Indoor Gardening

Over this past spring and summer, I've come to realize how much I benefit from being outside and connecting with nature.  Just sitting out back on the deck watching the kids play is great, but actually interacting with nature - walking barefoot in the grass, lying under the tree and looking up at the branches, tending to our garden, making our yard attractive to wildlife - that brings things to a whole 'nother level.  I'm a much happier, more sane person when I can do those things.

Unfortunately, we live in Massachusetts, and those opportunities are rapidly running out.  To be honest, I'm a little apprehensive about this winter and being shut off from anything green.  So I started searching Pinterest and the Google for information about houseplants and indoor gardening.  I've tried having some house plants before, but it's never worked out too well.. mostly because of a lack of information on my part.  This time, I'm vowing to do it right and not just wing it.

I took the kids out to Kanes, a local nursery that's like the Walmart of nurseries.  But you know what?  Everything I've ever gotten there has done really well.  We had a blast in the greenhouse picking out plants and admiring the sleeping kitties tucked away in little nooks.  And we came home with these beauties:

Check out the texture on that Pilea!  How cool are those leaves?

And look at the gorgeous green and pink foliage on the Fittonia!  It almost reminds me of watermelon.  So pretty.

And look at the leaf on this.. plant!  Yes, I lost the little plant label thingy.  Oh, had I tricked you with my clever plant-name-dropping?  Well, hey.. whatever its name is, it's lovely.

I got the Aralia mostly for height, but its leaves are variegated, too, so that's a bonus!  It looks so delicate.

We also grabbed some potting mix (nothing organic here, since we're not eating any of these babies) and some horticultural charcoal, since there won't be any drainage holes in the planters.

You may have noticed the aloe off to the side in the group shot.  I had plans for other plants to be grouped together in a giant glass terrarium, but the aloe has different needs so I picked up this cute little planter from Michael's.  I want plants in each room, and I figured aloe is perfect for the kitchen.

I filled the bottom with some charcoal...

Put my aloe in, packed some potting soil around the edges, and voila!  Isn't she lovely?  By the way, yes, I was doing this all on my dining room table.  These plants all need to stay out of direct sun and I figured if I brought these all outside to plant, I'd probably get pulled away (hello, four children!) and leave them out there too long.

Now for the terrarium!  Eee!  I have to say, this project was a little more fidgety and difficult than I was expecting.  Step one:  pour charcoal into giant glass terrarium.  Step two:  clean the glass.  And again.

Once the glass was somewhat clear of dust, I put a layer of potting soil down and set my plants inside.  It became apparent right away that one plant (the mysterious nameless one) was not going to fit.  They look so tiny in the greenhouse, but huge inside the terrarium!

After the plants are in place, then fill in with potting soil around the edges and in between the plants.  You don't want to put in a ton of potting soil first and try to dig holes, that just wouldn't work.  Not that this way was a piece of cake, but still.  Once everything is firmly planted, get out your sheets of moss.  Wait, you don't happen to have sheets of moss just lying around your house?  You can get this stuff at Michael's and AC Moore.

Tear off pieces and cover up the bare soil sort of like you'd use mulch.  You'll probably need to wet it to get it to stay put - I did.  If you have some little pebbles or rocks, you can add those for decoration, too.  You should end up with something like this:

Okay, so I may have gotten a little tired of trying to clean the glass, and there might still be some smudges of soil on it.  But isn't it beautiful?

For The Birds

My plan was to write about house-hunting, how we're getting ready to move from northeastern Massachusetts to southeastern New Hampshire (which is not a big move, obviously).  I was going to talk about some of the cool houses we've seen, features we like, etc.  Then I took a picture of the birds at some of my bird feeders, planning to illustration how important the outdoors is for us, and the direction of my thinking went totally off track.

Here are the bird feeders on our second-story deck.

We've had feeders here for a while, and I always get so much enjoyment out of them.  The slider to the deck is in our dining room, and there's nothing like watching the birds and squirrels eating while we're eating, too.  Watching and caring for the birds always makes me feel connected to my grandmother, and I find that so soothing.

Of course, we have some other family members who also love watching the birds, but probably not for the same reasons.  Here's our 11 year old lab mix, Madison.  She doesn't care too much about the birds, but she loves the squirrels.  And with her is Moxie, who's about a year and a half old.

