Garden Tags, Tomato Towers, and Transplants

I am always very obsessive and gluttonous about my tomatoes.  I tend to go overboard with too many varieties (for our little lot), and should probably be giving up a few of them in exchange for some other veggies.  But, no.  Mine is a tomato-heavy garden.  And that’s the way I like it.

We are currently in the process of tucking all of our precious little seedlings (tomato and non-tomato) all throughout the garden.  I figured I would show you one such spot, and a couple of corresponding projects.

Last year, we bought these great little ladder-style free-standing trellises from Lowe’s, and I decided to see how they did with the tomatoes.

In a nutshell, they were okay, but not great for this purpose.  I figured out pretty quickly that when I used them this year, I would be making some modifications.  So I split them all in half, and then, with some handy-dandy zip ties, I put them back together as an actual tower (if I had had enough, I would have preferred to use some raffia-covered wire instead of zip ties, for aesthetic purposes–but I was out and too impatient to get this done….so, zip ties, it is!)

I simply put three ‘halves’ together in triangle formation, and zip tied each corner, top and bottom.

I attached a strip of burlap around the base for one very important reason: CHICKENS.  This is to prevent them from sticking their interloping little paws in there and innocently digging up the seedlings.  Additionally, I did a little ‘companion planting’, and added some marigolds and basil around the base of each tower; these plants are supposed to help the tomatoes by deterring pests (chickens included).  Last season, I was amazed at how the girls were completely uninterested in the marigolds (aside from accidentally kicking a few young plants over as they do their little chicken-boogies in the dirt).  This season, I’ve been planting a lot of basil (due to its alleged fly-repelling properties), and lo and behold, the chickens steer clear of it, as well!

As we have been transferring plants out into the garden, I’ve been in dire need of tags.  You may remember my Chalkboard Plant Markers from Old Gift Cards–which are all well and good, except for the fact that I am out of gift and club cards to use!  So I was scrambling for something else, when I suddenly realized that I have been keeping all the little plastic markers that come with nursery plants.  Lightbulb moment!

Yet again, I cannot believe that these have been staring me in the face for SO LONG. I have SO MANY OF THESE stored up!

So yeah….hit these with some chalkboard spray paint, and then take a white grease pencil to them:

I wanted to use these as tags tied to my tomato towers, and many of them actually come with a built-in hole in the pointy end (but those that didn’t, I just used a hole-punch to remedy that), so I strung them with twine and tied them on:

For plants that don’t have a cage to tie to, you can just pop them in the ground like they come in your nursery packs.  However, in this garden, those things do not stand up to scratching chicken feet; they get flung like tiny frisbees across the yard.  I usually punch a hole, once again, in the pointy end, and then anchor them into the ground with a landscape staple.

Hello, blurry photo!!!

Once securely in the ground, these are pretty chicken-scratch sturdy.

You may have noticed the chicken wire that has been mounted on the fence behind the tomato towers.

That is for our hops to hopefully train up on (and simultaneously protect the current little seedlings from chicken demolition).

Baby hops, tucked safely under the chicken wire.

This is our first time growing hops–so I have no idea if this is going to work!

But….back to the tomatoes….hopefully very soon I’ll be sharing photos like this again:

Joy!!!

And this:

Super-sized joy!!!

 

 

 

An Impressionist Art Lesson from the Chickens

I don’t do a lot of kid stuff on this blog, because, well, we don’t have any of the two-legged, non-feathered variety.  But from time to time, my ‘loaner kids’ come over for a visit (good friends of the family–the two girls were our wedding flower girls!) The chickens were thrilled to have three of their favorite kids (we refer to them as C2, C3, and C1, respectively) over the other day for an ‘art lesson’ on Impressionism.  (There are only a handful of subjects that I possibly know enough about to try to ‘teach’ anyone: decorative wreathes, cocktails, and Impressionist painters….for this ‘lesson’ it was a close call between subjects 2 and 3.  No one wants to learn about wreathes.)

