sprouts galore.

cucumber sprouts.

holy sproutville. okay, this gardening thing is happening. i planted the seeds, gave them water and sunshine, and shockingly, they grew. this might not be shocking to you, but it was to me. i was gung-ho about this project, but realistically, i was well aware that i am not known for my gardening skills and there was a significant chance that this project would be a total fail. but, the sprouts are growing like crazy. 

garden bean sprouts. these guys were slow starters, but now they are taller than everyone else.

when i dropped the seeds into the dirt, i was super generous. my methodology was something along the lines of, throw in a thousand and hope that one sprouts. well, one sprouted. and so did all of the others. so the pots were thick with sprouts.

kale sprouts gone wild.

my gardening gurus advised me that i needed to do some thinning. ummm...WHAT?!! i took some microscopic little dots of nothing and brought them to life and now you want me to lop them off and throw them away? gaaaah. but, both of my gurus have seriously awesome gardens, so i trust that they know what they are talking about.

a forest of kale.

today i bit the bullet and thinned my sprouts. it was depressing. i had to chop chop chop the darling little sprouts. sad. but the goal is for the ones that remain to grow like gangbusters. one can only hope. i also planted some more seeds. this time i tried to be a confident gardener and i only put a few extra seeds. they better do me a solid and sprout!

kale, post-thinning. looking kind of bleak, but i have high hopes.

making the rounds.

christmas has always been a big deal in my family. my childhood is filled with memories of christmas crafts and helping my mums pull down the boxes filled with ornaments and other goodies. i was always super excited to get started, but like most children, my attention span only lasted about 7.4 minutes. luckily my mums had enough motivation to single-handedly complete the days long task of decorating. the collection of goodies has grown through the years...these days christmas takes over the entire house, inside and out. every nook and cranny houses a snowman, santa, or christmas tree. there are festive towels, napkins, and dishes. and the pièce de résistance is the christmas village, which sits atop the rock wall between the living room and kitchen. all of this probably sounds a bit gaudy, but i assure you it is not. it is a sight to behold.

mums is the only person patient enough to properly adorn the tree with lights.

other than my two years in the peace corps, i have spent all of my christmas' at my parent's house. i guess knowing that i will be in the midst of my mums' festive house explains why i have not taken to decorating my own house. plus there is the minor conundrum that i have no place to store my decorations the rest of the year. but this year i decided that at the very least we should have a wreath on our door. i had only two requirements...it had to be perfect and inexpensive. oh and if i had to make it myself it had to be relatively easy, because i am supposed to be working on a thousand other projects. no problem, right? ummm...sure. except other than knowing i wanted something fun and modern, i was not exactly sure what i considered the perfect wreath. 

some lovely wreaths. clockwise from top left: contemporary wool felt wreath by pinno, warmest greetings wreath by anthropolgie,  peppermint red berry christmas wreath by stylish stems, glitter berry wreath by pier 1, modern wreath by itsnick, and sweet fabric wreath by jane joss.

and then out of the blue a fellow blogtress, mrs. nipper knapp, posted a picture of some adorable flowers she had made. how lucky for me that when i asked for flower instructions, despite my not mentioning i wanted to make a wreath, she directed me to this felt wreath tutorial!! soooooo perfect. i jumped in my car, raced off to michaels, procured the necessary supplies, and came home to make my wreath. i even got the mister involved making little balls of yarn, so that i would be able to wrap my wreath. the finished product was more perfect than even i could have imagined.

the flowers all cozy together.

voila!!

of course i forgot to buy ribbon to hang the wreath (oops). i tried to use fishing line, but the felt flowers are surprisingly heavy and the thing was hanging kind of wonky. i switched tactics and made a braid with some of the leftover yarn. naturally our door is metal, so simple things like a thumbtack in the top of the door were not an option. i had to dismantle one of the mister's hangers to make an over-the-door hook. but in the end, the whole thing worked out and if i do say so myself it is perfect-O!!

last weekend all the necessary pieces finally lined up long enough for me to find my way to the local farmer's market. there is actually a company that coordinates six farmers markets in the surrounding megatropolis, four of which are within what i consider to be a "reasonable" distance. it should be noted that while it took me almost two years to unearth these potential gems, once discovered, it took me mere seconds to realize that arranging my appearance at one of these locales was about as likely as our fifth story apartment requiring the flood policy our insurance representative tried to sell us. why so difficult to go to a farmers market? oh boy, did you have to ask. well, for starters, the closest one is closed for half of the year, which is coincidentally the only half of the year that i ponder what my life would be like if i regularly attended farmers markets. the second closest one is open on saturdays, which is fine except that i only remember this fact on sundays. the third and fourth markets are in what i dub a "reasonable" distance, yet they are on sunday. a day on which my motivation hovers somewhere around lay-on-the-couch-all-day-watching-televsion, and the ten mile drive seems akin to a thirty-seven day camel trek across the sahara.

