I feel like I am cheating when it comes to gardening when I plant already started plants into the ground. I have resigned myself to the fact that if I want to grow anything, this is the way it will have to be. Forget greenfingers, I have gardening fingers of death. Do you remember all of my beautiful seedlings? Want to know how many survived? Not one single one.

After lovingly looking after them for months, they just stopped growing. They weren’t big enough to transplant, and I have no idea what I did wrong. It is so disheartening for me, as I really, really want to be able to grow things from seed.

We ended up going to the garden center and purchasing already started plants. I got them in the ground and have high hopes for them producing. We shall see though, as I can manage to kill just about any plant with a single glance.

The decluttering is going well, I have a whole van load to head to the thrift store, a stack of books that I am selling, and a few things that are going on ebay. I still have so much more to do, but I am finally seeing some progress.

Oh, and I am finally getting sleep. If the babe takes a late afternoon nap, she doesn’t go to sleep till about 9:30pm, but she doesn’t wake up during the night. I’m still trying to decide whether I want calm, quiet, child free evenings or a decent nights sleep. Some days it’s a toss up.

Hi everybody! I feel bad as I am almost constantly taking little breaks from my blog. Such is life with four little ones though, I suppose. I am in the middle of a couple of projects, one which is some serious decluttering of the house. It is taking up all of my time and I am feeling so ready for it to be done, that I really need to be able to focus on that and the family for the next few days.

I will be back on Monday, hopefully with a much calmer house, and mind. Have you recently decluttered, or do you need to? What’s your favourite tip for decluttering? Do you feel so much better when it is done? How do you decide what to keep and what to let go?

You know it’s finally a gorgeous spring day when the temperature hits 72 degrees, and you are able to spend pretty much the whole day outdoors. When you can plant flowers in a pretty hand painted thrifted pot….

when your most energetic boy can finally really work out some of those wiggles on the trampoline….

Well, let’s face it, they all have wiggles, and the tramp is the perfect spot to get in some exercise. I should probably get up there, but I’m not convinced I would be able to move the next day.

When it’s warm enough that they all have rosy cheeks, and are just about completely covered in layers of dirt, which makes the perfect time for a mango strawberry milkshake (just frozen mangoes and strawberries blended up with some milk).

What a gorgeous day it was. By the time we came in and got them all cleaned up with hot baths and warm food, their little heads hit the pillows and they were out. I am so ready for all of our days to be like this, though of course, it’s supposed to snow again on Friday.

We had to drive down to Denver yesterday as that is the closest Apple store and we needed to take our computer in for repairs. It was a perfectly grey, and drizzly day (I must admit, I do love a good rainy day). The sky was so many different shades of grey and blue and the ground was still partially covered in snow, which made the mountains absolutely gorgeous.

Have a great weekend everybody!

I made this string bag a while ago, but promptly forgot about it in shuffle of everybody being so ill. I used this pattern, which was a breeze to crochet. I did add some extra rows in the middle as I wanted the bag to be a bit bigger, but otherwise it is the same pattern.

I had lots and lots of natural cotton, but I am thinking of dyeing it a brighter colour now that it is done and my stash is almost gone. This is the biggest bag (though it’s not huge) I’ve done and I really like it. I have intentions of getting one more bag done before the month is out, and I hope I’ll be able to get to it.

I love making my own bags, and this has been such a fun challenge as it is not something I’ve done before. Even though I have not had luck in finding a pattern to match what I need for big shops, these smaller bags will definitely have their place. For one, they’ll be easier for the kiddos to manage. They will be perfect for produce bags and also little gift bags. Several different little handmade string bags would also be perfect tied up with pretty ribbons for a gift.

Well, it’s supposed to snow again today and tomorrow, I am thankful that we are having days of springyness in between the cold, grey weather, but I will definitely be glad when it is more consistently warm. No real sign of spring here in the form of buds or anything green, but I am keeping a keen eye out.

What are your favourite signs of spring?

Isn’t this piece beautiful? It was a gift from my mom after we found it on one of our Saturday morning thrift store runs a couple of weeks ago. I have no idea what it was originally intended for…..

but now it is sitting beside my couch, holding lots of scrumptious wool.

making granola

doing a bit of crochet

eating wholemeal cheddar scones

chopping veg for supper

I am so excited to be involved in Emily and Dawn’s String-a-Long Challenge.

I finally got my first bag finished last night and here it is. I used the Econo-Shopper Mesh Bag pattern over on Ravelry. I must admit, that I used the pattern for the main mesh part and then tweaked the handles as I preferred them flipped on the other sides. It wasn’t too hard, I just kind of figured it out as I went.

I just recently found this pattern for the brooch, and can I just say I absolutely adore it (but more on that later). Once I got the hang of it, it was really easy to whip out.

I’m not sure which pattern I’ll use next, but I’m going to have fun figuring it out. If anybody knows of any crochet string bag patterns, I would love to check them out. Sorry these recent posts are kind of short and to the point, still nursing my family back to health. Knock on wood, but I think the end is in sight.

A couple of weeks ago, a small hole turned into a giant tear in my daughter’s sheet. Instead of mending it, I decided to save it to use for other projects. I figured I would use some of it to make summer pj’s for the girls. These past two weeks have been filled with runny noses, and the three boxes of kleenex in the closet ( they were given to us this past summer) had finally run out.

Normally we use hankies, but I just don’t have enough to deal with this kind of onslaught. So what do you do when you have four little noses that have decided they are running a marathon and you need a massive amount of hankies fast?

You take your trusty rotary cutter and cut the torn sheet into strips, then squares.

Then you toss them all in a 25 cent thrift store basket and call it a day. I made each hankie 5" square so it’s perfect for one big nose blow. I only used about half of the sheet and got 160 hankies out of it, so let’s just hope that lasts the day.

On a side note, we took the babe in yesterday as her cough had gotten worse. The doctor said that for lack of a better term he was diagnosing her with bronchitis. She is now on antibiotics, and holding steady.