Garden

Productive planting

Yesterday was an incredibly productive day. I mean seriously productive. I got up at 4:50 a.m. and went to a spinning class. When I got home, I took my dog for a walk before work. I made breakfast for two days and lunch. I got a ton of stuff done at work, too. AND when I got home, we made dinner that I had marinated overnight before running to Home Depot to buy mulch. And yes, I spread it, too! This seriously never happens! I don’t know what took over and said “You are not gonna sit still for a single second today,” but it needs to happen way more often.

On to my productive planting…

This weekend my dad met up with a parent he met at on of Elliott’s baseball games go was splitting her perennials. She gave him an entire trunk-full of plants for us to plant in our yard! Thank you so much, Rene!

Free plants

We got right to work unloading and planning where to plant our plants so we could get them back in the ground and soaked with water. Three hours later we planted two hastas, three liriope, a bunch of lamb’s ear, a bunch of fern…. and a ton of other stuff we didn’t know the name of. We also transplanted one of my strawberry patches to join it with the other patch, so now I have one huge patch! Yummo.

Last night on my productive spree, I dragged the hubby (OK, OK, he went rather willingly) to Home Depot to buy mulch so I could mulch my new garden beds. We bought 15 bags for only $1.48 each. Score!

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In the photo above we have some daffodils braided down on the left and my strawberry patch on the right. I’m not crazy about daffodils, so I am thinking I might eventually make the whole thing a strawberry patch 😀

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This picture is less exciting, seeing as I don’t know the name of this plant, but it has pretty purple flowers and will hopefully wind up the fence when it grows. It also shows my next plan for my garden, which is lining all of my beds with big(ish) rocks. The tricky part — I don’t want to pay for them haha. I will be rock  scavenging to try to complete this task. I’m starting with the beds on the side of the house so the incompleteness won’t be super obvious when you drive by. I think it will look really great when it’s done.

This weekend I’ll be planting six tomato plants, which is absurd because how many tomatoes does one person really need? And yes, only one person in our house eats them — me!

I got three regular plants, one Roma plant and two cherry tomato plants. CAN’T WAIT FOR TOMATOES!

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Speaking of gardening… my broccoli are doing well (I think). We cut down the itty bitty tree right behind our car port earlier this spring to help get my garden bed a bit more light. The broccoli look like they are doing well, but I know my dad’s plants will be 80 times the size because of their direct sunlight all day long. I think this year will be really telling for future garden plans. I thought about moving my garden to the back corner of the yard that gets more sun, but that was gonna be way more expensive so I decided to give this area one more try.
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And to round out a productive planting post… you know what isn’t productive?

This guy….

He just wants to play in the dirt and chase water from the hose. In fact, last night he took to crying when we stopped playing with the hose. Needless to say, he was rather soaked by the time we went inside for the night.

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And when he isn’t sidetracking me from gardening, he’s certainly not being productive inside….

Lazy bones!

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Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts, Uncategorized

“Washi Tape” frame mat

So… I really don’t know what washi tape is but it is apparently a huge deal. Apparently. It’s just colorful tape, but I guess that’s cool.

Anyway, I was perusing the aisles of le Target last week and I stumbled upon a roll of Scotch tape that was mint colored and patterned! So, it’s not washi tape… but it’s some kind of tape! It was mint, so I needed it. I scooped it into my basket and went home.

It wasn’t until 1 a.m. that I knew what I wanted to do with my tape. I was staring at a our framed family tree, which has been missing something ever since I framed it. I got a document frame from Michaels and printed the family tree on our printer, but our printer couldn’t print full bleed (all the way to the edges) so there’s always been a white border around the image.

So I took the frame off the wall so I could make a faux mat out of my new roll of mint tape.

{A Smith of All Trades} Scotch Tape mint mat

Making this mat was really easy. I mean realllly easy.

Pop the image out of the frame and start adding the tape around the edges. I taped right onto the family tree and onto the white piece of paper that came with the frame.

{A Smith of All Trades} Scotch Tape mint mat

I did the top and bottom first, then taped along the vertical edges. That way the corners overlap in the same manner.

{A Smith of All Trades} Scotch Tape mint mat

I popped the newly “matted” piece of artwork back into the frame. Unfortunately, I taped it a little off center. Dang! I trimmed the edge of the white paper and popped it back in — done!

(A Smith of All Trades) Mint Mat

It pops out of the frame now and I love it even more!! It also looks lovely next to our new curtains.

(A Smith of All Trades) Mint Mat

So, next time you need one of your piece of art to pop, just add some funky tape… washi, Scotch… whatever!