Wednesday, March 28, 2012

New Blog Look!

So you can probably tell that we changed up the look a little bit... okay a lot. Since we've been slacking on the blog updates, I though we could at least make it look nicer! I'm loving the spring colors in the background, so maybe I'll keep it year-around!

What do you think of the new header? We tried to capture parts of our life around Atlanta. Braves games, Georgia Tech tailgating, and of course our kitties! Lion doing his favorite thing- napping, Nutmeg just looking cute, and of course Kitty dressed up like a Yellow Jacket!

Monday, March 26, 2012

Super Secret Outdoor Project


It wasn't really intended to be super secret, but for some reason when my dad asked what we did all weekend, I decided to make it a secret :) Here's some teasers for this project-
  • It's outdoors, got that from the title right?
  • It's going to be awesome (duh!)
  • I have to sew something (scary!)
That's all you get for now. But let me tell you, after working on this thing for an entire weekend (counting getting the supplies), it's gonna be a long long project. It'll all make much more sense when we reveal the final project, and trust me it'll be worth the wait! It doesn't look like much right now, just a bunch of wood screwed together and large amounts of fabric spread everywhere....

Tonight, I'll be measuring out fabric and reading plenty about sewing.  My next post will be more about the sewing part of this project, which will at least give you a better idea of what we're doing. Unless you are a super sleuth and figure it out on your own!


Update- Below are links to future posts on this project!
 Post 1: Super Secret Outdoor Project- This Post!
 Post 2: Sewing a Pillow
 Post 3- infinity: ???

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Veggie Garden!

The moment we've all been waiting for- the planting of the vegetable garden! ....well at least it's the moment I've been waiting for. We planted it last weekend, March 10th, and yes I'm super late putting up this post. It might have been a little early to be planting, but we went ahead and did it for a couple of reasons-
1. Based on when we started the seedlings indoors, things were starting to die and/or get too tall
2. We have so much going on over the next few weeks, it was now or late April
3. I really wanted to get it going :)

It took absolutely the entire weekend (plus another weekend early in January when we cleared out a lot of pine straw and ivy) & it was absolutely exhausting. But the difference is amazing!


Before- dirt, pine-straw, ivy, and chain-length fence
After- 3 Vegetable Garden Beds!


Bed 1- Onions

We planted what was left of our seedlings {some Cherokee Tomatoes, Roma Tomatoes, Bell Pepper and Poblano}. Due to a series of unfortunate encounters with Nutmeg, the Zucchini seedlings didn't make it.... We also bought a few small plants to supplement the seedlings- (1)Better Boy Tomato, (1) Roma Tomato, (4) Cucumber, (1) Eggplant, and several varieties of lettuce. We got the lettuce varieties from the Oakhurst Garden down the road, it's a community garden, which is pretty awesome! They have all kinds of planting classes that we want to check out soon!

Bed 1- Tomatoes
Bed 1 - Cucumber, Bell Pepper & Poblano
Bed 2 - Seeds, Kale, Butter Lettuce, and Arugula


 In the second bed we planted some cherry tomato seeds, broccoli seeds, and some leafy veggies we got at the Oakhurst community garden {kale, butter lettuce, and arugula}. The 2 spikes indicated the rows for the seedlings, tomatoes to the left and broccoli to the right. Since I took forever to post this, I saw last night that we have some broccoli seedlings popping up already :)








In our "Fruit" bed, we planted (2) Blueberry, (2) Blackberry, and (1) Nectarine tree that we got back in January at the Atlanta Fruit Tree sale (that wasn't what it was called, but I can't remember). Basically, it was a fundraiser where you could buy fruit trees and the proceeds went to the Atlanta Food Bank. It turned out to be pretty ridiculous, even though there were torrential downpours that day.... Seriously, the roads were flooding on our way there. Anyways, in addition to that, we planted some Watermelon and Cantaloupe seeds that we are hoping to trellis up the fence. We saw a cool post once about trellising them and using "pantyhose supports" to cradle them, so we'll see how that works out.


Basically, we're treating this year as an experiment, see what grows, what doesn't. And then we can make a better plan for next year. And since torrential downpours seem to follow us on our gardening adventures, what happens 2 days after we plant everything?! None other than, torrential downpours! Overall, it looks like the damage was minimal, we loosely staked the seedlings since they got knocked down into the dirt, and re-covered a few roots of the lettuce-y varieties. A basil plant was the only noticeable causality so far. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we planted other stuff in window box planters and hanging planters around the deck. Oh well, everything else will just have to wait for another post :)

Psst! Check out how big everything has grown in a month here!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Repurposing the old cabinets

Note- We actually did this a long time ago, but I just realized that I never finished the post!

Since we took down the cabinets over the island, we didn't want to trash them. So we decided to put them up in the garage for some extra storage (who doesn't need extra storage, right?). Greg's dad had told us the easiest way to do it would be to secure a 2x4 to the wall (in the studs, of course), then balance the cabinets on the 2x4 while one person screws the cabinets into the studs.Then you just screw the cabinets sides together for a little more sturdiness.
Leveling the 2x4 board.
You know the funny thing about cats? They can't stand to not be allowed to go somewhere, like a garage. So ours are constantly trying to run out the garage door, well Lion tries to get out any door, but they are both obsessed with the garage. So we gave in during this project and let them hang out with us in the garage (with the outer garage door closed of course so they can't escape). Trust me, it was much better than hearing their pathetic crying and whimpering from the other side of the door!

Lion wanted to inspect the cabinet

So of course then Nutmeg also had to inspect.

Finished product (well minus the cabinet doors that we still haven't put back on...)
Cost of the project? $0! Wahoo for free projects! The only things we used (other than the cabinets) were some drywall screws, which we always have on hand, and the scrap 2x4.

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