I tried to get a picture of Moxie's brother, Milky Way, but he was not cooperative.  This was the best I could do.

The 'older' cat is Indy, he's four and Colwyn's 'son' - and he's such a grouch.  But we still love him.

Print Wall Art

In my quest to update my decor - which hasn't been updated in at least ten years (...I feel old) - I stumbled upon this picture on Pinterest:

It's from Blue Cricket Design and she gives a great tutorial on how to make it.  I loved the idea and naturally had to try it - with my own modifications.

First, I found an old damaged book.  In this case, it was a Pippi Longstocking book that Niall had ripped the cover off of.  I pulled out a bunch of pages and made sure all the straight edges were interestingly torn.

Then I mod-podged them to my canvas.  Spread a bunch of glue in one area, put down a page, and mod-podge over that.  Rinse and repeat until the canvas is totally covered.

In the tutorial, she used some magazine cutouts of birds and drew the branches and leaves by hand, then colored over it all with sharpie.  Obviously it looked great, but I wanted to use my Silhouette craft cutter instead.  I got to mess around with the design a lot without drawing all over my canvas, and then once it was cut, I just had to glue it down, and seal it with more mod podge.  I made sure to include a cardinal, as a nod to my grandmother.

I think it came out really well.  Unfortunately, I can't take a nicely staged picture of it because my house is a mess.. but you get the idea.

Sewing Fun

Last year, I sewed a bunch of nightgowns for Fiona as one of her Christmas gifts.  She loves nightgowns but only had a few old pill-y fleece ones.  I found an awesome and incredibly easy tutorial for a raglan dress at Ikatbag.  When I say it's easy.. it's really, really incredibly easy.  I did modify the pattern a bit for her nightgowns - made the sleeves full length, and shirred the neck instead of using an elastic casing.  She loves them, though, and they're so cute!

Well, for her birthday (yes, back in June), she got Bitty Twins but the clothing - oy!  American Girl Doll stuff is incredibly expensive.  She got an extra outfit for each doll, but no pajamas.  I promised I'd make her some.. and finally, three months later, I got around to it.  Well, for the girl doll.. I haven't done the boy's yet.

I used the same pattern and just trimmed it a bit.  Well, a lot.  But anyway, I got it done in about 45 minutes.  Not bad, huh?

Then I happened to find some fabric I bought for her last fall, planning to make a dress.  I'd forgotten all about it!  She's grown a fair bit so I didn't have enough to make a dress, but I was able to make an adorable tunic using the same raglan dress pattern.  It took me about an hour this time.  She's been wearing it all day - with a skirt, which looks a little goofy - I meant for her to wear it with leggings, but it's pretty warm out.

Here's a close-up of the shirring.

It's just so damn cute!  I get the feeling she's going to have many more of these dresses in her fall wardrobe.  I love the raglan style and the option of doing different colors for the sleeves.  I also want to try doing some different sections of fabric on the skirt, sort of like her princess twirly dress.

Mill Brook Meadow Park, Rockport

Colwyn and Lachlann started an art class today with some fellow homeschoolers.  This is the first time they've done a real drop-off class, so we were all excited.  The teacher, a local artist, was very nice and her home is knock-your-socks off gorgeous.  Now, I'm not going to say that as soon as I got home, I looked up her street on Zillow (because in reality, it was about two hours later), but these are all well-over-two-million-dollar houses.  Boy, did I feel out-classed!  Seriously, though, the teacher was so nice and down to earth, and the boys had a great time.  I'm sure it also helped that their classmates are all good friends of ours.

While the boys got their art on, the littles and I (and the other mommies and their littles) tried out a new park.  It's called Mill Brook Meadow Park in Rockport, and it's a very good thing I spent a ton of time on Google Maps trying to figure out where it is, because it's really tucked away.  But this park is amazing!  There's a quaint little picket fence at the entrance, and just inside is a gorgeous English garden.  This little picture of Fiona and Niall doesn't do it justice because they weren't cooperating, but oh.. so beautiful.

Look at this lovely hydrangea.  Blue hydrangeas are right up at the top of my list of favorite flowers.  Oh, other interesting note.. the artist's street was just filled with blue hydrangeas.. some purple, too.  The kids said it should be called Blue Hydrangea Street.

