Card Making

I've been trying to get in the habit of whipping out some cards with the scraps that I have leftover from when I do a scrapbook page. Here's a few that I've done recently.

This is the card I made for my Mother In Law for Mother's Day

These I just put in my overflowing card basket so I can grab one when I need it.

Garden Diary - My Experimental Triangle Garden

A few years after we moved in, I dug up and created this garden in a corner of our back yard. It's been a work in progress to say the least. Somethings have worked there, others have not. Currently, I have a flowering almond that doing well, some peonies that are FINALLY going to bloom, some gorgeous lupine and foxglove that comes up every year and a couple of knock out roses. Everything else is a crap shoot. So, each year, I usually throw some perennials in to see what's going to take and then fill in with zinnia and cosmos seeds.

Last Monday on my day off, I spent a couple of hours raking out most of the old mulch, planting a couple of new perennials and sowing the flower seeds. Then I covered it all in new cedar mulch.

Here's what the poor garden looked like without any attention. :(

Here's that gorgeous flowering almond. This is another plant along with Hydrangea and Rose of Sharon that I will ALWAYS have in my yards.

I also have some pieces of garden art in this bed.  I bought the large obelisk at our local farmer's market from a local craftsman and the large flower  and cat with wings are from a metal artist from southern Iowa that I bought at a local arts festival.

After a couple hours of attention, the garden looked much better and as the seasons progress, the garden will change and evolve too.

Thanks for letting me share one of my passions.

Garden Diary - Spring

Since we really can't plant much here in Iowa until Mother's Day, early spring is spent cleaning up after winter.  I've been wanting to replace the old landscape timbers we had fencing the vegie garden because they were starting to rot out, so last weekend we spent time replacing them with cedar fencing.

Here's our garden after tearing out the landscape timbers.

Here's the garden after fencing it in cedar.  The top left corner of the garden is where I planted the asparagus.

I also planted some early vegetable last weekend too.  I got both red onions and shallots planted and I also did 4 rows of red radishes and white icicle radishes.

This weekend, I got the rest of my vegetable planted.  I planted cucumbers, red peppers, orange peppers, yellow peppers, eggplant and zucchini and a few plants of buttercrunch lettuce.  I'm still waiting on my tomato shipment from Burpee's.  I sure hope they get here this week.  I've got Brandywine and Yellow Pear tomatoes on their way.

I'll get you updated on the garden's progress every few weeks or so.

I've got to start working on flowers next!

National Scrapbook Day

Yesterday was National Scrapbook Day and I've celebrated every year for the last 15 years!  I can't believe I've been doing this hobby for that long.

In celebration, I thought I would share some of the pages that I've done this calendar year.  Some you may have seen and some you may not have.  I'm definitely catching up with my pages because most of these are things that happened in either late 2009 or 2010.

Thanks for letting me share them!

(You can click on the image to make it bigger)

 Here's a page I did of Connor's 14th.......he's already celebrated his 15th...lol

This is from last summer when I took Connor and Chloe to Adventure Bay after the water park expansion opened.

Chloe and I at Adventureland.

This photo was taken by Connor after Fred and I got home from my 35th class reunion.  We both had a bit of a buzz.  :)

 Anniversary Flowers or Mother's Day?  I couldn't remember when I did this page...lol

Another page from a photo the day of my 35th class reunion.  This was before we left for the party.
 

I finally got the photos I took when we were in Georgia after Fred's sister passed away.  I really liked that photo of Fred and his mother.

Another photo from our visit to Georgia.  Connor and his Grandmother Ginna.

More photos of Fred's family....his mother, his step father and his sister.

Picture of Connor and the parrot Brianna at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville at Universal Studios CityWalk.  It was my birthday and we had lunch there.

Gunner at age 8.  Yea, I'm behind....Gunner just turned 9 last month.  

Last fall, we made a trek downtown to see the Pappajohn Sculpture Park.  There is just the coolest art there.

Connor's Bucket List.  Why one would have a bucket list at 14 is anyone's guess, but hey, he's got goals..lol

Loved, loved, LOVED, these family photos especially the one with the "Connor face".   It's priceless.
 

It took 5 years living here before I finally got a garden shed.  We had the concrete pad poured for it a couple of years after moving in, but it took another 3 years to finally decide what I wanted.  I love it.

This is one of the city parks that I walk, bike or drive by regularly.  They've added more and more pieces of garden art over the years.  The master gardeners do a really nice job with the gardens.

Hope you enjoyed my pages!

Cat Hurdle

Not only is our staircase a good way to get daily cardio in, but once in a while you have the added challenge of a cat hurdle.

Here is Mr. Gizmo sunning himself on the stairs and never moves a muscle when either Fred, Connor or myself hurdle ourselves over him.