Custom Badges and Patches

As my regular readers know, I'm not one for throwing something away if I can mend it. When Little Miss got a dime sized hole in her otherwise new and unblemished coat, it didn't occur to me to toss it. I wanted to make a nice patch for it to cover it up!
You can buy patches and badges at most craft stores and even big box stores like Target and Walmart, but they can be pricey. They can be generic. They can be... mundane. And perhaps you want something unique, or something you can't find at a store? Badges, decals, patches, whatever you want to call them, are extremely simple to make, actually!
Please consider my heartfelt apology for these awful photos. My camera is missing and I'm not sure if a child made off with it or if I'm just too scatter-brained these days to remember where I left it... so my phone camera made due.

• First things first, get some supplies and make your design. A plain cotton muslin makes a fine base. You want something that won't be too thick to trace an image through or too rigid to easily sew into.
• A 4” embroidery hoop.
• Small sharps (needles) with small eyes, better to use those specific for needlepoint.
• Cotton embroidery floss in all of the colors you'll likely use.

If you can't freehand your image, you're perfectly fine to trace it. You can look for an image to use on any search engine or even a childs coloring book. My girl wanted Cinderella for her patch and it was easy enough to find a suitable image to draw from.
Next, you simply fill in the lines with your thread. Separate the floss and use two strands of it at a time. Beginning at the top of the section you're filling in, begin making vertical stitches, about half a centimeter apart. You'll want to stagger the length and do one short and one long. Keep all of your stitches parallel to each other. You will get an evenly filled section by keeping your stitches going in the same direction. Once you have finished the top row, leaving small gaps between stitches, go back and fill those ones in. Again, be sure to stagger the length of your stitches.

This technique is called long and short stitch and Satin Stitch embroidery and it has so many uses!















Here is an excellent tutorial to show you how to do the Long and Short stitch.



Once you've completed one row, you go into that row ever so slightly to begin your next row. You'll not only be staggering the length of your stitches now, you'll be going into that upper row at varying heights so as to keep the entire section free from ridges.

A few tips:

• You want to keep your stitches taught, but don't pull them so tightly that they pull and pucker the fabric. Don't use too much force.
• Pack your stitches in to fill in any holes, but be careful not to bulk them up too much that they are laying on top of one another.
• Try not to rub the stitches to fray them. 
• Don't use damp or wet thread. If your thread gets wet, replace it.
• Don't use bulky knots. When starting a new thread, pull the thread most of the way through the fabric and sew a couple of little sideways stitches, one on top of the other to secure it and then cut off the tail. These two little stitches will be covered over by your fill-in stitches.

After the badge was complete, I cut around the edges and tucked them under. I then loosely hand sewed the badge to the front of the coat. Using the color I selected for my edging (pink) I used a button hole stitch going from inside to outside, to cover the entire edge of the patch and secure it to the coat.

Here are some other badges and embroidered items I have made recently. They're good not only for covering up a blemish on an otherwise fine article of clothing, but you can make them in any genre or theme. You see I like the Kansas City Chiefs! And I've also made one for the New Orleans Saints, though I haven't finished the sweatband I'm knitting to put it on. I am also making some Christmas Tree Ornaments for some friends which use a satin stitch design on the front.

Here are some older examples of what I've done with satin stitch embroidery. I sewed my daughter a dress and embroidered a beautiful butterfly motif on it.

I've even embroidered my grandparents portraits into a pillow as a gift for my father.

There you have it! It looks time consuming, but it goes more quickly than you'd think. It's not difficult, but it takes a bit of practice getting those stitches to look uniform. You can do some beautiful work though! I've had it in my head for a while to do a large long and short and satin stitch design for a wall hanging, but I just don't seem to have the time these days. I'll set that on the idea shelf and one of these days I hope I get to it!

My Fall Favorites! My Best Fall Posts

It's Fall! It's finally here!

I first noticed Fall one day last week when I saw a small yellow leaf on the floor of the dining room. Since then, I've been checking for more signs every day. Sure enough, the very next day, there was a sprinkling of leaves when the wind kicked up while we were playing in the backyard with our friends. Three days ago I saw the first spots of red on the slope of trees opposite my house. And today - officially, is Fall!

To celebrate, I have compiled all of my favorite Fall Posts from the last two years. My favorite Fall recipes, crafts and activities.




