Not what I thought

I think I posted about the grand garden we were going to plant this year, full of all sorts of delectable edibles: tomato, pepper, cucumber, basil and dill?

Do you remember those beautiful photos I posted, from little seedlings to giant plants threatening to take over my kitchen?

Joe set out to work a couple of weekends ago and dug out the garden patch, a nice area by the house in full sun, and set it apart from the lawn with some nice pavers (which, guess what? Were on sale! I'm going to have to change the name of this blog to "too cheap to pay full price" or something if this keeps up). That night I set out and planted careful rows of plants.

Then it got really cold on Tuesday - I was afraid. But the plants, looking slightly less robust, were still doing ok on Wednesday morning. Then on Friday morning as Joe was walking out the door he said "you know all the plants died, right?" And I ran over to the window to survey the damage.

The entire plot? Gone. Some stems here and there, but for the most part all gone.

It appeared that my black hand of death had struck again and my poor plants (all those lovely seedlings!!) were dead.

Then yesterday as I was getting the kids ready for bed, I hear Aiko yelling "Look! The bunny is back!!"

Sure enough, I look outside to see a little furry creature nibbling on my almond bushes.

A couple of years ago we had a ton of rabbits running around our house, until our neighbor boxed them up and took them far away and released them (I still have problems with this). That year we lost many plants and our bushes suffered greatly from the nibbling, but it was kind of nice to be surrounded by all that wildlife. I was greatly disappointed when the neighbor told me what he had done (after the fact, of course) and then for a year or so we didn't see any more bunnies.

And our landscaping flourished.

With the return of our fuzzy friends it appears that it is not my black hand of death that killed off my plants but the rabbits who had a smorgasbord in my backyard. This would explain the complete disappearance of the seedlings, as opposed to seeing shriveled up dead plants in the garden.

So good news, I don't kill plants that easily. Bad news, the rabbits are back. Someone help my poor almond plants (which are apparently the tastiest thing we have, and prettiest at the moment as they are starting to bloom brilliant pink and white blooms).

Everything Tote from Weekend Sewing

The sewing machine has been whirring and clicking away since Easter (not that the posts here would indicate anything to that effect) but some of it is super secret so I can't post it yet.

There is at least one thing I can show you, The Everything Tote from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross.



When she says Everything, she is NOT kidding. This bag is giant, but perfect for me since I tend to carry my entire life around in a single outing.

This is the first time in a long time I have made something for myself - everything is usually a gift or for my kids. Anyway, this fabric jumped out and grabbed me during a sale and you know me - I can't resist fabric on sale!



If you do attempt this bag from the book, please keep in mind that you should read her errata page which indicates that you will need more than the yardage noted in the book. The errata page increases yardage to one whole yard, I would go a little more if you want to cut your straps the way they are called for in the book (if you get creative with the strap placement on the fabric you can get away with just a yard, there might be some more seam sewing involved with the handles).

One alteration I did make to the pattern with this bag was the manner in which the binding and handles were put on. I wanted a wider binding/handle attachment so I sewed the binding/handle on as directed in step one (right sides together on outside of bag) then instead of a traditional binding, where you fold the entire long edge under and then top stitch, I took advantage of the fact that the binding/handles are lined and just folded them over the top of the bag and stitched them into place, without the binding fold. It was a matter of necessity for me, as I used home decorator fabric on the outside and the fabric sandwich was impossibly thick to sew through with my needle (use of a tougher needle would have helped here).

Anyway, I'm pleased as punch and plan on making a couple more perhaps slightly smaller bags.

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Originally uploaded by pikatures

If you haven't checked out Karen Tack & Alan Richardson's book, Hello, Cupcake! I highly recommend getting it immediately. It is such a great resource of beautiful, inspirational pictures and clear instructions on creating each masterpiece shown.

These Easter egg themed cupcakes took a little time to make but the results were fantastic. I would definitely take their advice and nuke the crackers to make them easier to cut for the egg shapes (you'll notice that several cupcakes do not have the "eggs" as I ran out of graham crackers due to breakage).

The recipes included are also delightfully delicious. These were made from the carrot cake cupcake and cream cheese frosting recipes in the book. Don't omit the raisins and walnuts, they really make this cake special.

Because it is the season, our local Target carried all of the necessary sugars and decor - no special trips necessary! Actually, everything except the blue sugar was part of a giant canister of decorations with sugars and decorations (on sale!)

