Disney & Beach Vacation Surprise Bag

We are getting closer to our trip! Today I got the last few things I needed for Adelle's "surprise bag." I get some serious joy out of surprising Adelle with fun stuff. I have something for Nathan and I too, but unlike Adelle he knows how to use the internet, so I will keep that one to myself for now. We are going to give this to her the morning we leave, before we tell her where we're actually going, and see if she can piece it all together. 

I bought some sand castle building essentials (thank you Target $ section for never failing me), a few things to keep her busy on the plane, a fishy tank top for the beach, and a Minnie shirt to wear that day. We are leaving very early (like it's-4AM-what-the-hell-were-we-thinking early) so I am just going to pop her into the car in her pajamas and change later. I will of course change into real clothes likely be wearing pajamas as well. I also put the Magic Bands in there - partially for fun, but mostly so I am guaranteed not to forget them. Not that I would ever do something like that. Fifteen days!

DIY "Elsa Inspired" Outfit

Nathan and I about six years ago at Universal Studios

TWENTY THREE DAYS! That's how long we have until we're off to sunny Florida for vacation. Saying that I am ready for a beach day would be a gross understatement ...its been over two years since we were in New Zealand and that's two years too long. And of course, no trip to Florida would be complete without visiting some theme parks. The last time Nathan and I were in Florida was 2008 which was before Adelle was born, so this trip will be a bit different. And because I enjoy embarrassing myself, to the right is a photo of us from our last trip!

Elsa's dress - making this into a shirt
and shorts outfit required some thought
but it was a really fun project overall!

For this trip we are flying into Orlando on a Thursday and staying at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort. On Friday we are going to Magic Kingdom, Saturday we meet up with my parents and go to Universal Studios and then that evening we head to St. Augustine to stay with Grandma Polly and Papa Allen for a few days. The best part is that Adelle has NO clue any of this is happening. Sneaky sneaky! And while I am beyond excited to experience Harry Potter World at Universal (um, can you say dream come true?) and go to the beach, I think I am most excited to take Adelle to the Magic Kingdom. We have a lot of fun things planned and one that I am super excited about is that we have Fast Passes to meet Anna and Elsa from Frozen. Adelle is in love with the movie and knows that they "live" at Disney World, so I think she will be thrilled to find out she gets to meet them. I decided to get crafty and make an "Elsa inspired" outfit for her to wear. I love the Elsa dresses Disney sells but 1) they are ridiculously hard to find and 2) I just don't think the princess dresses are at all practical for wearing at a theme park. Adelle meets the height requirement for all but one of the rides so we definitely plan to ride some rides. For that reason I decided to go with a shirt and shorts, but to try and use some of the same elements in Elsa's dress.

the two shirt I started with - it
cost about $12 for both shirts

My first task was to find a shirt. Elsa's dress is a very light blue on top and darker blue on the bottom. If this were something for her to wear at home I would make it long sleeved like Elsa's, but since we are going to be dealing with Florida heat choosing short sleeves was a no brainer. I went to Target and found a white top and a blue top - Nathan probably thought my excitement over the blue top I found was ridiculous but it is perfect! I love that it fades to a different color of blue. Next I cut and sewed the two shirts together, which included adding piping in between the two. I also added a few small pleats because my blue shirt was bigger than my white shirt. I took photos of the sewing process so if anyone is interested I can do a tutorial on how I put everything together! For this post I will keep it simple though.

before sewing, after sewing, & finished product!

I am so excited with how the shirt turned out! I bought some large sequins at Hobby Lobby and cut them into rectangle shapes to mirror the sequins on Elsa's dress. I didn't feel like spending hours attaching them so I just glued them on with fabric glue and faded them down to the bottom of the shirt.

Next I wanted to make a cape similar to Elsa's. Since I was going for theme-park-friendly I made it just under floor length so it won't drag on the ground, and I also made it detachable so we can take it off after the meet and greet. I did want to do a cape though because I am hoping she can use this to play dress up after our trip is over as well. As of now the cape is pretty simple, I just used light blue tulle and zigzag stitched glitter ribbon along the edge. I also attached velcro on the sides of the cape and the shirt to make it detachable. I would like to add some embellishments to the back of the cape (I remember seeing some large snowflake sequins at Hobby Lobby) but here's what it looks like right now:

