Starting A Herb Garden From Seeds

We moved in! This house is huge! Of course there is still a lot of DIY work to be done around the house, including removing the cotton candy pink in the family room and repaint all the fuchsia  turquoise, hot pink, and lavender walls. Oh yea, this is a brightly coloured house. We are gonna wait awhile before actually painting though, just to make sure this house doesn't have any huge problems that all of our paint money would be going to. AND WE FINALLY HAVE INTERNET! I went so long without internet this month, it's amazing. Now I really have the convenience of blogging on the computer in the middle of the house without waiting and waiting and waiting. So far everything is pretty awesome.

Since we can't do anything major to the house yet, I decided I want to start an herb garden for the kitchen. Remember the seeds I started on Earth Day? Well they are huge sprouts now. They are sitting on the windowsill of my kitchen. It made me want to put an herb garden there too, so I got a bunch of plain $.50 pots and painted them, and found some seeds I had from a couple years ago when I wanted to start my own huge veggie and herb garden... that garden didn't really go anywhere since I was 7 months preggo and it was almost summer. I was fat and hot and couldn't bend over... so now I have all these seeds I need to do something with. I only found five packets of seeds, I still have a bunch of boxes (posting a picture blog of the new place later) so the seeds are somewhere in the chaos of cardboard boxes.

Anyway, starting the herb garden.
Starting seeds is always a tricky thing to do, so don't be alarmed if you don't succeed very well the first few times. To make it easier, you need to first gather the RIGHT materials. Such as -

- Seed Starting Potting soil.
- Seeds
- Seed starting pots. nothing too big, and nothing too deep.
- Water (I use a spray bottle for seeds so I don't completely drown them)

These are my little pots I painted. But since I only have five packets, I really didn't need all of them right now.

These are the five pots I chose. I picked the most bright/springy coloured ones...since it is spring.

Make sure you have Seed Starting Potting Soil. This is Very fine and very light. Some even have a little bit of food for the seeds when the sprout. But it is so much easier for the seeds to grow in rather than regular potting soil.

Fill your pot up almost towards the top, leaving about a half an inch of space from the top. DO NOT PACK. Remember, your seeds are little babies! They need to be able to move and grow. I lightly tap down the top of the soil to keep it from being too loose, but that's it

Lightly water the soil, so it's moist, not wet. This is why a spray bottle is helpful.

Now I don't have any seed markers yet. That's probably going to be another DIY blog later, but for now, this picture is the only source of indication of which seed is in which pot.

Now that all my pots have soil, it's time for the seeds. Normally with flower or produce seeds, I like to soak the seeds. This really helps to break down the hard shell of the seeds. Remember, in Mother Nature, those seeds go through a hell of a lot. Breaking down the shell is the equivalent to what they go through naturally.
However- since herb seeds are itty bitty tiny, I didn't soak them, I just kind of cracked the shell a little bit. If you decide to do this, do it GENTLY. Don't completely crush your seed, but just open it a bit with something hard. this allows the water to get to the seed, inside the shell.

Now before actually planting, make sure you do a little research of your seed. They all have the basic concept, but it's still helpful to know what you're dealing with.

sprinkle a couple seeds, no more than 10 in your pot and either cover LIGHTLY with a sprinkle of soil, or just press the seeds underneath the already soil. A couple more spritz of water and you're done.

Place the seeds in a warm sunny place and make sure to keep them moist. NOT DAMP but warm and moist. In a weird way...it's kind of the mother's womb for seeds. But seeds need to be warm, a lot of gardeners say to plastic wrap them to keep the humidity in the pot.

Here are my finished seeds. As long as you do what you're suppose to, The seeds should take care of themselves. It's gonna take a couple weeks for them to start showing but they should do well.

Cherry Blossom Adventure

Hello, it's been a while. I might not have been blogging much but I've been taking pictures of things to blog about.. my phone is actually almost full to memory capacity because of how many pictures I've taken to remind myself to blog! My daughter has hit the INSANE terrible-two's so if I thought I didn't have much time to myself before, well now I really don't. Oh and I don't mean she's insane, just that she is driving me crazy. As I am writing this, I thought I might be awake early enough before her, but I think her little baby senses kick in saying "oh, mommy is awake, we need to wake up too" because as I tiptoe through ten minutes of the morning...I now here the start of toddler babble.

let's get through this blog a bit quicker then shall we

A couple weekends ago my fiance and I went to D.C. to the Cherry Blossom Festival Parade. The weather could not have been more beautiful. The parade was nice in itself, I never really have seen a parade upfront but it was a neat experience. It's sad to say that I wasn't more excited about it but there are things that I find less amusing than what they're suppose to be..parades being one of them. Reality shows, fancy restaurants, matching t-shirts, etc... but before the crowd decided to go get food, I thought we'd go get a head start before the 1.2 million people who were there. I opted out of most of the little bistro and cafe streets, but I found this completely rad little sandwich shop.

