...How Does Your Garden Grow??

Here is all the beautiful veggies that we planted in our Raised Garden Bed.

We planted several varieties of tomatoes.  Sugar babies, Romas and Beefsteak.

We planted several cucumber plants (YAY PICKLES!)

Even though we know carrots are hard to grow in our area, we decided to try some.  I would love to see Lotte pull some carrots out of the ground, but for as many seeds as we planted there aren't many that germinated.

We planted Snow Peas along the back with the chicken wire and these babies have already grabbed on.  They are so cool how they twist around the wire and climb.

And my favorite are the many variety of peppers we planted.  We have a red and a yellow.  Then we got a few different varieties we haven't seen before.  We got a Purple Beauty and a Chocolate Pepper.  They are both really sweet and dark type of pepper.  I'm excited to try them.  They are really doing well.

What did you plant? Are they growing?  This little one is growing like a weed, but I think I'll keep him around!

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.