more stuff, as it was a 60"x84". The more expensive part would've been the bias tape I used around the edges, but I already had that (and have NO idea where it came from, it's just been in my stash for a while now). Other than those two things, the only other stuff I needed was a little velcro (about 6 inches total for 2 smocks) and some ribbon for a tie, which is totally optional. So now, for just a couple dollars and a half hour each, I have 2 smocks to keep my girls' clothing clean while they paint/sculpt/craft to their hearts content. I'm pretty excited about them.

General size and shape (I decided to do this differently than the smock at Make It and Love It--I wanted one that I didn't have to pull over the girls' heads--if they get gunky paint or whatever on them, I don't want to have to pull that up over their heads.):


Simple Velcro fastener:


I changed up the pockets, too:


and this is how I attached the ribbon (I went over it at least 5 times for some security, since this will get the most pull of anywhere on the smock):


And the smocks in action:


(And in case you're wondering, we are having a jammies day over here, what with the rain outside and everything. Normally I don't like them, but I'm being productive this morning, so it's going ok. And I know it's hard to believe, but I really do actually do my girls' hair every now and then... and I usually make Janey wear pants... and Breanne generally wears pj's that match... just not today. Oh well.)

Who has a diaper bag they love?

Me!! And I made it myself! I'm pretty ridiculously proud of it, sorry. :)


The exterior is corduroy, for two reasons. One, I love corduroy, and two, it's so durable! You're supposed to use a home decor weight fabric of some sort, but most of those are dry clean only, which just doesn't scream diaper bag, to me. So thus, the washer and dryer friendly corduroy. :)

It has an outside pocket for papers and such,



an inside pocket divided into three sections, meant to carry three sippy cups or bottles, or other snacks,



and an inside pocket for my keys, phone, wallet, and whatever else.


I've been wanting a bigger and nicer diaper bag for a while now, but just couldn't find anything I loved, and everything was so expensive! So, I finally got up the nerve to make one myself. I got inspiration from this tutorial, and this tutorial, but ended up making it how I wanted it. I still need to sew on another piece of velcro, but because I broke my sewing machine needle (first time for everything, right?), it will have to wait. But I am excited, and I love it. And, it cost me less than $20! (and one sewing machine needle...) Pretty great. :)

Snowman Craft Day

So every now and then we do some sort of new craft. Both the girls really love art time, but now that Janey's participating, I have to be more careful about what they do (I like low-supervision, low-mess crafts). I finally decided to let her do something with glue the other day, and she did great! We made snowmen out of cotton balls on paper--I drew one for Janey and let her put on the cotton balls, Breanne did hers completely by herself.






I think if I do this again, I might do it on paper plates, and use chocolate syrup as the glue and use marshmallows for the snowmen... yummy! And if it's going to be messy, it might as well be yummy.

Carseat Cover

So after the whole RSV thing, I've been a little bit protective of Cailin... I really, really don't want her to get sick again. So, everytime we go anywhere, I want her covered up. I was using a blanket for a while there, but finally decided to just make a carseat cover--and I LOVE it. It's been so nice to not have to worry about it falling off/blowing away/becoming a baby doll blanket and getting more germy... I love that it's stuck to the carseat. So nice. I used a tutorial from A Wednesday Afternoon, though I saw tons more when I was researching it, and may have tweaked it some to fit my needs. I still need to add some details to the handle thing to make the ribbon prettier, but for now, it's wonderful and functional, and just what I needed.