Tending to your garden.

Most who live in this area are spatially challenged.  Take our house for instance.  We share a 3 family house with my fiance and I on the 3rd floor (yes we got engaged, but as I'm reminded frequently not everyone cares/wants to hear wedding talk so I will try to refrain... for now), our neighbours with one toddler on the 2nd, and newly weds on the first. 

Our yard needs the have the ability to accomidate

• BBQs with respective eating and hanging room
• small bonfires (we have a fire pit yes)
• a toddler who likes to play outside
• a garden

....in a very limited space.

Last weekend I began the task of transforming our backyard into a garden.  The obstacles are...

• over coming the ivy/vines that plague but complement at the same time
• not monopolizing too much space in the yard.
• planting hardy plants that can stand to be investigated by a toddler.
• that are sweet smelling but not over powering to draw bees during our gatherings.
• did i mention we have a very small yard... if i had to guess the entire yard is 25x25.

Last year I undertook the task of digging a bed, weeding, pruning/training a wild rose bush that grows on our old iron fence, uprooted invasive saplings, and planted wild flower seedlings that disappointed me by barely growing.  Looking back I will never put seeds directly in ground (even if that's what the package recommended)  I am going to try my thumb at growing, then harvesting sunflowers, but first let me begin. 

The pictures below are from last year. 

This year I have a better idea of what I'm working with and a new goal... 1.To have fresh cuttings fragrant our (and friends') home.  2. To grow my entire bridal bouquet for our summer 2012 wedding.  This weekend I will update this post with new pictures of the yard after I plant (weather permitting, they say rain)... but here is some inspiration.  On our fire escape/porch like last year...I am going to plant herbs (lavender, basil, mint) and tomatoes. Because of the critters hiding in the bushes it's impossible to have anything grow in the yard, my eggplant flowers last year kept disappearing.

Any suggestions out there?

I am going to give seeds one last shot this year by growing Magnificent Sunflowers...

These beauties can reach 12' and be harvested at the end of the season. 

Word to the wise: Last year I grew these in egg crates on the fire escape and everytime I had one sprout there was a respective bird ready to eat it... Out of 30 I ended up having n0 sunflowers... This year, I will protect them with glass or a cage until they are big enough to fend for themselves.



botox for flowers, i want!!!!

I'm so obsessed with learning hot to make poly resin coated flowers.  for a million different ideas....
for...barrettes, jewelry, wedding favors/wedding flower arangements (not getting married anytime soon but wedding stuff is some serious ching, how cool would it be to have all your bridal flowers preserved indefinitely, think of the possibilites people... I can see this on the wedding central channel in my head right now)!!!!  think of lovely centerpiece arrangements with stem to petal dipped in a clear resin preserving the flowers for ever sitting in a cylindrical glass vase( hey a gal can dream, right?)... think of the 5-10 thousand people spend on FUCKING FLOWERS, and then they just get thrown away. What about the poor guests who are allergic to flowers?

case in point...it's like botox for flowers.

i am the type of gal who loves to put a fresh flower found on a walk in my hair and wear it all day... with resin dipped flowers you can do it... they sold them at the Hoboken Arts and Craft Fest which was my first time seeing them... but for 65 and up... and there are only orchids and roses... so boring... and then i found this etsy store that sells them, gorgeous, but still lacks the flowers i'd like to see.
let's show gardenias, zinnias, chrysanthemums, poppies, and queen anne's lace some love too.   also no one has them preserved WITH the stem... just a single rose in a vase with thorns and all would be simply lovely.

there's a place that you can buy the flowers here (they call them beads) but alas they are only 1-1.5 inches... i want at lease a 3 inchers, not to mention expensive (for me at least).

so fellow diy-ers... i vow that when i figure out how to do this i will post it, maybe even a video... so far i have researched this subject and found little how to do it....but i will, because that's how i am. 


besides the poly resin coating (kinda toxic but very effective) i am also researching a green (but slightly less effective) method using 100% natural beeswax...  it was very popular in the 1700s is cool but has some downsides.  it dulls the color and doesn't preserve the flowers indefinitely... i'm going more for the poly resin.

candy, fruit, h'orderves, oh my!

I made this after becoming obsessed with finding a purpose for my favorite plates that my mom gave me in my first apartment.  When my ex and I split, he decided to keep half of the plates, so now I only have a few.  I decided to make a cupcake platter to use for gatherings.  I loved the way my first one came out so much that I made my best friend and mother one too.
I'd recommend scoring some antique plates at a thrift store.  The glass candle sticks I got at the dollar tree.

Daybed lounger

Ok so this one was a long time coming...The daybed that I got for free on craigslist ended up costing me around 465.00 in eye care... The spring that loads the staples shot back at my eye and scraped my poor little eye ball, so one clinic, one specialist, and anti-bioitics later I have a great lounge (and thank God a functioning, healed eye ball...) WEAR SAFETY GOGGLES!


I also sewed the body pillow out of left over fabric and used stuffing that I had lying around.


I love this lounge, and so do my kitties.  If you have a nook by a window I'd suggest doing something like this...

Did I have to rock the eye patch for a day or 2?-true... Do I look like poo in this pic?-true  Did that shiny metal thing that is out hit me in my eyeball? -true ... Will i ever craft again sans goggles?- false

inspiration for crafts

I recently went to my Bubbie's (yiddish for grandma) house to help with a bit of house-downsizing.  One of my contributions was taking my late Great-Gramma's 1950's Singer sewing machine back to my house to be repaired and put to good use.

I have always dabbled in sewing- buttons, remaking skirts, shirts, jeans, pillows, repairs, etc... but all by hand which is very time consuming.  I'm really excited to begin making all the things that I will never be able to afford such as this lovely 1950's styled skirt, or things I feel I could make better like this (they took it off the bastards) knit sweater headbands that should be in rich cozy angora or 100% wool knits as opposed to the Charlotte Russe 100% acrylic which will most definitely break me out.  That will be in upcoming tutorials.

leather chairs

My boyfriend and I moved in together back in late march.  Little by little I've been adding a womans touch to our apt.  He had these great antique chairs from his parents that are wood and actually fold up...but the chairs had cig. burns and vinyl seats.
In my travels I pick up a lot and save it in my craft bin in my attic crawl space.  This leather skirt was a size 10 and I'm not.  It was a long leather skirt with silk lining so I kept it waiting.  Originally I was going to chop it and make pillows, but decided that the chairs needed more love than the couch.  I still have plans for the chairs, a good ol' sand and re-stain, but that will come later.   I made 2 leather and 2 silk seats...

Here's how I redid the chairs.
  
Here's 10 steps to ta-da from blah.  Some pointers...
*SAFETY GOGGLES, in the next post I'll show you what can happen when not wearing one when the loading spring goes off.
*use the original seat fabric as a stencil.
*silk wasn't the best choice on the other 2 chairs, opt for a more durable fabric (we have 2 cats)