Missy's Home & Garden Improvements

One More Dose Here for the Spider Mites

2011-02-19T11:08:00.000-08:00

You can see that they spider mites survived. Those little white specs are the blasted things.

So I took the blasted plant back into the kitchen and blasted the blasted things off with some blasted water again. This time they better not come back!

Trying to Get Rid of Spider Mites

2011-02-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

My impatiens plant has a terrible problem with spider mites. I've been fighting them for a long time. I've sprayed them several times. I haven't been feeling well, so it kind of got neglected and almost all the leaves died. You can see in this picture here that the poor thing looks...very sad:

Here's a close up of the little buggers web:

The little white specks are the nasty critters. I decided it was time to get really serious with the things. You'd think I could have come up with a nicer way to do it. The plant was really struggling anyway, but they're about as hardy a plant as ever I've grown. I tipped it over the sink and sprayed it all down:

I got it from every side corner and angle I could think of. You can see that it washed almost all the leaves off. They were dead anyway.

Here's a close up between the branches showing where all the mites were washed away:

It has been a couple weeks since I did all that. I'll take pictures of it now and share them with you another day. About my health, I'm waiting for a referral to visit with a Rheumatologist. Because my blood work didn't show anything really obvious, my regular doctor doesn't want to put me on anything without a for certain diagnosis.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2010-12-31T15:26:00.000-08:00

My favorite part about my birthday is the good excuse it gives me to do something for my mother. Since I was 16, every year I've made it a point to do something for her on my birthday. She's the one who did all the work getting me here! I also like to do things for my other family members. This year I'm giving a gift to each of them. The gifts range from MP3 players to books to stuffed animals. Mother's will be a new pair of Skecher's Shape Ups! For my father's gift, I had a hard time choosing between this Water Wheel Table Fountain and this Spinning Ball Table Fountain. I personally liked the Water Wheel one better, but I settled with the Spinning Ball one since it looks more like something you could, you know, drive your Jeep on. :D He loves natural fountains. That one looked much more natural to me.

I've wondered before, why exactly my birthday would happen to fall right in the dead of the winter. Maybe it's so I can have a little spark of sunshine during the cold months. My parents, especially my father, were thrilled to have me as a "tax deduction baby" and the last baby of the year in my area. :) Anyway, so I'm having a happy birthday being so thankful for my parents and wish you all a Happy New Year!

Snow!

2010-12-30T08:53:00.000-08:00

Remember those pansies I told you about last week? Well, look at them now:

This is our first snowfall of the year, if I remember correctly. Since my friend thinks snow is just the greatest, I won't comment on how I feel about it. ;)

It's Been Raining...

2010-12-22T07:44:00.000-08:00

And raining, and RAINING!

I was glad for these pansies that came to brighten my day. It has been raining for a LONG time now. I don't even know how long it's been. All I know is that it hurts, but we need it! Here in the desert, we don't get rain like this hardly ever. I'm surprised it's not snowing. I took this picture from my window. I don't care to be out in the cold. :P Anyway, how's life for everyone? :)

Missing My Morning Glories

2010-12-14T13:15:00.000-08:00

I don't know how anyone else is feeling, but I'm missing my morning glories. They were SO lovely. The old dead vines just got torn down. Here are some pictures from a few months past. I think you'll agree that these were BEAUTIFUL!

I love how they get a little star on them and the center almost glows.

They are bigger than you'd think.

So while I'm feeling rough with the cold getting to every joint in my body, I can rest with this assurance...it's springtime somewhere! :D

My African Violets

2010-11-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

I sure love flowering houseplants. African Violets are so much fun for me on my plant shelf. They just love it there. Here are some pictures of them.

This one is really flowering well right now. I don't know if I've ever seen this many flowers on an African Violet at once:

This one flowers such glittery white flowers that you fall in love with it in an instant:

And this lady is just getting ready to throw out a bunch more flowers I'm sure!

Here they are all together on my plant shelf with there little flip flap friend:

I wish I wanted to tell you all about these lovely ladies, but my wrists hurt so I'm too lazy to make myself type. I hope you enjoy the photos anyway. :)

Gardener at Heart

2010-11-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

During my long absence I got to spend some time with a dear friend of mine in the hospital. If you've ever spent much time in the hospital, you know that you get to sit...a lot...and do nothing. While I was sitting there doing nothing, I decided to decorate my Styrofoam cup. I love drawing on Styrofoam. It grabs the pen tip and the ink just glides out so gracefully. It's easy to make it look nice. Here's how my gardening cup turned out. :)

Oh, and I own the copyright on that! :D

New Forever Stamps

2010-11-16T14:09:00.000-08:00

I went to the post office for stamps. I was impressed that they finally did something cute with their forever stamps!

Now they just need to come out with some that have different kinds of flowers on them. :D

Papaya Leaves

2010-11-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

At last, the long awaited post! I said I'd show you close up pictures of my papaya leaves. Here they are finally!

I don't know about you, but I think they're beautiful! Hopefully my next posts will be a little closer together. ;) Thank you everyone for your kind sentiments. Check back soon!

Where has Missy Been? - Diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis

2010-10-29T15:51:00.000-07:00

So you're probably all wondering what became of Missy with her lovely gardens and houseplants. We've had some pretty good rain storms and the cold has set in here. Along with rain and cold comes Missy's reminder...achey bones. Around here we don't get a lot of rain, but when we do everyone is so glad! I am too...when I can think past the pain. When I heard rain drops and started crying a few weeks ago, I knew it was time to do something about it.

I consider myself an emotionally strong girl, generally, so when tears come, something really is wrong. I have an aunt who is a Registered Nurse. She also has a BlackBerry. I got on my BlackBerry and sent her a message telling her that I was taking the highest recommended dosage of ibuprofen and it wasn't even taking the edge off the pain. Her reply? "You need some very expensive testing." Nice of her to be honest, right? I'm always fretting about how much things cost. After giving it a few days thought and only feeling worse, I decided she was right. She told me to look a few things up on the internet. My symptoms all matched up with what she told me she thought I had: Rheumatoid Arthritis. Click on the picture below to read about it on MedicineNet:

A 21 year old girl doesn't just accept that she has a chronic debilitating illness like as if she'd just been told that the cookie jar was empty. It's a big deal! I finally scheduled an appointment with my local doctor. She's a really nice lady. After listening to my symptoms and feeling my joints she said, "She's got to have it."

