Mary Mary Quiet Contrary...

How does your garden grow??

Well, here is how mine grows.

This year the husband and I (with a little help from Lotte) made and planted our first raised garden bed.

We started out with 2x12 untreated lumber.  We bought a 16 foot plank and a 10 foot plank.  Our local "Blue" store cut the 16 footer in half and the 10 footer into two 4 foot planks.

We used brackets (two in each corner) and screws to put the box together.  As you can see by the picture, we put our box on our back "car port".  It is outside the fence so our puppies wouldn't be tempted to dig.

Then we drilled holes (with a 1" drill bit) into the bottom of the box.  We wanted pretty good drainage because it is sitting on concrete, so we have about a dozen holes around the bottom.

We lined the box with weed repellant tarp.

And we filled it with top soil from our local Market Basket.

We wanted there to be a way for the tomatoes and peas to grow UP so we added three posts along the back side and strung chicken wire between the posts.

We put the kiddos to work early in this house!

We had a ton of fun spending the afternoon building our box.

Tomorrow, I'll show you what we planted and how it is doing!

Where am I today?

Hey Hey Hey!

I'm doing a guest tutorial over at sweet miss Eva's blog house Couturier Mommy.


If you stop by you will get to see how I made this helpful baby....

Full out tutorial on her blog.  Whheewww...tutorials take some work.  It amazes me when bloggers post more than one a week!  I wish I could make blogging my full time job rather than working at the office.  But alas, my husband says that headband holders don't buy groceries...so off I go to the Day Job.

OH.MY.GOODNESS. & a mobile

I'm on cloud nine right now! I'm beyond stoked!

I entered the Color My Summer Contest at KoJo Designs annnnnddd.....

I was given a shout out to.  Not one of the top eleven, but I was MENTIONED!  I'm so excited!

What was it that was mentioned you ask?  Well, this is one of the projects that I have been working on for Lotte's Second Birthday.  It has been aptly named "Summer Breeze Mobile".

This is the picture that the KoJo ladies posted on their blog.

This was WAY too easy to make.  I spent a whopping $1.50!!  I bought an embroidery hoop for $1.50 and painted it with green paint.  Then I glued on 16 inch strips of rainbow colored ribbon and ric rac in different sizes and varieties.  I used monofilament to tie up the hoop to hang it from the porch.  It will look perfect as an outdoor decoration for Lotte's birthday.

I'm not 100% sure I have actually posted the theme for Lotte's party which has been consuming my thoughts lately.

Drum roll please.................................

Sesame Street

It's going to be mostly rainbow colors, polka dots, letters and numbers, and a few characters here and there, but nothing overly character-y!  If anyone has some suggestions or ideas send me a link!

You can check out my inspiration board for the party on Pinterest.

A HUGE thank you to all the Color My Summer ladies who have inspired me over the last few weeks with all the amazing posts on KoJo Designs and on Delia's.

My gracious link party hosts this week are...

Get your craft on @ Today's Creative Blog
Just something I whipped up @ The Girl Creative
Sundae Scoop @ I Heart Naptime
Tute Tuesday @ Little Birdie
Craft and Tell @ Cherished Bliss
Inspiring Creativity @ Dragonfly Designs
We Did It @ Sew Much Ado
Sugar and Spice @ 733 Blog
DIY Under $5 @ A Little Tipsy
Strut Your Stuff @ Somewhat Simple
Get Your Brag On @ Gluesticks

Brother's Swaddler Blankets

My son is the EXACT OPPOSITE of my daughter when she was an infant.

He smiles and laughs all the time.

She was my Serious Sally.

When he falls asleep, he sleeps like a rock.

When or if she fell asleep, she was easily awaken.

ie: taking this picture woke her up...

and as you can tell I didn't even have the flash on.

She loved to sprawl out and hated being covered up.

He has to be wrapped up tight in his little cocoon.

Seriously, he cannot sleep at night without be swaddled.  Lotte never used her one swaddler we had for her.  {I'm not ashamed to say my sweet son gets wrapped up in his sister's never used PINK swaddler.}  We go through those things quickly in a week at my house.  So I used Prudent Baby's tutorial and made him a set of DIY Swaddle Blankets out of coordinating flannel.  They were super easy to make and Mister Caterpillar loves being tied up in these at night!  I recommend doing this because they are about $10 cheaper than buying the velcro ones at the store.

So Much Time, So Little To Do...Strike That, Reverse It

My to do list is HUGE. I wish I had enough time to get everything finished that I have been wanting to do.  I finally sat down and wrote a WIP {work in progress} list.  I'm going to type it all out here so that as I get things done I can show them off.....and undoubtedly add to it.

~Things I Need To Finish~

-beanbags

-t-shirt quilt-gift

-foyer re-do

-milk tally chart

-cake/candy stand

-material de-stash

{Photos and Posts To Look Forward To}

-passy pocket

-headband holder

-ribbon holders

-thrifty finds

-strawberry picking

-31 days to build a better blog

Oh and I just submitted my Color Your Summer submission.

