Raised Garden Beds

After our (amazing, outstanding, ridiculously fun) wedding in Crested Butte, we came home to find that all of our tomato plants had been producing like crazy! The raised beds we put together in the spring are making us and the plants all very happy. It would seem that the farther section gets the best light/conditions because the ones there are exploding. It will be interesting to see if next year the plants feel the same way.

Irises in Bloom

The front yard irises have been very happy this year! Three of them decided to bloom all at once in the middle of April! At this rate we will be splitting them next year <3

Air Plants

I've been wanting to put plants in the entryway since I first painted in here. For Christmas this year, Nick's mom gave me this candle holder, and I thought it would be the perfect home for some cute plants eventually! We did light the candles a few times, but usually we forgot to replace the burnt-out tealights until we wanted to light them again, and it just ended up not getting used as much as I wanted to. I thought about tiny succulents, but I didn't want to try to cram them into too small of a space and not give them any room to grow. I came across an article with links to these air plants on Amazon, and I haven't seen any in my local nurseries, so it seemed like a good way to get some cool plants for cheap. (I also found the same seller on Etsy and they have a good selection there too!)

Air plants are really cool! If you haven't heard about them, they require no soil, just water and sun, so you can put them anywhere that gets good light. I filled our glass votive holders with pebbles and just have my air plants sitting on top of them. I mist them once or twice a week and soak them for half an hour every few weeks and them seem to be very happy!

They were shipped in individually labeled paper bags and were all in great condition. At least one of these is supposed to turn red when it's about to bloom, so I'm excited for that to happen! I love new plants, especially new kinds of plants.

Spring is Here Again!

Springtime means new plants! We went to two different events at the Zilker Botanical Garden in the past several weeks and got some really fun things.

First, Zilker Garden Fest! We've grown one pepper plant and lots of herbs before, but we finally picked up some fat pepper and tomato seedlings for the first time. We're waiting until we put up a fence on the back of the property so we can take down the chain link and use that space for a raised bed since that gets the best light, but we don't want to take up the only space puppies can play without supervision with a bunch of garden beds, so we just opted for large containers until the fencing situation changes. Every single plant now has flowers so they are definitely happy on the deck in pots!

Our ZGF haul - three peppers, two tomatoes, a succulent, and basil from the Travis County Master Gardener Association (TCMGA)

From left to right: Garden Salsa Hybrid pepper, Cubanelle pepper, & Big Bertha pepper

The chicken wire cages prevent the squirrels from bothering our cute little plants. Here are the Celebrity Hybrid and Black Cherry Heirloom tomatoes right after planting as well.

Here they are today! Very happy!

 

Donkey's Tail from the TCMGA. I split off one of its pups into its own tiny pot to get two out of this one!

East Austin Succulents was at the fest as well, so I was able to replace the poor Desert Rose that I killed a few weeks ago :( I think I know how to not kill this one...

Along with basil, I also picked up some sage and mint plants for our herb planters. The mint has exploded! I've been making mojitos and mint juleps for weeks and it's only growing stronger, so I'm gonna have to have a few mint parties.

 The weekend after the ZGF was the Cactus & Succulent Show & Sale, also at the botanical garden.

The near box is Angela's haul (Clockwise from the top: perhaps a Black Prince Echeveria, Echinocerus chloranthus, Panda kalanchoe, Tiger Jaws, Anacampseros rufescens). She got some really good ones! $16 for all of these I believe. We only got a few for ourselves that are in the far box (Pencil cactus, Big Needle Cactus, Elkhorn succulent) because we already seem to have a succulent problem... but of course now I'm jealous of the cool ones Angela got. 

This Pencil Cactus was the weirdest we got by far. It had a flower on it when we got it and we'll see if it ever flowers again.

I looove the way they all looked on this windowsill together. I will have no choice but to add more to my collection now that Angela took hers away because they just look so cool in a group!

Also I never posted about our most recent trip to East Austin Succulents! This is the trip that started Angela's plant obsession. I think I've created a monster. Muahaha.

Really though, look how cute they all are even before they are potted! Angela has good taste in plants and I'm always jealous of the ones she picks! I need to get some of those for myself too, especially the tiny Portulaca in the bottom row. It's like the tiniest tree and it's totally adorable.

Echeveria harmsii

Lizard Lips Aloe

I thought this was a Hobbit Jade but it turns out it's a Gollum Jade. Who names these things???

Little Spikey Aloe. I love the glass container for this one and I'll have to use more glass containers in the future because it's really cool looking.

