Pressed Flowers

I'm still recovering from my surgery. While I'm leaps and bounds better than I was 4 weeks ago, I'm not as far along as I would like (aka miraculously healed ahead of schedule). It took 3 days to decorate our house for Christmas instead of our usual one because I'm slow. I need to take breaks when the pain sets in. And I can't seem to catch up with the mess around the house (understandably, considering I can't bend over well or lift anything over 10 lbs). 

So instead I'm focusing on something easy - pressed flowers. I put a bunch of summer flower between paper towels and my biggest cookbooks back in early September and they've had plenty of time to dry. I also had done a bunch in the spring - pansies, tulip petals, peonies, grape hyacinth, and violets. I shared the peonies in a previous post because they came out so lovely. 

The hardest part about these are photographing the glass frames. The reflections are so intense with the double glass - they looks so pretty in real life, but trying to snap a picture all I see is my hand holding the phone or worse. 

Pressed Peonies (shared previously):

Pansies, violets, hyacinths and tulip petals:

Chantilly Bronze Snapdragons:

Totally Tangerine Collarette Dahlias:

Nasturiums, Zinnias and Cosmos:

Other flowers that were too big for the glass frames so I threw them all in one 11x14 black one: 

(Peonies, dahlias, zinnias)

I love the idea that this is a way to keep the garden with me year round. 

What I won't be pressing again? Dinnerplate dahlias. Oooh boy, those made a moldy mess. One even ruined a page in my cookbook (whoops!). I only had one come out (above) and the rest were a disaster. I have also noticed that white flowers don't look very good either, they just look brown. I think some flowers, like begonias, are too watery. Amaranth,and echinachea are too hard to press flat. 

Next year I want to press some Lady of Shalott orange roses. And the pink Zephyr roses from the garden archway. I also have coral and magenta knock-out roses to try. Geraniums. And I think a wider variety of zinnias could be very striking. Anyone else have any experience with pressing flowers? Any recommendations for next year? 

Feeling the Hazy Blue

I have a new favorite paint color. Hazy Blue 2040-50 by Benjamin Moore. It's SUCH a gorgeous shade of aqua. Just the right amount of green, blue and gray. 

I want to paint my whole house in this color... but for now... we'll start with a few little things like the red stools. I painted these a long time ago a bright red (back when we had a lot of bright red accents) and they've become pretty beat up over the past 15 years. We've used them as side tables, toy sword bins, stools... currently they are plant stands. They needed a fresh coat of paint... what better color than Hazy Blue? 

Before:

After:

And set back up in the dining room as a plant stand (I let the paint cure for a 1.5 weeks before anything was allowed to touch it... it takes time for the paint to harden fully... patience is key when painting furniture with enamel). 

The in the greenhouse, I had this old brown kitchen cart from our basement that had rust on the metal doors from living in the damp basement of my dad's house. It's perfect for storing plant stuff and I love that it's on wheels. What I didn't love was the color. The brown was drab and didn't fit my vision for my little plant sanctuary. And I had plenty of Hazy Blue self-leveling cabinet paint leftover from the stools. 

Before:

After:

With the two tall red stools/tables/plant stands done, the short red stool's days were numbered (it's in the living room I always keep my purse on by the front door). While I always liked the bright pop of red, it looked better with our old furniture and color palette better and now competed with the rug. It's on the bottom left of the first photo, middle right in photo 2 peaking out from behind the chair.

Hazy blue was much more fitting:

I have the stool in the greenhouse to cure. The paint smells pretty bad for a few days as it hardens. It looks quite pretty though with all the aqua and I'm excited to put it back in the playroom. 

And of course now I'm looking for other things I can paint Hazy Blue. I could literally live in a ball of aqua happily for the rest of my life. 

Seriously this color is just the best. 

(paint color with prism rainbow from dining room windows)

Garage Decorative Pergola Awning

Last Summer when I repainted the garage, the plan was to put up a decorative pergola awning over the door. Not only would it look nice, but it would also give the climbing rose something to grab onto when it outgrew the trellis.

