Month: February 2011

A Garden To-Do List

We haven’t touched our front garden in four months and you can tell.

After our hard work last summer, this mound of weeds is a terrifying sight.

The winter rains have helped the weeds take over the yard. We never pruned back our perennials (plants that will grow back again this spring). We never yanked those bare cosmos plants, annuals dead because of frost and in dire need of being removed. The yard was a mess:

We’ve had a string of gorgeous (gorgeous!) summer-like days, so my daughter and I spent two hours starting to whip that front yard into shape. We’re all about telling that clover who’s boss.

(Especially when it’s 75 degrees out and super sunny; we HAD to be outside.)

After our mama-daughter clean-up party, the yard looks a little bit better:

We still have lots to do. Here’s our list of garden tidying tasks for the month:

1. Take down and dissemble holiday wreaths.

2. Remove rotting pumpkins from porch and place into compost bins.

3. Tiddy up kids toys so we don’t come close to breaking our necks every time we enter the house.

4. Find a pillow and sew a cover for the porch chair. This one has been on my to-do list for two years. We’ll see if we get to it this year.

5. Finish weeding. Cause we have three feet tall giant purple allium bulbs set to arrive in this exact spot soon. Like next week.

6. We also need to lay down a layer of compost and mulch to prepare for the long, dry summer ahead.

We have a little bit of time for the last task because even if it feels like summer with these atypical hot and dry days, it’s really just February, right?! Oh, wait, it’s February in Northern California and our last frost date is a month and a half away!

My to-do list just got longer.

It appears I need to get our veggie beds ready too. Time to start those cool-season crops on our windowsill because spring is just around the corner.

I’m so excited! Stay tuned!

The Bobbin Winding Continues

We’ve been hard at work organizing our arts and craft supplies. Today I am focusing on our ongoing attempt at bringing order to our giant stash of embroidery floss.

We have been slowly and steadily winding our way through the enormous quantity of embroidery floss that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. (Have I mentioned how much I love that my in-laws own an arts supplies store and gallery?!)

Lucky for me, our three-year old daughter loves to help me wind bobbins.

I believe bobbin winding is a great activity to build hand strength. I’ve read about how cutting with scissors helps build hand strength in children, an essential first step towards writing. I believe that bobbin winding also helps with this as well. Both the winding of the handle and the holding of the string helps develop hand dexterity and strength.

We also added a color lesson to today’s bobbin winding activity. (I love how every day activities can be transformed into learning experiences!) We sorted the strands into piles of different colors:

We also giggled when we mixed them up, purposefully placing (throwing!) a pink floss in the blue pile, for example, which sent my daughter into a fit of giggles:

The kid loves adding chaos to my attempt at finding order.

We so enjoy these mama-daughter activities. We’ve found sorting floss and winding bobbins to be a calming, quiet activity to do together.

We only have a couple hundred bobbins to go. Piece of cake! I think it may take us all year.

Our Go-To Dressing

We recently stopped buying salad dressing and started making our own from scratch. We found vinaigrette making to be easy, containing fewer additives, costing less to make, and tasting so much better.

Here’s our go-to salad dressing that’s our current favorite.

This maple-mustard vinaigrette uses simple ingredients (pantry staples!), takes 5 minutes to make, and lasts for the week.

Maple-Mustard Vinaigrette

Yield: Makes 3/4 cup

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 small shallot, minced (we use 2 small garlic cloves instead)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Whisk together all ingredients in a medium bowl or a small bell jar; set aside.

We’ll never go back to store bought dressings after this.

Make Your Own Stickers

We picked up a Xyron Create a Sticker Machine at our local craft resale shop, along with a refill cartridge for just a couple bucks. Thrift store score!

The sticker maker machine is actually incredibly affordable (i.e. under $6!), so if this project appeals to you at all, I recommend picking one up! We’ve been using ours every day since we bought it.

Here’s how we made our own stickers:

We used plain construction paper, colored pencils and our Winnie the Pooh stamps, also scored from a thrift store. These stamps may look old and well-loved, but I’m thrilled we found them as I have been unable to find similar ones anywhere.

We stamped different Hundred Acre Wood characters onto plain paper, then filled in (over!) the outlines with colored pencils.

After cutting out the stamp shapes, we fed them through the sticker maker, peeled off the front and back of the tape, and voilà! We have a personalized Piglet sticker! Our little girl was thrilled.

We’ve also made butterfly clip art and colored shape stickers cut from construction paper.


The possibilities with this sticker maker are endless!

We used these beautiful handmade stickers on some of the thank you notes from our birthday festivities. A handmade-touch to the cards and a super fun project!

Arts and Craft Supplies Organization – Paper Storage Inspiration

We’ve been working on organizing our arts and craft supplies. Today I am focusing on different ways to store paper.

I adore the simplicity and functionality of this writing center, from one of my favorite educational sites Playful Learning:

Everything stored is easy to see and readily accessible!

Ali Edwards also has fantastic paper storage ideas in her old studio:

I love the three different types of paper storage shown in the above photograph, but I am not sure that any of them would work for us. I especially like the open paper storage, but I wonder if the paper might get dusty being uncovered in our house.

I also like the idea of using clear magazine files to organize paper:

I like how this solution takes up little space and with the clear files it’s easy to see the different papers. My concerns with this solution are that we’d have to keep the files full or the paper might warp, and that the paper may get dusty.

(Clearly, the theme of this post is that I need to dust more frequently.)

A dust-free solution might involve this IKEA drawer unit shown in Victoria’s beautiful (!) home office all the way on the right:

Unfortunately those drawers would take up space that I’m just not sure we have. Sigh.

What paper storage method are we going to use? I have absolutely no idea! I need to get to the stores and see what inspires me.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going to be reusing the plastic, semi-transparent drawers we already own.

Stay tuned…