We began with some print-outs of a few well-known Vincents and Claudes, so the kids could get a feeling for how these painters concentrated less on specific form, and more on color and light.  I also wanted them to notice the deliberate brushstrokes, and the layering of color upon color.  We were going to paint the chickens in this manner, but we weren’t going to paint what our brains told us a chicken looked like; we were going to paint based on the colors we were seeing.  To help with this a bit, I selected photos of each of our birds and applied a painting filter effect to them in Photoshop, then printed them out…they looked something like this:

This may seem a bit like ‘cheating’, but I wanted the kids to see the chicken more as bits of color and light, rather than just a chicken.

So each kid picked a chicken, and we began.  Because the focus of this project was the bird, I had them ignore the backgrounds in the photos and simply fill their entire canvas with simple, bold color.

We filled the entire canvas, and then let them dry while we had a juice break.  And yes, those are trash bag painting smocks.

Next, the kids drew the outline of the chicken in white, and filled it in so that we could layer other colors nicely over the top.  (This is mostly due to the type of paint we were working with; non-toxic kid paints tend to be very transparent and don’t work as well for layering as the oil paints of the Impressionists.)

The face of concentration.

A darned fine Gertie silhouette.

We then let that layer dry thoroughly (yay for the quick-drying powers of acrylic paint!).

So while we waited….this happened!

Epic photo-bombing.

Next, it was time to start layering on some color, Impressionist-style:

C1′s face paint is still cracking me up.

Another comprehensive animal photo-bombing.

I urged the kids to paint the colors that they were seeing.  For instance, instead of falling into the trap of thinking a chicken’s comb is red, look closer: it’s actually rather pink.

C2 couldn’t help but embellish the background.

C1 really got into the ‘dappling’ brushstrokes. Very Monet!

Yeah, Southpaw!

We layered and layered the different colors until we got some pretty good results!

Gertie has never looked better!

‘Millie and Eloise in the Garden’, acrylic on canvas, by C1

I somehow didn’t get a close-up of C2′s finished Clementine portrait (she was still working till the bitter end!)….but please enjoy the final group shots:

Not sure who wins best face….but we got some pretty awesome paintings here, if I do say so myself!!!

Super Simple Starfish Wall Decor

I know what you’re thinking….starfish aren’t really very ‘farmy’.  But aside from the facts that I grew up near the beach, and we’re in Los Angeles which is technically on the beach, these starfish hold some pretty heavy sentimental value.  You see, the Texan and I got married on the beach, and instead of flower petals scattered down the aisle, we had starfish and sea glass.  We tried very hard to gather up as many of them afterwards to bring home with us (I also have a large jar of the sea glass, as well as a small jar of sand from the very spot we took our vows….I’m not usually so mushy, but this was important to me!)

Here’s a few shots from our wedding:

Our ceremony site: on the beach in Los Cabos, Mexico.

A shot of how the aisle was set up.

Close up of the starfish in action.

Gotta throw one of these in!

And this one’s fun….this was about a thirtieth of a second before we both doubled over laughing.  (BTW, this was the morning after the actual wedding–it was our ‘wreck the dress’ shoot–good times!).

All right, enough of that!  Back to work!!

I really wanted to display our starfish in a unique way.  I didn’t want to do anything cheesy–framing seemed too obvious and we just have so many of them!  I finally decided that I just wanted to stick them to the wall, and at first, I put a glob of earthquake putty on each one and just stuck them up like that.  This was all well and good until we had a really hot day and I walked in to find that my painstakingly-lined up grid of starfish was now a detail from a Dalí painting.

It was then that I had my ‘Ah-ha’ moment.  Thumbtacks.  All I needed was thumbtacks.

Here is the world’s most complicated how-to:

Starfish, white thumbtack, and hot glue.

Put a decent glob of hot glue in the center of the back of the starfish, and sink your thumbtack into it so that the glue rises over the first lip of the head of the thumbtack.  Hold it in place until the glue is set.

Let that glue harden and cool completely.  Meanwhile, mark off a grid in the shape that you want it on your wall.  I did a grid of twenty-four starfish: four across, six down.  The marks represent the center of each starfish, and I went ahead and spaced mine six inches from each other (every starfish is, obviously, a different size, so this winds up being an imperfect science–but it works!)