Fall Recipes:
Whole Wheat Cheese Raviolis with Apricot Squash Sauce
Apricot Squash Soup with Grilled Provolone Sandwiches
Vegetarian Chili With Meat Alternative
Nonfat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Nonfat Crab and Squash Chowder


Fall Festivities:
A Yard For Harvest
Seed Saving How and Why

Fall Crafts:
Harvest Wreath
Sweater Legs
Cable and Ribbed Glove Pattern
Table Centerpieces From Found Natural Materials
Embroidered Heirloom Pillows

Harvest Wreath

Fall is absolutely my favorite time of year. The outdoor temperatures become more comfortable, the insects diminish, and the colors of the landscape here in Missouri are exquisite as the fog rolling in on a cool autumn morning.

I feel peaceful and relaxed at the idea of hunkering down for the winter. Harvest season is less than a month away!

As I shared in this post last year, one of my favorite fall activities is seed collecting. Visiting parks, the woods, even walking around my neighborhood usually culminates in a rather large collection of seeds to stash away.


As I wrote in this post, another of my of my favorite things to do in the fall is to harvest my yard. Not only the edible parts, but the grasses and twigs for my fireplace, weeds and wild flowers to make centerpieces and arrangements, and my unruly, out of control wild grape vines to make wreathes and other decorations.

This prolific vine gets cut back every fall and regrows in the spring. I think it's rather pretty, even though it's a messy thing. It's worth it to me to keep it because I can make pretty wreathes out of it.

This year, I have not been enjoying the outdoors quite so much. I decided to make a new wreath, but rather than collect my decorations before hand, I have decided to hang the wreath bare with only a simple cotton print and denim bow.

This autumn, as the landscape changes, we will look for our decorations for it and collect them on our walks while we are gathering our seeds. Anytime we see something pretty or interesting, we will collect it and bring it home. I am hoping this will motivate me to get out more and enjoy the lovely temperate weather. I'll update pictures of it on my facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/TheyAreAllOfMe, as it begins to fill up!

Growing A Yard For Harvest

I love to have a manicured yard. I want my yard to look good so that when I come home, I am arriving at a beautiful and uplifting place.

Growing native flowers is one way to achieve this with minimal fuss and no watering or chemicals. It's also important that I find my plants for free, and amassing my collection of native plants is something that I am always working towards. With many of my local parks growing native flowers, and no shortage of interesting flowers growing along the roadside, collecting seeds for my yard is both simple and exciting!

One thing that is just as important to me as having a nice looking yard is to have a yard that is useful. Again, growing native flowers is a useful way to garden because it benefits the local eco system and attracts beneficial insects and feeds the birds, squirrels and wild life. But native flowers are not only nice to look at and good for the environment, they make nice dried arrangements in the fall and can be used in many ways. Some wild flowers are edible like Queen Annes Lace (wild carrot) or have medicinal uses, like Echinacea.





I grow flowers with the ultimate goal of harvest. Even my ornamental rose bushes have a purpose aside from being pretty. I can make potpourri out of the blooms after they just reach their peak, and then I can blend them up to make rose beads for jewelry making.

Growing a yard for harvest naturally means growing a yard that is abundant in food. I would love some day to have a yard in which I can walk out into and pick a wide variety food to eat. I have my vegetable patch, my herb garden and my strawberry bed. I also have a hazelnut tree that I will find a mate for soon so that in a few years I will have loads of hazelnuts to snack on and cook with.

Nature offered me a blackberry bush earlier this year, that just sprouted in my yard and 75% of my vegetable garden volunteered itself, from the compost that I created from my kitchen scraps. I planted the cucumber and the bed of lettuce, but Nature decided to give me 3 squash plants, 2 pumpkin vines, 7 garlic plants and over twenty tomato plants. Yes, Nature is very, very good to me and I know how to use my bit of Earth.

One day I plan to have a small orchard, of four to six fruit trees, and I have a large currently unused area designated to grow others types of berries, apart from the blackberries I already have. But it's important to me to have a yard that is useful in many ways - not just pleasing to look at or delicious to eat, even more than a space for the children to play.

There are plants in my yard which are only grown for some sort of functional purpose.


I have an ash tree that was cut down to the stump a year ago because it was badly placed and would soon grow into the chain link fence. The sugars built up in the roots allowed it to sprout several upright branches, turning the tree into a bush. I noticed this when the shoots were small and could be snipped easily, but I quickly realized the potential in them. I allowed to shoots to grow tall, for they are straight and pliable. We have used them to roast marshmallows and hotdogs over the fire pit, and they are also useful for building natural trellises for vining plants. Cutting them down every fall will allow new shoots each spring to be used for many things throughout the next growing season. Because they are very bendy, they can be easily shaped and I am currently considering what types of things might be created from them.