She ordered a bunch of tests and told me to take lots of things. Now we're waiting for the results in order to know what to do next. In the mean time I have good days surrounded by bad days, I have bad days with bits of good mixed in, and good days with bits of bad mixed in.

You know how it is when you go to the doctor? You almost feel like it made things worse, but really, why did you go to the doctor? Because it wasn't getting any better, and just because you went to the doctor doesn't mean it's suddenly going to get better.

So how does an avid gardener and houseplant lover keep up with a hobby like that when they can barely get around? Let's take a spin around my bedroom.

When my wrists don't hurt too bad, there's nothing stopping me from reading. I have a little collection of gardening books and magazines in my bookcase:

You can probably guess my hobby by looking at my dresser. Butterfly Thermometer/Clock, Flower Vase, Rose Lamp, Rose Clock, Flowery Jewelery Box, and a Little Hand Crafted Birdhouse I made once:

I'm learning Spanish, and I don't see why I can't mix it in with what I already enjoy. Thus, I got this Spanish book on the Life Cycle of the Earth Worm:

And my Calendar with beautiful flowers every month:

First glance at my bookcase would make you think, 'Yep! This lady is sick!':

But, I haven't lost sight of the things I love which is shown by these plastic Cosmos hidden amongst all the pills (And yes, I need to dust!):

I also have my beautiful plant shelf that I've shown in other posts. My bedroom looks very "gardeny" as a whole, so nope! It's not going away any time soon. Rheumatoid Arthritis or not I'm still a gardener at heart!

Yes, I've accepted and rejected the diagnostic about 150 thousand times in the last few weeks, but I still have the old reminder, pain. I've been so glad for things like Ibuprofen, Tylenol Arthritis, Lavender Oil to soak in, and all my wonderful friends and associates. I looked back in my old chats with my co-workers. I was mentioning my knees in April of 09 and talked about my achey bones through the winter of last year and into this year. It was interesting because I kind of felt like it was a little "all the sudden". Apparently, it was not.

Papaya Again!

2010-10-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

I thought you might be interested to know that my Papaya grove put up a few more seedlings again. Have I mentioned that this is an amazing plant before? Here's a picture:

Say CHEESE! the Lazy Way - Lazy Ladies Grilled Cheese Sandwich

2010-10-07T08:08:00.000-07:00

I got to wanting a grilled cheese sandwich but I was too lazy to do it right. I invented this lazy lady's way of doing it. First I toasted 2 slices of bread:

Then I buttered one slice:

I put it butter side down on the the plate and added a nice thick slice of cheese:

Then I added the other slice of toast and buttered it. (Ok, so I really used margarine, but it would have been BETTER with butter!)

Next, I microwaved it for 30 seconds. (I didn't dare take a picture of the inside of the microwave, it's WAY too dirty!)
It was just right at that point:

I cut it in half and enjoyed my easy, stretchy, yummy sandwich! :D

Another Guessing Game

2010-09-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know how well everyone else enjoyed my last guessing game, but I thought it was great fun. Here's another one. Can you guess what this is?

After everyone has had a chance to guess, I'll tell you what it is on Monday or Tuesday. Thanks for guessing! :)

My Tree is Climbing Out!

2010-09-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

If anyone sees a Hairy Tree on the loose, it's probably mine because mine is trying to climb out of it's pot! This is an example of when to re-pot a plant. Look how innocent he looks just sitting here on my desk:

Take a closer look:

He's climbing out! Someone once explained to me that you know to re-pot a plant when it starts pulling away from the sides and pushing up like a cake does when it's done baking. I hadn't seen it until this one. When you see these roots you'll see why it's pushing up:

See how huge the roots are? Here's another look:

One last view of the bottom:

So it looks like a new pot will be on my list of things to pick up when I go in to town next. :)

Crayon Art

2010-09-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I did this Crayon Art from a picture my sister took. The picture is the trees up our walk way at work. Here's the original photo:

Here's the Crayon Art I did:

I know it's not the greatest thing ever, but I love crayons for art. Crayola is the only brand to buy. I have a big box of something like 300 crayons which I need to get out more often. Silhouette pictures like this one are my favorites. Do you draw, color, paint, or do art of any kind? I'd love to see pictures of them if you do. You could post them on your blog and leave me the link here if you'd like. :)

Flowers Galore

2010-09-16T17:43:00.000-07:00

I took a few more pictures of the top tier of that garden I posted a few days ago. Here they come. This is Aster, Daisy, and Vinca:

Here's the pink Aster with Vinca:

This Vinca is SO very pretty to me. I fell in love with it at the nursery:

Here's a close up of the pink Aster flowers:

And here's a close up of the purple Aster flowers:

I might be playing favorites, but I sure think I have the prettiest garden there is! :)

Papaya Grove Strikes Again!

2010-09-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

I keep being amazed by my Papaya grove. Every once in a while another one sprouts! It's seriously been 7 months since I first planted the seeds. It took about 4 months for them to first spout. I took this picture of another newcomer yesterday:

Isn't that amazing? These are some of the most fascinating plants I've ever grown from seed. I love growing things from seed, by the way. It's so rewarding, but when they die... :( it makes me SO sad. I'm worried about this little Papaya grove I have. It has white powdery mold and I can't get rid of it. I'll be taking home some spray to see if I can help that today. Let me know if you know of any other ways to get rid of the dreadful stuff.

Name This - Guessing Game

2010-09-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of an everyday item at a not-so-everyday angle. :) Go ahead, give it a guess:

After everyone has guessed at what it is, I'll tell you. Whoever guess right, or at least the closest, gets a high resolution copy of any of my blog images emailed to them just for fun. Whoever doesn't win gets one too. Be sure to include which image you would like a copy of in your reply. :) Thanks for joining and I hope you all have a good time.

