Sea + Prairie

busy, busy, busy

in the last 8 days we have...

finished 2 teacher quilts,

picked zinnias 9 from the garden,

visited the Contemporary Art Center's Boardwalk Art Show and Inflatable Art Exhibit with 2 good friends,

eaten 3 cantaloupes from the market, and eaten our weight in popsicles,

picked 7 tomatoes...there's always one that can't follow the rules of how to become a pretty tomato, eh?

visited with our 2 cousins (1 tia, 1 tio and an abuelita) at the beach,

played 6 games of kickball, 

run in from the rain 3 times,

said good bye to 4 great teachers,

and umpteen jillion friends (but just for the summer),

...and today is only the first day official day of summer.

 

Looks like its going to be a busy one!

A Most Perfect Morning

 

Sometimes people ask, if you were to have a day to yourself, what would you do.

Well yesterday I didn't have an entire day to myself, but I did get a morning.  And it could not have been more perfect.

One of my best friends and I have had some time blocked off on the calendar for what seems to be weeks now.  We didn't know what we would be doing, and honestly it didn't really matter.  But we knew getting together was important, chatting, grabbing a cup of coffee.  Wandering...all very important you know.

We ended up driving out to a little rural area just South of here.  Just the drive was therapeutic.  As the grocery stores and drive-throughs gave way to planted fields and farms stands, I could just feel the pressures and stresses we've both felt as of late melt away.

We ended up at a new little antique/vintage/handmade shop called Southern Fried.  We were there 30 minutes before opening time, but the owners let us in and browse anyway. Love it when shop owners are so nice. If you are local you should definitely check it out.

Next we ended up at one of our favorite plant nurseries.  It is not the cheapest place to buy plants, but they put things together so nicely it is a great place to get ideas of color combinations and textures.  You end up thinking about putting plants together you'd never think of.  Kind of like browsing through an Anthropologie store.  I can't afford to buy anything, but just looking at different ways of putting together what you already have is inspirational!

We didn't end up buying much.  I picked up some Lamb's ear to replace some I lost when I re-did our front flower beds.  And my friend picked up a gorgeous dark purple pepper plant (I can't remember the name now) that neither of us had ever seen before.

And I loved seeing all of the new colors, most importantly salmon colored verbena.  I have some around our mailbox in purple, but never seen it in this soft peachy color.  Love it!

And succulents!  I could very well become addicted to all of the new varieties of succulents.  That wouldn't be such a bad thing would it?

So happy to be heading into a very busy next few days feeling a bit more rested, calmed, centered.

There is a lot going on this weekend.  We'll see how much we can fit in, but our next few days may include any combination of the following: 

• The Warbirds show is this weekend.
• And its sheep shearing time at our favorite farm.
• Scouting some logs to make some of Blair's stump tables.
• Updating the ipod with songs from Alexander.  Thanks for the rec Sara!
• Alyssa has her second soccer game on Saturday night.  Go Piranhas!
• A birthday party for a little friend to attend.
• A breakfast meeting.
• Two more soccer games for the boys.
• Strawberry picking is a must!
• And I'd like to work on the teacher quilts too.

It might all be a bit too much to ask, but if I get half of it done I'll call it good!

Happy weekend to you!

A House Full of Boys Needs Flowers

I'm surrounded, I tell you.  By boys.

I have three of my own.  And then my husband makes four.

Add the cat (who is a boy) and the two guinea pigs (which are both boys), Scout and I are the only estrogen in the house.

There was a time that I thought this meant I was relegated to a world of camouflage and car prints.  Maybe a dinosaur or two thrown in.

I'm not much of a girly, girl anyway, but I do like lace, and pretty dishes...and flowers.

I am coming to understand though that as a mother of boys, I am almost *more* obligated to bring a little femininity into our home.

It is my responsibility to teach them what the fairer (and smarter) of our species responds to.

It is my job to show these boys that there is a softer side to life.  