I have a slope in my back yard that is a great place to allow the grass to grow in the late fall and get nice and tall. We purposely stop mowing it in early September. There are some weeds that grow in it, that once dried make nice floral arrangement along with the native wild flowers, but what I'm really after is the grass. In the late afternoon when there is no moisture on it, I will reap the grass and form it into little bundles. These are for my fire place during the winter. We also trim the trees back when the summer begins to get hot and the rapid growth of spring dies down. The limbs will then be cut into 8 inch long sections and dried out for fall, to become kindling. In the winter when I want to start my fireplace, which I tend to do daily, I grab a nifty little bundle of dried grass from the stack, and handful of the dried twigs. Getting the fireplace going is pretty easy with them, no need for fancy store-bought starter logs or supplies.

All along my chain link fence are many types of vines. But the vines I am especially interested in are the wild grapes. They are either too old to produce, or they are a naturally barren variety.
I don't grow them for the fruit, I don't even like grapes. I want the vines. These are invasive and unruly, however, I cut them down to their trunks in the fall, pull off all of the leaves and use the vines to make natural decorations, like wreathes to be decorated with fall leaves or Christmas baubles.

There is also my water garden, where I grow bulrushes and cattails. The long slender leaves of the cattail plants are great for decorating, lashing and I keep meaning to get around to weaving them into baskets or placemats. It's on my to-do list.

I do not consider myself an urban homesteader, and I have no desire to live on a farm at this point in my life. But utilizing my space in the most useful way possible just makes sense to me. Nature is very giving when you let it do it's thing.

Easy DIY Clothespin Bag

 
 
This bag was made using materials I had on hand, and took less than 20 minutes.

Materials:

1 child's ruined T-shirt, size 5 or close to.

1 metal coat hanger, or arm length piece of wire of similar gauge and width.

Needle and thread or sewing machine.

Pair of pliers.

My daughter was so sad when she ruined this T-shirt. I was too, it was the first time she wore it. We don't throw away fabric if it is in decent condition, because we know that we can always make something from it.

I've been in need of a new clothes pin holder and decided to use the shirt for that.

You can use a child's T-shirt, trim down an old pillow case, or make yourself a pouch from scratch. Whatever works for you!

I have made a few of these over the years and prefer the child's T-shirt because we usually always have one around to serve the cause - and because they are the correct width so as not to need to sew the sides or hem the opening.

It may be difficult to tell in this picture, but I flipped the T-shirt inside out and then sewed alongside the seams of the sleeves and across the top, just beneath the collar.

I straight stitched it, and then zigzagged on what would be the outside edge to prevent fraying. If you cannot zigzag, I would at least double stitch it as the bulk of the clothespins will be hard on the seam.

Trim away the sleeves and neck opening after sewing.

Using a pair of pliers, open up your coat hanger and stretch it out. You want the length of wire to be approximately 2 to 3 feet - or an arms length.

Fold the wire in half and pinch it with the pliers.

Three and a half inches from the bend, begin twisting the two sides together as you see in the photo. Give it a couple of twists.

Now take your doubled over end and shape it into a hook. Make sure your hook comes down low, and nearly meets the twist. There may be times when your bag is swaying in the wind and you don't want it to fly off of your clothesline!

You now have a bag instead of a T-shirt. The opening of your bag is already hemmed for you! On the inside of this hem, pop two little holes, about half an inch apart to feed the ends of your wires through the hem.

Make sure that you feed both wires through the hem simultaneously, and pop them out of the other side of the bag.

After you've popped the wires out of the other side of the hem, use the pliers to loop them around each other as shown.

Bend the wires as needed to form a hoop at the opening of your bag.

You may now fill the bag with clothespins and hang it on your clothesline. There, it can slide along the line with you and you won't have to bend over to pick them up!

Make Your Own Paint and Tips For Painting With Littles

The consistency of this paint is between watercolor and craft paint.

As an artist, I have plenty of experience producing and packing up a painting station and dealing with some of the common mishaps of artistry. I am also a profoundly messy artist. It is not uncommon to find me at the end of a painting day with oil paints smudged up and down my forearms, my thighs and my face.

As a mama, I have plenty of experience painting with wee ones. My kids see me painting and what a good time I’m having, they want to paint too! You know what? Paints aren’t cheap and kids go through them quickly. I’m always running out.