Pretty Flowers Everywhere

2010-09-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

My garden is SO pretty right now. I snapped a few pictures to share with you today. This first one is my pink Aster. Is this pretty, or what? This is the second year for this plant. It did get transplanted this spring:

This is purple Aster. It's the same age as the pink and also got transplanted the first of this spring:

I sure like Verbena. The purple and red flowers here are Verbena with the purple Aster in the background:

Here's some red Verbena:

This is a patch of white Alyssum. I love the petunias peaking through the middle. I just wish there was more of them. :)

Here's the full top tier of that garden from the back:

This is my rose garden. I love this garden. The foliage is so dense that weeds don't hardly even try to grow here:

Here's the pretty corner of this garden. It looks so beautiful here:

I took another shot since I love this corner so much!

This is a (I think) watermelon plant that came up volunteer. It adds a nice enough effect that, even if it doesn't grow any melons, I left it there:

I was amazed at how these petunias climbed up this wall by sneaking up behind the fencing:

This is a view of the Lantana (that came up from last year) and roses from the top of the stairs:

I'm expecting the mums to burst forth into color any time here now that it's cooling off. I've had a lot of good times gardening this year. This time of year it really feels like it's all paying off. :)

"Perfect" Aquarium Filter with a Fishy Translation

2010-09-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

A little while back I got a new filter for my aquarium. I always get a kick out of funny translations. This one gave me a huge source of entertainment. This "Perfect" brand filter had far from a perfect translation. Introducing the new Perfect Outside Filter:

MULTI-LAYER FULL OF VARIOUS FILTER MATERIALS
HIGH EFFICIENCY OF BREEDING NITRO BACTERIA
PERFECT FILTRATION CAPABILITY
Touch the perfection

This gets better. Look at the parts diagram:

1. INPUT AND OUTPUT DISCRETENESS
2. BARRELHEAD
3. MAIN BODY
4. DRAINING SKEP COVER
5. DRAINING SKEP
6. OUTPUT CURVY BAR
7. CONNECTED BAR
8. SPRAY BAR
9. SPRAY BAR COVER
10. DIRTINESS ENTRANCE
11. CONNECTED BAR
12. INPUT CURVY BAR
13. JOINT OF DIRTINESS ENTRANCE
14 INPUT BAR
15. INPUT COVER
16. SUCKING DISC FOR FIX
17. PIPE

Now if that didn't confuse you, the "Operation Guide" most certainly will:

1. According to the diagrammatic representation, the buckle (1) and (2) should be unfolded at first, which will separate the main body and barrel head.

2. Putting the draining skeps with filter medium into the main body in turn. And pressing the barrelhead with your hands to combine the main body and the barrelhead. Then you should fasten the buckle (1) and (2).

3. Pulling the securing buckle to take out the input and output discreteness .After this, the input and output pipes should be installed and they will be fastened by nuts. Later, putting the input and output discreteness to the former place and press the securing buckle to fix the input and output discreteness.

4. According to the diagrammatic representation, installing the input and output curvy bar in the aquarium. (Notice! The curvy bar with spray head is output curvy bar, and the curvy bar with dirtiness entrance is input curvy bar.)

5. According to the diagrammatic representation, pressing the blue buckle forcibly and leave it immediately. The blue buckle will rebound. And the input bar absorb water into main body at the same time which compel the air out of main body through output bar. When the level of water in output bar is equal to the level of aquarium, you may electrify the equipment to make it work.

Without the "diagrammatic representation" I don't know if I would have even figured out how to install the silly thing! By the way, it is a very nice filter and my turtles (and I) have really enjoyed it. :)

A New Spin on Cake Fans...or Fan Cakes

2010-09-10T16:52:00.001-07:00

September 7th was my 5 year birthday working for the company I'm working for now. I decided to make a cake to celebrate. I made it to look like a ceiling fan and wrote "I'm a (Company Name) Fan!" on it. I blotched out my company name for privacy reasons. Here are some pictures:

So, are you a cake fan, or a fan cake? :D

Where's My Penny Cutter?

2010-09-09T13:56:00.001-07:00

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements. -Ernest Hemingway

This is kind of off the wall and has nothing to do with my home or garden, but I'm a grammar freak. I was communicating with someone over Google Talk today about a USB adapter he needed for his phone. I found one on eBay for $0.99 with free shipping. He was commenting on how cheap it was.

"Very cheap.
.99, amazing.
.99 cents"

At this point I replied with, "Umm. That's less than a penny." He knows that. He just wanted to get at me. He next typed, ".99 cents would be VERY good. Bother you?" "Yes, actually. That's one of my least favorite grammatical errors." Naturally, he got to harassing me since he now knew I didn't like it. "I had no idea. Is it wrong to say .99 cents?" I replied with a simple " :) " to which he continued, "I could maybe afford .99 cents. .99 cents is a good deal. I may have .99 cents. Can I borrow .99 cents?" I told him, "No. My penny cutter is broken." He said, "See if you can find one for .99 cents?" I replied, "I can't and that's not a question either, while we're knit picking grammar..."

I'm always amazed at how many people are confused with that. It's not 0.99 cents, people! Do you realize that's 99 hundredths of a cent? It's either $0.99 or 99¢ but NEVER 0.99¢ or 0.99 cents.

Another one that makes me smile, but doesn't bother me so much, is when people say, "Guess what?" "Guess what" is not a question. It's a command sentence and should be ended with either a period (that's the little dot, remember? Like this: ".") or an exclamation mark (!). That's probably confusing to people because we use "What?" so much. When you say "Guess what" to someone, and end it with a question mark, it almost makes it sound like you didn't understand yourself. "Guess! Huh, what?"

I could go on and on about grammar errors, but I'll just bring up one more. See this little guy? " ' " He's called an apostrophe. I'm sure you've seen him about being used both correctly and incorrectly. The most common mistake I see with him is when he's placed in words that are meant to be plural. "We are picking apple's." Ok, so this implies either "apple is" or that the apple owns something. "Apple is" simply doesn't make sense in this sentence unless you were to say, "We are picking. Apple is...." which you can see is going nowhere really fast. If we see it to mean that Apple, whoever this might be, owns something, the first problem we run into is that he should have his name capitalized. We wouldn't want him to feel like he's being degraded, now would we? The next problem is, supposing we are picking something that belongs to Mr. Apple, WHY DID WE STOP THERE?! What were we picking of his? What's that period doing there before the sentence even got through telling us what we were doing?!

