Green Fun...and where I Create

Happy Weekend!  My husband will be back from a week long trip tomorrow and we can't wait!

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Here's a random Miranda-style post for you this weekend :)

I'm getting really tired of all the turquoise and blue in my house.  I like it in tiny touches, but it seems like there is blue everywhere, and I just don't LOVE blue in large amounts.  Things must change.

So I've turned my attention to green, one of my very favorite colors.

Antibes Green to be exact

You might remember my dip dyed and stenciled table.  I loved the concept, but the color just wasn't doing it for me.

So I changed it up.

LOVE IT!

I redid the table with Antibes Green and Old White ASCP.  For the top I used a Martha Stewart stencil from Joanns.  Then the whole piece got a quick antiquing with my bronze rub and a coat of poly to seal.

 

It doesn't quite "go" in my living room (yet), but with my other green accents that I'll be switching to, it should be great.  If it doesn't work, then I'll change it again, ha...nothing is permanent around here.

 

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Did you know that if you plant the stem of a celery, it will grow?  Yep, it will.  Isn't that fun?  The ultimate in recycling and going green.

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I found a new kind of green veggie at Safeway yesterday.  It's called Gai Lan.  I sauteed it with mushrooms and it was awesome!  I'll be buying it again for sure.

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I've been seeing all these beautiful posts around the bloggy-land showing off these lovely spaces where they create their art or projects.  

I don't have one of those dedicated spaces.  While I'm a little teeny bit jealous of theirs, I think mine is pretty special too. 

Here's where I create:

 

 Yep, it's pretty fancy.

The location is central and convenient, and honestly, you can't buy the kind of assistants that I have

Life is good...and rather green right now ♥

 

A beautiful Fathers Day

We had a beautiful day together.  My husband is an amazing Dad and I loved paying tribute to him today.

He hates having his photo taken, but I managed to get a couple of them.

Opening his gifts

Spending time outdoors joking around 

 

 This scene was not staged...this is a daily occurance. These children adore their fun loving Daddy, and he adores them

  

He loves his two girls

 

Since this day wouldn't be possible without the kids, here are extra pics of our babies

Isaac on his new bike

 Adin wanted to give a serious expression just for my blog

Crazy-eyes Ephraim

  

Silly smile Lydia

Elsa and I finished off the day by planting some plants purchased with Mothers Day money from my in-laws

 

I taught Elsa how to put the plants in all by herself, and she did great.  Her little sister enjoyed watching. 
 These gardening pics were taken around 9pm, and the lighting isn't edited.  It does not get dark EVER right now.  Summer in Alaska is crazy!

 

 

 

I hope your Fathers Day turned out as lovely as ours did.  I'm SO thankful for the Dad my husband is and that God blessed me and our children with him.

Projects Galore!

I have tons of project ideas swirling around in my brain and yesterday I got a chance to get going on a couple of them.

The biggest (and most painful) one is a new frame around my guest bath mirror.

This has been a logistical nightmare and I don't think it will ever be perfect, but overall, I still think the bathroom looks way better with it in there.  The full bathroom reveal is coming in a couple of days.

Some new art projects

And a sneak peak at my attempt to dip dye

 

The kids and I planted a few seeds in the ground to get the garden going...cabbage, kale, peas, carrots, squash, cucumbers, sweet peas, hollyhocks, echinacea and zinnias.  For now...

The kids each have their own pot they planted.  They're so excited to see the seeds come up.  

 Do you have anything in your garden yet?

Gardening...sort of

My front flower beds are about done.  Pita helped me get started 2 weeks ago and I've been slowly pecking away at it ever since.  It's not exactly the kind of garden I usually do, but I had to do something easy this year.

I should have taken a before photo (pssst, it was UGLY), because the transformation is pretty darn nice!