We have new napkin rings on the table, with real cloth napkins.  (That go in your lap.) Sometimes we even eat on real china plates.  We are learning to open doors for ladies, even if we don't know them. 

I want them to know the language of flowers.  How to write a love note, even if it is to a teacher.  How to be polite and not put your elbows on the table.  I think they need to know that it matters if you notice the little things, like if your girl gets her hair cut.  Or if she had a new dress on.

These things are important.

But most importantly...all girls like flowers.  Period.  

Their mama is no exception.

 

These are my most favorite Spring grocery store flowers at the moment:

• Alstromaria:  These pretty little lilies don't have much to offer in the way of smell, but they come in a variety of colors from yellow, to red, to pink.  And are very long lasting. They can last for up to two weeks without cutting if the water is kept clean.
• Ranunculas:  Love, love the delicate pretty flowers and the curly stems are whimsical.  This very old flower just screams Spring!
• Stock:  Pretty pastel colors and the smell is intoxicating.  I put them right by the bed or in the entry way where I can enjoy them the most.
• Hyacinths:  Also love the smell.  And hyacinths just scream Spring!
• Daisies:  So summery and long lasting.  These are might be my favorite flowers of all time.  You just have to smile looking at daisies.
• Daffodils:  Yes, daffodils.  I have seen them pop up at several of our local supermarkets and they are always less than $2 a bunch.  A bargain.  And this way I can leave some in the garden to enjoy outside.

I think the boys must be catching on.  We were in the grocery store a few days ago and my youngest picked up the biggest bunch of orange roses and asked if we could get them for his teacher.  "Ms. T's favorite color is orange!"  How can a mama say no to a boy who is so observant of the likes and pleasures of the woman who has his heart at the moment?

If you are a mother to all boys, do you feel the same?  Like you are responsible for teaching your little lads to be chivalrous and keen on the female species?  

And what are your favorite Spring flowers to have in your house?

 

Yarn Wreaths - Christmas Front Door Makeover

This year while bringing down the Christmas boxes from the attic and digging in, it was clear that we needed some updating.

Our boxes are filled with decorations that we have had since we got married. 

OK, in reality some of them I have had since college.

Last year they seemed ok.

But this year for some reason, I just couldn't put some of them up.

They just aren't "us" anymore.  The front door wreaths were such.

I had seen several yarn wreaths around the blogosphere...namely Jade's little colorful numbers and Blair's.  And I love Sarah's color combination.  

So the boys and I made some new wreaths for the front door.  I'm glad they were game to help because the circle looks pretty small until you start wrapping, and wrapping and wrapping.

It took us two nights off and on, but we got them done.  And we're pretty happy. It was our little bird lover's idea to add a little chickadee.  I think it totally makes the wreath.

 

Since our doors are green, we needed a light color to stand out against the darker background.  And I'm still in love with that plaid flannel from the new pillows.  We used some of the scraps to cut out leaves.  Add a stick from the yard and a little bird...and you've got an entirely new look for the front doors.

The previous versions were originally purchased by my mother-in-law at a craft fair several years ago.  They had little fisherman and ducks on them, but in an attempt to make them more "us" I removed them.

I'm liking the new version much better.

Now on to the fireplace mantle.

New Pillows For Pillow Week

 

 

Erin has been hosting pillow week this week.  If you have a few minutes (ok, an hour or so) pop over because she has some great video tutorials answering lots of how to questions regarding pillows.

Pillows are such great projects.  Similar to the impact a new paint color has on a room, pillows are inexpensive and can really change how the room looks in just a short amount of time.

I've had this great blue and grey plaid for a few weeks now.  I picked it up at Joann's when I was getting the pattern for Wyatt's Halloween costume.  I didn't know what I would do with it, but when I saw Erin's pillow challenge, I knew some new living room pillows would be great in front of the fireplace.

This fabric at first looks a bit like wool, but is super soft - almost like fleece, but even cozier.  It is easy to sew with as it doesn't ravel much.  