Elsa shirt with detachable cape

the tulle, ribbon and sequins I used for her outfit

And last but not least, every Elsa needs a crown. In the felt section I found some glitter "felt"...except it wasn't felt. But it had a similar backing. I totally forgot to take a picture of it. Whoops! I found an Elsa crown template online and traced it to the size I was looking for and cut it out of the glitter "felt" (can you tell I have no clue what to call it?). I trimmed one a bit shorter so I could wrap it around a headband - it makes sense in the picture. I glued them together, trimmed them up a little and added a square blue gem to the top. I then glued the crown piece to a black headband so it will sit on her head. I love it!

the crown in all it's adorable glory

I'd still like to embellish the cape and I need to pick up some really cute sandals I saw online at Old navy...and then I will be done! She will wear jean shorts with it and I will french braid her hair, I can't wait to see it all put together. It's driving me nuts not to be able to let her try it on! It will be a fun surprise though, and I think it will make our day at Disney World all the more fun. And because I am picture obsessed, here's one more:

Thanks for reading and let me know if you have any questions! I'm off to make some popcorn and watch Frozen...again :)

-Kelly

How To: Container Gardening Part 2

Time for part two! If you're just joining us part 1 can be found here. I will answer some questions pertaining to container gardening in this post. I'm going to go ahead and jump right in:

What kind of dirt should I use for container gardening?

This is something that has differing views, but I will give you mine. There are a lot of products out there that seem to have a good purpose but that you can probably do without. Go to any garden section at a big box store and you will find 15 different kinds of soil for specific situations. Maybe these have merit, like I said I am not a pro container gardener. But some of the reasons I've read for using container specific soil don't make sense to me. I've read not to use garden soil because it gets compacted, however the soil in my garden gets compacted over time and it works fine for growing vegetables. I've read that you should buy specific soil because garden soil may be too acidic or basic, but again, the soil we use in our garden works just fine. Another reason I read was that garden soil may have weeds and pests in it. That is true, and buying soil will help you avoid that, but it seems like a bit of overkill to buy new soil every year just to avoid some weeds and bugs. So my suggestion is to use what we use in our garden: a 2 to 1 ratio of top soil and amendment. Amendment is basically a bag of organic matter (compost, peat moss, mushroom mix and a few other things) that adds nutrients and other good stuff to your soil. I would recommend checking out a local garden store or nursery, they usually have what you need as well as a lot of good advice!

Photo of the Day: 04.08.14

I absolutely love little kid drawings. They are so unique, honest, and often times a little bit on the strange side, which just makes them that much more fun. I am going to branch out from gardening a bit, and the easiest place to start in my mind is to post about Adelle. I may be a smidge biased but she's the coolest four year old I happen to know. Here is her latest drawing: a ghost. His mouth looks a little scary, but he's waving so I'm pretty sure he just wants to be friends. She named him Ghosty the Ghost and he likes to eat brownies.

How To: Container Gardening Part 1

One thing that is so great about gardening is anyone can do it. There are plenty of different methods when it comes to gardening, but they all follow the same basic principles: plant seeds or a plant in the dirt, water it, and let it grow. I know that a big concern for a lot of people who want to garden is space. Many people have small yards, rent their homes, or live in apartments which would quickly rule out an in ground garden. But never fear, just because you are short on space doesn't mean that you can't grow yourself some food.

the large pot was $10 at lowe's - they were on a big flat
in the outside garden area and were all very brightly colored

First off I just want to throw it out there that I do not have much experience growing in containers. I am hoping to remedy that this year; I am growing cantaloupe, cucumbers, lettuce, dill, cilantro, oregano, basil and strawberries in containers this year. I might even pick up one more big pot and see how one of our tomato plants does in a pot vs the garden. But the internet is a wealth of information so I've tried to round up some good information on the subject. As usual I wrote far too much, so I have broken this up into two posts. I am also seriously crunched for time this week so the next post will come at the beginning on next week, I am shooting for Monday but bare with me!

First off let's talk containers. They can be almost anything so don't be afraid to get creative. Here are some cost effective options:

• Cheap pots: I can't find a link, but I found the huge pot in the photo above for only $10 at Lowes 
• Flea market finds: think wooden boxes or metal pails or buckets
• Five gallon buckets
• Making planters with or from pallets like this or this
• Plastic storage tubs: this would work of you wanted something wider but still deep, or if you have some extras lying around
• Upcycling! Find containers that would normally be thrown away and get to planting. If you don't like the way they look Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint ($4 at Walmart) works wonders. The large pots I got from Lowes were bright blue which I wasn't digging (garden puns!) so I spray painted them.
• use old kitty litter containers (the big ones)
• use tire as planters in your yard
• apparently you can go to bakeries (like the Walmart bakery) and ask for icing buckets which are large buckets that they will often give away for free
• grow food in a reusable grocery bag like this tomato plant and this lettuce
• grow directly in a bag of soil