Fast forward and we got busy with other things. And more things. And suddenly it's the day after we get back from Cape Cod at the end of the summer, and Mike is half in the mood to relax, half ready for a new project. And I notice that the rose is juuuuuust starting to outgrow the trellis on the side of the garage. 

Before I know it, specs are drawn, lumber is purchased and Mike is building away on the driveway. I took the boys to the pool with friends and by the time we got home it was more than half done. Mike finished building it before sunset. I was definitely impressed. 

My contribution was painting it. I did a coat Monday and a coat Tuesday. We hung it up on Friday of the holiday weekend. It's REALLY heavy. We were a little nervous we wouldn't be strong enough to hold it up long enough to get the bolts in with just the two of us. But with some adrenaline and determination we got it up.

We kept the design super simple on purpose - I didn't want any of the fancy ones with big braces and multiple heavy layers with lots of details. It wouldn't look right on our garage - doing that to a basic cinder block structure would be like wearing a diamond tiara with a flannel shirt, when we just needed a headband. But I think this is just the right amount of interest to dress up the front of the garage and give the rose something to grab.

I love the way it came out. It's one of those things that feels like it was always there, and that's my favorite feeling because then I know it was the right choice for us and the house. 

Now I just need to up my game and knock more out of my to-do list around here. Between the drainage project, the garden pathways and double composter, the greenhouse and the pergola awning - Mike is definitely winning this season. 

Propane Fire Pit & Patio Updates

A few years ago Mike gave me a fire pit for my birthday, with the intention of turning it into a propane fire pit. Our boys are asthmatic and wood smoke is irritating to both of them, so we haven't been able to really enjoy backyard fires much (even though we love them). We tend to hit our wood smoke quota between friends and neighbors, so we stopped using our wood burning one at home. The propane pit was a great idea - but we had a million other projects to do and with two little kids... the idea just sort of fell by the wayside. The fire table was covered up, shoved into the corner of the patio. We told ourselves we would use it soon. Then we didn't. I put plant pots in front of it. Then on it. It became a table.

Fast forward to now. I saw a post on Instagram for a propane fire pit using amethyst. I did some price comparison and realized that from a rock wholesaler I found, it was the same price as fire glass from amazon. And looked a heck of a lot cooler. I mentioned it to Mike and he agreed that maybe after the garden was done, we could look into finally converting the fire pit for the fall.

I decided to do it for Mike's birthday.

I did the research and the shopping to convert the fire pit. Our current setup requires a ring, the piping and gauges from the propane tank to the ring, and a mini camping propane tank. If we want to have an extended fire we can also use the tank from the grill - it's very easy to swap around. Then of course the rocks - 30 lbs of lava rock for the bottom and then 50 lbs of fire glass or amethyst for the top.

(This is 100 lbs in all these buckets, freshly washed, before laying it out to dry in the sun and completely dry out for a week to ensure there's no moisture)

NOTE: Make sure whatever rock you are using is able to withstand high temperatures such as lava rock, fire glass or igneous rock (aka formed from lava - like quartz and obsidian). Never use a soft stone or river rock that could have moisture inside of it - the rocks will explode. Exploding hot rocks is a very bad thing.

To convert the pit, we had to accommodate the tubing, so we drilled two holes in the fire pit for it to go through with one of those circle-making drill bits. One into the pit itself and one into the side to connect to the valves and tank. The tubing is secured with heavy duty silicone tape.

I found a small black storage bin with lid and drilled it into the wood base in the back. This stores half the tubing that doesn't fit under the tarp well and when we're having a fire the small camping tank can be placed in here with the lid off to keep it off the ground.

Here's the pit with the lava rock being added around the ring and tubing. We used the grate that came with the pit to help keep the ring and tubing steady.

Then the crystals on top.

And now when we light it.... amethyst on fire!

This table would also be really cool with another kind of quartz crystals or obsidian, but amethyst was the most economical at $1 per lb. And honestly I love the deep purple and the way it sparkles - it's definitely not glass. I think it looks WAY cooler.

I built a base for it out of 2x4s (with plenty of braces to support the crazy weight) and added casters to the bottom so it can roll around. I sprayed it with heat resistant bronze spray paint to match the table. Being on a caster base, this pit can be moved anywhere. The paint helps the based feel like a natural extension of the fire pit - it already had a lovely rustic feel to it and this works well all together.

