Repurposing...

I have not spend much on my daughters room furniture. I simply use her older brother’s bed and painted it with white (swiss coffee) a beautiful shade of white. This was done last summer. 

This summer I painted his night stand and add a glass knob and slightly distressed it to go with the bed because I use the same technique. 

I finally was able to bring it up stairs. My neighbor offered us some peonies and mock orange blossoms. I arrange them in a milk glass vase I scored last year from a garage sale. It looks wonderful I love it and so is little Nicolette. 

I love how her room is coming together my next project is window treatments. I am looking for something simple that I can make I am thinking of ruffles and shades of white...

I think she can use a light on this night stand but not right now when she starts reading... Hopefully in couple of years...

Quote of the day “ be able to say I made it myself”

Enjoy!

My Neighbors Garden...

I am so lucky to have a wonderful neighbor, she is an avid gardener and knows a lot. Whenever I have a conversation with her I learn something new. I remember when my son growing up use to asks questions and I do the best to answer him and if I do not have the answers. I will find them out for him. He use call me a living encyclopedia I do not think I can live up to that because he has learned a lot and sometimes show me things around. 

My neighbor has a beautiful flowering perennial garden and a vegetable garden she was the heart and soul for my raise bed. In her perennial garden there are some old irises and poppies when in bloom steals my heart. 

She showed me the lady in the bath tub through the bleeding hearts and taught me names that I never knew. Taught me to look at flowers from a totally different angle. 

The value of natural gardening techniques... and shared some historical aspect of gardening. 

She did share some irises with me. I truly thankful to my neighbor. 

Quote of the day “when love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.” - John Ruskin 

Enjoy!

Bobby Pins and Fabric Buttons...

Girls are wired totally unique way. I have so much fun working with Nicolette making her girly stuff. 

We enjoy making the ponytails for her and I was thrilled to hear from her how much she likes them. Not only that she loves me for making them as well. “ I love you for making my hair” 

Yes, I do get the real deal. 

I took a step further and and made these bobby pins with fabric buttons. As soon as Panduka gets home she run to him with her hair accessories so he can put them on. 

These are fun to make and cool B’day gifts for a little girl who like to do hair who would not.

Quote of the day “aim for quality"

Enjoy!

Simple Play...

I want to say this concept derive from the statement “less is more” I personally agree with it. I have been taking a totally different route raising my daughter considering the gender difference. 

Well I am staying at home however I do work on my own as well. Taking it to account I plan to get my daughter involve in many activities I do at home. 

However when it come to play I offer very simple natural toys try to stay away from plastic, electronics, and generic gender toys. I believe in wholeness with the changing world and societies. 

I had the opportunity watch her play with her blocks. I was thrilled to watch her imagination at play. Sometimes she consider blocks as buildings, and in some occasions they were cooking ingredients and she is demonstrating a full blown cooking session. 

Then she consider them as a herd of animals crossing a river... I thought all of that was what she has absorbed and was very confident to rein- act. I was  delighted watcher her imagination at play!

Quote of the day “less is more”

Enjoy!

Quick Dinner!

I am always looking ideas to incorporate greens into meals. I was thrilled to add this simple side dish to chicken I made. It was simple and took less than three minutes to prepare it.

Don’t you love side dishes like that. 

What you need

1 - 2 Heads of Broccoli (depends on your family’s consumption of greens)

1/4 Cup of grated Parmesan Cheese

Sea Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

2 Tbs Olive Oil

How you do it

Wash and dry your broccoli heads and cut them into wedges ( I like to add stems as well more fiber)

Place them in a bowl add all the ingredients and toss them well to coat all the ingredients and lay them on a greased pan

Bake them 350 for about 30 Minutes.

Enjoy with chicken, and mashed potato

Quote of the day “eat from four basic food groups”

Enjoy !

Rain Rain Come again...

We Northern Eastern’s was waiting for Rain. I love spring showers. So the bulbs can showcase there beautiful flowers. Since we planted the grass seeds we were looking forward for spring showers.

Well, it was finally here. I was happy to see the raindrops. Happy to ware my rain boots. I can see the plants are being so thankful for the rain. 

I woke up to the sounds of the raindrop and was thrilled watch it!