Now, take your fully-dried starfish and gently press the thumbtack into your mark on the wall (if you have drywall–if you have some sort of paneling, you may want to pre-drill a bit so the thumbtack goes in easy).

Press into the wall straight-on–if you angle it at all, you risk snapping the thumbtack off.

There you have it!

The offset of the thumbtacks really makes for some amazing shadows on the wall.

DIY Weathered Wood Headboard

As part of our master bedroom makeover, the Texan and I decided that it was way past due that we have an actual headboard.  Our guest bedroom bed has a darned headboard; shouldn’t we?  How fancy of us!  That being said, we aren’t quite fancy enough yet that we want to spend much money on it (ie: any money, at all).  So we turned, yet again, to our scrap wood pile for a few leftover 2×4′s and some dinged-up pine boards (all of which can be acquired for a nominal fee at your local home improvement store).

We started by building the frame; this took a bit of baffled staring at the wall where the headboard was going to figure out the exact dimensions.  We’ve got light switches and window frames to factor in, but really, it boiled down to a personal preference on how we wanted it to look.  We figured out roughly where we wanted the peak of the arch to be, and roughly where we wanted the edges of the arch to be, height-wise.

Our professionally-drawn plans.  Hey, it isn’t on a napkin!

Once we had decided on all that, it was time to build the frame.

We cut the four pieces according to our height (42 1/2″) and width (72″) requirements, then screwed them together with metal straps from the home improvement center.

Next, we cut our 6″ wide pine planks all to length (29″, which is the length from the bottom cross piece of the headboard to the highest point of the arch).  Here’s a little tip: before you assemble these, use an electric sander or even just sandpaper (I used a Dremel) to knock down the corners along the lengths of the boards–even though they sit side-by-side, those edges still tend to be rather sharp….if there is one thing you don’t want your headboard to be, it’s sharp.

Line your boards side-by-side and face-down, and place the frame on top of them. Screw through the frame and into the boards, one screw in each top and bottom. We used 1-5/8″ length screws–long enough to go through the 2×4 and into the boards, but not long enough to go all the way through the boards.

Millie monitors the Texan’s progress.

At this point, the basic headboard is assembled.  But we wanted to get crazy with the top edge and do an arch.  Which is a little tricky.  This, I’m sure, could be done by one person, but it is a lot easier with two, trust me.

You want to start with the headboard laying flat, face up.  You also need a pencil and a long length of twine.

Find the midpoint of the top edge of the headboard (which is where the highest point of the arch will be), then measure straight back a ways (we used an extra board as a straight reference, because the eventual point you are looking for will fall somewhere below the headboard).  The farther back you go, the more gradual of an arch you will wind up making–you’ll have to fiddle with it a bit and figure out what shape arch looks best for what you are doing.  But basically, you just need to have one person pin one end of the string down (this effectively, is the center of the circle that your arch is a part of), and then tie or hold the other end of the string to a pencil, carefully drawing your line by moving the pencil along in an arc at the end of that string.  You’ll have to practice a few times without making a mark to really figure out what works best.  I am sure there is a more precise way of doing this, but I was never any good at math, so this is quite mathy enough, thank you!

You’ll wind up with a pretty legit arch:

You can see I screwed up a few times. (meh.)

It was time for my favorite tool: the Dremel Trio, which is a handy-dandy little multi-function router-thingy (it routs, it sands, it cuts, it slices, it dices!  JK on the last two–I got carried away).  Carefully, I cut along my not-so-painstakingly-done guidelines.  You can see I didn’t make the cleanest cut….

The arch I wound up cutting was wobbly, at best.  But I figured that because I wanted this headboard to be pretty weathered and beat-up looking, having a wobbly top edge wasn’t the worst thing in the world.  I did sand the living daylights out of the top, which took the wobbliness down quite a bit.

Next, it was time to beat the wood up.  I wanted some glaring imperfections, so I gathered a few weapons and took my aggressions out on this poor, innocent headboard.

Some of my favorite distressing techniques/tools include: tapping a nail in little clusters to emulate worm holes, letting a grinder skip across, repeatedly hitting with both ends of a hammer, etc. Distressing wood is fun.

If there are any splintered wood bits from all your abuse, be sure to give those a quick sand.