Maybe another time I'll carry on some more about things like "your or you're", "than or then", or when commas are supposed to be used. Just my luck, I probably messed up on each of the areas I've been ranting about in this very post. :) English really is a very fascinating language. What do foreigners do for entertainment? They can't say things like "Mete out the meat to all you meet" or "Pare that pair of pears" or even "Did you read what I read about a reed in red?" I just love English! I also love to see people use proper grammar. :)

Hummingbird Visit

2010-09-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

We had a hummingbird pay us a visit at work yesterday. We have big windows out front of our building. I suppose it flew into one of them and knocked itself out. One of my co-workers brought it in so we snapped a few pictures.

After we took pictures, he took it back outside. As he went to put it down by a tree, it came too and was off as happy as ever. :)

Started Some Peach Pits

2010-09-07T12:49:00.000-07:00

I started some peach pits on Saturday. We had a couple of our big peach trees clear loaded with fruit just drop dead and all the green fruit just fall to the ground completely unusable. :( We chose another one of the trees that we've liked the fruit to and started 4 pits.

I'll let you know when they sprout. :)

Sweet Williams

2010-09-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

I was able to get a few fabulous pictures of my beautiful Sweet Williams:

I just love these flowers, and they smell so....well, sweet! :)

Why Do I Garden?

2010-09-02T07:15:00.001-07:00

Randy over at Creating Our Eden posed an interesting question. How did you develop an interest in gardening? Well, I guess it kind of came natural with me. My grandmother is an avid gardener although my mother is not interested. I never really got into gardening much when I was younger. I thought it was all but a punishment to have to weed. I still don't like to hoe and rake, but at one point I remember realizing that I actually didn't mind weeding flowerbeds by hand. That was when I was 13 or so. I still didn't do it very much and never thought of actually planting anything. Then I got an office job. After about 2 years, my sister told me about a coffee house plant she'd seen at Home Depot. My company had just given us Home Depot gift cards and there was a bit left to spend, so I sent my card with a co worker and he picked up my coffee tree for me. That was my first house plant. It was just a little bunch in about a 3" pot when I got it. This is what it looks like now:

Well, the house plant was a refreshing and happy addition to my little office. He grew and brought me happy thrills with each new leaf. What a fascinating world the world of plants is! I remember being so gleeful and summonsing the whole office to come see when the first two leaves bloomed out. I even took a picture of new baby leaves when another branch started coming on:

So, what does all this have to do with gardening? I don't exactly consider house plant care as gardening, but it does give me a little piece of my hobby when I'm in the office. What this has to do with gardening is, that is how my love of plants got started. When that gets started, well we all know it's non-stoppable! A few years later my boss came and asked me to take care of a few plots with some plants. He told me to plant some things around the trees and make it beautiful. There was no limit to how much I could do. Truthfully, he's a better gardener than I, but I'm sure glad he let me do it. I was elated when he asked. Can you imagine being paid to do what you already enjoy?

I sure had a lot to learn and I still do. My first lesson was that bulbs don't bloom all year long. (Is that embarrassing, or what?) I was pretty much a novice on the subject, but I loved plants. I actually had a very pretty garden that year. My boss had his wife take me to a nursery and get whatever plants I wanted. She introduced me to SO many different things. I got lots of different things and put them in the ground. My second lesson was that you have to break up the root ball or your plants will get root bound in the ground. (Yes, that was embarrassing too.) I had kale that wouldn't grow because it was root bound.

My boss would have people bring me different plants and flowers so I could make it beautiful if he got to thinking I hadn't put enough in or was afraid to ask for more. :) This made so I had petunias, verbena, hyssops, lantana, rose bushes, desert rose, ornamental kale, and lots of other plants, that I developed a love for, in my very first garden. I don't think my love of gardening is going to grow old like some hobbies do. I love gardening. Weeding is so relaxing. You don't have to do any brain work to weed. You can just rip out the weeds and let your thought wander around without anything bad happening. (Good luck doing that in an office.) So anyway, that's why I garden, and that's where I got started. (Now I just need to figure out how to do it more.) Thanks for reading. Happy Gardening!

Impatiens in Bloom

2010-08-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

My houseplant impatiens that I grew from seed bloomed. Isn't this lovely?

They're such a peaceful dusty pink color they just melt you to see them!

Pin Cushion Wall Clock

2010-08-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

You've probably seen those retro style clocks with the little balls all the way around the outside. I've always thought they looked like a pin cushion and thought one would look neat in our sewing room. I sure didn't like the price tag though. I saw one that's only 13" across here for $61. It looks like this:

Well, as much as I like them, I sure wasn't ready to fork over $60+ for a novelty item, so after seeing a Sunburst Mirror created by Stephanie Lynn from Under the Table and Dreaming, I thought, 'If she can do it, so can I!' So I picked up supplies from Wal*Mart 2 days later. My clock is going to be much larger than the $60 one too. I got these regular old super balls for 4 for $1:

I started by boring a hole in them. I'm sure there's more technical ways of doing this, but I just used the screw that came off the back of the clock. It was holding it in the display box:

I screwed it clear in and then pulled it out:

Then I made the hole bigger with the dowels I'll be using. I can't remember exactly how much the dowels were, but they came in a 16 pack for about $2.
Next I dismantled the clock so I could decorate the face of it:

It came out very easily. This is the point that I discovered that the face is actually glass, not plastic. That pleased me for a $3 clock!

This is how it looked. I tested it to make sure it worked before I put any more effort into it. That's why the second hand isn't up on the 12 where it belongs:

I decided to put it back together to mark where I wanted to drill the holes:

Then I laid the dowels out and painted them using Krylon silver paint:

Midnight of course had to come check on me. I'm surprised Canicus wasn't along as well:

Next I drilled the holes:

Then I decorated the face of the clock. I thought I was going to do some actual stitching on it, but it was glued on so I just drew on it and added buttons, pins, and a needle. Cute, huh?

