Tag: You're It!

I was tagged by Giggleface (Tracey) and am passing along the game to six other bloggers.

The rules of the game are:

1. Link back to the person who tagged you
2. Mention the rules on your blog
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger's blogs letting them know they've been tagged

Here goes with six unspectacular quirky things about me:

1. I like reading favorite authors’ entire works ( i.e., P. Gregory, J. Picoult, C.S. Lewis, etc.)
2. I can only eat corn on-the-cob which has been sliced OFF the cob by a knife
3. Crafting projects go in stages of months or years, then picked up again at a later time (knitting, sewing, painting)
4. If I had to make my living by my art, I would have starved many years ago
5. I hold only one grudge; all else is forgotten because of my bad memory
6. I think my husband and brothers are the greatest things since the invention of fat-free coffee additives and Maxine.

So here are the six bloggers I have tagged:

1. Knitted Gems (Marie)
2. ritazramblez (Rita)
3. Dragonfly Crafts (great background of dragonflies)
4. Apronista
5. SweetWilliam
6. The Felt Mouse

Read their blogs; creative souls writing there!

Garden Produce and A REAL Mushroom

Neighbor Ronda brings her gorgeous produce around the neighborhood on early weekend mornings.

What colorful, tasty organic vegetables! I went back later and picked up 8 cups (packed!) of basil and arugula leaves and made four more batches of pesto sauce to freeze. Ronda suggested making some arugula pesto with added lemon juice, and it was delicious!

Ronda also inspired me to try painting some purple eggplant with her successful gardening efforts.

This is a picture of our back patio Sunday evening.

Is this some amazing mushroom?

Actually, the one on the left sprung up spontaneously from a potted plant of succulents and petunias. The one on the the right is ceramic and was purchased from a local nursery.

Can anyone tell me the variety of the little brown mushroom?

Stepping Stones Personalized

Family Crafts was the informative internet source I used for a quick tutorial on how to make stepping stones. If you look into making stones for your garden , you will find many resources. Another good tutorial can be found at The How-To Site.

A few summers ago, I made six stones from one bag of quick drying concrete and some dye, and they are still holding up well in our garden. I won't go into specific details of how to make the stepping stones, as the references will give you all that information. However, two quick notes from experience: 1) large plastic planter saucers heavily slathered with Vaseline are excellent for molding concrete; 2) do not use wooden items for embedding. (And remember to date your stones, so that archeologists in later years will know exactly when we Coloradans were busy stone building.)

Middle school friend Cassidy helped make eight more stepping stones from one 60 lb. bag of Quikrete, water, and one bottle of red concrete dye. Each stone is personalized in some unique way with plastic buttons and trinkets, ceramic flat pieces of found art, keyrings picked up from various vacations, foreign coins, pieces of colored glass, Scrabble tiles, glass beads and discarded jewelry embedded into the concrete. We liked the results. Cassidy will further color some of her stones with latex paints after the Quikrete dries completely.

Often, stones have a layer of chicken wire for added strength, although these stones are not likely to break into pieces. Cassidy and I did not bother to put wire reinforcement in the middle of our stones since they are for decoration, not pathways.

Cassidy at work and with completed stones:

For half a morning's time devoted to this project, and with a little help from a young friend, our gardens will soon welcome these new stepping stones.

Now it is time to start collecting objects again to make even MORE garden delights.