Time for stain!  I began with a layer of grey stain (Varathane Weathered Grey).

Next, I layered on a basic brown stain (what we had sitting around: Minwax Early American):

I hate the smell of stain.  I cannot think of anything worse than that smell, right next to my head, soaking into my sheets, as I try to sleep.  Ugh.  So, at this point, we left the headboard outside for several days to air out.  I’ve also read that if you scrub white vinegar on it, it helps to neutralize the smell.  So I did this….a few times.  I like to believe it helped.  Honestly, I think it did.

As is typical of most of our projects, there was no rain in the forecast, yet it began to rain, so we had to move the operation into the garage (which ain’t great for photos).  The next step was to do a white-washed effect over the top of the stain.  I used some semi-gloss Behr Swiss Coffee white paint that we had sitting around.  Using a cheap wooden brush (I like the effect the coarse bristles create), I would load it up with paint and then brush most of the paint off into a rag before rubbing and brushing it onto the headboard.

This is what a ‘drybrush’ looks like. You can brush this on for a streaky, wood-grained effect, and you can also use it to smudge areas and create a sort of color haze.  You don’t want there to be any areas of thick paint–if you accidentally get some, use a dry rag to rub it off as much as possible.

Finished white-washing.

Again, we let this sucker sit in the garage for a few days to air out (also, before I started painting, I mixed a tablespoon of vanilla into the gallon of paint, which helps neutralize the paint fumes without affecting the color).

The final embellishment came in the form of metal star ‘nailhead’-looking trim.

My source for these little pretties is one of my best. kept. secrets.  And I’m gonna go ahead and reveal it to you….deep breath: King Architectural Metals (www.kingmetals.com).  This is where I acquire all sorts of metal bits and bobs (wrought iron fence pieces, cast iron star washers, barn stars, etc.) It is pretty much my most favorite, random, wonderful place to shop.

I went ahead and drilled a center hole in each little star (taking care to remove or sand off any resulting sharp spurs).  I then pre-drilled a hole into the headboard where I wanted each star, and then nailed them each into place with a little furniture tack (acquired from the home improvement store).

We finally placed the headboard and secured it to the wall with a couple of screws in the legs.

There you have it!  A nice little addition to our nice little bedroom, if I do say so myself.

DIY UpCycled Vertical Planter

After doing so much renovation work on our house, there’s quite a few bits and pieces sitting around that didn’t get used.  A couple of windows, two sinks (yes, two sinks–don’t ask), and a gable vent.  What’s a gable vent, you ask?

That’s a gable vent.  It’s supposed to vent our attic.  But we thought–eh, no thanks, vents are overrated.  (JUST KIDDING–we wound up using a different vent than this one).  The second it went in the ‘leftovers’ pile, I knew I wanted to plant it–just look at it!!!  It’s begging to be planted.

The first thing I decided to do was remove the flanged edges, because they are a little sharp and added an unnecessary element of mortal danger for a planter.  In my opinion.  They are just spot-welded on in a couple of places and with a flathead screwdriver and hammer, it’s pretty easy to pop those suckers off.  And gloves.  Wear gloves.  Sharp edges.

The edgeless vent looks much cleaner….

….and much less finger-cutty.

At this point, I strung a heavy-duty wire along the upper edge of the backside of the vent (just strung it through the grating), as I intended to hang the finished product.  I neglected to get photos of this step.  FAIL.

The next step was to line the backside of each vent pocket (there is metal grating across the entire backside of the vent).  I decided to use coffee filters.  I wet them and stuck them inside each section along the inside of the grating.  I also neglected to get photos of this step.  Double FAIL.

I then filled each section with potting mix, and selected my plant material.  I decided to go with succulents, as I intended to hang this on a fence and knew I would forget to water it most of the time–so I needed to go with something that would cut me a little slack.  Yay, succulents!

For the ‘stripes’ I chose two different types of sedum, and then as an accent I tucked in some random echeveria and aeonium ‘blossoms’ (at least I think that’s what they are–I am no succulent know-it-all and these were unhelpfully unmarked at the nursery).

