Gardening success

We have had a bit of fun in our backyard this year. I planted onions. Phoebe planted strawberries. Our compost grew decorative gourds.

These gourds are the coolest! They have thin necks and fluted sides. I bought them at the grocery store last year for Halloween. This year, the compost gave us a new batch! If you look by Phoebe's knee, you will see a little yellow thing. That is a baby gourd. The little ones are so cute! There are like 30 growing on this vine that we have done nothing to! No water. No weeding. No nothing. Next year, I want to try loofas and see if they just grow like this.

Some underground critter got to a section of my onions and ate the roots and pushed them up. So, we got an early tiny onion harvest. They were delicious in our chili and chicken meals. Phoebe even ate them!

In addition to the ground critter, some insect laid eggs on them. These are very cool looking. I have no clue what did it, but I like it!

Here is a strawberry plant. They aren't huge, but Phoebe has gotten a couple of good ones. The dogs also got one, to Phoebe's chagrin.

Next year, I am adding green onions, garlic, artichokes, and loofa. I am hoping to do some square foot gardening, too. If I do that, I want tomatoes and bell peppers. We go through peppers and onions something fierce and to have those in our garden would be sublime!

Fallen agave

We have a gargantuan agave plant in our backyard that is just awesome! We are waiting for the day that it shoots off its flower stem.
Up the street, one of the agave's started its bloom, but the high winds knocked it down. Sad, sad, sad.
We will be extra vigilant when ours blooms.

Uh oh! Thumb was found!

Laundry room makeover

We got serious about adding some storage to the house. It began with some shelves in Phoebe's closet. Wow! 2 shelves makes such a difference in her room! Seeing how great that was, the determination was made to equip the laundry room with organization. Lowes had the cabinets we wanted because it allowed me to keep a bar next to the washing machine for hanging lightweight stuff on the circular doohickey. (Notice I start out with "we" and move onto "me." Mike is a good man and is good to me!)
See that tall cabinet? We originally were going with another cabinet that was $100. While heading to check out, I spotted that tall cabinet clearanced for $25. Can you believe that it matched the front exactly? Mike wanted to make sure that I wasn't just getting it because it was cheaper, but I was sure. Totally sure to this day, too, because I got an open shelf out of it.
Mike installed a 1x2" piece of wood to the ceiling and then I attached hook tape to with a staple gun. I sewed up this pleated curtain with the loop tape on the back. Easy up, easy down, easy to wash, excellent to cover up the additional junk up there above the cabinet. $1 a yard home decor fabric, too. Got 20 yards of it and I fear that won't be enough for all I want to do with it.
Originally, this horrible builder-installed shelf system thingy was above the machines. To expand air drying capacity, I moved it to the opposite wall above the door. All of our medicines are way out of reach, clothes can hang to dry, and oddball computer stuff has a home. (Notice the wooden clothespin on Mike's polo. He doesn't like it when I button them up to hang as is whacks out the buttonhole. I don't like how the whole collar looks whimpy without it being attached while it hangs. Problem solved with a clothes pin.)


Here is the additional shelf I got because of the $25 cabinet. Since we went with the bar on the large set of cabinets, there was an extra chunk of "wood" for this. The laundry items I need are in easy reach, the liquid won't make a huge mess (last bit of purchased laundry detergent there. Making my own! I will report with recipe and how it works out.), and you can't see it from the hallway!
The pièce de résistance is that I filled in all the holes and touched up the walls. It looks perfect!
For that honey-do list: laundry room-check!

The circular doohickey strategically shot around the unmentionables.

PS-I like to blog about all the stuff I do as it helps to quantify things for me. I feel accomplished when I can rave about my, well, accomplishments! Not all are fantastic, but a darned lot of them are pretty downright cool!
My posts have been minimal lately as we ended off the school year and I have a great big list of things to post about. While outlining them, I realized that some need raving here, but tutorials and more info can go on my LbP crafty blog. I keep the other WordPress blog because I can upload PDFs and that is my preference for patterns and print-offs. Duplication has been a concern between the 2 and has subsequently kept me from doing a whole lot with the WP blog. So, to differentiate, this blog will rave and the other will outline the process.

Nothing is more precious than Phoebe reading to Renée. Okay, Phoebe driving her around a store while she rides in the cart is pretty darned cool. Renée laughs loud and makes others around us laugh, too. I get more compliments about my beautiful girls because I let Phoebe act a little crazy. Note to self: bring the FlipVideo and capture that!

Reading Nanala's letter

Little Sister must do as Big Sister, or else! Renée's cranky sessions
are typically spawned from things being taken away that she insists
are hers! Thank goodness for envelopes!

When you play hard...

you rest where you are.
Notice the new wool wrap for her cloth diaper. I crocheted that up and will post more once I get the other one properly lanolized. They are cool!