What’s a frugal artist-mama to do? Well, make my own paints, of course! So along with giving you a few tips for painting with kids, I will give you paint recipe using materials most of us keep in our kitchen. Mind you, these paints are staining. Make sure your kids are wearing old clothes and don’t give them this paint the day before their scheduled portraits.

Plenty of space to let her artwork dry.

Set up a work station with lots of space. If you’re worried about your table top or flooring getting stained, you can purchase an inexpensive vinyl table cloth that can be wiped down and reused over and over. Kids are messy and the best creativity comes from being allowed to get into the project.

Have several clean shop rags ready to clean up spills or blot paint brushes. We prefer not to use paper towels at my house and instead we use inexpensive shop rags that can be washed and used repeatedly. I find this much more convenient (as I always have plenty) and Earth friendly than throwing away dozens of used paper towels. It’s also much less expensive.



Use a wide flat bottomed bowl for rinsing their brushes, rather than a skinny jar or glass. Those glass jars are tricky when you’re a little one. I prefer a margarine tub or something similar that will sit flat, hold plenty of water and be difficult to tip over.

Give them paints in individual cups (recycled yogurt cups work well) rather than a pallet. There will be less mixing of the colors. I find that giving my little ones paint pallets with small wells of colors becomes a big muddy mess as they can’t seem to help themselves from trying to pick up all of the colors at once. Maybe that’s just my kids…

Make sure you have a place set aside beforehand to dry the artwork.  My kids like to paint in sprees and will have several drippy sheets of paper by the time they’re done. We often designate the covered porch for a drying spot, but sometimes it’s rainy or windy. The kitchen table is handy if we take the time to clear it off. What’s annoying is having to run around with a soppy wet sheet of paper and finding no good place to set it.



Play some music. When kids are just learning to paint and draw, much of what they create is interpretive. Music can help get their creative juices flowing and keep them into their painting for longer periods. This would be a great time to play some jazz or something with a lot of feeling and  movement.



Don’t instruct them. That would be so boring! We know the sky is blue, so what if they want to make it green? Who cares if their apple tree looks more like a bush than an actual tree? What of it? Just let them be, let them play around. Interfering will just throw up creativity blocks and maybe even put them off of painting. Just as forcing kids to read books they don’t enjoy can put them off of reading, trying to make them paint or draw the way you want them to can put them off of art completely.

Have the kitchen sink clear before you start. Wow. No brainer, right? Except I always forget to do this and I find myself scrambling to clear the lunch dishes out of the way to have a place to dump the dirty water, rinse the brushes and clean the kids.

Now that you have some handy-dandy Painting with Littles advice, here’s a quickie paint recipe if you’re interested.



This is half an egg yolk with 2 tbs. water and 1 tbs. flour.

6 yogurt cups (preferably with lids)
3 egg yolks – make sure you get all of the white part off.
6 tbs. flour
12 tbs. water.
Food coloring

In a small cup, beat the egg yolks until there are no clumps. Add 3 tablespoons of water, and then the flour. Add the rest of the water, until you have a slightly thickened consistency. Divide this up between the six cups and add the food coloring. I used McCormick brand that I bought at a regular grocery store, however, you can use natural food colorings and even make your own.

For the paint shown, I used between 20 and 50 drops of coloring of McCormick Neon. These are just rough estimates. Have fun and fool around with the combinations.



These colors are very vibrant, and also quite staining.

Red: 50 drops of pink
Orange: 40 green, 10 pink
Apple Green:  20 drops of green
Dark Green: 30 blue, 10 green
Blue: 40 drops of blue
Purple: 40 drops of purple
*When my little girl mixed the green and the purple, it made a perfect black!



You can add a bit of water if necessary to lighten the colors more. As you can see in the pictures, the colors are quite vibrant. Once your little ones are finished painting, you can put the lids on the paint and keep them in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Happy Painting!

50 Empowering Life Tips



 

1.  Don't wait around for someone to stick a label on you. If you want to be an animal rights activist, be one. If you want to be a human rights activist do that. Whatever you want to be, go be that. Define yourself. If you wait for someone to define you, you're probably not going to be happy with the label they pick.

2. No matter what you're religion or higher power, remember that everything you have ever been given or will be given came from the Earth. Honor the Earth and you will be honoring your higher power.