That bottom ledge wasn’t very conducive to planting, so I decided to display some seashells on it. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I should probably tell everyone that I laid this flat for a couple of weeks for the roots to take hold.  I should probably say that.  But I did not.  I am impatient.  I packed those suckers in there and hung it on my fence post-haste.  It’s holding up just fine!  But for best results, you might want to let yours sit and marinate flat for a bit.  I’m just saying.

I love this so much that I think I am going to go to Lowe’s and get me a few more of these vents and hang several along this section of fence.  The expanse of white fence makes me nuts.  I must fill it with randomness and apologize to no one!!!

Scrap Wood Garden Edging

We have a very long driveway.  Along this driveway runs a very long planter bed.

This is what it looked like when we bought the house:

So originally, we built a raised bed of pressure-treated wood to hold in all the dirt.  For the last few years, it’s looked like this:

Nevermind the squirrel-hunting hijinks happening here (and also nevermind the pre-renovation ramshackle garage).

When we acquired the chickens, there was a whole lot of this going on in those beds:

And this:

It looks bad, I know. This looks like roadkill. But this is a seriously contented bird lolling in the warm dirt.

And this:

And so, most days, our driveway winds up looking like this:

And this:

Because of some very serious neat-freak issues, this just wasn’t working for me.  The obvious solution is to fill the planters with so much vegetation that there is no free dirt for the ladies to get into….but this is a huge bed to fill, and, though I am working on it, I needed a quicker solution (and also, I happen to get a kick out of watching their dirt bath antics).

Enter our ever-expanding piles of scrap wood:

With so many projects going on all the time, we are constantly collecting remnant wood….in fact, most moments, we are completely overrun with scrap because I refuse to throw it away.  So when we can come up with a use for it, especially a cute use for it….I get unnecessarily excited.

The scrap that I used for this started in all shapes and sizes: slabs of plywood, bits of 2×4, planks ripped off the side of the old garage, cedar fencing, and more.  You may remember this photo from a previous post about our scrap pile.

I selected my victims and cut the wood into completely random bits, all roughly around a foot or so tall (but sometimes as short as 6 inches tall, just to get a really good gap-toothed vibe), varying widths.  There was really no rhyme or reason, at all.

Then I gathered up all my miscellaneous cans of leftover house paint (my theory was that these were all colors I had used throughout the house and garden and so, therefore, they’d coordinate.  Right?  Right.), and painted them randomly and sloppily.  A lot of these pieces already had old paint on them–I slapped new paint on a few of them, but mostly left the old weathered pieces alone.  Also, I left quite a few pieces completely unfinished.

I wanted the paint finish to be patchy on these, because I want them to weather a bit naturally–I like the look of old, chippy weathered wood.  Obviously, if you want these to last a good long time, you’d better seal them up really well and not follow my lead.  But I want mine to weather.  I may seal them once they’ve aged a bit.  We’ll see.  I get distracted pretty easily.

After the bits and pieces dried, we screwed them in, in random order to the inside edge of the pressure-treated wood curb.  Obviously, not everyone has such a curb–I share my recipe for a stand-alone version down below.

The real point of this edging, for me anyhow, was to keep the chicken dirt bath spray somewhat contained.  Remarkably, it’s totally working!

The chickens don’t seem the least bit fazed by it.

The varying heights of the edging allows for some very lazy bug picking maneuvers.

Squirrel hunting is a much tidier affair now that the edging is in place. Chance approves (actually, it’s quite obvious in this photo how much he could actually care less).

We are currently in the process of turning our back garden into a ‘Chicken Garden’; what was once my enchanting, flower-filled oasis has literally gone to the birds.  As part of this do-over, I want to use this scrap edging back there, as well.  The only problem is, there’s no wood curb to attach it to….we needed to modify it so that it could be free-standing.

From Home Depot, I grabbed some cheap garden-variety garden edging that comes in two foot strips that click together on the ends.  I also got me some metal garden stakes.

For my purposes, the metal stakes needed a couple of holes drilled into each of them (though I am sure there are stakes that come like this, I just haven’t found them yet).  This is a little time consuming, but easy enough with a metal drill bit.