Yesterday I made two pillow covers for the summer pillows.  I love the idea of having simple, seasonal slip-on covers for the living room pillows.  This project took me all of 20 minutes and was so gratifying...just what my creative brain needed!  I am already thinking up what to do for Christmas.  Maybe some snowflake doily embellishment?

On the plate today is to make three huge floor pillows in a coordinating plaid for lounging in front of the fireplace.

On second thought...

...these seem to be working just fine.

 

Join Erin and make some pillows this week!

---  Don't forget to share your photos on the Pillow Week photo pool.

---  Have you seen Sara's to die for l-o-v-e pillows?  They are available in her etsy shop.

---  Im in love with this fall pillow.

Vintage Inspired Playroom/ Family Office

I am so excited to finally be able to show you our new space.  Just a few short weeks ago this was my sewing room.  Remember when I shared that I was redecorating this room room and painting the yellow walls.  Yes, well shortly after I posted that little bit of news, right smack dab in the middle of the crazy phase of redecorating, it was clear that it should go upstairs and the playroom needed to come back down. That everything had to come to a complete halt.

And there it sat for most of the summer.

Until a few weeks ago when S left again on a trip...which is always my cue for "let's move things around!"

This room sits on the front of the house, just to the left of our front entry and gets the most wonderful morning light.

On the wall that used to hold my sewing machine table is now a great chalkboard wall!  (There is also magnetic paint under the chalkboard paint...more on this later.)  You know how much I love chalkboard paint.  You don't see the dark wall initially from the front door, so it is fun to see people walk in and then turn around to discover it.

I have had these MS flashcards for a year or more and I love the images.  So I hung a clothesline of jute twine with the first few letters that Wyatt is studying in kindergarten.  We will switch them out as he moved through the alphabet.

I have had the lamp for years - since I moved into my first little house after college.  And the chair used to be in the sewing room.  It just never made it up the stairs.  It is a most excellent reading chair and I love having a comfy place to sit while I oversee homework.  I see a little knitting basket next to this chair during the winter.

The round table and little wooden school chairs are gifts from our Oma (my mother).  They were in the upstairs playroom already so we just brought them downstairs and gave them a good cleaning.

 

The previous home owners installed floor to ceiling shelving on the back wall.  The shelving is just what we needed for our vintage kids' book collection, games and art supplies.  HEAVEN!  And sprinkled here and there are some of my favorite vintage toys and thrifted items.

Initially, I was going to move the dining room rug into this room.  But the boys have been having so much fun playing on the bare floors.  Zane told me the other day, the floors were the best part because his cars rolled so much better without a rug.  You got it buddy!  No rug.  We'll see if they still like playing this much on the floor in the winter.

I think this might be my most favorite part of the entire room...the family office concept. I knew I wanted a long desk from one wall to the other.  With our file cabinet(that curiously lived in the craft room before) and a metal shelf borrowed from a closet as supports for two large MDF pieces I had cut, it makes three work stations.  Perfect for the older two to have their own homework areas and a space for me to pay bills and organize school papers.

(The silver chair did not end up staying silver and the little wood chair eventually got a paint job.  See below.)

Just above the desk is a line of cork.  You can buy thin rolls of cork at craft stores.  It took three rolls to do the entire length of the wall and will be a great place to tack party invitations, school notes, artwork, pictures...anything!

A few years ago, S pieced together two computers from spare parts and hand-me-downs so that the boys would have a place to do their "research" - which apparently must include touching the screen.  Do you see how dirty it is?!?!

One of the bad things about this room is that there is no central light fixture in the ceiling, so I used three $9 desk lamps from Target on the desk for task lighting.  But I think on my next trip to IKEA I might pick up a few wall mounted sconces.

Above the cork strip is another shelf to hold an old set of thrifted encyclopedias - great for cutting and gluing projects.

Tin cans hold pencils, scissors, paperclips, thumbtacks, glue, etc. - any supplies they might need for homework.  Mason jars full of summer beach treasures from Maine serve as book ends.

