Twenty Cent Finds at Michael's Crafts

As I waited in line at Michael's Crafts yesterday, I noticed a display rack of items near the register.  The shelves were labeled with tags that read "Select Impulse Items-- 20 Cents".

My first thought was that it was funny that they would blatantly label the items as IMPULSE BUYS instead of using a euphemism.  Why would they want to make impulse shoppers self-aware about the nature of their purchases? Who wants to feel like a sucker?  Why not call the impulse items "Last Chance Treasures" or something?

My second thought was that there couldn't possibly be anything "good" on the twenty cent shelves.  I mean, what can you buy for twenty cents?  I'm not a regular gum chewer, but isn't a pack of gum still around 25 cents these days?

As I was having these judgmental thoughts, I found myself browsing the "Select Impulse" shelves, casually at first--just as an interested sociologist, mind you-- and then with a bit more enthusiasm.

First, I found these.  They are intended to be ornaments (Christmas?  Valentine's Day?), but I'm going to snip off the hanging ribbons and add pin backs.  Wouldn't these make cute gifts for little girls to pin on their winter coats or school backpacks?  My daughter has already claimed the pink one (not pictured here) for herself.

Next, I found these rubber stamps.  I love to make handmade greeting cards, so these will definitely come in handy.  The medallion one might make an interesting repeat pattern on a pillowcase border (use a Sharpie marker, instead of a regular stamp pad, to make the design permanent).

  

When I found this pack of three little baking stencils, I laughed to myself, wondering where I might find an alternate universe in which my baked goods would come out attractive enough to merit a stenciled design.  Then I tried thinking like a Martian and realized that a stencil is a stencil, and that my daughter could use these for fine point marker art projects.  She has already made several cards with these, and like a good little creative Martian, she has pressed the center of  the flower stencil into lumps of play dough to make "sunshine cookies".

 

Finally, I found pencil cases and a journal.  I thought the pencil cases could be recast as purse organizers.  The journal...was just cute.

 

So, they got me! They say a sucker is born every minute.  But "Last Chance Treasure Hunters" are harder to come by, as they are only born every 1.5 minutes.

Evolution of Our Front Door Garden

Today, I'll explain how (and why) I designed and created a DIY flagstone and pebble "mini patio" to make my front door garden prettier, tidier, and--most importantly--easier to maintain.  I've mentioned in other garden-related posts that I love gardening, but I tend to be a lazy gardener--or more accurately, an intermittent gardener.  This little garden area has evolved slowly over time--the photos in this post were taken over a seven year time period--and I'm still fine-tuning this space.  An alternate title for this post could be, "Sometimes Being Lazy Takes a Lot of Work."

When we bought our house in 2005, the front door was flanked by Nandina bushes.  For awhile, I barely noticed the Nandinas enough to have an opinion about them.  Then one day, my husband and I decided that they had to go!  Immediately!  I posted a Craig's List ad with the title: "Free Nandina Bushes--You Dig 'Em".  Two hours later, the bushes were gone.  It was a win-win.  Actually, if we consider the Nandinas' perspective, it was a win-win-win.

Since there were already some iris rhizomes and daffodil bulbs in the planting area on the right, I left them there and spent a few years trying to figure out the best way to maintain the area.  The photo below is from March of 2007.  Not very impressive, right? 

A year later, I sat down and listed challenges in this garden area.  These included: weed control (summer), fallen-leaf management (fall), unattractive "spent" daffodil leaves in spring  (which could not be cut back without compromising the next year's bloom),  and plant height, spacing, and grouping challenges.  I also added "snakes" to the list, as they are my go-to excuse for garden neglect.

It occurred to me that I could redesign this area to include two "zones": a low-maintenance in-ground planting area at the back and a container garden area in front on a foundation of flagstones and pebbles.  The latter would allow me to rotate pots seasonally.  Rocks, I reasoned, would deter weeds (and handle fallen leaves) better than mulch.  And if I played my cards right, maintenance would be heavily weighted toward the pots rather than the in-ground planting area, which translated to fewer snake encounters.  (In case you think that my snake aversion is excessive, I'll share that one of our dogs was bitten by a venomous snake in our backyard.  Thankfully, she was OK, though her little muzzle swelled up like a toucan bill for a few days.)
  

Back to the garden.  Step one was to dig up the existing bed.  Here's what that process looked like.  Yes, I am a messy gardener (also a messy cook).  This picture was taken in October of 2009:

Did I make this the weekend project that it should have been, zipping through the required steps to the "after" picture? Nope. My nap-resistant baby girl was one year old at the time, so I ended up placing flagstones directly on the soil and living with that "temporary" look for...awhile.  I don't remember exactly how long, but the picture below is from June of 2010.  See the flagstones and soil in the background? Busted!