3. Remember the 60-40 rule. If 60% of your life is going well and 40% of it is failing, you're STILL winning.
4. You're not made of sugar and you're not going to melt in the rain. Whether literal or metaphorical, rain is no excuse to sit inside and complain that you're bored.
5. Everyone has their own standard of beauty. Meeting one persons standard means falling short of anothers. Be the beauty that YOU want to see in the mirror.
6. You are the one and only constant person in your life. You better be good company because guess what? You're stuck with you.
7. Make a goal to try something new every day.
8. Everybody has their own truth. What makes sense for one person won't make sense for another. There are very few “rights” when it comes to how things should be done.
9. When you find yourself in constant conflict, battling everyone around you and suffering one break up after another, then it really IS you. Sorry, but it's true. The good news is that you can fix you.
10. Some people have combative personalities. There's nothing you can do about it and shoving your perspective under their nose won't convince them that you're right. They will argue with you even when they agree with you.
11. Grow a plant, they're good therapy. If you suck at keeping plants alive, get a cactus. Recognize the limitations of your abilities and work with them.
12. Understand that we are all going about our day in the best way that we know how. Nobody is purposely trying to inconvenience you by being in your way.
13. Getting ahead in life rarely results from staying inside your comfort zone.
14. Don't be a sexist or racist ass-wipe. It's NOT going to get you anywhere in life. Really.
15. Finding people who agree with you doesn't mean that you're opinion is superior to another persons, because no matter what your ideology there will always be someone who agrees with it and others who don't.
16. Don't insult children. It's fine if you don't want them, it's fine if you choose not to be around them, but putting down any child will offend every single parent who hears you and you're going to look like a jerk.
17. Also, if you don't have children, keep your mouth shut on how they ought to be raised – especially when your beliefs aren't based on what is best for the child, but on making your life a little more comfortable.
18. None of us know every fact of any situation. Forming solid conclusions about any given person or situation means always being partly wrong.
19. Do get a soapbox. We all need to feel passionately about something, even when we're partly wrong about it.
20. Recovery is only impossible if you're dead. Recovery may not always be a hundred percent, but every situation can always get a little bit better than it is right now.
21. Don't be daunted when faced with an impossible task. Look at the tremendous feats man-kind has performed. A large amount of dirt can be moved by one person, one small shovel at a time.
22. When you feel like your voice doesn't matter, nothing you do can make a difference, remember this: there are other lonely voices who are singing the same tune at the same time. When those voices are all sung in the same direction, what is heard by the recipient is unison. You're never the only one, so sing loudly.
23. Get to know crazy people and weirdos. They will enrich your life in ways you cannot imagine.
24. What you project into the world is what you will receive. Some call this karma. Mostly, it's common sense. There are a few people who manage to be successful assholes, but we know them as the 1%. So that's probably not going to be you. Be nice if you want others to treat you well.
25. Finding a mate isn't about finding your ideal partner, but finding the person who's ideal partner is you. They're not going to be who you pictured yourself with when you were 13 so let go of your expectations.
26. Keep an open mind. Don't forget that life is about learning, first and foremost. You continue learning even up into old age.
27. Most people who are elderly are incredibly wise. Make friends with an old person, they can teach you a lot.
28. I've never heard a person say that they regret traveling too much and seeing the world or learning about other cultures.
29. Remember that the way you see the world is limited to the scope of your vision and another person can be standing right beside you and have a much broader view. This will likely change their opinion of what they are seeing.
30. Pick up trash on the street when you see it. Little things like that can make a big difference when many people do them.
31. Turn about is fair play. When someone shows you loyalty, remember them and repay the favor when you're able.
32. Take care of your body and your body will take care of you.
33. There are superficial jerks in the world, but most of us only want someone who doesn't make us feel badly about ourselves. If you want to make a lot of friends, spend time making a lot of people feel good about themselves. Then you will be genuinely popular, not superficially.
34. Do you ever notice that in movies, we all seem to root for the same person? No matter what our disagreements in life and the fact that as a society we can be so dramatically polarized, when it comes down to it we all just want the good guy to win.
35. In our own minds, we ALL think that we are the good guy.
36. Every substance that exists has it's use, but every substance that exists can be harmful when abused or overused. Moderation is the key to not totally fucking up your life.
37. Surprisingly, the people on television, movies, on the radio etc. aren't trying to entertain you. They are trying to sell you something. There is no exception, their goal is to get you to spend money in their direction, or in the direction of their sponsors.
38. When you say things like, “We didn't need that when I was a kid,” bear in mind how boring the world would be if we weren't changing things up all the time.
39. Being a bully won't get you respect. Remember that the most respected people to have ever walk the earth: Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Jesus and others were pacifists and they were revered for their gentle natures.
40. Parents: Just remember that they way you treat your children will become the way they treat their own.
41. You can be brilliant, witty and beautiful, but your value to others will always be contingent on what you bring to the table.
42. In very rare instances, you will find a person who loves you even when what you bring to the table is lacking. Treasure those people. That is called unconditional love and very few will ever give it to you.
43. Make stuff up. Make up stories, words, songs, anything you want. If you go looking for something and find that it doesn't exist, make it up. Every innovation and cultural advancement that has ever come about, came from somebody deciding not to follow the rules and make it up.
44. It's never too late to change your game plan.
45. Stop fretting over the things you haven't done and start looking forward to the things you'll get to do.
46. Remember what your basic human needs are and focus on them. Television and Nike's aren't among them.
47. Stop trying to impress people and be someone that others want to impress.
48. The world does not have unlimited money and resources. When you take more than you need, you are taking from someone who needs it. If you are not willing to take less on that score, be mindful of the fact that someone out there is getting less on account of you.
49. Love as many people as you can, nobody ever worries that they're going to have too many people at their funeral.
50. Do what you can to make others feel good. No one in life ever regrets being kind to someone, even when the other person doesn't deserve it.

