Things That Made Me Happy This Month: March

In January I embarked on a personal project to take pictures of the little things that make me happy. See: January | February.

These are the things that made me happy in March:

Easy art projects that don't make a mess | O's favorite muslin blankets in toddler size



Spring veggies



Watching the first amaryllis unfold and bloom



Coffee (enough said.) | Oliver's Latest Masterpiece



The Sky!



Rocking the shamrock brownies (pun intended) | A silver lining (literally) to my car dying



The prettiest purples I've ever seen



And it's FINALLY starting to feel like Spring around here

Posing

Yep, it's Friday, so here's another picture of Georgia. She's deliberately posing, which is rather amusing, jealous of the attention Oliver gets when I take his weekly photos. (For those of you who don't know me in real life, I have a personal project of taking weekly photos of Oliver until he's 2 years old. Originally it was a year but we were having so much fun we decided to make it 2 years.) She's sitting in the same spot he stands in. Her poor ear is still floppy and I'm starting to wonder if it will ever go back?

2014 Yard Plans

It’s going to be April next week! It’s hard to believe because it STILL feels like winter around here today. I can’t wait for Spring though, it’s constantly on my mind. As I mentioned in my Spring To Do List, there are several updates I’d like to make to the yard overall.

This is what our yard currently looks like:

(And if you want to see what it looked like last year, you can see the layout here.)

This is what I would like to make it look like this Spring/Summer:

Okay so it’s probably hard to tell the difference, they are small changes. First I would like to move the mailbox in the front yard to over by the driveway and plant a small garden around it. I think it would look really pretty and our mailman would stop holding our mail when neighbor’s friends block it with their cars.

Secondly in the backyard I would like to widen parts of the perrenial bed along the fence and mix around some of the plants. I did a sloppy job transplanting the astilbe and lilies, and I didn’t plan things well. I just sort of added things along the fence as they arrived and now it looks disjointed. So I would like to spend some time rearranging the beds, widening them and create a more appealing layout.

Other backyard plans you can’t see on the layout include building a trellis for the clematis so it can grow over the pergola. Then there’s adding more dirt to the raised bed garden and fixing the fencing, prepping the vegetable garden for spring, reorganizing the garage, and re-sealing the driveway... hurry up warm weather! We have a lot of work to do.

Basement Update

We’ve been coming up with temporary solutions for the hazards in our basement. Just a deterrent or a way to block something that could be potentially dangerous for Oliver. The whole idea of redoing one side of the basement to be a “living area” right now was so that I could come down here and do laundry with Oliver with me. If I’m changing a load over, I won’t have both eyes on him, so I need to make sure he can’t hurt himself easily.

So far we decided to put the old dark brown Ikea coffee table over the sump pump for now (found a use for it afterall!). This way Oliver can’t mess with the pipe or easily open the little hole in the cover and stick things down there. With the coffee table there and the red media cabinet a foot away, blocking the gas line just required sticking something in front of it. I opted for a plastic tub as a toy bucket for now. Over by the bookshelf and staircase we needed to block the paint storage under the stairs and the “broom closet” area next to it. We actually decided to try old posters I’d been storing down here as a visual block and hope that Oliver doesn’t figure out there’s something worth exploring behind it.

I put down old (slightly damaged by Georgia) rugs to cozy up the floor. It really warms things up. This side of the basement could use a lot more help to make it feel homier, but it’s a good start. 

We still have to block off the water main on the floor, but we have to get rid of the big pile of trash first. Now that the snow is melting, hopefully the oversized garbage pickup will start again soon. We also have to still wrap up the steam pipe by the crawl space. It gets dangerously hot. Almost there!

An Experiment

I’m running an experiment - advertising. I’ve signed up with an advertising network for 3 months to let them run ads on this site. Over the next few days ads are going to appear on the site.

I didn’t come to this decision lightly. This blog has always been a hobby, a thing of love, not a business. But at the same time, I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this site and we thought it would be worth trying out as a way to fund future projects.