Wish me luck...because I think my project is pretty cool and I can't wait to share it.

If you want to submit something you have until tomorrow to do it!

A Bubble Dress That Didn't Bubble

It was still super cute on my Little Lotte, but my poor bubble dress didn't bubble.  We wore this at a wedding rehearsal and she was by far the cutest little girl there...it doesn't hurt that she was the only little girl there!

I had a hard time making her sit still long enough to get a good picture.  So here are a slew of mediocre pictures that you can piece together to get the idea of how cute it is.

Here it is hiked up to her diaper due to the swing, but she is HAPPY!

You can see a close up of the rosettes here, and a cute little face.

This might be the best view I got of the whole outfit.

Notice the matching headband...it might be my favorite part!

Never a dull moment with a full fledged toddler!

In case you don't remember when I showed you the bubble dress from Me Sew Crazy, here it is again.

I followed her tutorial but my bubble didn't bubble.  Can anyone tell me why it just looks like a regular skirt?  I want to make a dress for Lotte's birthday party that bubbles, but I need to find out how to do it right.  Is it the fabric that makes a difference?

Crafting up a storm...but nothing to show for it

I really have been getting tons of stuff done lately on the craft front.

I just can't share most of it right now.

I have done a mock up of Lotte's 2nd Birthday invites and I LOVE them!  They are just what I was after.

I also did some outside decorations for her party.

But alas, I am entering them into a contest and I can't blog about it until it is over.  I would love to win, but I'm not holding my breath, there are seriously talented women out there in the blogosphere.  Wish me luck!

I'm entering the KoJo Designs Color My Summer Contest.  I have really loved their series on summer projects with themes that are matching a specified color.  It has introduced me to fabulous women bloggers that I haven't had the opportunity to stalk visit yet





I'm also working on a t-shirt quilt for my bestie's sister.  She is going to be a senior in high school this fall and she has tons of Volleyball shirts.  I hope it turns out to be spectacular.  This is my first attempt at quilting with knits.  It's kinda fun so far.  This is the style I'm going for.

Photo Courtesy of Too Cool T-Shirt Quilts

The Birthday Girl

Not only does this post serve to show you the outfits I made for Lotte's birthday, but I get to show off the cutest little girl ever!

I used watermelon material combined with a light pink (to brighten it up a bit) to make her ruffley dress.

It has ric rac of various sizes in pink and green around the edges.

For her photo shoot we went to St. Louis City Park to the water fountains.

I made her a big tutu of hot pink, light pink and black

For her onesie I appliqued a mod watermelon with ric rac and a big black "1".

Here is a close up.

This was the day before we found out I was pregnant with Brother.

THE Cake and Desert Table

NOTE: Because of the Blogger being down for two days and deleting Thursday's post (grr) I'm reposting this today and I'll post the birthday girl tomorrow!

Here is my favorite installment of this party!  I loved making all the deserts and loved displaying them even more!

Here is the full table.

We hired a photographer (BEST choice ever!!!) to photograph everything so we didn't miss out on the fun by being behind a lens.  I loved all the hundreds of pictures she took, but there was not a single picture of the cake table from a straight on angle.  Sad news!

The banner was all fabric and felt sewn by moi!  Here is a detail.

We took it with us for her 12 month photo shoot!

Looking back we had WAAAYY too much food.  There were quiet a bit of left overs, but everyone tried all of it!

 Watermelon Sugar Cookies

 Watermelon FLAVORED cookies.  So Yummy!  One of my roommates in college has a secret family recipe for cookies where you actually use watermelon to flavor them.  I searched EVERYWHERE on the internet for the recipe, but couldn't find it.  Would she share the secret with me? No. But she did one even better...she made them and sent them with another friend for me to serve.  I LOVE you Katie!

 Watermelon flavored popcorn.  Made with Jello and served in too cute cupcake wrappers.

This was the "pop" display.  Cake pops, Chocolate dipped Golden Oreos, Marshmallows dipped in pink chocolate, and Strawberry Marshmallows dipped in white chocolate.

Here are some more pictures of the stand/display I used for the pops.

I used two Styrofoam blocks (one cut down) to create a stair stacked shape.  I spray glued the blocks together.  Then I spray painted the entire thing pink and wrapped 2 inch ribbon around each level of stairs.  It worked perfectly and I will be able to reuse it again for other parties by just spray painting a different color and adding different ribbons.

The cake was EXACTLY what I wanted.  My cake girl went to high school with my husband and I and she is seriously talented.  I told her what I wanted and she made it even better.  The best detail you can't see is the inside of the cake, it is dyed pink and has mini chocolate chips to make it look like watermelon!

She also made jumbo cupcakes and Lotte's smash cake.

I'll leave you today with pictures of my sweetie digging in to her first sweets!

Join me tomorrow for Lotte's birthday outfits and a recap!