Now lay out your wood pieces and attach the plastic edging to their backsides with an industrial stapler.  Let the pointy side of the plastic edging stick out beyond the bottoms of the wood pieces–this goes into the ground and helps stabilize the whole thing.

Now screw in your stakes, one on each end of the two-foot length of edging.

Finally, pick your spot, and pound that sucker into the ground.

Unfortunately, the Chicken Garden is a work in progress….you’ll see the final results of this edging project when I do the reveal post on that.  Soon!  Very sooooon.  Bear with me.

Butterfly Wreath

It’s about that time of year when I start to fiddle with things on my front porch.  We’re through Easter, on our way towards summer, and I want some seasonal decor that will carry us along till those reds, whites, and blues start popping up.  After considerable consideration on where to go with this springtime spruce up, I decided that I wanted to run with the ‘Farmhouse Red’ of the front door (which is really a saturated orange), and do a decor scheme based on that.  So what to do for an orange-y springtime wreath?  What to do, indeed….

I feel that it is necessary for me to state that I have a bit of a closet butterfly obsession.  I love me some butterflies.  I should also state that I have a plethora of craft butterflies leftover from my floral design days (and when I say ‘plethora’, I mean plethora–ask the Texan….they are everywhere) that I am always trying to figure out what to do with besides sticking an occasional one in a whimsical flower arrangement.  So, well DUH…. butterfly swarm on a wreath.  I’m surprised it took me this long to figure it out.

I started with a wreath form that I actually made myself, from grape and wisteria vine, but any old craft store-type grapevine wreath would work great.

And then, of course, I selected my victims: you know the ones, those craft-store beauties made from painted feathers with wires attached.  I chose to go with a mixture of orange, yellow-orange, and coral, both large and small variety.  Those wires often come in handy, but for this project, I popped them off.

I fired up the glue gun, and began to glue them in a random fashion to the wreath form.  I wanted this to look like a natural cluster swarm, which meant that there was no rhyme or reason to the orientation of each butterfly; some are right side up, some are pointing down, some were glued to the sides and top of the wreath.  Asymmetry is key here.

Additionally, I did not want the whole wreath to be filled up; I felt it would look more natural for part of the grapevine to be showing.

An unexpected bonus of this particular wreath?  The view from the inside of the door:

Love.  It.

Stay tuned for a full disclosure of the rest of our spring porch mini-makeover.

No-Sew Scrap Fabric Bunting

In preparation for our Easter festivities this Sunday, I whipped up this easy, no-sew, fabric bunting to stretch over our outdoor dining area.  Everything’s better with bunting, right?  All you need is rope (I chose a rustic-looking jute variety straight off the shelf from Home Depot), and one inch wide scraps of colorful fabric (I used quilting fabric).  Oh, and to get a little sparkle, I also added chandelier crystals every so often.

Choosing colors at random, I tied the swatches of fabric every six inches or so (the fabric scraps were approximately eight inches long each), but I certainly did not try to make them perfectly spaced–symmetry is overrated.  I just tied a single knot.  Good enough.  That rope is grippy.

Then, every few feet (again, never measuring perfectly), I attached a crystal with fine wire.

I wish I had video of these little pretties fluttering in the breeze….they look like little birds, and the chandelier crystals bounce some lovely sparkle around the yard.

I’m thinking that after the party on Sunday….the bunting stays.  Me likey.

Eggshell Peony Easter Wreath

As part of the decor for our upcoming Easter party, I created this sweet little wreath.  It sticks nicely to our ‘rustic with a bit of glitter’ decor theme for the party; a natural twig craft store wreath is a great backdrop for a touch of golden sparkle, don’t you think?

The egg flowers are the only tricky thing about this, but they are actually pretty forgiving to make.

Start with your raw eggs (I wanted five blossoms so I did five eggs), and, using a butter knife, crack them anywhere from about halfway to three quarters of the way up to the pointy end (depending on how tall you want your ‘blossom’, I actually cracked each of my five at different points on the egg–some shorter, some taller.)  Use a knife because you want a controlled crack.

Separate the two ‘halves’ of the eggshell, and catch your egg guts….breakfast!!