photo: James Jordan

Strawberry Fields 4ever

I'm so happy it's spring! I'm not even irritated that we keep getting bouts of freezing temps and snow. I've lived in the Midwest plenty long and I know to expect snow clear into May. I enjoy the bouts of warm temps when they come and allow a bit of leeway when it comes to my spring planting.


Each spring I usually put in a bit of landscaping. Whether it's putting in flower beds, building trellises or building a new walkway or fire pit. Last year I moved my little water garden from the back corner of the yard to sit beside the porch. We had goldfish in it, but they never seem to make it more than a season and so I've determined that we will have a froggy pond, not a gold fish pond. I even made a sign, see?

There are poppies, daisies and coneflowers planted around the pond.
When they come in, it will be quite a pretty natural look.

This year, we wanted to grow strawberries but because the large oak tree planted in the corner of our yard is shading the back half of our garden, we needed to find a new site. The old pond site was looking pretty atrocious. I thought about it and thought about it, and came up with a design using materials we already had to make a raised strawberry bed on that slope.




My determination faltered for about a minute when I first came back to this site and became overwhelmed
by the amount of digging and excavating it was going to take. But one thing I've learned digging a lot
of holes (I have built 4 in ground water gardens) is that a large amount of dirt is easily moved, one
shovel at a time.

 

Adam was fascinated by what we found when we turned over these rocks!



The fill spot from where the pond used to sit was sunken in a bit and we were looking to make a raised bed. It took quite a lot of digging on the slope to bring all of the soil down.

I used to live in a house which butted up next to a creek. There was a long steep slope from my back door down to this creek, and this slope was positively littered with limestone rocks. It took many days outside to dig up these rocks and climb up the slope with them to the back yard, but I had a lot of them and my first pond was gorgeous! When we moved, we decided to bring the pond (and the rocks) with us. But because the pond now sits partially beneath our porch and we have far fewer rocks around it, we have a surplus of them sitting in the corner of the yard. The kids helped me move the rocks back over to our site where I dry stacked a sixteen inch tall wall.

Karlie was a big help breaking up the soil and raking it towards the front of our wall.

 

One thing I've gotten pretty good at over the years is dry stacking limestone rocks so that it's good looking and won't fall over, even when little feet run across them.

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There is plenty of room on the back end of this slope to build a second tier, for an herb garden. On the very top, I plan on growing some berry vines, such as blackberry, raspberry and blueberry.

I love that my kid dressed up like Bumblebee to help me in the yard.

We got some old weathered pallets from my next door neighbor and broke them up, cut them down, and made a little wooded "fence on the back end of the new bed. Adam had a lot of fun breaking them apart.

This little fence is to keep the bunnies out. They are jaggety on purpose.

We have a lot of bunnies in our neighborhood. Every spring the cute little shits eat up half of my produce as it's coming out of the ground. They're really fond of strawberry plants, so I built a barrier. The front and sides are raised and rocky, the rabbits will have a hard time getting in that way. On the back side, we dug a deep trench and then placed these posts to form a fence. They are purposely staggered in height for simplicity and for looks. Plus, it'll make it that much harder for the rabbits to find away over it.

We couldn't find our spade, so we used a kitchen spoon.