From right to left, starting at the garage side door

4 potted tomatoes with nasturtium seeds tucked in there waiting to sprout

The red bag is a topsy-turvy strawberry planter that I don't have a good spot for yet

This bed has bush peas in 2 rows and sweet peas waiting to climb the trellises.  I have a few cosmos in here too

  

The corner plant is one of my favorite perennials, a Peony

I also have cosmos and other annual flowers here

The red chairs were my mothers day gift

 

Here is the start of a rock garden, since I don't want this teeny area to be grass.  These we've dug up from the edges of the driveway since they were buried anyway.  I still have to figure out how I'm going to get enough rock to finish it

 

The tiered planter is all herbs

 

I didn't want to have the beige chairs out here, but the kids all like to eat outside and each want their own chairs.  

This corner here has another of my beloved Peony's

 

This bed has 4 rows of plants; hollyhocks, echinacea, cabbage and carrots

 

Things are really greening up around here.  It's looking like summer.  I'd love to be outside more if it weren't for those dumb mosquitoes.

I'm loving this plant...well, it's a weed, but I'm going to make sure I find them all over the property.  So pretty, no maintenance, and they're free!

This is about the only way I get anything done around here.  (Excuse my not-so-fancy duds and uncombed hair...we're in survival mode these days).  Lydia is wrapped very badly in the photo, I was in a hurry to beat the mosquitoes that were starting to come outside en masse.  Note the Off repellant fan hanging on my shirt.  I'm not sure if it works, but it's worth a shot.

Ambivalence

Alaska Air National Guard finally got Dave's paperwork all finished.  He went down to the local Portland base and got sworn in this morning.  This is real.  We're moving. 

I've known it was coming.  But when things are delayed for so long, you settle into a false sense of reality.  Our reality has been that we live frugally, but really almost act like things are normal.  Dave has been home 24/7 for the last 10 months.  He has been officially hired for 4.5 months, but the process has been painfully slow.  It's been a long and yet wonderful 10 months.  We have gotten really good one on one time.  LOTS of family time. We have gotten to live in our custom built house on our dream property, enjoying the climate and perfect familiarity of the NW area that we've both grown up in.  We love it here.

However, circumstances of necessity require that we make some changes.  It really hit me today when I was taking my 2 mile walk.  It was drizzly and rainy.  I had Daughtry playing in my ipod shuffle.  It was nice and cool, but not cold.  And I looked over at the brush on the side of the road.  It is starting to sprout it's new growth of flowers and leaves.  And it so reminded me of last spring.  A month or so from now, our place will look less like a wet muddy piece of property, and more like the land that I love, like this: Last Spring ~

My heart and spirit will yearn to "keep" my gardens and flowerbeds.  It will want to plant, weed, and yes even shovel truckloads of free horse manure into the beds.  I will want to mow and prune and plan future projects.  I will want to admire how the kids' trees I planted when they were born are growing.  Instead of knowing that I'm doing these things for the future, I have to look at it with the eyes of a buyer.  This will soon be someone else's home.  And I don't like it one bit.

And in a couple of months, I will have to pack up my treasured things and treck off to an area unknown to me and my family and make a new life.  Part of me yearns for the adventure and newness of it, but the other part of me desperately wants to hang on to the familiar, to the hopes and dreams that my heart has nurtured these last 8 years.  So, I am melancholy tonight thinking of the loss of those things.  Most of the time, I try very hard to focus on the excitement we have ahead of us, but for now, I'll allow a little sadness and introspection.  I am going to miss my life here.

Gardening

It's definitely Spring around here.  The weather just cannot decide what to do.  Once moment it's pretty and sunny, and the next the clouds roll in, the wind picks up, and the skies OPEN UP.  Then everything is drenched.

The rain is awesome for germinating all the seeds for the gardens...IF I can manage to get outside at just the right time to get things planted.

I think I finally got most it completed today (been working at it for over a month).  Now I need to get back to grooming the yard and flower beds since those have been neglected lately.

Here's some pics from the last week or two.

Tons of mowing to do 

I got the kids to clean up the fruit tree prunings.

Planting new things

Cousins having fun

And this was a strange weather day....