It isn’t going to be a perfect, clean break–there is going to be some shattering….don’t worry.  Use the bigger, lower half of the eggshell as the center of your blossom, but save the smaller, upper part to use later on as a petal.

Carefully snap bits of the raw edge of the ‘blossom center’ to shape it and give it sort of an irregular edge (this also allows you to remove some of the shattered pieces and clean it up a bit).  Leave as much of the inner membrane of the egg in tact–this helps strengthen it.  If your shell breaks a bit, don’t worry about it too much.  As long as that inner membrane is still there, it will still work, and the paint will help hold it all together.  As for the ‘tops’ (the pointy ends of the egg), break them in halves and thirds to make some various sized ‘petals’.

Rinse all eggshell pieces and let them dry.

Now, pick your paint colors.  I wanted a peachy pink, and I decided to paint the interior sides of the shells the fully saturated color, while watering down the same color to paint the exterior of the shells.  This gave it a streaky, water-colored look that I found rather pleasing.

Let all bits and pieces thoroughly dry, and then warm up your glue gun.  Choose your center piece and decide how many ‘petals’ you want it to have (two of my blossoms I left petal-less to simulate buds), and then select 3-5 petals for each blossom.  Carefully glue them on one at a time, adhering one tip of the petal to the bottom side of the center eggshell; you’ll have to really gob the glue on there to get the petals to sit at an ‘open’ angle, which requires you to hold it still until the glue is completely set.  It’s pretty easy to hold it still in one hand and navigate through Facebook with the other while you’re waiting.  Trust me.

When you’ve got enough petals on, and they have set completely, glue in your center pom-pom.  I selected these yellow/gold craft store pom-poms because they have little sparkly bits, and the yellow ones looked like pretty decent peony centers.  Also, they kind of remind me of little seed pods or something, so I integrated them into the rest of the wreath. But for now, just glue one into the center of the flower.

Next, I hot-glued the peony blossoms where I wanted them on the wreath form–again, over-glue.  Really get them good and stuck.  I then embellished the wreath with some craft store leaves that I had lightly dusted with gold spray paint, as well as more of the pom-poms in various sizes.

The peachy-pink of the flowers looks especially chipper against the orange of the Farmhouse front door!

That’s it!  Happy Easter everyone!

Trying Natural Egg Dyeing

I’ve been lusting after the gorgeous colors of naturally-dyed Easter eggs for quite some time now; there is something poetically lovely about the gentle colors that result from vegetables and spices.  I must admit, however, that I was overwhelmed when I first started studying recipes.  There are many, many different methods, so I decided to sample a little from here, a little from there.  Primarily, I relied on the recipes from Lakewinds.com, as well as those found at wholefoodsmarket.com.  But, I am a self-professed fiddler, so I did not leave well enough alone.

Before we begin, a few notes….a lot of recipes out there seem to call for letting these mixtures sit and marinate overnight (most times in the fridge) before you even do any egg dyeing.  I didn’t do this.  I’m impatient.  But I can see how this might be a good thing, especially if you plan to do this project with kids–the prep process is tiiiiiiiiiiiiime consuming–not gonna lie.  Let those mixtures get super-saturated.  Can’t hurt.  Another note: some recipes call for straining the solids out of the mixture before dyeing.  I also didn’t do this….this may yield more uniform coloring, with less ‘marbling’ (when there are material particles in there with your eggs, they tend to stick and create a marbled look–which is kind of cool….depends on what you’re going for).  Finally, it seems to me that any vegetable materials seem to work best the more finely they are minced–I ultimately decided to pulverize everything in my mini-Cuiz (food processor).  The more you beat the vegetable up, the more juice comes out.  It’s science.

Notes complete.

Behold the chaos:

Don’t think for one second that I didn’t start fantasizing about cocktails….but there’s something inherently unappetizing about cabbage, beets, turmeric, vinegar, and eggs….what am I saying? I’m sure there’s a cocktail to be found in there, somewhere.

