Summer Harvest

One thing I miss most about growing up on a farm was our huge garden! My parents would plant everything--peas, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, carrots, beets, onions, pumpkins, lettuce, zucchini, rhubarb and strawberries. It was wonderful to walk out and pick whatever fresh veggies (or fruit) we wanted to eat that day! And later we would can, freeze or pickle what was left, making it last into the winter.
This spring I mentioned that, if there was a place for it, I would love to have a little garden in our backyard. So in keeping with his tradition of spoiling me, :) Kyle went to work making it happen! We had one small strip of dirt along the side of our house so we decided to try planting it there. Unfortunately, the ground was so hard that Kyle had to use his axe to break it up. Afterwards we watered it and let it soak overnight. By morning it was a nice thick mud--perfect for planting! So in my little 4 x 12' garden I planted pumpkins, cucumbers, carrots, corn, beans, peppers and tomatoes. And a few strawberry plants. Then we waited. And waited. I started to think they weren't going to grow when we finally saw some tiny green leaves poking through! Some of the plants don't get much sun over there, so I'm still not sure if everything will produce, but it's been fun! So far we've had a handful of strawberries, although they came in one at a time. :) And a few days ago I picked a cherry tomato and three green beans. It was quite the harvest! :) Maybe at some point we'll have enough for dinner.

Still No Crib!

Well, we thought the furniture was in last week but, as it turns out, only the crib mattress arrived. Though baby's not due for a while yet, we've been teasing that if his furniture isn't here by the time he comes, he may have to sleep in one of our empty moving boxes or plastic tubs! :) But at least he has a mattress now! We were going to paint the room last weekend, thinking once it was done we could set up the crib a few days later and start getting his room put together. But once we found out that the furniture wasn't here, our motivation dropped--plummeted, actually. So as of today, we still haven't picked out the final paint color and a mound of boxes are still sitting in the corner of the room. I guess we can procrastinate for a little while longer.

I made a couple more things for baby, one of which made Kyle start thinking....is it fair to your kids to make them fans of a sports team that's not very good? :) Because Toronto is one of the original (and most popular) NHL teams, they became the team Kyle and I cheer for. But to say they haven't been doing well is an understatement! So Kyle was wondering if we should encourage him to like a different/better team or if baby should, like most little boys, like the team his Dad likes...at least while he's young and doesn't know any better! :) Any thoughts?
I voted for him being a little Toronto fan. After all, he already has some team gear!


I also made some burp cloths and a little pouch to carry wipes/diapers.

Boppy Covers

We were told last night that the baby furniture we ordered is in! Yay! We weren't expecting it to come for at least a few more weeks, so we were surprised to get the call. Not sure yet what day we're picking it up, but pictures will come later! :)
First we have to finish cleaning out the room and decide whether we're painting, etc.

When we moved here in January, what started out as our spare room quickly became 'the room where we put all our random junk that doesn't belong anywhere else.' Unfortunately, that ended up being a lot of stuff! So once we found out we'd need it for baby, it forced us to start going through boxes we hadn't opened in a long time. I took a full carload over to Goodwill--they're probably STILL going through all the boxes. I bet we kept their mismatched mug aisle stocked for a week! The rest Kyle was somehow able to store in the garage. At least he SAID it went in the garage... although I noticed our trash bin looked a little more full than usual that week. :)

It feels great to get rid of junk, but the spare room won't be empty for long. With the crib, dresser, bookshelves and my sewing table, it'll be full again in no time! Only now, it'll be more organized--hopefully! I'm just thankful I can still have a place to work on my sewing and other hobbies.

And the pile of homemade baby items continues to grow. Good thing we will soon have a dresser to put it all in! My sister-in-law had a boppy pillow that I'm going to use, so I thought I'd make it a little newer by sewing covers for it. I found a pattern online at www.vanillajoy.com/how-to-boppy-cover.html. It seemed easy enough, so I bought some flannel and a zipper. And then I remembered the last time I tried to put a zipper in something. HA HAHA! But I wanted to try it again anyway.

I'll go ahead and save another paragraph worth of words here to say that I finally returned the zipper and tweaked the pattern a little so I could use buttons or snaps to close it. :) And it worked fine! Here's the finished product.

I only made one minor change....rather than having the two back pieces meet, I made them overlap a little so I could put snaps on to close it.

Happy Canada Day!!

It's Canada Day! And, in typical fashion, we did absolutely nothing to celebrate. :) I was telling Kyle recently that when we were kids, our aunt and uncle, who lived a couple hours away, would come out to our farm every summer on July 1st. Our uncle would always bring a box of fireworks that he would set off in our yard--we'd get our own private fireworks show! We loved it! And of course it was never complete until we got out the sparklers at the end. :) Fun times!
Unfortunately for Kyle, I think marrying a Canadian kind of ruined his fun as far as celebrating Independence Day. Now we have two holidays, on separate days, so we don't really do much for either one. Maybe that'll change once we have kids--being dual citizens, they'll get to claim/celebrate both!

Speaking of baby, I tried out another new pattern today! I've been seeing nursing covers around that, although cute, can be expensive. So I used a pattern a friend had posted, similar to a 'bebe au lait' style, to try making one. The directions were super easy! The only thing I didn't like about it was that the corners didn't line up exactly...thank goodness they don't show up in the pictures! There's probably a better way to sew them, but I wasn't feeling creative enough to pick it apart and re-do it. :)



I think the total cost was just over $5, which is a lot cheaper than buying one. And since it's homemade, mine will be one of a kind! :)



The pattern is from: http://sometimescrafter.blogspot.com/2008/02/sometimes-crafter-tutorials.html