The last few plants are from various stores & events, but I didn't want to leave them out because I love them! Plants are so awesome you guys. Not pictured is a string of pearls that got badly infested with gnats. I wanted one for so long and it died almost as soon as I got it :(

I love asparagus ferns, so I got a tiny one that I'm going to grow big and strong in my hanging pot right outside the back door. So far the squirrels don't seem to care about this one, which is good, because this spot was hell for a couple of others and they almost killed my Heart Leaf Ice Plant for good when it was here!

We got this cool echeveria (secunda perhaps?) in a terrarium from the Renegade Craft Fair that was here in Austin.

I didn't know this air plant would look so cool when it bloomed! We got this one for free when we bought the echeveria.

Jungle House

We recently had to bring in all of the potted plants from outdoors when it dropped below freezing stayed there each night, and now our house is a jungle wonderland! I'm going to have a tough time giving them all back up to the porch when the warm weather comes back around, so I might just have to get a bunch more for in the house year-round to fill up the empty spaces.

Aside from the plants, there is another new addition to the master bedroom...

It's this little light switch in the corner. We have several flood lights on the back porch, but the one that is between the living room and our bedroom only had a switch in the living room, so if we forgot to switch it off before bed we would have to go all the way back through the house to turn it off. Not any more! Nick cut a hole in the wall and wired a switch up to control the same light using three-way light switches in both rooms.

Another recent electrical project was finally replacing the extension cord that has been draped across the ceiling to power the garage door opener since we first moved in. A few months back Nick replaced the old chain opener with a new WiFi-enabled belt opener (that we got on sale for under $200 including tax!), and now it's got a fancy new outlet in the ceiling to just plug into directly. This picture is from right after Nick installed it so the cord is still hanging down and it's not super pretty, but you get the idea. Hooray for safe electricity use!

Living Room Changes

 I really love the way our living room is turning out. Here are a few things we've added lately...

A snake plant in a pretty new pot from The Natural Gardener

A cool metal "h" that my future cousin found on the side of the road (??) that I painted bright shiny red!

The most exciting thing we've done in here recently is add a GIANT decal to our GIANT mirror that's right smack-dab in the middle of the wall (which makes it very hard to decide where the TV should go, by the way).

Before: No decal, just the most humongous mirror anyone's ever seen.

Half up... And it stayed this way for a good three weeks because we were so reluctant to do the other half.

But finally... it's done!

The decal was delivered in two pieces, one for the city-scape and one for the tree-scape. This is not a re-positionable decal, so we basically had one shot to get it right. The first (top) half was a disaster. It started going on wonky really fast and before we could do anything it was stuck and there was really nothing we could do about it except smooth out as much as possible and cry over some really bad wrinkles. Nick was so upset that he wanted to repurchase the darn thing and start all over!! We got it on sale the first time, but I was definitely not game for spending another $50 only to have the same thing happen again and also have to deal with removing the first bit we put down. Mr. Perfectionist had to just deal with it.

Then we waited until we could work up the motivation to do the other half. We knew the top half was all kinds of crooked in the middle so there was no way the bottom half was going to line up perfectly, so we cut that sucker into three pieces and put them each up individually, which really helped save our sanity this time. We ended up with two extra seams this way, but the benefit was not wanting to strangle each other the whole time. Nobody got strangled and we got all the trees up pretty smoothly, so everything turned out OK in the end. Nick just has to stand really far back when he looks at it so he doesn't get angry every time. :P

Nick finally got the crown molding removed from the beam in the middle of the living room (yes, you read that right, crown molding on a solid wood beam) so my next project will be painting it brown so we can pretend it's pretty stained wood instead of a potentially gorgeous beam that someone painted BEIGE of all things.

From Grandma's House

Three months after falling off the blog train I'm back with a post I actually wrote in June but never posted! 

My parents were up in Ohio about a month three months ago clearing out tons of stuff from her basement, closets, cupboards, etc. No storage area was left untouched! When my mom came to visit me last weekend, she brought several of these things with her, and now we have all of these lovely reminders of my grandma around the house, which makes me really happy.

My grandma collected these chickens in every color!

This plant stand was in a box in her basement. It was clearly assembled at some point but I don't know if I ever saw it. Somehow every last little piece except a single screw end cap was still in the box.

We don't know who crocheted this afghan, but I love it! (We actually have moved this bed upstairs and now have a borrowed full-size in here.)

I'm somewhat concerned that this may be the beginning of a map collection. We already have an Austin city map hanging in the guest room and a world map that has yet to be hung up anywhere so if Nick isn't careful I might just sand down the walls and wallpaper them with maps when he isn't looking!

The globe is old enough that it still has Egypt shown as UAR and has a bunch of other interesting differences from how the world looks now.

I promise I won't disappear for another three months this time. Summer is ending and we've already taken our annual overseas trip, so we are gone for fewer weekends and there's finally time to work on house things again. Plus, I've started painting the kitchen!