Fun With Cattails

Back in the fall I purchased a lovely arrangement of plants that included a few cattails, euculyptus and other pretty green things.  They lasted a long time but I eventually decided it was time for them to go.  I started breaking them up to put in our compost bucket and the next thing I knew I had a MAJOR mess on my hand.  I had no idea that cattails basically explode when squeezed.  Thankfully, I found it quite humorous and stopped before my kitchen turned into a mound of cattail seeds.  One cattail filled my entire sink with fluffy seeds!!  I saved the other 2 thinking that my kids would find great amusement out of playing with them OUTside.  Anyway, they've been sitting in a lovely vase mason jar waiting for their lucky day.  Today was that day and it was indeed fun.  I think you'll see by the pictures what I mean.  And since I release a gazillion seeds into my yard, we may have cattails popping up all along our pond for more entertainment next year.

Home Renovations - Playroom - Progress 2

Progress is still being made on the playroom.  I'm almost done with all of the painting.  I just need to roll the walls one more time and I should be done.  I finished cutting in the other day but ran out of time to roll.  After that, it will be onto the big project which is the built-in.  Between my busyness and my friend's, we haven't found a weekend that works for both of us.  In the meantime, I knocked out a little sewing project and wanted to show you all.  Here are the new shams and throw pillows for the couch - which has also been moved to its new home.  I love the color they add and look forward to finding more places for use of fun fabric in the room.

I bought the fabric from a local store called Premier Fabrics.  They only sell a line of fabric called Premier Prints.  They have TONS to choose from and lots of coordinating choices at a really good price.  I found that they sell Premier Prints on Fabric.com for an even better price and if you spend $35 you get free shipping so it's a steal.  It's hard to tell in this picture but the two outer pillows are red with small polka-dots.  The green pillows have dandelions on them.  The only thing that is unfinished is the larger pillows are going to have 3 buttons each on the ends to "seal" them.  I want a bright green button but haven't found one I love or fits in my budget so I will wait until I find something for a good price and is exactly what I am looking for. 

The Tulip Wait is Over

I'm loving my tulips. I'm loving how each morning Dakota announces to me, "We have an orange tulip now!" or "We have a purple tulip Mommy!" I'm loving the color and I'm loving the beginning of Spring. More please :)

Gardening: Peek-A-Boo

Little things are starting to pop up and some things are still hanging around from fall.  I love Spring and I'm SUPER excited for us to really start gardening this year.  Jacob's given me a budget and a catalog and told me to pick out what I would like planted this spring so that is one of my tasks for the weekend.  If you were planting a garden, what would you grow??  I know I want some tomatoes (not a huge fan of eating them plain but I would love to make homemade salsa, spaghetti sauce & soup).  Possibly some blueberry bushes but they take a few years to bear fruit.  Oh and lots more flowers.  I would LOVE a rose garden (my favorite flower) and some potted gerbera daisies.  So many choices...anyway, just thought I'd show you what's starting to make an appearance in our yard.

We started some bell pepper seedlings in an egg carton.  You know what's so great about these??  I gutted them from a pepper I was cooking with in the fall, dried them out and saved them in a jar.  Since this is my first time doing this, I wasn't sure what would happen but was thrilled to see them poke their little green leaves out of the soil.  I'm all about recycling...I also saved some butternut and acorn squash seeds but those will be planted later in the year.

Jacob planted some tulip bulbs for me in the fall because they are one of my favorites.  I can't wait to see the color on them.  I think they are an assorted variety but I don't remember what I picked out.  :)

First flowers at our house!  Thanks to Anita who told me what this plant was last year.

Remember this?  Well, our broccoli never had ideal growing weather but somehow it hung in there and survived the winter snow.  We're hoping that it will finish growing but I'm glad to see the form of something that actually looks like broccoli.  There are about 7 plants from what I can tell.  Notice all of the weeds I talked about previously?  And...notice the netting.  Our white tailed pests friends thought we were planting our garden for them.  How silly of them.  The netting has worked great.

Same goes for our 45 day cabbage that is now on probably day 150 or something but at least it looks like cabbage and it's still very hearty.  And it is growing...just verrrrry slowly.  Hopefully this spring weather will give it the extra boost it needs.  We have about 9 plants.

The Happy Man and His Dump Truck

That was the title of Jacob's favorite book when he was a little boy and I think Corban plays the part pretty well.  This amazing weather and glimpse of Spring is a blessing to us.