I knew I wanted three matching chairs for the desk areas and the very day I began looking on craigslist, the boys found these three little chairs on the curb across the street.  Seriously.  It pays to have neighbors with good taste in junk.  I loved the shape of them, but she had obviously left them outside because the finish was coming off and they were pretty weathered.  But with a little sanding and a few coats of paint, they are perfect for this room...and free!

A few things I still have yet to do:

• Decide if I want curtains or not
• Recover the chair seats with fabric
• Move a stool from the upstairs bathroom down so that the littlest member of the family can reach the upper bookshelves
• Paint the file cabinet white
• Find flat screen monitors on craigslist or freecycle (those old one's sure take up a lot of space, don't they?)

I am so happy with how this room turned out.  Actually I am kicking myself that I didn't do this three years ago when we moved back from Chicago.  The boys have been playing in it ever since we started the project...which is always the case when you move things around.  Isn't it?

On Tuesday, the boys came right in from the school bus into this room, sat themselves down at the desk and started in on their homework.  We'll see how long that lasts. *wink*

Happy weekend everyone!

 

Playroom/Craft Room Swip-Swap

This used to be our playroom.  We called it the explore room.  It had a reading nook, bins for toys and an art cabinet.  The toys were upstairs and out of the way.  It could get messy and it didn't bother me.  We added two rebuilt desktop computers for the boys to play their jump start games and do their all important lego research.  It worked perfectly for us.

For a while.

But sometime around the end of the school year last year, it became clear that our use of the room was changing.  That our needs had shifted and a change was in order.

(Hmmm...maybe it was the boys search for star wars lego videos on Youtube that took them to a...ahem...less than desireable video that did it.)

One of the things I love most about out house is how versatile it is.  Bedrooms can become playrooms.  Guest rooms can become sewing rooms.

So one of the many summer projects while S has been away has been to swap my downstairs craft room with the upstairs playroom.

Part of me could not believe I was bringing the playroom back downstairs after I had just trained the boys to keep the toys upstairs.

But things are different now.

They only play with a few things...legos, action figures, animals, art supplies, puzzles and games for the most part.

Gone are the baskets of toys along the wall.  No more dress up corner (which makes me a bit sad).  They spend more time in their rooms when they need a quiet minute or two to play with a few select toys they keep there.

And homework is becoming a much bigger deal...do you know how big a 2 inch Social Studies binders is???

All of this to say...change was necessary.

In true Eren fashion, I began doing research.

I looked through books, magazines.  I put together a pin board at pinterest.

And have been eating away at the HUGE task of moving all of that fabric up, all of the legos and books down.

But it is almost finally finished!  I have to spray paint a few chairs today and fin three baskets for a shelf.

Can't wait to show you the full reveal tomorrow!

A Day To Myself

Yesterday was a good day.

A very good day.

A day that brought an unexpected period of time all by myself.

I keep a mental list of all of the things I want to do if I the stars align perfectly and I get a few hours to myself.  Things like...start seeds for the Fall garden, sew new throw pillow for the living room, straighten the pictures in the guest room.  You know...those important little things that just never get done because you are too busy being busy.

Last Saturday morning, S announced that he and the boys were going to Busch Gardens for the day and I was not coming with them.  He knows what a homebody I am and how I really don't like places with too many people, food that costs way too much especially on a 109 degree day.

Bless him!

So how did I spend my day?

- breakfast, zucchini bread with chocolate chips, while I contemplated peeling the rest of the peaches and catching up on a little blog reading.

-I got a few jars of peach butter jarred up and added to the pantry, here is the recipe I used.  Easy is an understatement people!

- I watched the tomatoes ripen in the window, did a little more reading, and apparently spent way too much time looking at vintage inspired boys rooms

- because, then I got a wild hair to repaint the boys' bedrooms

both of them

- I am loving the results.  It isn't a huge color change, but there's nothing like clean, freshly spackled  and painted walls.  I'll show you the full update when I finish getting the new shelves up and Im excited about a little swimming inspired art piece Im working on for above Ian's bed.

What would you do if you had a day to yourself?