Given that the name of the park is Mill Brook Meadow, you'd be right in assuming that there's both a meadow and a brook.  The brook is overflow from a pond at the far end of the park and was running fairly high today.  It goes the length of the park and includes some areas bordered with rocks, one area where it widens into a small lily pond, and some 'rapids' that the kids loved.

That little sign in the above picture states that the Rockport Garden Club is trying to eradicate two invasive species of plants and includes pictures.  Goodness.  There are two wooden bridges and a stone bridge over the brook, leading to little nooks and paths that give it a very "Secret Garden" feeling.  There were lots of butterflies and dragonflies flitting around.

We all agreed that the bridges would be a great spot to play "Pooh Sticks" and we thought that next time, we could bring little boats to race downstream.

I read online that there was some playground equipment there - that turned out to be a slide and three swings, which was more than enough given all the natural play areas.  Niall definitely liked the slide.

Across from the playground is a public beach that boasts the cleanest bathrooms I've ever seen.  There are inns all over the place and Bearskin Neck is a relatively short walk away.  But right next to the park is a little place called  Nate's at Front Beach that serves breakfast and lunch, and dinner on the weekends.  We might have to try it out sometime.

Success and a New Challenge

I am pleased to announce that I was a winner in my DietBet!  I reached my goal weight (4% lost) just in the nick of time and made $25 to boot!  That's not bad, huh?

I had so much fun doing this DietBet, and really found the accountability and camaraderie helpful that I've decided to start my own DietBet!  I'd absolutely love for you to join!  It's a way to motivate yourself to get healthy, and you might just make some money off of it!  So, please.. consider joining.  I'd love to have some people to play with!

Oh, and as a side note - you do not have to make your weight public.  I know I was concerned about that at first, but it's quite easy to keep your weight hidden and only show how close you are to reaching your goal.

Back in the Saddle Again!

I've jumped back onto the weight loss bandwagon, yay!  I've been at it for a week so far and I'm doing great.  I've been planning on starting to eat healthier, hemming and hawing, and one of the things that pushed me into it was an invitation to do a Diet Bet through a parenting forum I've been on forever.  Diet Bet is pretty cool.. you get a group of people who all want to do something crazy, like lose 4% of their body weight in 4 weeks.  Then you set a fee to join (in my case, it's $15).  All that money goes into a pot that gets split by those who are successful at the end of the 4 weeks.  To discourage cheating when you weigh in, you have to take a full body picture of yourself on the scale, and then take a picture of the scale's readout, with your feet clearly visible, and an index card that has a special code word written on it.  Then the Diet Bet staff verify your weigh in.  It seems weird that the prospect of winning a little bit of money would be so motivating, but it is.  I'm sure it's also because these people know me and my success (or failure!) is there for everyone to see.

The other thing that pushed me into a desperate desire to do something about my weight was weighing myself and realizing that I'm at my highest weight ever.  I'm so disappointed in myself, and so sad.  Here I am, feeling pretty crappy about myself.

Ugh.  It's painful to post that picture.

I'm incorporating a lot of different techniques into this newest attempt at getting healthy.  One thing I'm relying on, that I find very helpful, is EFT or tapping.  It seems very new-agey and a little out there, but tons of therapists recommend it, and there is some reputable scientific evidence showing that it works.  I bought a book called EFT for Weight Loss: The Revolutionary Technique for Conquering Emotional Overeating, Cravings, Bingeing, Eating Disorders, and Self-Sabotage (Emotional Freedom Techniques) and I love it.  It has a lot of practical suggestions for how to use tapping on weight loss, and also lots of inspirational stories.

I've also tried going to Overeaters Anonymous but the first meeting I tried didn't really speak to me.  It may have had something to do with the fact that it was at 9am on Saturday.  Ugh!  But there are a few other meetings around at better times, I just have to find babysitting.. so I'm working on that.  But I have a few twelve-step workbooks that I'm using to work the program on my own at the very least, given that I'm pretty familiar with twelve-step programs.

I haven't chosen a diet plan to follow, but I am trying to cut out a lot of processed sugars and eat low carb.  I'm tracking my food and weight loss on My Fitness Pal.  I'm not sure that I like it as much as Spark People, but I want to give it a chance.  You can check out my profile if you like.

So, wish me luck!  I lost 5 pounds the first week, here's to 2 pounds down a week!