Seed Update #2

Long time no see! Please excuse the fact that I fell off the blogging bandwagon for a few weeks. School started back up for me which sucks up a pretty good chunk of my free time, but I have a few posts planned for this week. Today I am going to show you some photos of how my plants are looking. Some of them are doing wonderfully, others have gotten off to a slow start, and some of them I am having trouble with. My next post (scheduled for Thursday) will be about container gardening. FINALLY! I wanted to get that post up much earlier, but better late than never, right? In that post I will go over what containers to use, which plants will work best, how to get started, and what we are growing in containers this year.

our tomatoes 3 weeks ago - 3/12

largest and smallest, both yellow cherry - 4/1

We planted our seeds about a month ago and we have about a month before we can plant anything outside. This excludes broccoli which was the only cold weather starter we did - more on that in a minute. So far the tomatoes are doing wonderfully...I could not be happier! They are not leggy, stalks seem strong, and they have plenty of leaves by this point. They are also growing at a crazy pace. The photo on top was three weeks ago and the next photo is from today. Huge difference! The second photo also shows my largest and smallest tomato plant - they are the same variety they just sprouted at different times. 

How To: Building a Raised Bed Garden

This weekend we spent some much needed time outside. Mother Nature gave us a beautiful, sunny 70 degree day Saturday...and then it snowed Sunday morning. She is a fickle lady. But we were still able to get some things done, and the dusting of snow we got overnight melted away quickly. We have four raised beds in our garden but decided to add a long bed between the original four beds and the fence, which is what we worked on on Saturday and what I am going to write about today. Shout out to our friends Simon and Emily for keeping us company and helping out with building our box! Work is always better with the company of friends. I've had a few people ask about our raised bed and how we built them, so I took (far too many) photos yesterday and am going to provide some simple instructions on how to make them yourself.

working hard - i believe emily and i were sitting
on the deck eating girl scout cookies at this moment

I don't want to take over our yard with our garden. Well, I actually DO want to do that, but I'm trying to be reasonable. If we at some point sell our house I don't want potential buyers to think we're insane/worry about having to pull out a massive garden area if they're not gardeners. So we opted to add a 15 foot box in between the current boxes and the fence. It doesn't extend into the yard any farther and Nathan doesn't have to squeeze the mower back there - win win! Building the boxes is very easy. If you can work a saw you can bust these bad boys out in a day.

Seed Update and Weekend Plans

here's a little gardening humor for you

Hello all! I'm so happy to say we had a few 70 degree days this week! Never mind that it's currently in the 40s outside and I have been battling the cold that never dies. We made the best of it though: Adelle and Mallow got to play in the yard, Nathan grilled dinner and had a few beers, and I sat on the deck with some tissues stuck up my nose. Fun times.

In other news I have a bit of a correction to make! In my post that gives instructions on starting from seed I mention that I bought a clamp plant light for (only) my tomato and pepper seedlings. I didn't think the other plants would care much about getting a lot of light, but apparently all plants benefit quite a bit from a light source. My broccoli seedlings popped out of the dirt and grew 2-3 inches in a matter of days...which is exactly what you DONT want to happen. In that same post I also talked about how you don't want your plants to become leggy (tall and thin) because the plants are weaker than stockier plants. The reason they get leggy is generally because they are focusing all their energy on growing toward their light source (like a window) and less energy on growing leaves and bulking up.

Gardening: Where to Start

When I posted the link to my blog on Facebook I had a friend comment and say that she wanted to plant a garden this year, but had no idea where to start. You know how anytime a professor asks a question in Harry Potter, Hermoine excitedly wiggles in her seat with her hand straight up in the air? I am totally having one of those excited "I can help" moments. While I am definitely not an expert, I feel a bit like a crazy plant lady these days and if I don't know the answer I will do my best to find it. So where to start? Here are some things to consider when you are ready to plan your garden:

What sort of space am I working with? 

a view of our garden area from the deck

I think people generally begin to think about what they'd like to grow, but the first thing you should plan out is your garden space. Do you want several raised beds and six tomato plants so you have the option of canning? Do you want a container garden with peppers and tomatoes so you can avoid buying them at the store? Figuring out how much space you have will help answer these kind of questions. You have a few options here:

Containers: This is a great option if you are short on yard space. You can use just about anything: terra cotta pots, plastic pots, DIY boxes or even thrift store finds (think wooden boxes or old metal containers). A few things to keep in mind: it will need holes to drain out extra water, which can be drilled into the bottom if there are none, and bigger is better. Seriously, the more room you give your plants, the bigger they will be able to grow their root system, the more soil they will have to "eat" from and the more food you will get. Some things do better in smaller pots, like herbs or greens (think spinach and lettuce), but things like tomatoes and peppers will really benefit from having more space.