It was very hippie-ish, very simple, very...if I dare... groovy. The place had an awesome vibe. You know, if you're into that kind of thing.

The food was amazing, and I'm hard to please when it comes to a good sandwich, but this place was top notch. They had nice healthy choices, and didn't give you too much. They were decently priced too, which is hard to find lately. I got a simple toasted ham and cheese with mayo, and amazing "popped" bbq chips and an Izze. Now I am obsessed with grapefruit Izzes. I don't find them many places, and since this place had them, they got automatic brownie points.

My SO got really delicious soup..somethings spicy, I don't dig spicy that much so I sort of forgot what he got..but his chips were good too.

And now lets just enjoy some beautiful pictures of the flowers I only get to go see once a year.

-peace and love and spring-

Happy Earth Day

So this Earth day I have lots of seeds to plant. I wanted to grow a tree...but I thought flower seeds might be a good start. Maybe I'll plant a tree when I move into the new house. You know... one tree, or maybe five. And an herb garden, and a butterfly garden, and a good sitting area... Oh yeah.. I like gardening.

Anyway, I never have started seeds before, so I thought the kind that have kits might be a little easier. I got three of my favorite flowers - daisies, forget-me-nots, and sunflowers. I also got strawberries because my SO absolutely loves strawberries. The weird part is that the sunflower seed starter pot was about half the size of the strawberry pot... one is definitely going to be larger than the other. Oh well, follow

I also fifgured I should re-pot my house plants. I only have three now, but I had seven...but because the house we live in doesn't exactly have heat...and my house in the winter was around 48-52 degree average.. a few died. One of my plants are hanging on by a thread, so hopefully after the warm weather keeps getting warmer, and re-potting the plant, it will survive.

I absolutely adore yellow daisies. I don't think there could be a happier flower than a yellow daisy. They look like little balls of sunshine sprouting up! My own little suns in my house

I loved the cheveron pot. I have a weird obsession with very simple chevron lately. The "good moms" pot was awesome too...but that's just because it's completely true. Except I could change it to say "Good moms have messy kitchens, laundry piles, and absolytely cranky almost-two-year-old punks" who me?? did I say that? Nahhhh....

I ended up planting extra daisies and forget me nots in the above pots.


and this is my covered in soil peace for the day. I can't possibly be the only one out there who thinks the smell of fresh soil and plants is the most comforting smell of the season. It reminds me of living plants and warm weather and lots of memories helping out the women of my family in their gardens growing up. Now I can make those memories with my own daughter...you know, once she has out grown the terrible twos!

Happy Earth Day ~Peace~

DIY No-Sew Bows

In the midst of preparing for moving, I've been in a very DIY house happy mood. As I was packing up (or more correctly, pulling everything out and thinking about packing up) my craft room things, I found a bunch of old scrap fabrics. Now I always keep my scraps and sometimes feel a bit like a hoarder because I really like recycling my things, especially if it ever cost a pretty penny. That being said, I tried to decide what to do with some scrap fabrics...and with a one year old girl running around with a big pink hat on her head, what better than to make big bows for her head too.

So here is my DIY no-sew bow tutorial, and I am very happy to report how lovely I thought these bows came out.

What You Need (or what I used) :
-Craft glue
-Hot Glue
-Scrap Fabric
-Scissors
-Toothpicks (optional)

Sorry some pictures decided they want to remain sideways

So pick your fabric ...

And cut out a chunk of it. The bigger you cut, the bigger your bow. I live the floppiness of this fabric and thought it would make a neat large floppy bow, so I cut mine larger than the rest I made.

I put some glue into the cap and had a toothpick to smear the glue on the fabric. More accuracy and less globs.

Depending on if you cut a square or a rectangle, you're going to glue down the raw ends. Basically hemming the ends so it has more of a neat finish. I cut this one in a square-ish shape, so I smeared three spots of glue on two opposite edges...

And then folded them over, only about 1cm so its only an edge.

Now both sides have smooth edges

Flip the fabric so the two raw edges are vertical, and find the center between both finished edges that should be horizontal

And add a dab of glue to both sides.

Fold the bottom and place the raw edge on the dabs of glue

Add a little more glue

And do the same to the other raw edge end.

