Sweet Surprise

Guess what I found in my yard yesterday! I took Dutch out for a quick potty break and he was taking his sweet time while I was freezing, so I walked around the yard (its tiny - the walk was short) and inspected all the different plants that we planted. Some have tiny sprouts on them, which, I guess is good, because at least they are alive. Some of the plants were just nothing to look at when we put them in the ground. ANYWAY. I happened upon this:

How sweet is that? It was nothing but a twig sticking up out of the weeds until a few weeks ago when we started tilling up the ground and mixing in some new soil. I discovered that the one rose still has some pathetic tiny leaves on it, so I weeded all around it just in case. There's another pathetic stick near it and I'm hoping come spring something good will sprout from it as well. Don't you just love plants and flowers? The littlest things are so pleasing.

Gratuitious Puppy Photos

Dutch and my sister's chihuahua, Evie

This is how well they played together. Looks fierce, huh?

Dutch's favorite spot - in the sun coming in the front window.

Sometimes he watches the birdies at the feeder.

He's stolen a feather from my wreath. I love how his shadow looks like a cartoon chi.

Of course, he's not allowed to chew on my slippers, but he cracks me up when he does.

Plants

I've been busy trying to prepare my yard for plants for next year. We aren't sure what we're going to do with a lot of the yard yet, but I must have my flowers, so I'm planting in some spots. I've bought Globemaster (purple) and Mt Everest (white) alliums, Casablanca lilies, snowdrops and tulips. Some of those were from John Scheepers, and some were from Home Depot and Lowes. I propogated a few plants from my Mom's hydrangeas and planted those as well, even though they are still quite small. I'm not sure if those will make it through the winter or not, but we'll see!

I also bought a bunch of plants from Spring Hill Nursery, like white and pink bleeding hearts, white astilbes, hellebores, lilac poppies, white reblooming irises, pink lupines, pink and purple lavendar and blue delphiniums.

But the real star of my purchases is my Godaishu tree peony from Klehm's Song Sparrow. Isn't it beautiful? Hopefully it won't take forever to establish itself and bloom, but they are worth the wait anyway.

My plants all arrived last week and my Mom helped me plant them all on Saturday. My husband tilled up the beds and added in some nice new soil. I haven't planted any of the bulbs yet because it has yet to get very cool around here. Probably soon it will though and I'll be out there wishing I hadn't bought quite so many. Hopefully we will be set for some beautiful blooms for next year though.

Kitchen After

And this is how it looks now:

So obviously it was a low-budget re-do, but it looks much better to me. I love the blue in there - it makes me happy! Someday we'll really re-do it, but I can live with this for now. Even the gray countertops aren't too bad!

It still needs some work - the one lazy susan is too hard to open or close, so its empty. I have no idea how to fix that. The hinges that we put on our biggest cupboard now down't allow the drawers to slide out. I'd like to get a knife magnet and an undercupboard paper towel holder to get that stuff off the countertops. I could also use a better way to organize my spices. And what in the world should I do with that big empty space above the oven?

But at least it looks better than it did before and I won't be hating it desparately until we can afford a real kitchen remodel.

Kitchen Makeover

I am finally getting around to taking "before" and "after" pictures of my kitchen. I guess I haven't before because its still not finished, but its most of the way done now.

This is the kitchen during our fist walk-through of the house.

Stage One - Making a Mess with Tear Down

Stage Two - Sanding, Painting, Wallpaper Removal and New Hardware

Step Three - Paint the Walls and Install Oven

Aprons and Dinner Napkins

I hurried up and monogrammed these aprons and set of dinner napkins for my cousin's wedding the other day. I'm always wishing that I had more time to make gifts more "special" and it doesn't seem like I ever do. But I thought these were nice enough, anyway.

Echeverias

At least that's what I think they are. There is a bunch growing right outside my kitchen door. I don't think I want to leave them there, but I like them and I will have to find somewhere to put them. I thought I could use a few indoors as well. We'll see how well I do with them.

p.s. There's just not much crafting going on here these days. I haven't even had my machine out since we moved. I have been sewing yo yos on my quilt when the puppy is sleeping or otherwise preoccupied and I have a whole 70 on. Out of 900. Oh well. I'm determined to relax and just enjoy it. I'll have to post pictures one of these days.