• Pottery

    Teacher Gifts from the Garden

    Last year was the Man-child’s first year at Mom’s Morning Out, and I completely failed to do something for his teachers. This year, though it was a different set of teachers, I was determined to make up for last years’ negligence. Afterall, these ladies love my boy well! The only problem is he has nearly six to eight teachers between the two days he goes, the teacher that comes just for story time and the awesome director that comes in to play with the kids just because she likes to. At Christmas I took in tasty treats for the class and brought in small pieces of homemade pottery that I had…

  • Garden

    I Won a Wally One!

    Talk about a tongue-twister of a title. A couple weeks ago, I discovered a “Vertical Gardening Cyber Book Party”. Perhaps Ricky Nelson’s “I Went to a Garden Party” just entered your brain.. it did mine.  Well don’t you know I visited every single blog hosting giveaways as a promotion for launch of the new book Garden Up!: Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces by Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet. Unlike a certain member of the Sheen family, I am not often a winner, but to my delight Laura from Interleafings selected me as the winner of the Outdoor Wally One. Wally is a “modular living wall system ……

  • Garden

    Mini Herb Pail

    I have a terrible habit of buying dollar pails in the entrance of Target. I always claim that I buy them so the Man-child can keep his toys in them, but now we have an assortment of little pails that we use to lazily stick random writing utensils, buttons, and screws that we find lying around the house. They have become clutter pails. Anything with a flat surface, a hook, a knob, or a cavity serves as a clutter magnet in our house. In our kitchen bay window, we have a pub table from the flea market and a storage entry bench with hooks that we relocated from another room to make…

  • Garden,  Projects

    Soda Bottle Garden

    This is a great little recycling project I’ve seen variations of in many gardening blogs. I decided to keep it as simple as possible so I could involve the Man-child who just turned three. These teaches about reusing materials and caring for plants. How to make a soda bottle garden: You will need plastic bottles from your recycling bin, scissors, two rocks big enough to stop up the bottle opening, potting soil, plants, water, and four pipe cleaners or twine. Kid task: remove the cap and rinse out the bottle. Parent task: cut the bottle in half just below the label. The top of the bottle should be flipped upside…