Gardening Start Up

Although this last weekend was completely rained out for us I spent my time cleaning and starting up this summers garden. To my surprise everything started sprouting on Sunday and look how well it is doing!

All I used was some miracle grow organic outdoor mix, water, and my favorite heirloom seeds from Bakers Creek. You can find their website here.

Last year my very good friend Erin gave me this hand me down starter box. After the gardening season the winds got a hold of it and half of the inside was broken (as you can see below). I went to find a new one and discovered you can't just by the inside parts. I didn't want to waste money since the one I have works fine! So I tried to find the dehydrated starter pods that you water and rehydrate but I had no luck finding them.

Then Friday evening I was looking through a catalog and found this wood device that you can make your own newspaper pots with. I thought what a great idea! But I didn't have thirty dollars to spend and they would have been a larger medium size pot. So I played around with my newspaper and figured out how to make my own starter sized newspaper pods! I will have to post the tutorial to make them. It is so easy and even better they are FREE!!!

DIY coffee cozy

While standing in line to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks I saw they had felt coffee cozies. I thought they would make adorable gifts but at 5 dollars a pop I definately couldn't afford it. So I decided to make my own. It is so easy and requires very little sewing.

Materials : Felt

1/2 in ribbon

1/8 in elastic

Lanyard Hook (optional)

small eyelet and setter (optional)

First your going to need to take a cardboard coffee cozy from your favorite coffee shop and pull it apart. Use it as your pattern and cut out the felt.

Next fold it in half and sew it together at the end. Leave about a 1/2 inch flap at the end.

Next punch your hole and set your eyelet

Now cut the ribbon to make your 'tag' 1 1/2" and cut your elastic 3"

Now you are going to place your ribbon "tag" and elastic and sew a stright line down to sew them into place. Make sure they are sewn in securely otherwise they will come out.

Then if you included the eyelet you can add a lanyard hook so you can attach it to your keys. I used the below lanyard hooks.

Here you have it, your coffee cozy. Roll it up and use the elastic to keep it rolled up so you can keep it on your keychain at all times. You can choose different ribbon and tread to make yours unique!

Getting IT Together

It has been such a journey since the end of 2011. I really can't believe it's already March. It's been so long since my last post you all probably thought the worst!

We have been incredibly busy and going though a lot as a family. I don't talk about our family a whole lot mainly because I figure not you probably don’t want to hear about it. But I have to say that I am so thankful for the people that have been there for us its meant a lot to me.

After my last post I was lucky enough to find a new job. My workload is similar however I have a huge learning curve. Fortunately I have an awesome new manager has been training me from the ground up so I am very blessed. The job also provides me a lot more flexibility, but it has also been time consuming to bring myself up to speed. So everything else (except family) was put on the back burner. Can you imagine what my house looked like-eek!

On top of getting a new job and everyday life we finally after some struggling we're able to have Xavier assessed. For as long as I can remember X has had the beat of a 'different drummer'. He is an awesome little boy and I completely adore him but he was struggling in school. So after begging and pleading with our pediatrician we were able to take him to a neuropsychologist. He assessed Xavier and found that he has a very high IQ but has a five second attention span and came to the conclusion that X has ADHD. This wasn't a big surprise for us since ADHD runs in the family.

Our whole process since Xavier being diagnosed has been somewhat of a bumpy ride.
When friends asked about it I was greeted with all sorts of different reactions. But it seems that life is getting back to normal. Logan is getting the attention he needs and Xavier seems to be happier. So everything can get back on track.