Then I added the "pins". I made these by gluing the balls onto the sticks after poking them in the holes I'd made. The white stuff you see here is wadded napkins glued in to hold the pins in place:

So far, so good:

I added the battery:

I did get a reassuring "tick, tick, tick, tick," but I must admit I was hesitant to turn it over. A million thought went through my head. What if it doesn't work? What if the glue dripped through and ruined the mechanism? What if it falls apart? What if...? We certainly need a drum roll here!

Tada!

Isn't in darling? It's nearly 3 feet across. Here's another shot of the face of the clock:

You can see that the hands of the clock have a kind of glazed look. That's from the super glue fumes. This made me grateful again that the face is glass or it would have gone cloudy too. How "in-place" does this look hanging here in our sewing room?

All the supplies cost me around $10. There are a few things that bother me about this clock. The bottom pin is a little crooked and I can see the wood coming through on a few of the pins. I don't think I'm going to be able to do anything about the bottom pin, but I might mask it out and fix the paint on the pins. Chances are, I won't ever do anything about it. :) In the mean time, I hope you all like it!

How to Make a Diaper Cake

2010-08-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

This doesn't really have much to do with home improvement or gardening, but I made a diaper cake for someone last night. Since I haven't posted any articles the last few days, I'm going to bombard you with lots for this project. First I cut pieces of ribbon into strips long enough to tie around the rolled diapers:

Then I rolled the diapers up:

Then I tied the ribbon around them:

Next I tied 6 of them around 1 to make a circle. This will be the center of the cake for both tiers. I made 2 of these:

Next I stacked 12 around one circle for the bottom tier:

Then I put diapers around the bottom in a swirl:

I tied it all cute with ribbon and tied a bow:

Isn't that cute? Next I used baby spoons inserted in the center of the top tier to attach them to the bottom tier:

That just makes so it doesn't move around:

Now I cut some more pieces of ribbon. These are longer because I'm going to tie them into bows on the outside of 6 of them:

I tied the bows on the smooth facing side like this:

I did 6 like that and 6 the same as the others:

Then I stacked them on every other one with bows and regular. This is kind of a balancing act to get them all to stay on while you tie the ribbon around:

After I put 2 rows of ribbon to hold that tier together, I added some baby spoons to look like candles:

It's almost cute enough just like that, but it gets ever cuter! I added some flower hair clips to the top tier:

...some baby socks to the bottom tier:

...some cute little zip lock bags filled with mini M&Ms:

...a few pacifiers and a set of baby toy keys:

...and filled the sock with Skittles and Mini M&Ms:

Doesn't this look most tasty?

Here are just a few more shots:

I'm going to finish it off with a tin foil covered tray. Baby is due next week and I hope she likes her new cake! :D It reminds me of what my parents' sign looks like right now. We planted morning glories by it and this is what happened:

If that doesn't describe this cake to a T, I don't know what does. ;)

The Rest of the Houseplants

2010-08-14T18:30:00.000-07:00

Here are the rest of my houseplants. I know I said I'd share these yesterday, but it got really hairy and I didn't get to it. This first plant is another Impatien:

This is a Finger Jade:

This belongs to a co-worker. It's a Bougainvillea. It's supposed to grow red bracts, but it hasn't yet. Where it was before, I think it wasn't getting enough sun, so we moved it here:

This is an arrangement I got just the other day. It's got an Umbrella Plant and an Arrowhead Plant in it:

This is an African Violet which I also got just the other day. I've seen, bought, and grown much better specimens than this before, but this was the last one they had so I took it:

This is a Hummingbird Vine which I started from seed about this time last year. It grows very very slowly. There were 4 plants in there, but one of them died:

This is an Ornamental Pepper Plant. You can see that it has red fruit on it. That's from last year. I let them dry and remain as decorations on the plant. It's also growing some more:

This is a Spring Cactus. If it were to flower again I'd be very glad. It grows very pretty flowers, but it's hard to get it to flower and I haven't felt like it would be worth the effort yet. You have to keep it at a certain temperature for so long, then a different temperature for so long, then in darkness for so long...anyway, I'm not that ambitious quite yet. It makes a lovely green plant in the meantime:

This is a Swedish Ivy:

This is a Cyclamen. I've really enjoyed this plant. It grows beautiful pink flowers in cooler weather. You can see that there are a few on it right now, but in the cooler weather it grows scads of them:

This is where all those hanging baskets are hanging. Isn't this lovely? I really like hanging baskets:

This plant I also got just the other day. It's a Corn Plant with Pathos vine growing around it. I've never spent as much on a plant as I did on this one, but it was truly love at first sight when I saw it:

Last, but not least, this is a Mother-in-Law's Tongue. It's a great plant because it almost never needs watered and doesn't really care if it get any direct sunlight. It does just fine with fluorescent lighting:

Well, I hope you all enjoyed my house plant collection. These are all the ones I have at my office. There are some more at home, but that will have to be for a later article. ;) For those who wonder, that's 35 pots of plants. :O We better have lots of oxygen in this office!

Even More Houseplants

2010-08-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

Again, here are more house plants. This first one is an Aloe Vera Plant which I got on a clearance table for $0.99. As you can see, it's not doing very well. I watered it too much at first. It's just starting to turn back green from that! The problem is, I love my house plants...too much for this type. They thrive on neglect rather than care, so all my efforts of rescue just make them worse. One day I'll figure the silly things out. In the mean time, this is what it looks like:

This is another Dragon's Blood or "Hairy Tree" as I like to call them. This belongs to a co worker. Dragon's Blood trees are amazing plants. They seem to grow just as large as you allow them to. If they're in a small pot, they stay small. You can move them to a large pot and they'll grow larger until they fill the pot. I saw one that was huge; I mean HUGE in a hospital. It was as tall as a 1 story building without any exaggeration and the pot was massive. This one will probably get a little larger in this pot before it evens off:

This is a banana tree. It was much larger, but something happened to it and it clear died off. This one came up from the roots and is just starting to get big for us:

This next plant is a China Doll plant. It was once much bigger too, but we re-potted it and took most of the starts out. It started out as this cute little innocent looking plant in a basket arrangement that also contained the Peace Lily I mentioned in my last article. When we re-potted it, all the starts we took out died. This one had 2 starts that struggled for a long time before one finally got over it and the other one died clear back. We thought it was gone, but you can see in this picture that it's tiny in the bottom and coming back healthy as ever:

I love these plants. This actually belongs to a co-worker, but I sure like it a lot. It doesn't need any direct sunlight and just likes to be watered about every other week:

This is a little shoot I took off a Kalanchoe. It's growing next to a Money Tree:

This is another arrangement that was given to my co-worker. It has a Dragon's Blood or "Hairy Tree", a Crouton, as well as a Pathos. This is about how big the other arrangement was when she first got it:

This next plant is a Spider Plant. It also came is the same arrangement that the China Doll and Peace Lily were in:

This is an Ivy and, well, it's not doing so good. It looks fine here:

...but take a closer look:

It's my fault. I forgot to water it for 2 weeks and now I just hope it's going to pull out of it. It looks so lovely here:

While you'd think I'd be content with that many plants, I do actually have a few more to share with you tomorrow, so check back for even more beautiful, lovely houseplants that keep our office cheery. :)

More Houseplants

2010-08-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

Here are some more of my houseplants. This first one is an Impatien. A little history on this plant which is actually my boss's plant; my sister gave it to him after she couldn't get it to grow for about 6 months or more. It was pale and yellow and just plain wouldn't grow. It was about 6 inches tall and just did nothing. After he had it for about that long, I took pitty on the poor thing and repotted it with my favorite kind of potting soil (Black Gold Waterhold), and fed it some of my favorite fertilizer (Miracle-Gro Liquid Houseplant Food). It just took off and grew like crazy. Now it's producing flowers and is absolutely gorgeous:

I love these plants. They're so much fun. I did have to trim off a branch that got broken somehow:

Look at the flowers on this thing. They're so beautiful:

When I water Impatiens, I pour lots of water on top of the soil, then I fill up the tray with water too. They like lots of water:

These plants can easily be grown from clippings. You just put the clipping in water until they sprout roots, then you pot them up. I grew this one from a clipping and then gave it to a co-worker:

I water it the same way:

This next one is I grew from Mimosa Pudica Seeds. Some people call them Sensitive Plant Seeds. The leaves fold up when you touch them:

Here is a Jade. I only water this when it starts looking shriveled:

This is a rainbow bush. It gets watered whenever I think about it. :) It doesn't like too much water. It's a succulent so it's kind of like the Jade family. This is actually a rescue I got from a friend. She had a bunch of plants in her classroom that accidentally got abandoned for a couple months. I went in there one day and this was the last one that had even a tiny bit of life left. It's doing very well now:

Here is my co-worker's Peace Lily in bloom:

This last plant is a coffee tree that a friend of mine gave me to try and resurrect. In places it looks like it'll be fine. Well have to see how it turns out. I'm thinking about changing out the soil to Black Gold Waterhold, and I think that would help a lot:

I guess that better be all for today. I still have more, so do check back tomorrow for some more beautiful houseplant pictures!

My Houseplants

2010-08-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

I love houseplants. It's my office way of gardening from my computer. :) Every Monday I go through the office and water all the houseplants. Most are mine, but I water them all regardless of the owner. I always use Miracle-Gro Liquid Houseplant Food each time I water:

Let me introduce you to some of my plants. These are African Violets. They don't need watered every week. I only water them when they feel dry to touch. One or the other of them are in flower almost all year long:

This is a start that came of the blue purple one. It hasn't flowered yet. I gave it to my co worker who potted it up most tastefully in this vanity light glass. African Violets don't like to be in large pots, so she'll never have to re-pot it:

This is a Dragon's Blood tree. I like to call it a "Hairy Tree." :) This plant only needs watered about every other week or so:

This is a Cat Palm. It's in water. I just keep it filled with water and it just grows beautifully. It doesn't really care if it has direct sunlight or not:

Somehow I always manage to run that one over when I water:

This is a coffee tree. Coffee trees are really easy to care for. They don't mind fluorescent lighting and just want watered once a week. I've had this one for about 4 years. It was my first houseplant:

I usually just pour water in until it looks good. The soil this is in takes a minute to absorb the water. Yes, that's a can of instant coffee there for looks. I don't drink coffee, but it was given to me because it's labeled in Spanish and I'm studying Spanish. :)

This is an Autumn Croton. Crotons are notoriously hard to grow houseplants because they detest change. I haven't had a lot of problems with this one, but I haven't changed its environment or care even in the slightest since I first got it. It did have 3 separate plants when I first got it and one of them died. You can't really tell by looking though:

This is a bamboo. They call them "Lucky" bamboo when they're twisted like that. All I do to this plant is keep the water full. It's not picky at all:

That better be all for today. I have a lot of plants. I'll keep posting pictures of my houseplants for the next few days until you've seen all of them, so check back tomorrow for some more beautiful plant pictures! :)

My $0.89 Obliterate the Oak Tree Experiment

2010-08-07T12:22:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my last article, we have this oak tree growing up through our peach tree. I read online that if you put copper nails into it, it will kill the roots. I don't know how or why that's supposed to work, but I decided to give it a swing. We went down to the hardware store, and after looking around for a while, we finally came up with these copper tacks for 89 cents:

Here's the lovely oak tree we're trying to be rid of:

You can tell that it was dark when I trimmed it last time. I left a lot of stuff alive. I started pressing the nails into each branch after I trimmed off the stuff I left:

Most went right in without problems. Others I had to use a hammer to get them to go in clear:

This is what the tips of each branch looked like:

Pretty classy, if you ask me. :) I like copper. The largest ones got two:

I just kept adding...

...until they all got one:

Good thing I had some company during this monotonous task:

I also got to brush a little red spider off my face when I was done. I tried to take his picture, but he ran off too fast. :( Better luck next time. :)

Eradicating an Oak Tree from the Peach Tree

2010-08-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

One of our peach trees has been infested by an oak tree!