We planted around 28 June bearing straweberry plants. These are perennial, and will come back year after year if we take good care of them. That's why it was important for me to have a good place to keep them. I am expecting a pretty good crop to bake in pies, make strawberry shortcake, eat fresh and can into jams. Notice I did not say that I expect to have any for sharing.

Karlies favorite part is to water them in.

I expect this weekend to build the second tier and plant my herb garden.

I realized after I took this picture that I misspelled the sign.

Growing Native in My Flower Beds

Welcome to the April edition of the Simply Living Blog Carnival - Going Green cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. This month, we write about going green and environmentally friendly living. Please check out the links to posts by our other participants at the end of this post.

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I have always enjoyed growing a flower garden. My first flower bed was a six foot by two foot patch of dirt in front of a town home I was renting. That year we planted several flower seeds, but none of them took despite my best efforts of watering daily, fertilizing and weeding at least once a week.

That was eight or nine years ago. My green thumb is more practiced now and I can grow a whole lot of things. I have six flower beds in my yard now, as well as several large terracotta pots that I also grow flowers in.

I know that growing flowers isn't the most eco-friendly practice. I choose to forego fertilizer, though my flowers my look a bit wimpy. However, they still need water at least three times a week, and daily in the hottest months. With six large beds, it's a lot of water and it has bothered me for years that my marigolds and petunia's are so darn needy.

I learned about growing native when I first began gardening. Actually, I was looking for cheap/free seeds and I had wondered if I would be able to find plants out in the wild that would look nice in a flower bed. That is how I came across the term “Growing Native.”

But wildflowers in the city are hard to come by and I didn't have the time to drive all over the countryside looking for cone flowers and black-eyed susans. It was less expensive to spend 50 cents for a packet of allysum than order wild flower seeds from a nursery.

Then last spring, my city surprised me. They decided to grow native in all of their public landscaping! That's right, every city park has flower beds brimming with daisies, native asters, flowering milk weed, and some very interesting plants that I had never seen before.

Throughout the season I watched these flower beds mature with my home made seed packets at the ready. In this post from last fall, I describe the process of seed harvesting. When I knew that the seeds were ready, I went on a few excursions to get the native flowers that I wanted from some of my favorite parks. I was very careful to only clip a few dead flower heads and and be respectful to the plant the habitat.

I have waited all winter long to plant my precious little seeds and now that spring is here, I put them into the ground last week. Because I harvested my own, I was able to get a lot of seeds – especially purple cone flower. But I also planted daisies, poppies and a tall exotic looking (but native) grass. I missed harvesting the black-eyed susans, they were spent before I got to them.

While I do still have a few rose bushes and other non-native water plants in my water garden, I will slowly replace these with native species as they age and need replaced.

So what is the point of growing native? How is this a green thing to do, and how does it simplify my world?

Native plants require very little, if any, watering. They are completely used to living in the conditions which I planted them so no need to amend the soil. They are resistant to local pests and plant diseases. They don't need fertilizer to grow well. In other words, you can plant native flowers in their home environment and they will thrive with virtually no care whatsoever. That's easy on my time constraints as well as my budget and it also keeps my yard organic while looking top-notch.

Another plus of native growing is that the local wild life will benefit from what I have planted. These are the plants that best serve the butterflies, lady bugs and other local insects who can feast on the plants without damaging them. In many urban settings, the beneficial insect populations are dwindling, which impacts the larger animals who need the bugs to survive.

Growing native looks great, costs very little (if anything), requires practically no care, and boosts the health of the native ecosystem.

If you would like more information about growing native, visit:
grownative.org

If you live in Missouri and are looking for information (or seeds and seedlings) of native Missouri plants, visit:

www.missouriplants.com
www.missourinativeplantsociety.org
www.mowildflowers.net



Cone Flower Photo Credit: Sean McMenemy

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  Thank you for visiting the Simply Living Blog Carnival cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children , Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair . Read about how others are incorporating eco-friendly living solutions into their everyday lives. We hope you will join us next month, as the Simply Living Blog Carnival focuses on Daily Lives!