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Oh, and I have a new post over at Simple Organic on the health benefits of getting outside with your kiddos if you want to check it out.  There's lots of good stuff over at Simple Living Media.

Pallet Projecting

Hello friends.

It feels like I have been away from this space for quite awhile.  

Thanks for the kind comments about the garden habit posts that have been filling in for my usual wordiness.

We are settling in to new routines here...but anxious about what is around the corner.

At some point I will share what is going on here in our home and our family.  But we still do not have all of the answers.  But at least I feel like I can come up for air now.

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Today I wanted to show you some of the pallet projects going on around here.

The patio has been complete for several weeks now, but we were in need of some furniture so that we could actually enjoy the space.  And if you haven't shopped for outdoor furniture in a few years...its expensive as all get out!

And then I saw Rachel's table.

After seeing how Rachel and her husband used a pallet and a few castors to make an outdoor coffee table...I knew the answer to our furniture problem.

I started collecting pallets from alongside the road, behind stores, etc.  Many of the pallets we found had color on them, but I like the look of the natural washed wood.  The boys had a ball with this..."There's another one Mom!  Quick Stop!"  Kids have such good spotting eyes, ya know.

 

Here is our finished table.  I love it so much.  And all it cost us was the price of the castors.  Which wasn't much.

We also ended up using pallets for several other projects.  Actually we went a bit nuts with the pallets.

 

We are lucky enough to have the ugly green power box for the surrounding 8 houses in the corner of our yard.  I absolutely hate looking at it.  So we used two pallets nailed into a 90 degree angle to hide it.  I planted a few volunteer morning glories at the base of the pallet.  They are just starting to climb in and out of the slats.  In a few more weeks, you won't even be able to see the box behind it.

S also came up with the idea of using pallets to upgrade our outdoor shower area.  The pallets were perfect to raise the shower floor up out of the area that stays pretty muddy.  He used pallets to also semi-enclose the area to give a bit more privacy and a place to hang towels and swim suits.

We have a new outdoor kid's table too.  Its super long and skinny and we can fit 10 little people at it at a time.  Perfect for summer time.

Have you had enough yet?

There's one more...

A good friend was getting rid of a sample piece of butcher block counter top left over from their recent kitchen remodel.  S used it, plus left over pallet pieces to make this kitchen island for me.  Now the stove top is free of the cast iron pans, but living on the bottom shelf of the island, they are ready at a moment's notice.  And I love having so much room to chop up veggies fresh from the garden.

I told you we went a bit nuts.  But we were having so much fun, we just couldn't stop ourselves.

We're feeling like we have a whole new backyard with the addition of the patio and all of the new finished projects.

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I have a new post over at Simple Organic.  A little diy project for summer travelers.  Enjoy your weekend!

We have family coming into town, so ours will be full of crazy cousin time!  So fun!

In the Garden: Early Morning

I took my coffee (and my camera) outside this morning, before the boys were up.  The birds were chirping away, mallards flying overhead.  It was a good way to begin a day. Little did I know, that the littlest would be home from school today with a cough and a fever.

We're trying to do a bit more repurposing in the garden.  A few weeks back, S needed new tires unexpectedly.  Luckily he asked for the old tires back, because they are making great potato pots now.  We started the potatos in the bottom tire and then as we piled the soil on top, we added the next tire.  This is the first time we've grown them this way, so we'll see how they do.

We've had a tiny little cement slab patio ever since we purchased this house 5 years ago. It is barely big enough for the grill and a small bistro table.  But this past week S and the boys started digging out the grass to lay a new slate patio.  The rock gets delivered tomorrow. Im so excited!

Perfect timing too because on Tuesday I rescued three sweet little patio chairs from the garbage.  They will go great with the iron table that has had no chairs. I can't wait to see it all come together.  Hmmm...to paint them or not to paint them?

Im a bit crazy with the spray paint around here these days.  So Im guessing they'll end up with a new coat of paint.

There's a new book giveaway coming up tomorrow, so stay tuned my friends!