Next year I'll get the extra large eggs

I had not intended to do much more beyond the paper/pencil wraps for Easter in the creativity department. The plan was to do the egg dye project today (as there was no school) and plop them into a new-fangled rabbit-shaped egg holder and voila! Instant centerpiece. If only Easter dinner cooked itself as easily.

Imagine my surprise when I finished boiling all of the eggs and went to plop them into the holder to cool and dry - and they fell right through. Apparently this rabbit requires eggs of the extra large variety. So now, we had eggs but no vessel with which to hold them.

Out of necessity is born a craft! This is actually Joe's idea, as he was walking out the door he casually threw out the suggestion to cut apart the egg carton, glue on some ears and make rabbits out of them to hold the eggs.

After he left (and after I had my morning tea, because NOTHING happens before morning tea), we started our little project.

You'll see below that we did not wind up gluing the ears on and simply used the shape of the carton. You can all it creative - I call it lazy and not wanting to get out felt and glue :)

Empty egg carton

Empty egg carton meets scissors (cut in between the cups, as you will need those ridgy bits attached to them for the ears).

Choose which ridgy bits (I believe this is a very technical term, no?) you wish to use for the ears and cut away the unnecessary parts, but don't cut into the cups too much because otherwise they won't hold your eggs. You'll notice that the uneven ridges are good because you get some rabbits with very attentive ears and others who have lop-ears.

Paint.

Behind the excited boy with paint you can see the wire rabbit that caused all of this excitement.

Dry

Now that the eggs have cooled, have fun with them:

After everything is dry, sit back and admire the rabbit colony on your table.

It appears that the Easter Bunny has been sewing items for certain Easter baskets this year. I found SkiptomyLou's tutorial on how to make these cute paper pad and pencil holders through mmmcrafts, and decided that perhaps this could be a cute item for both of the kids.

I didn't have any leftover denim or placemats to use but I did have a nice coupon and time to peruse the fat quarter sets that were delightfully on sale. The thing about those fat quarter sets at major box stores though, is that some of it is complete and total crum (as in, there is definitely a reason why they are only selling a fat quarter of this and definitely a reason why it is part of a super duper discounted set). The great thing is that you can find a hidden gem or two in there if you poke about a bit. I didn't really have to think about picking out coordinating fabrics because it was all coordinating! Couple that with the sale price and I couldn't say no.

This project used 3 fat quarters, the pencil pocket and paper pocket were cut from the same quarter. It is also sturdied up a bit (is that even a phrase?) with thick iron-on interfacing (which was still soft enough to sew through, although there are others out there that can be used that can't be sewn, just make sure your interfacing pieces fall well within your seam allowances). Giant button and ribbon are scraps from home. See, packrat behavior is highly helpful for this type of project!

The pencils are the Crayola twistable (erasable!) pencils, which are skinny enough to fit in the little slots and have the added bonus of not having tips to break off (the tips swirl right back into the plastic casing) making this craft ideal for shoving in bags for waiting room entertainment. Hopefully the kids will enjoy them, and even if they don't it only took an afternoon of sewing to complete them so it was more a fun, quick thing for me to try out :)

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Originally uploaded by pikatures

I'm not sure why the weather has not gotten the memo that it is SPRING (April 6, y'all!!) but there you have it. Snow on the ground and sweet pea growing indoors.

At this rate we are never going to be able to use those lawn chairs.

The GardenProject 2009 has been going pretty well. The greenhouse packs we bought have helped the starter plants really get going. So much so that the cucumber starter plants have outgrown their current home. Which is why it is even more important for the weather to start cooperating so we can plant them in their summer home and get that process going. Also doing well? Tomato, pepper, basil and dill. Not so hot? Rosemary.

I'm trying my hand at some dianthus and sweet pea flowers as well, I was hoping to add the dainthus to the front area soon to infuse it with color but those plants are not exactly prospering like the sweet peas are. Not sure what to make of it, other than to say that when we took the seeds out of the seed packs they were not very healthy looking. I just chalked that up to being how the seeds were.

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Originally uploaded by pikatures

I will write more about this later, eventually with better pictures. Suffice it to say that I am so relieved to be done with this jacket - it's a fully tailored jacket, finished with bias tape at all the seams - that I am going to reward myself by... starting on a new project.