Starting from Seed

seeds from baker creek

I know it's still February and all, but I think the nice string of 50-60 degree days we had is making me dread our impending winter storm this weekend even more. I like to read a little about the weather even though I don't understand much of the in depth stuff. But from what I can tell, I guess the question in our area is whether we will get sleet or snow, and if we do happen to get all snow we could potentially have another foot of snow on the ground. Yikes! On the plus side, we are growing our own starters this year which means I get to start growing things in February...so it almost feels like Spring! Yesterday our seeds came in the mail so we got started planting. Now we have one hundred and forty four (yes, you read that right) seeds planted and I am hoping most if not all of them germinate. This is actually more plants than we need, but we figured we had the dirt, the seeds, and the space, so why not? Hopefully I can share some starter plants with family and friends, and if we still have extra I will be able to pick the healthiest looking plants to go in the garden! For now they will grow in the seed flats, and once they get their first true leaves, in three or four weeks, we will transplant them to small 3 inch " jiffy pots" so they can grow their roots larger. Once we do that I will have to find a new place for them because they will take up quite a bit more room!

What We Are Planting - Part 2

Click here for Part One!

My birthday was in early February and my mom mentioned she was sending me a book as a present. Not only did I get a book (about gardening!) but I also got a subscription to a quarterly gardening magazine and a packet of seeds as well. The book was written by Jere & Emilee Gettle and is called The Heirloom Life Gardener. They own Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, which is actually located here in Missouri. He gives some history of heirlooms and talks about how when he was about 13 years old he noticed that a lot of once popular heirloom varieties started disappearing from the seed catalogs he loved to look through, so he did what any responsible 13 year old would do and started saving seeds! A lot of those seeds they still sell today. Reading his book gave me a bit of an "ah-ha" moment: why buy regular seeds from a big box store when they offer over a thousand of amazing varieties for the same price? Did you know there are red, yellow, orange, purple, green and striped tomatoes? Or orange fleshed watermelon and spicy red carrots? There are SO many varieties that we've lost touch with by shopping at grocery stores, and we unfortunately end up with bland, lower quality food. No wonder so many people aren't vegetable fans.

fun read, great resource and beautiful photography

So this year we bought seeds from Baker Creek and I am anxiously awaiting
their arrival in the mail. I wanted to buy starters for our tomatoes and peppers again because if anything produces well I want it to be those, and I wasn't sure how well growing my own would go as they require some extra effort and attention. But after seeing all their lovely varieties I decided

What We Are Planting - Part 1

I mentioned earlier that my mom always had a garden when I was a kid. I remember eating something akin to salad (I can't remember what we called it) in the summer when her garden was in full swing. It was essentially a giant bowl of veggies, minus lettuce, that had salad dressing on top. I thought, and still do, that it tasted so much better coming out of the garden than from the store. We are planting quite a bit this year, a lot more than last year, but if you think my garden is large you should check out my parents set up. I will have to get a photo of how big their garden is (they own about 5 acres so they have some extra room, lucky them!), but for now here is some of what they harvest in the summer:

eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, peppers, onion,
cabbage, lettuce, potatoes and of course tomatoes!

Can you see where I get my love of gardening? Like I mentioned earlier we are adding onto our garden this year. Our tomatoes went crazy last year, I did not at all expect them to get that large. They vined so much that they

Waiting for Spring

Anyone who knows me well (or who endures my complaining on Facebook) likely knows my feelings about winter. I love to spend time outside. Camping, hanging out on our deck, swimming...whatever. Winter makes those things next to impossible, so by the time Spring rolls around I am beyond ready for warmer weather. Another reason I look forward to warmer weather is, no surprise, my garden.

Last year we bought the house we now live in, and one of the biggest reasons we decided it was the one was the yard. I remember walking up to the glass doors that look out over the deck and immediately falling in love with the huge trees, all the space and the fact that it backed up to a wooded area. After years of living in duplexes with tiny, shared patches of grass Nathan and I both agreed that we wanted a lot of outside space. We bought our house in February and in April we started building our raised beds. And by the end of May we had a nice little garden going!

 

  we (aka Nathan) built 4 raised
beds from cedar fence posts

our garden at the end of May

Since I post quite a bit on Facebook I have a pretty good timeline for anyone who is curious. Of course it's neat to watch your garden grow, but the best part is