 

 

• Green Renovating: A Lot, A Little, Not So Much - Laura at Authentic Parenting ponders about the many things that have an impact on eco-friendly renovating
• Growing Native in My Flower Beds - Destany at They Are All of Me takes the guilt out of her flower habit by switching from high maintenance flowers to native plants which not only lessens her gardening load, but also benefits the local wild life.
• Baby Steps - Kellie at Our Mindful Life shares how her family became more sustainable, one step at a time.
• A Greener Holiday - Sara from Family Organic discusses the overwhelming amount of "stuff" that comes with every holiday and talks about how to simplify instead.
• Forcibly Green--Obligatory Organic - Survivor at Surviving Mexico talks about her family's evolution from passive to active green and sustainable living.
• Giving It Away - Juliet Kemp of Twisting Vines writes about the role of Freecycle, the giant karmic lending library, in her simple and green living.
• Simply Sustainable - Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children discusses her family's attempts to live in harmony with the earth by living simply and more sustainably.
• How Does Your Yarden Grow - Alisha at Cinnamon&Sassafras writes about an ongoing permaculture project, converting her grass lawn into a mower-free paradise.
• Green? - Is it about ticking the boxes? sustainablemum shares her thoughts on what being green means in her life.
• Using Cloth Products To Reduce Household Waste - Angela from Earth Mama's World shares how her family replaced many disposable household products with cloth to reduce their household waste.
• Going Green in Baby Steps - Joella of Fine and Fair shares some small, easy steps to gradually reduce your environmental impact.
• Are You Ready To Play Outside?! - Alex from AN Portraits writes about gardening, and playing in the dirt, and how it's O.K. to get dirty, play in the dirt, play with worms, for both adults and kids.
• Lavender and Tea Tree Oil Laundry Booster - At Natural Parents Network, Megan from The Boho Mama shares an all-natural way to freshen laundry.

Make Your Own "Opoly"

I first made Futuropoly years ago for my kids Christmas gift. At the time I decided I was going to do a board game, space and the future were running themes in our household.

Futuropoly is also not the first board game I have made with Monopoly as the basis. I once did Footballopoly back when our oldest boys were wee little babes. That of course, was for my husband, and used pro football teams as property.

Whatever Opoly you choose to go with, you can have a lot of fun adapting the theme to fit the game. Most of this can also be created with items around your house, making it thrifty and eco-friendly.

To make a game, you need to put together the following components:

• The board - I used a half inch square piece of nice plywood. You want it to be furniture grade wood because it's going to last for years. This board is 2' x 2'.
  Use a straight edge and ruler to partition off the property slots. You'll have a large square in each corner, and nine slots in between each one. I painted mine with inexpensive watercolor paints, acting as stain. I used a sharpie marker to draw the straight lines, and then I applied polyurethane over the top to seal it all in. The gold paint went on last, because polyurethane causes the gold to smear.
  
  Create the property names with the theme of your game. Some of ours are "Omega 1 System" and "Alpha Center." Regions of outer space, in other words. I looked up names of star systems and galaxies. Where the colors coordinate, the names also coordinate. For instance, the red properties are "Delphius Scape," "Dorado Lat," and "Draco Region."
  
  Instead of railroads, we have teleports, and Jail is "Suspension Chamber." Utilities are "Fusion Company," and "Fission Company," and instead of Income Tax, we have "Robot Maintenance" and "Alien Housing Tax."
  
  You get the gist!

• Cards - There are two sets of cards in any Opoly game. Ours are Question Mark and Time Capsule. The Time Capsule cards refer to things in todays era. I had a ton of fun making up crazy things that could happen to either fine players or reward them. "The shifty Robot you purchased at the Hydrus Sector Swap Meet stole your space pup and fled the galaxy. Pay 700k's for Unrestrained Droid Violation."
  There are 30 cards for each stack, and were made out of poster board. I also made property cards out of poster board. Because it's Futuropoly, I accounted for massive inflation and everything costs a ridiculous amount of money.

• Money! - This unfortunately isn't easily customizable. You can buy Monopoly Money from online sources like Ebay and Amazon. We used Play Money that we bought from the Dollar Store, but it too can be purchased from Amazon. The play money comes in higher bills than Monopoly does (usually) and this jived well with our ridiculous inflation.

• Houses and Hotels - When I first made the game, I used Polymer Clay from the craft store and shaped little futuristic buildings with it. In the image of my board game above, you can see the way these looked, painted with purple and gold enamel.
  But that was years ago and they have been lost. Lego's work well though!

• Characters and Dice - Dice can be bought at the store, usually with a pack of cards. Not expensive at all! And characters should not be purchased, but each person playing the game should search for their own piece, which makes it more personal and fun.

• Box - I just chuck all of my pieces in a little non-descript box to be kept beside the game board. Except when I had Footballopoly, it was all a part of a large game set built out of MDF. I hope to make one of those again soon!

That should take care of it all! You should know the basics of playing Monopoly, and your Opoly game will go in the same manor. If you do make your own Opoly game, come back here and tell me all about it!