Now you can scrunch the middle and it starts looking like a bow.

Make sure the ugly end (the end with the seams showing) is facing you and make a little pinch fold.

Add a little glue between the fold you pinched.

Pinch and glue a few more and it should hold like a bow now.

Cut a bout 2in long piece of fabric. This goes in the middle.

Now I use my hot glue gun to make sure the middle holds together tightly. Add a dab of hot glue to the center of the bow

And press one edge of the new cut fabric strip onto it.

Wrap it around and around until your out of fabric and hot glue the end.

Now you have a bow!

Now if you want to make hair clips, get some plain cheap hair clips. These snap ones I like most when using them for my daughters curly hair.

Open the clip and on both sides add a dab of hot glue

And press it to the bavk /ugly end of the bow. If you opened the clip, it makes this part easier so it sits better.

Once its dry you have a lovely bow.  This is my daughter wearing the big bow. She was watching a Disney movie and couldn't be bothered with me taking a picture ;p

I love these little things. I especially like the polka dot ones and use then to hold my hair back while cleaning! Don't think you can ever get old enough to not wear bows. Unless of course you're a guy :-) 

~peace and crafting!~ 

Yin-Yang Life

There are times that really try your spirit. There are situations that make you winder why on earth would this happen. There are other times that make life seem meaningful. Life will try to break you.

I mentioned that I was looking into buying a house to move into and make my own and really start my life, my family. It was hard. Every house that seemed to have potential, especially the ones I really liked, all ended up having horrible problems. One had a landslide problem, one had foundation problems, one had the floor breaking away from the walls inside, one had termites and foundation problems and broken beams and septic failure and bad wiring. After that, it just started to seem like there was just no point. After many many weeks of discouragement, there was finally a house. I'm not settling down in a house any time soon,  maybe not ever, so this was the perfect house to call ours for the next five years. The owners even excepted our offer not even an hour after putting down the first offer. And it just seemed meant to be.

That's when everything started getting harder. I always have believed in a yin-yang universe. With every good thing there is a bad. Its always happened to me, even in the best situations. Sometimes the bad happens first and I have something to look forward to after the bad happens. When our house was being foreclosed, my grandma passed, and everything was very tough for my family. But it opened up the possibility for us to move in with my grandpa who didn't want to live alone. After my daughter was born, and it is was amazing bringing that miracle into  this world, we had moved back into the old house, and it was great. But my grandpa then passed suddenly not long after my daughter was born. Not only that but my daughter's father's family decided to HATE me. That is a long story in itself. But after all that, we got engaged. That's always how its been. With every good there is a bad. When I decided to leave the nest, there were too many bad things that had happened to mention. So it isn't much of a surprise that after getting this house, and everything started falling into place that I started waiting for something bad to happen. But nothing came. And for a moment I thought my yin-yang theory might be wrong.

But something bad did happen. I already had a lousy roommate, so it wasn't surprising that he decided to get very dick-ish (pardon the language) after realizing he would be the only one without a new place to go. If that wasn't enough, me and my best friend were having issues. So social matters were tough, but not horrible. But that's when I found out the really bad news. 

I've tried not blogging about it.  I have for other posts I've saved as drafts but I don't have any desire to finish them any time soon. I'm in a very depressed state of mind and I'm trying my hardest to get out of it. Maybe blogging about what is really on my mind is easier than ignoring it and trying so damn hard to imagine it away. But I can't. It's always there, the thoughts, the horrible horrible dark dreams. 

I had a miscarriage. I hadn't really known I was even pregnant, except for being three months late, and having that gut feeling. The week I decided to make a doctors appointment, I had the miscarriage. And the thought that keeps running over and over and over in my head is that I neglected the little life I had growing inside me  until I killed it. If I hadn't tried to deny the fact I was pregnant, maybe things would have been different. If I had gone to the doctor and not been so scared if what would happen if I was pregnant, it wouldn't have happened. There is a horrible sickening feeling inside me now that won't go away. I try so hard to listen to things like "it wasn't your fault, it happens to a lot of women". The thoughts of knowing my body let a baby die inside me are overwhelming me. My body wasn't good enough to let a baby grow, meaning something is wrong with me. Or I neglected it and killed it. That thought haunts me every moment. I go and get a house to start my family, start our lives, in our own home, and my body won't let my family grow. I don't know how to cope with this, but I still go with the motions. I'm still here, even in this sadness. I'm not sure if there could be a yang happy enough to come from this yin. 

Life tries to bring you down. Way way down.