Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone!

 

 

I am here to send good wishes to you and to share a picture or two of how my Easter basket with the real grass that I grew and eggs that I colored turned out.  I tried several ways to naturally dye my eggs.  A couple of them worked out, one of them almost ate clean through the egg.  I never said I was a chemist!  Although I kind of felt like one and my kitchen looked like a lab with all the concoctions sitting about.  The buttercup blooms and dandelion blooms did the best for yellow eggs.  The ginger, parsley and lemon verbena in vinegar did not do so well for yellow tinting.  I wound up water color painting them all, even over the buttercup and dandelion ones because the painted ones were so much prettier.  I also put little spots on them in blue, mauve and brown just for fun. 

 

My chicken turned out well, maybe a little large for my basket but she's cute.  And there she is watching over her flock of eggs.

 

I am totally thrilled about the grass.  I have babied it for the last week and a half at the DC.  I thought about giving it a trim but, like my own hair, I like it growing wild the best. 

 

If you missed my post about my inspiration for my centerpiece, you can see it HERE.

 

Happy Easter and I hope you and your family have a wonderful day.

Don't spend too much time blog hopping!

 

 

Easter Plans

I would like to announce that I am going "All Martha" for my Easter centerpieces this year!  I am the hostess of our Easter gathering for our family, this is my fourth year to do so and I love it!  Even Shaun likes it... mainly because it gives him a good excuse for not mowing the grass until after the Easter egg hunt.  But... this morning, after looking at my daily craft email that I get from Martha Stewart dot com ( which really makes me feel like we are friends.. Martha and I... because she sends me stuff like everyday) I got inspired to decorate a tad bit for our get together.  The inspiration comes in the form of centerpieces and it is derived from several of Martha (and company's) Easter ideas and involves only using items that I already have and I literally have the stuff to make each one of these.  Except maybe the turmeric... I'll have to check the pantry for that and probably won't do it unless I have it.  No special trips to the store here. 

For the main table (which may or may not be the only one I make) I will be using a round Easter basket that my junk from the estate sale on Saturday was packed in.  In that I will rig up something to grow grass in, probably a bowl, of which I already have seed for because I grow it for Captain Kicks-A-Lot (Tom the cat) during the winter.  Then I will use my onion peelings to dye my eggs and maybe the turmeric too.  I have already downloaded the chicken and bunny template from MSdotC and printed them on card stock and will cut them out today getting them ready for spray glue and fabric scrap this evening.  The little bowls will be a sort of after thought and will happen if I have time over the weekend or possibly not. 

Easter is just next Sunday, March 31st, so I feel the grass will grow between now and then if I get to it when I get home this evening.  Wheat grass grows pretty fast in good conditions.  I promise to share a picture of the end result since I can't put it together today because the grass has yet to grow and the eggs have yet to be dyed.  Never-the-less I have faith that it will come together in the end and be a nice addition to all the pretty Easter dresses or in my case Easter Levis at my house. 

Here is the link on Martha Stewart where all this inspiration came from.  She is wonderful and I adore that the ideas and inspiration comes with printable templates, instructions and videos!  I have learned a ton and a half from her website for sure. 

Indoor Garden Terrariums

When I told people what I made for my sisters and mom for Christmas, most of them said "wow, those are from the seventies!"  But really terrariums have made a humongo come back.  I love the idea of a self sufficient world under glass.  Once the plants are established you don't even have to water them much at all.  Maybe every few weeks and not much then.  They don't need outside oxygen and don't need a terrific amount of sun light.  It's the perfect little world.

I bought my glass containers at Wal-Mart because they were the cheapest and believe me when I say I shopped around looking for low priced ones because I was making four.  One for me and three for them.  They were in the kitchen department and ran seven and nine dollars. 

The plants I bought at Lowe's.  The moss I dug up from around Shaun's shop in the gravel.  I used a layer of gravel from the driveway on the bottom, activated charcoal, potting soil and then plants.  I stuck pretty rocks that I have found and placed them in there for character.  They all seem to be doing very well.

I will tell you that I got my courage from Martha Stewart and her very instructional videos.  Once you find one and watch it, it will bring up more and more.  I bet I watched ten of them and I was ready to roll. 

 

 

 

The charcoal can be messy!  But it keeps the stink out.

The big one was for me :) It's is 2 gallon and the others are 1 gallon.

One bought plant can be seperated into several.

 

Give it a pretty good spray down so the plants will settle in.  But not so much water on the plants themselves as trying to get it to the soil and moss.

 

 

I will say the the ferns haven't done very well, the ones that I bought.  A different kind may respond better.  And you do have to trim the plants down some so they aren't too tall.  And also they aren't supposed to touch the glass. 

 

If the inside of the jar has moisture building up it is either in a spot that's too sunny and it definately doesn't need water.  You can tilt the lid a touch and let it get a small amount of air to absorb the extra moisture. 

 

The moss that I got from the driveway has done well and little plants have popped up out of it. 

 

It really didn't take long at all once I had on the ingredients and I love the results!

Halloween Dreams

Being the summer lover that I am, it may be confusing that my favorite month is October.  Not just because my birthday falls in middle, plus three days, of October, but because somewhere around the end of my favorite season, Summer, the Halloween bug bites me.  I begin craving a Halloween party and spooky decorations including spider webs, pumpkins and blood dripping candles.  Year round I have odd things in the house, which aren't odd to me, but to most may be.  I keep things in and around our home in jars and odd places that I find in the woods, that most people would not touch.  I have bones, owl pellets and odd rocks, along with feathers everywhere.  I have the ability to spot feathers just like I have the ability to spot four leaf clovers.  A keen eye... maybe a keen witches eye... spookily spotting off items for spells and tinctures.  Really I just wanted to say the word tincture.  I'm not a witch....... or am I?

I surfed my gal Martha Stewart's website for inspiration this morning.  I also have a number of books on hold at the library right now, ready for pick up, and am craving the hosting of  Halloween party of my own this year... yet again.  Although I've never hosted one. 

Here are some of my favorites from the slide show on Martha Stewart's website.  I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing them.  If she sues me.... she'll win.

1. i love the plastic teeth in these little darling pumpkins.
2. i truly like old, black and white photos in old frames.  you can even spray paint cheap frames and print pics online.  easy.  i also like the specimens under glass.
3. this room reminds me of a spooky house on monteagle mountain near beersheba springs hotel from being a child and peeking in the windows of some one's summer home. 
4. a dc craft idea.  card stock, punch holes, thread yarn through... instant spider webs.
5. i like the pumpkin on the chair and the whole look of the room.
6. tea stained cheesecloth.  easy and cheap... like i like.
7. i love these mice.  i also love them template she includes for free with this one.
8. bats on a clothespin.  how simple and brill.
9. glow sticks in balloons.  once again, simple and brill.
10. this is definitely do-able.  and spooky.  especially if the are in a room where people are turning the lights off and on.  a silhouette murder scene.

ah.. if only i lived where you could see my house from the road.  just for the night.

here's the link to this fabu collection of Halloween ghoolness.  there are 75 in this slide show.