I am a big fan already. There's almost no smoke, plenty of heat for chilly nights and it looks beautiful.

Once again. FIRE!

Couch Pillows

I ordered these pillows on Amazon back in January to go with our new couch. Mike and the boys all wanted a say in what I chose... I picked out the options but they had veto power. Sadly my Nordic floral folk pattern and the hipster patterned unicorn designs were vetoed. But we did all agree on these, so in the end it's probably for the best.

These are an indoor/outdoor burlap material that we have on another set of pillows and it seems to hold up well to the kids and dogs. And after the abuse my most recent pillows have gotten - I wanted something durable and cheap that also looked cute.

The set was very inexpensive (4 pillows for $18 at the time I ordered them) so I didn't think the metallic detail was really metallic ink... but in person, the effect was a little cheesy. If it had been a flat copper brown it would have been fine, but the fake metallic details were a cheesy gradient of peach to brown. It looks decent in photos but in person it was less than ideal.

So my solution was a $2 tube of metallic copper fabric craft paint. I washed the covers, slid a piece of cardboard inside and traced the fake metallic lines with real metallic paint.

In person the difference is awesome. In photographs its much harder to see... the metallic copper paint just looks brown in my pictures... but in real life it's PERFECT. Just the right amount of sparkle and sheen. No more cheesy peach gradient. On the left is the original stripe and on the right is the metallic paint mid-job.

I painted all 3 pillows that had the metallic detailing. Now it looks much better.  And I love the designs so this was a great way to fix a minor detail I didn't like ($2 + 1 hour of time). And now they are exactly what I wanted.

 You can see a little bit of the metallic detailing in the arrow below - it sparkles just enough.

And the style coordinates well with the existing pillow we've had forever in a similar geometric pattern. And I like the juxtaposition of modern pillows next to the busy traditional wallpaper and the busy traditional style rug. Our house has always been an eclectic mix of old and new, modern and traditional.

I realized after taking the pictures that one of the pillows in is in the wash with chocolate ice cream stains... but that's the beauty of 4 cases, we just rotate them! And the paint is holding up well so far to washing the past two months (which is fairly frequent since my kids are often sticky and Morgan loves to lay on pillows).

Rustic Garden Obelisks

I made two garden obelisks over the weekend in our backyard while the kids played in the backyard with neighborhood friends and the rule was to stay away from Mama's miter saw. We had beautiful weather and it was such a pleasure to be outside.

Each obelisk required 4 - 8ft 2x2's, 3 - 8 ft 1x2's, a 4" square piece of 2x4 and screws.

The first one I wanted to be tall and more narrow, as it sits sandwiched between the blackberry bush and the forsythia in a small bed. I cut the tops and bottoms of the 2x2's at a 10 degree angle to make the legs form the pyramid shape. I attached the pieces to the top square and then put on the horizontal braces. For the side braces I just eye-balled it - 4 - 18" pieces, 4 - 15" pieces, 4 - 12" pieces, 4 - 9" pieces and 4 - 6" pieces and screwed them in where they fit. 

It's very sturdy with all the cross-braces. The theme of all our improvements this year is AQUA since it's my favorite color and looks good with the gray patio stone, the yellow siding and dark brown wood. So of course I painted this one aqua. With the spray paint I was able to give it a glaze that still shows the wood grain - I didn't want it to look like plastic. Later on I want to put a bird house on top of this one - I think it would look nice. 

The second obelisk I wanted it to be shorter and wider, for the back raised bed garden. I cut the 2x2's at a 15 degree angle and cut off about 18" of height. For the cross braces I did 4 instead of 5 sets, but they were wider - 4 - 24" pieces, 4 - 18" pieces, 4 - 12" pieces and 4 - 6" pieces.

I was going to stain this one brown or paint it white, but after spray painting the other one I just loved how it came out. I loved how bits of the wood still shown through but it still popped with a bright color. And spray painting is so darn easy. I had 1.5 cans of teal leftover from painting the play house so I ended up going teal.

I do love the bright pop of color in the garden. Now I kind of want to paint my tomato cages teal too.