Quote of the day “be thankful for rain”

Enjoy !

How to incorporate a COMPOST UNIT to the garden...

I always wanted to add a compost unit to our garden. I research, read, watched my neighbors, and friends. I finally said YES, I am ready make ours this SPRING. When I was voicing out this idea to my neighbor she offered her mesh wire from her bin last year. (She is going big this year and made one with pallets) I do not have the space since I am big into gardening.

I decided add one in my gardening space we will move as we get more creative in future. Panduka decided to use the post that we took of from our bathroom to build the frame. He did a wonderful job creating this. 

We hammered the mesh into place around the posts. Now we have a compost bin. I am happy we can contribute to make a change in the carbon print we leave behind on our dear mother Earth...

Then it is all about layering brown and green. We had some leaves from Fall well the reason for that is we residents in the town of Mansfield is responsible for taking our recycle garden material to the dump. 

We gladly empty out our fall leaves and fresh cut grass there goes our first two layers now we have been adding the kitchen scrap. No meat or dairy products. Once in a while toss it. I add some lime to the pile for easy composting but you do not have to. We will be adding to this pile through out this year. 

Quote of the day “refuse to quit learning"

Enjoy!

Hair Do accessories for little Nicolette...

I have been writing about my garden lately a lot. Sorry I am not trying to bore you with my garden musing but this is one of my favorite time of the year. There is so much you can do out in the yard and enough of the garden.

Little Nicolette has been asking me to do her hair. In other words to add a pig tail to her regular hair do. I was delighted to do that. I was using my ponytail bands on her. 

I was eyeing for those cute button projects and I had ton of scraps that I had been collecting and wanted to add a little color. I bought some colorful ponytail bands for less than $4.00 and there were 72 bands. Prior to this I bought a button making set from the craft store and used a coupon on it did not spend much. 

One afternoon little Nicolette and I decided to make the button covers and add them to the ponytail bands. She was very delighted to help me and ware them. We did not made a ton since we did not have much button cover it is in my list to get some.  But we made plenty for her to have now.

I thought this could be a unique gift for a little girl. Nicolette enjoyed very much making her ponytail bands and even said thank you for helping. This project was very easy she was able to make some by herself at the end with very little help. 

Aren’t these simple ponytails adorable any little girl. They are too cute not to have. I place them in a little card for easy access. 

I am sure to make some more soon.

Quote of the day “be the artist, the writer, the creator, of your future. 

Enjoy!

Raise Beds...

This was last Fall, yes we did add a raise bed to our yard last fall. According many gardeners raise beds offers many advantages. You can move the bed you want to that’s mean you are in control when it comes sun light!, water source, and enrichment of the soil condition. 

We did add a bit of height for our bed, technically you do not have to go this crazy for height. We used simple cement blocks. We also get much sunshine to this area we have to keep in my we do have older trees in our yard and we were not willing to cut them because we really love them. 

We dug a trench so we can lay the blocks and level it. Very simple steps to build. You can do this anywhere you want to. 

We are excited get this started this Summer... and will post more...

Quote of the day “ stay curious, explore, discover”

Enjoy!

Tulips and more garden musings...

My tulips are in bloom and they are adorable. I want to cut them and bring them inside and part of me tells me leave them outside. 

Aren’t they pretty...

I also inherited these beauties'... some times this could be a problem because they tend to spread uncontrollably. I am facing something like that... 

 

This is what I am talking about...

I add these this year I found out that they do reseed... if so I can make plans for mother’s day...

This is the fun part, I love peonies but I do not own any. This is my neighbors aren’t they pretty. I love them now I am thinking do I need to own them or just simply adore the beauty...

Look at the buds... I am happy to have a wonderful neighbor who loves gardening and a pretty good one... 

Quote of the day “ respect someone by learning from them”

Enjoy!

Kids Art - wall collage...

As you can see I am playing around with art work. Here is another set of frames that I bought from IKEA. I used these frames in her room to frame pictures from her favorite story book you can see them here. 

Now that she is into expressing herself through art I am using them again to frame her her work and make a collage. 

I am still working on finding the right spot for these frames in her room. 

Quote of the day “enlarge your world”

Enjoy!