Garden Update

It has been a busy week, let me tell you what. My awesome husband entered a radio contest and won! He won not 1, but 2 truckloads of screened garden compost! (only we could be excited about this, I know...) He won it from WIXY country radio, and the screened compost is from Urbana Landscape and Recycling Center (which is a great place to go!). So we've been busy trying to disperse this huge pile that accumulated in our driveway.

Before I show you what our yard looks like now, I wanted to show you a before picture. This is from last summer, and see how we only have a little garden on the left...this summer it's going to be twice as big as that!

My sister and husband did most of the hard work while I took down some laundry that was drying outside (and watched the kids). They were such troopers shoveling the compost out of the truck and hauling it to where it needed to go.

Here is Z-man with all our veggie plants as they "harden" outside in the sun. The boys love to help water the plants.

Here is a photo of our backyard with the idea that we are going to plant a couple rows of corn along the fence. This is before we put compost on it:

And here is my sister spreading that rich compost over it:

This a view from our deck of the two raised "beds" that we saved from the landfill. Someone was going to throw theses two Captain-type beds away, so we figured that we'd try to reuse them, and here's what it looks like now.

I am so excited to start planting seeds and transplanting the plants that we have indoors. If only the weather would start warming up. Are you growing any vegetables or have started your gardens yet? If so, I'd love to hear about it.

Homemade Suet for Birds

My neighbor recently broke her ankle, and has asked the boys and I to feed her birds in her backyard everyday. Before I met our neighbor, I didn't know anyone who loved birds more than her. She has tons of birds who frequent her backyard for the plethora bird food she provides. These birds range from cardinals, to tiny baby birds (I'm not a bird person...yet!).

Anyway, we were talking one afternoon about the suet bird food that she puts out for the hummingbirds. She mentioned that I should try to make my own and see if the birds will come. I said that I usually have bacon and ground beef grease leftover whenever we cook, and sometimes I wish that we could reuse it. So, therefore, I am experimenting with that idea.

I've heated up the leftover bacon grease, combined some peanut butter, oatmeal, nuts, and cheap bird food to it. Then I froze it to make it solid. Then I cut it into fourths. I then hung up a netted bag in our tree, so that the birds can eat it (instead of the rats! Eww!)

So far, through my experimenting I have seen a couple of birds on our deck, but they weren't really interested in the suet. The squirrels are a different topic! They are sniffing around, and playing with the bag I hung in the tree. I think they're more interested in the peanuts and peanut butter than anything else.

Here's another blog I found that tried making suet as well:

Peanut Butter Suet

I.D.E.A. Store in Champaign

Last night was the first night that I entered the I.D.E.A. Store here in Champaign. My husband has always told me that I need to go there, and so last night, my husband, the boys and I ventured out. It is kinda in an odd location, and the door is on the side of the building, facing away from Springfield, but it's very earth-friendly inside! It's kinda like you're walking into a garage sale (in a good way!). There are so many random items that people donate, that you never know what you'll find in there.

Last night I found 8 red, glass bottles to go on my bottle tree in my garden. They were priced at $0.25/piece! Very reasonable!

I've accumulated 18 bottles now for my bottle tree that I will be making in the Spring. The volunteers at the I.D.E.A. Store were very helpful in giving me ideas and resources to make my bottle tree. They even said they'd like to see pictures whenever I finish my project!

This is what I'd like my bottle tree to look like eventually:

I got 4 (nearly new!) spools of thread for $1. I also got a garden book for $2, and a mesh bag to put my homemade suet in for the birds outside (post to come on that project as well). I also grabbed some used felt to make a pizza game for the boys to play.

So, if you have time, and are in the area, I highly recommend that you check out the I.D.E.A. Store to help you be creative!

One of my favorite places

Do you want to know where one of my favorite places to go is? I know, it's weird, but it's the Urbana's Landscape Recycling Center. I love to go there because they hardly charge me anything to get rich compost and mulch for my multiple projects I have going on around our home. And it's recycling!

Today, I had two helpers who used their shovels and loaded up some buckets for my flower garden. (Okay, really, they just played with their shovels in the HUGE compost piles).

But I think they had a lot of fun trying to help me!

For only $4 we got:

7 - 5 gallon buckets full of garden compost

2 - 5 gallon buckets of fine mulch

2 garbage bags of mulch.

All for $4!!! There's no way you could get this great of deal at any garden store.

It feels so good to know that the garden beds around our home will be full of good nutrients and will grow so much more due to that. So, now you know what one of my favorite places are in Champaign-Urbana.

DIY: Re-Upholster Bar Stools

Today I had the urge to use some of my leftover curtain material to use on the bar stools in our kitchen.  The material on those bar stools have gotten so gross because of our kids.  I'm serious, check them out here:

I know, they're so gross!  So we're having extended family stay with us this weekend, and what better time to be motivated to fix up the house.  Like I said earlier, I've been wanting to do this for a long time, so I've just let the kids be kids at the dinner table or whenever we're eating.  

I've heard that it's pretty simple to re-upholster chairs, so I've always kept that in the back of my mind.  Today I actually flipped over those chairs and saw that there were only 4 screws to undo.  Pretty simple!  As I was looking over the chairs I noticed how much gunk and crusted over milk was on the underside of the chairs.  So away I went to find my baby wipes and give those chairs a good "wash down" (as Zechariah and Thomas the Tank Engine would say!).  

It turns out that the whole project would've taken me 1 hour or less to finish re-upholstering 4 bar stool chairs!  Wow!  The only thing that is hindering me at the moment is my staple gun seems to be jammed.  So I'm going to see if my hubbie can take care of that when he gets home from work.  Other than that - I am SUPER pleased at the outcome of my 1 hour DIY project for today!

My Bathroom Curtains

Just wanted to share with you all my latest project - my (front) bathroom curtains.  They turned out okay, and I love it when they blow in the breeze!  I used the leftover material from my bedroom curtains to match our new green shower curtain that I got from Goodwill a month ago.  

I took down the pink blinds that my in-laws left here when they moved, and finally got around to updating the front bathroom.  So I just thought I'd share these with you.  :)

Update on Project

I have finished reupholstering the ottoman, and last night I stripped the backing pillow on the armchair.  Here is the finished look of the pillow.  I was surprised that this didn't take too long.  Right now I'm working on stripping the seat pillow.  My goal is still July 4th to have the whole chair done...that means only 3 days left! Yikes, better get cracking!

Update on Project

Well, here is the good news and bad news about my reupholstering project.  

Bad news first: our staple gun is not working anymore!  I will be borrowing one from my sister this weekend, so until then, my project is at a standstill.  The good news is that I pretty much am finished with the ottoman!  (all I need to do is finish stapling the fabric to the skelton, then I'm done!)

Goodwill curtains $4 total

I finally got around to trimming the curtains that I got at our local Goodwill for $4.  I LOVE the material and colors...and I've been looking to make curtains for our bedroom for a couple years now.  The material is almost silk-like and the colors make the room nice and warm-glowing in the morning. 

This is a shot of our window as you're walking into the bedroom.

And here is a close up of what the colors are really like.