Reds, Pinks, Magentas, Maroons, and Everything in Between:

Beets!  I saw many variations on beet quantity, but after much trial and error, I arrived at the following concoction:

6 tablespoons finely chopped beets

2 cups boiling water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Toss the beet pulp into your container, pour the boiling water over, add your vinegar, and give it a good stir.  Let it cool off before putting your eggs in.  I know it completely defies logic, but the longer you leave the egg in the mixture, the deeper the color.  Your mind is blown, right?  The beet coloring gets to work pretty quick; you don’t have to leave the egg in long for a lovely, soft pink color.  Also, fyi, brown eggs look pretty great with this coloring on them (the two darkest eggs above are brown eggs, the rest white).

Buttery Yellows:

Turmeric!  This one is so easy and quick and effective.  That stuff stains fast–mind your spills!

3-4 teaspoons turmeric powder

2 cups boiling water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Mix it all up, and once it’s cooled a bit, drop in your eggs.  If you want light yellow, take your egg out almost immediately.

Shades of Blue:

-To achieve a robin’s egg blue, you use red cabbage.  This is one that takes a long time to get a good saturated color–many recipes recommend letting the eggs steep overnight in the mixture.  I let mine sit for for a few hours and that seemed to achieve a pretty good result (in photo, top left two eggs, and bottom right).

8 tablespoons finely chopped red cabbage

2 cups boiling water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Same process as usual: combine all ingredients in container, let cool, drop in your eggs and wait until desired color level is achieved.

-To a get the greyish-blue (and sometimes a bit brownish) color, you use blueberries.  This is one that I fiddled around with the size of the chop on–at first, I just smashed the berries each between my fingers, and this resulted in the top right and bottom center eggs–it gave a little brown marble to the eggs that I kind of dig.  On a second batch, I finely processed the berries, and this resulted in the upper center and lower left eggs.  If I had strained either mixture, there probably would have been no speckling or marbling of the colors.

1 cup fresh blueberries (either mashed or finely chopped)

1 cup boiling water

1 teaspoon white vinegar

Mix it all up as per usual, and drop in your eggs when the mixture has cooled.

Orangey, Peachy, Coppery Tones:

Yellow onion skins.

2 generous handfuls of dry onion skins

2 cups water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

The method’s a little different on this one.  In a saucepan, combine the water and the skins until it boils, turn the heat way down and simmer for 20 minutes.  Strain the skins and add the vinegar to the leftover dye mix–once cool, drop in your eggs until desire color is achieved.  The dark coppery egg is one that I completely forgot about and left in for several hours.

Various Shades of Green:

Green is the tricky one.  I fiddled a lot with this and have several different methods to achieve various shades.

-Red onion skins: prepare this mixture exactly like the yellow skins were prepared.  This resulted in the right two eggs in the photo….kind of perhaps, a khaki-ish green?  I would barely classify this as green, but hey, still kind of a cool color.

-Spinach: This resulted in the very, very pale celadon egg in the center of the photo.

1 cup of fresh spinach leaves, finely minced

2 cups boiling water

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Mix all ingredients together, let cool, then submerge egg.  The color takes a long time to come up….be patient.

-Red cabbage and turmeric: mix up your dye as you would for the robin’s egg blue, but add a 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric powder to it.  This method resulted in the top left three eggs: a very vibrant yellow-green.  This look can also be achieved by taking an already dyed robins-egg-blue egg and dropping it in a turmeric dye mixture.

-Blueberry egg dropped in turmeric mixture: this is the bottom, lone egg in the photo.  I thought this was the most ‘green’ of the bunch.  This was achieved by taking an already dyed blueberry egg and dropping it briefly into a turmeric dye mixture.

Lavender/purple was a big flop for me.  I tried the grape juice method mentioned in the Lakewinds.com recipe list and found it to be lacking.  What was also lacking?  Time for me to continue experimenting.  I feel that taking a beet-dyed pink or red egg and dropping it in the red cabbage or blueberry dyes (or visa versa) would produce a pretty good purple.  But I didn’t get around to this, so it’s just my best guess.

All in all, it was pretty fun to do, and the result wasn’t too shabby.  I am, by no means, a professional egg-dyer, so take my methods with a grain of salt.  There is definitely some recipe tweaking left to do!

The house reeks of cabbage and turmeric, but I just can’t complain.

Come on….those are some pretty eggs right there!!!