The only thing we know to do about it is to chop out all the new growth.

I actually quite like the leaves on the oak tree, but I think I like the fruit on the peach tree better. :D

You can see in this picture that the oak tree is growing mostly off to one side of the peach tree, but it actually has some shoots coming right up through the middle of the peach tree's trunk:

Canicus (Pronounced Con-EE-cuss - It's Spanish for Marbles) and Midnight, my kittens, had to come see what I was doing. They wanted to hide behind this box though:

Look at this big pile of oak branches I clipped off:

I wish I thought that was the end of that, but somehow I'm afraid the saga will continue as it has for the past few years. Any suggestions for a total annihilation of this tree would be greatly appreciated.

My New Vases - Repaired

2010-08-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

I was given 2 of these vases that were cracked because they were in an unsaleable condition. One had 2 of the feet clear broken off. The other just had one foot cracked. This article will show the one that was cracked. This is the box it came in:

If you ask me, that's an awful picture of it on that box. It's way prettier in real life. Here are some pictures of the damage. It's made of cast resin so it broke pretty easily:

I pulled it out a little:

And put some glue in the crack:

Then I pushed it up tight and held it for a little while:

All better:

Isn't it beautiful?

No vase is complete without flowers. I got my gloves on and clipped a few:

I love cut flowers. I added a few more to fill up the vase since it's pretty big. Isn't this a nice home improvement?

I didn't put flowers in the other one yet, but they look nice on either side of my headboard.

New Gardening Gloves

2010-08-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in an earlier article that I had to get some new gardening gloves. I bought a 5 pack from Costco for about $17. They're Wells Lamont brand:

These are just your standard everyday knit gardening gloves that you can buy about anywhere other than that they have little dots of rubber on them. They call them Dotted Jersey Gloves:

I've never been disappointed with a pair of knit gardening gloves other than the fact that they don't usually last a whole season. This next pair they called Latex Coated Knit Gloves. They're supposed to be better because the sticker-burs aren't supposed to poke through them. I'll have to let you know if I end up having any troubles with them:

Then they had some Nitrile Coated Knit Gloves with double dipped finger tips for extra finger nail protection. Good! I never like to break a nail. :D

This pair of gloves looks as if I'm planning on having a sword fight with them. They called them Leather Palm Garden Gloves for heavy duty use. I liked them for pruning rose bushes since our bushes are extra thorny. Good thing they're green or they might have been appropriated for use with my father's Jeep for winching! (He hate's green.)

I think I liked this last pair the best. I think it might be the little flower on the strap that fastens it tight around your wrist, or maybe it's the fact that they're machine washable. Then again, maybe I just like them because they look like they might last a season. They called them Synthetic Leather Gloves with LiquiCell Technology. That last bit means it's supposed to prevent blisters. I don't have enough time to spend gardening to get blisters anyway, so I didn't worry too hard about that. Here they are:

This is a little off the subject, but I've always wondered if those silica packages that came in things would swell up real big like those kinds you buy for house plants so I gave it a try. I dumped them into a cup:

The beads are tiny:

There are probably 100 of them in this cup:

I put plenty of water in for them to absorb:

Guess what happened....Drum Roll!

...Absolutely Nothing!!! Anyway, it was a nice experiment. :) I threw them out.

Spiffing-Up the Plant Shelf

2010-08-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

When you walk in your bedroom and see something as beautiful as this lovely African Violet...

...on your lovely plant shelf...

...you probably won't notice that it's incomplete. This "Papaya Grove" as I like to call it, needs repotted:

I grew that from seed. We got a papaya and I planted all the seeds from it thinking maybe a few would come up. I think they all came up...it just took about 4 months for them to sprout! This Impatiens plant also needs re-potted:

But I think the last thing you're going to notice is how dirty the shelf is:

It's amazing how much dust we collect in our homes without noticing. Well, I went ahead and re-potted the Papaya Grove:

And I re-potted the Impatiens:

I really like Black Gold brand Water Hold Cocoblend Potting Soil. If I buy it, that's what I get and nothing else. I have used other kinds that people have given me, but I never like them as well. I taped the bag shut after I got through potting up those plants. I don't want to imagine what my "Hermanita" (Pronounced like air-mon-eat-ah - It's the Spanish version of "Sis") would do when she found a whole big bag of dirt here nice and handy in my bedroom!

Next I piled all my plants around the room while I cleaned the shelf:

This on the wall is where the tomato seed package got wet and stuck to the wall when I was sprouting them this spring:

It was really stuck on there good too:

Look how nice the shelf looks now:

Isn't this most lovely now?

That plant on the left hand side is a few of the Papaya seedlings I re-potted for one of my co-workers who asked me for some. I think you'll agree that this shelf looks much more appealing to the eye than it's sister shelf across the room:

One of these days I'm going to come up with some fancy way to make those dark black cords not stand out so much against the bright white of the rest of the room. Feel free to drop me some ideas on that one!

New Bathroom Timer

2010-08-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

We had 15 minute timer that had stopped working so we needed to replace it. It was the knob style that you turn to the time you want it to run:

I got my nifty 2 in 1 Stubby Quick Change Pocket Screwdriver that I got from Meritline for 89 cents and set to work:

For some reason the face plate wouldn't come off, so I had to use the screwdriver to pry it off:

Don't ask me why they used flat head screws to install the thing. I hate flat head screws, but nonetheless, out they came:

At this point I remembered that I'm not an electrician, so I better switch off the breaker so I won't get zapped. I don't know what those wires might be up to!

I took the wires off the old timer:

Again, lovely flat head screws; what good is a 2 in 1 Stubby Quick Change Pocket Screwdriver that I got from Meritline for 89 cents if I only get to use one side?! :D At this point, I took the new timer out of the box. Uh oh! Do you see any problems here?

