Spiffing-Up the Plant Shelf

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!

Cleaning the Living Room Railing

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!