I know it's been a while since we've posted anything, but it's because we've been working on something BIG.
And by BIG, I mean queen-sized bed big. My brother turns 21 this year, but we decided to celebrate a little early (his birthday isn't *really* until tomorrow), so we could present him with the gift we've been working on all month.
Yes, it took all month. Yes, it was extremely difficult to keep it a secret. But it was all worth it to see that look of surprise on his face.
I've made a slideshow of the Nintendo bed set we created for him on Instructables:
The old dog bed in the living room was horribly dilapidated, and a new one of comparable size is at least $80.
We inherited some memory foam mattress covers from my grandparents...while one layer wasn't enough, putting two layers together (with the softer foam on top) was thick enough to please our pampered puppies.
The big roll was from the old dog bed. The fabric is all upholstery fabric left over from other projects. My contribution to the project was helping to shove the foam into the cover, manipulating the pillow into its sleeve, and hand-sewing the opening closed.
This post is courtesy of my sister, Red. Still trying to figure out the photo layout options, but at least they're all here! ~TheYellowRose
Hey guys, Red here! Today Yellow and I got to decorate some wonderful sugar cookies that Zabrina made. It took us a while, even with the three of us working together, but we had a lot of fun doing it.
They have all sorts of different designs as you can see. Some suggested by Zabrina, and others Yellow and I just did on our own. I did the strawberries, butterflies, and the tiny flowers seeing as those are some of my favorite things. Yellow did the cupcake with sprinkles, and the one with the sunflowers.
The cookies themselves are from a Krusteaz mix that's totally delicious and hard to find around here. The marshmallow fondant is just marshmallows heated up in the microwave, mixed with powdered sugar, and rolled thin. We used edible food markers for the designs.
I hope you guys really enjoyed these cookies! I know I sure did; I’m going to have as much fun eating them as I did making them with Red and Zabrina! Until next time!
Recently, I read an article about a young woman who lived in an apartment and was upset that she couldn’t have a summer veggie garden. Someone replied that building garden boxes was not a hard task, but the young lady replied again saying she was not allowed to build any permanent structures.
After careful consideration and a lengthy conversation with my daughters, we decided to take the patio veggie garden challenge.
Rules:It could not be a permanent structure.
The garden had to be easy and inexpensive to make.
Here is our plan:
2 plastic kiddies pool (recyclable) small and large
Few bags of top soil and mulch or peat moss.
Hand shovel, hand rake, box cutter.
Carefully cut holes in the bottom of the plastic kiddie’s pool for drain purposes. You can see in our illustration that this was pretty easy and only took my daughter a few minutes.
Next, place the pool or pools where they can get good sun during the day. Move them around to different places and make sure that’s where you want them to sit during the summer months because it’s hard to move them after you fill them with dirt.
Fill your kiddie pool with good soil and peat moss. A garden mix soil is best. Using your hand tools make sure you mix you soil well.
Now the fun part! Decide what veggies you use the most during the summer months. We picked tomatoes, (4 different kinds) Bell peppers (3 different kind) Pablano pepper , and a jalapeño pepper. We put all this in the larger kiddie’s pool.
In the smaller pool we planted three herbs, and zucchini squash (2 kinds) this was a leap of faith for me not being sure the zucchini would work. See Illustrations.
Arrange the plants around the pool and decide where you want them to go. We used live plants, but you could easily plant seeds.
After you figure out where you want the plants to go, it’s time to start planting. Some live plants you purchase at the garden stores will have recyclable/compostable containers. Remove these because they tend to mold and spoil the plants. Plant your veggies 8 to 10 inches from each other, water…taadaaa you now have a cool patio garden: See Illustrations
As Fall creeps in you might want to consider using your garden as a composter for all you garden scraps during the cold winter months. This will insure healthy new soil for next spring when you start over again.
Kitchen scraps could include coffee ground, tea grounds, egg shells, all veggie peels and scraps, left over beer someone didn’t finish, and much more.
It was quite a few years ago when one of our online gaming buddies asked my mother a simple but brashly inappropriate question: "Which of your daughters do you think is more beautiful?" Rather than point out the obvious, my mother took a moment to think while I was reprimanding him. She then told him, in her gentlest voice, that both her daughters held the beauty of roses.
"[My younger daughter] has dark auburn curls with streaks of burgundy, pale green eyes, deep red lips and a blush to match. She is my Red rose. [My eldest daughter] has blonde hair with streaks in every shade of gold, deep ocean-blue eyes, and a peaches-and-cream complexion. She is my Yellow rose. I could not choose between my two favorite flowers, for each of them possesses a unique and captivating beauty."
It is a story that nearly brought a 16-year-old boy to tears, and has stayed near to the hearts of both me, Yellow, and my little sister, Red. Heaven blessed us with a poet for a mother, and, ironically, a 6'4" red-headed brother in the middle.