FOUR WIRES! HELP! What am I going to do with twice as many wires as I think I need?! Perhaps I can consult with the instructions:

After pondering why these instructions weren't making any sense without actually reading anything very close I discovered they were in Spanish. That's one problem with being a Spanish student, it takes a little longer to register that it's not in the right language. The other side looked much more understandable:

English or Spanish; either way, it was all Greek to me...besides I was too lazy to read it. I shall converse with my brother who is an electrician:

I'll bet you thought you were going to find out how I got shocked, set the electrical on fire, had to buy a new timer, had to scrape melted wire nuts up off the floor, ect, etc, but no. HE WOULDN'T EVEN HELP ME! His reply? "I'll be over there tonight and put it in for you." So now I don't even know how to install one for if I want to sometime. :( At any rate, it does look nice:

You push the button to turn it on and again to change the time to run:

Next time I'm going to demand a tutorial on the installation! :D

Weeding the Corner Garden

2010-07-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

The corner garden; haven of peace, refuge of safety, and retreat of calm, sublime, serenity...if you're a weed. I have a huge problem with grass in this bed. Here's a picture of before I got started weeding:

You can see that there are by far more weeds than there are flowers. Good thing I think weeding is recreation after a day in the office, right? There really are some flowers there among the thistles:

I don't weed without gardening gloves. Maybe I've got just a little too much feminine in me so I don't like to get my hands dirty, or maybe I'm just too lazy to spend the next 10 days digging mud out of my fingernails. I don't know. Maybe it's really because I'm afraid someone's going to send me a message on my BlackBerry and I don't want to get dirt in it, just rip off the gloves and text away. :) Anyhow, so I got out my trusty butterfly glove (by the way, by the time I was done weeding this garden I had to throw that pair of glove away because they got a hole in them) and my metal hand shovel and set to work:

I got that shovel from the gardening club free as a test product or something. It was advertised as a transplant shovel. I got a hard plastic Fisker shovel from them too, but I like this metal one better since it's a lot sharper because the metal's thinner. It took me several days to weed this lovely garden, but I enjoyed every minute of it. How can you not when you find such pleasent surprises as this Violet Candy Tuft Plant that I didn't realize had actually come up:

Or these beautiful candy cane petunias:

Or lovely purple and pink petunias:

Look at this mammoth pile of weeds I got every night:

I'm not sure what the pink flowers (I like to call them fireworks) are here, but the white ones are baby's breath, if I'm not mistaken:

These blue petunias sure are lovely, wouldn't you agree?

I simply can't stop cooing over how lovely the sunset was this night:

Is that one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen, or what? I just love it. I think it has a very good chance of being my next crayon art subject. Another day, just before sunset, the clouds were so gorgeous:

And when sunset came....you can form your own opinion on this one:

That same day it sprinkled a little while I was out there, and a piece of a rainbow showed up:

Here's another sunset picture from that night:

The weather that day was especially meaningful to me for personal reasons. I really enjoyed my weeding! I think it took around a week to finish, probably a little less, but here are the end results:

Yes, those are a few more weeds there around the power pole. Don't worry, they're gone now. I went ahead and snapped a picture after all the weeds were gone, just for good measure. ;)

All the flowers and the tomatoes in this garden were grown from seed by me. Those are cherry tomatoes on the end away from the street. I think the sunflowers peeking over the fence from the neighbors sure add to the effect...especially next year when I'm weeding them out of the garden again... :)

Cleaning the Living Room Railing

2010-07-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I cleaned the railing yesterday. Here's the picture of before I got started:

Pretty gross, huh? Our railing has this special problem; the paint is sticky. It just collects the dirt. Luckily, it's pretty easy to clean:

The cloth get's pretty sick though. This was a blue cloth that got bleached so it was kind of a pink color when I got started. Look how dirty the cloth and water are:

The part right up against the floor gets lots of dust on it:

See how white it's supposed to be?

My "Hermanita" (Pronounced like air-mon-eat-ah - It's the Spanish version of "Sis") wanted to help. How can you get after little hands like this that helped it get so dirty to start with?

Your guess is as good as mine as to why there was a ribbon tied around one of the posts. I'm guessing at one point it probably had a balloon on it. Nice for me, it wasn't tied on very tight so I was able to cut it off with my dollar store kitchen scissors:

Good thing it's my favorite color, green:

I had to move the piano (it's electric so it's not heavy) to get to the corner. Good thing because then I could vacuum underneath the piano too. I wondered if that had ever been cleaned before:

Yuck!

Doesn't this look much better now?

It took me about an hour and lots of elbow grease to get the end results. After five I lost count of how many times I rinsed the cloth. Now THAT'S what I call a home improvement!

Installing the Toe Skin

2010-07-24T10:23:00.001-07:00

I guess you're probably thinking, 'So, what exactly IS a toe skin?' I wondered that too the first time I heard it. A toe skin is a little decorative piece of wood or laminate that covers the bare wood on the bottom of your kitchen cupboard; at least that's what I've been led to believe it is. I had a cabinet built to replace an old broken down dishwasher and they make them to have flooring installed over that place. Well, since this was a renovation or remodel situation and I had no desire to redo my flooring just for that, I asked them what could be done. They supplied me with the toe skin to glue on. That was almost a year ago. Here's what the cabinet looked like this morning (and for nearly a whole year) before I decided to spend 5 minutes doing this:

Yes, that's red food coloring from when we made humming bird food. Oops. :) Here's the toe skin picture:

Pretty, isn't it? So, I got some wood glue and scribbled some on the back:

I guess I probably would have done it more gracefully, but I was trying to do it one handed and take the pictures left handed. Next I stuck it onto the bottom of the cabinet:

It wanted to slide down to the floor past the bottom of the wood so I propped it up with wadded up napkins:

Now doesn't that look better?

Don't ask why it took me nearly a year to decide to do that. It's taken me MUCH longer to post this blog about it than it did to glue it on. :D

List of To-Do Items

2010-07-23T17:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. This is my first blog and first blog post. Since I'll be posting my Home & Garden Improvements, I thought I'd start off with a list of things I'm going to do first.

*Glue toe skin on the kitchen cabinet.
*Get count and replace plugs and covers.
*Wash the railing.
*Weed the corner garden.

Pretty small, right? Well, don't worry. These are just ones I've been putting off forever. Check back to see pictures and details about my improvements. I just got a brand new camera (Panasonic DMC-ZS6) that's super nice too, so I'll be posting lots of pictures for a while. :)