I say again, this is an experiment. If you don’t like the ads, tell me. If you see an ad you find offensive from the ad network, PLEASE tell me. I am also considering sponsored ad space, so let me know if you would be interested in that. You can reach me at hiyellowhouse {at} aol {dot} com for all comments and inquiries. I don’t want to lose readers over this change. If you don’t mind the ads or like something you see, please help support this site with your clicks.

Finally!

We finally had our first taste of spring over the weekend and the crocus came out! It's cold again today but we're looking forward to more warm weather soon. Come on Spring!

Nesting

Georgia has always considered the playroom, in particular the playroom couch, to be hers. Even when the room has been hit by Hurricane Ollie, she still manages to make her own little nesting space for a cozy nap.

New: A Source List

"Hey! Where did you get that....?"

I get a lot of questions about where stuff in our house came from. I’ve been meaning to put together a source list for years, but I finally did it. It’s a new page, you can find it on the top left  below our house tour!

Check it out our new Source List page here.

2014 Garden Plan

Now that I have the garden’s tomato seeds started, I thought I would share the garden plan for this spring (can you tell I have warm weather on my mind?).

Since we follow a plan that includes annual crop rotation, each bed moves over one spot.

In the first bed will be flowers. I only have a couple of dahlia bulbs left that have survived multiple years (unfortunately), the rest will be snapdragons and zinnias. In the second bed will be snap peas and green beans on a tower, lettuce, herbs, carrots and chard. The third bed will be all the tomatoes I started yesterday and the fourth bed will be cucumbers on a trellis, musk melons on a trellis, and in the middle will be watermelon. I'm skipping zucchini and squash this year to break the squash vine borer cycle. I tried watermelon before and it didn't work out, but it would be fun to try again.

In our pots on the patio we're going to do poblano peppers, jalepeno peppers and bell peppers. The citrus trees will also be outside.

Peppers, basil, and rosemary will be purchased from the nursery. If the oregano and thyme don’t come back after this brutal winter to transplant, I’ll buy those too. Everything else will be sown directly from seed.

See our previous garden plans: 2013 Garden Plan | 2012 Garden Plan | 2011 Garden Plan

Garden Seeds Planted

Over the weekend I planted my tomato seeds. I have to be careful that we don't have a repeat of last year (where my curious baby destroyed the whole tray!). This year Oliver is much taller, more mobile and every bit as mischievous so these seed pots might not make it. But I’m hopeful!

I planted several different types of tomatoes including yellow pear, sweet 100s cherry, chadwick cherry, pink poderosa, big boy, zapotec, bloody butcher, Arkansas traveler, Italian paste, brandywine and purple cherokee. This year I'm not sowing cucumbers or peppers indoors. I've had just as much luck direct sowing the cucumber seeds in the garden beds and my pepper seedlings grow so slowly I've had better luck with plants from the nursery.

When the seeds sprout I'll put them under my grow light. For now they are staying warm on top of a radiator cover, which works great as a warming pad.

Thinking about starting your own garden? Check out my Top Gardening Tips.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I’m back! I’m sorry for not posting last week. I just needed a week to catch up with everything and cut myself some slack. Time to do mountains of soiled toddler laundry, get the 10 million cracker crumbs off the floor, and get some much needed sleep so I could recuperate too. Things have just been a little rougher than usual. I’m normally a when life gives you lemons make lemonade (or lemon custard!) type person, but recently life chucked a few more than I could squeeze.

I don’t mean to complain, I really don’t. I’ve been back and forth and hesitating about even mentioning it because really I know we are incredibly lucky. It's just small, passing difficulties. Bugs we'll get over, a little bad luck, and a few bumps in the road. I have to remember to count our blessings. And we do have so many blessings.

To start the new week off right, I made St. Patty’s Day brownies for Oliver’s daycare party. I'm hoping to channel some of that Irish good luck and turn our streak around.

And while we're on the topic of brownies, one of my favorite tricks is to bake brownies in muffin tins. For the little ones, mini muffin tins. They make perfect sized portion, each serving is about the same size, and they all come out neat and pretty and round (as opposed to when I cut brownies in a pan and they come out as a crumbling disaster). It's such an easy trick - as long as you remember to spray the pan with cooking spray!

I hope everyone has a happy and lucky St. Patrick's Day!