Incidentally, this photo is interesting because the miniature roses were originally a small potted Valentine gift from a grocery store.  Transplanted, they have lived and bloomed in the garden for years.

There are no photos for these next steps, but here they are in order:

1. Use a shovel and rake to level the dirt (a real gardener would have called the dirt "soil").  Be sure to dig down deep enough so that there will be some kind of border (in my case, the cement path and driveway edge) to contain the pebbles.

2. Cover the dirt with landscape tarp and pin it down tightly.

3. Top the tarp with leveling sand.

4. Lay out the flagstones in a loosey-goosey jigsaw pattern on the sand.  Scoot sand around as needed until the tops of all of the flagstones are relatively level.

5. Between the flagstones, add pebbles (purchased in bags-not-too-heavy-for-you-to-carry from Lowe's).  

Now that I write these steps, I'm wondering whether there is a better way to do it.  In my garden area, weeds root directly in the sand at times, and the sand gets mixed with the pebbles.  I wonder if there might be a way to place the leveling sand on top of the soil and then add the tarp and then add flagstones and pebbles directly on the tarp?  Hmm.  The challenge would be accommodating the uneven thicknesses of the flagstones.  I'm thinking hard about this, and it hurts, so I'm moving on.  Please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments section if you have tried something like this (the gardening I mean, not the thinking).

I used small shards of flagstone, placed on end (two deep at places), to create a border/wall to contain the mulch that would be in the in-ground planting area.

Here is a close-up of the flagstone and pebbles today.  Note that there are a few weeds (also little twigs, seeds, mulch, etc.), but there are fewer than there might otherwise be.

 

When I was planning this space, I had a hard time finding online pictures of patios that combined flagstones and pebbles.  Now that I own this combination, I know that there was probably a good reason: when the pebbles get shifted on top of the flagstones, they are like little slippery ball bearings; it's basically an "I Love Lucy" episode waiting to happen.  That hasn't been much of an issue for us, as this space doesn't see much foot traffic.

Here's a shot that was taken at the end of March, 2011.   The irises hadn't bloomed yet--they usually open in April, though this year they bloomed early.

And here's a picture that I took yesterday.  The back portion of the garden is primarily irises and daylilies.  The front pots change.  Right now, the pots are a scraggly mix of pansies and grape hyacinths.  I "should" have staged this picture with better/fresher annuals in the pots, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity to snap a picture when the irises were in bloom.  In the summer, there will be miniature roses, some wildflowers, and lots of marigolds in the pots.  As I mentioned in a previous post, marigolds will grow beautifully from last year's saved seeds.

Is my execution of this idea perfect?  Nope.  There should be more flagstones and fewer pebbles (I used flagstones left over from another project and didn't want to order more).  Also, at some point, I'll "upgrade" to larger, better-coordinated pots with saucers underneath them, for goodness' sake, so that the soil doesn't drain out through the bottom of the pots and provide cheap housing for weeds.  I'm sharing my warts-and-all gardening effort here in the hopes that it will give you ideas for your own garden, which I'm sure has no weeds.  Or snakes.

This post has been linked to great before and after posts for Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch.

DIY Repurposed Pen Cap Vase

This post really belongs on my other blog, but I couldn't resist sharing it here. Why? Because it's green, it's upcycled, it's easy, it's kid-friendly, it's seasonally-appropriate, and it ties in nicely with a post that I wrote last March in which I sang the praises of little vases.

Readers, I give you the pen cap vase (which is, technically, more of a vase cluster). It's the perfect size for displaying the microscopic weed-flowers favored by the preschool set. Materials are simple: you'll need a bunch of colorful caps from dried-out markers, a wider, shallower lid (think: Gatorade), and some hot glue. If you don't have any dried-out markers in your house, then this blog, which is aimed at mere mortals, may not be for you.

Instructions are simple: fill the wide, shallow lid with hot glue, arrange the pen caps in it, and allow the glue to dry. Think "class photo" when you're arranging the pen caps in the lid: tall kids in back; scrawny kids in front. It might look something like this when you're finished (if this were my kindergarten class photo, I'd be the turquoise cap):
To fill the vases with water, you can run the whole thing under the sink (use low water pressure) or for some great fine-motor skill practice, have a preschooler use an eye dropper or plastic syringe to fill it. The final step is to grab your favorite preschooler and go on a weed-flower hunt. If you don't have any weed-flowers in your yard, then you are definitely not a mere mortal, and it's very likely that this blog is not for you.

Happy weed-flower picking!

This post has been linked to other great DIY projects at Tatertots and Jello and Blue Cricket Design.