but the stars were aligned last weekend and the mister and i ventured down to south beach for a glimpse of the newest addition to the group of farmers markets. there was a lady selling soap, a man selling olive oil who did not seem to notice that his tasting dish was filled with suicidal flies, a smoothie stand, a ridiculously overpriced french bakery stall, one plant lady selling only two kinds of plants, and two farmers. not exactly the bustling farmers market that i am used to from my days living in los angeles, but i decided not to be picky.

being a plant-killer, i naturally fall madly in love with plants on first glance. i dont know what it is. some sort of chorophyllic magnetism. i simply love to buy plants. you might think we have a problem with finding space to put all the plants, but in actuality i kill them so fast, this issue never arises. so i saw this little gem, which reminds me a whole lot of the spiral aloe found in lesotho, and lucky for both of us, the mister was present to offer instant approval on a non-food purchase (remember i am banned from shopping). yahoo!

so we get home and i plop the little guy on the table, but quickly realize that the poor thing will have to live in the crappy plastic pot in which it arrived, because buying a new pot would constitute more shopping. damn damn damn. oh the misery of it all. i tried to make it better by putting it on a gold coaster. sadly, this only served to make the plastic container that much more depressing. but, lady luck was on our side this lovely sunday, because i rode my bike to the grocery store, which thankfully led me off my usual path and right past the dumpsters on the west side of our building. i spotted a withered and dying lucky bamboo sitting in a pot next to the garbage. i told you it was a lucky day. especially lucky that i am the kind of girl who sees nothing amiss with acquiring worldly possessions at the dumpster.

after hacking away all the lucky bamboo, dumping out the contents of the pot, and giving the pot a scrub scrub with sandpaper, our wee little plant has a new home. since i am not exactly a professional gardener, i decided to leave the guy in his original plastic pot, which i propped up on rocks to provide drainage. wowee zowee, if i keep talking like that i might be able to convince some folks i know how to keep this plant alive. uh huh. sure. anyhow, end result is that the little man looks rather handsome in his new white pot. and this was another environmentally friendly adventure as i decided to REUSE the pot that an anonymous neighbor discarded.

i think i am going to name the guy mr. green. not only because he is part of our current "go green" theme, but also because maybe, just maybe, if he hears the word green every time i talk to him, he will remember that his leaves are supposed to be green, even if i forget to give him water. welcome to our home mr. green!

brown bagging in style.

i like to think of myself as a person who puts in some semblance of an effort to be environmentally friendly. i participate in recycling, i bring my own bags to the grocery store, and sometimes i use my bike instead of my car. so naturally when it came to deciding how to bring my lunch to work, i clearly selected the reusable bag option. my search started in target, where i discovered that insulated lunch bags cost $10-15. whaaaaat?!?!?! that was not gonna work for me. luckily i found a rather wimpy, but serviceable bag at another store for only $3. 

this bag proved to be a bit of a challenge as reusable food containers were not typically inclined to fit inside. somehow the mister has not had such difficulties, so after almost two years in my care, this flower-encrusted bag was passed on to him for his culinary needs. it does not take a genius to realize i was thrilled when the p.t.a. at my school decided to give all the teachers an insulated lunch bag. a bag big enough to hold all my favorite food containers. yahoo! at the time i did not realize that this bag would not last long in day-to-day life with yours truly. the bag's demise started when the lining started separating from the bag. eventually it was so bad i ripped out the lining. i was not prepared for what i found. a crumbling layer of floppy foam that also had to be removed. the end result? goo. it was at this point that i added "lunch bag" to my list of sewing projects.

 

a few months later a fellow blogger shared her adventures sewing these "buckets" from the stitchin chicken. at the time, although i recognized that they were a clever creation to bookmark in the noggin, i had no idea that these buckets would factor into my lunch bag conundrum. but yesterday i had an epiphany. the buckets are designed to maintain their shape via the insertion of batting, which could double as insulation. voila, a lunch bag!! luckily, months back, upon the downfall of my p.t.a. bag, i had added rain-gear fabric to my stash for the eventual day when i would create a new lunch bag. so, on the heels of my inspiration, i quickly decided on dimensions and got to work creating my template and cutting out my fabric.

since this is a lunch bag, i made a few modifications. i added a pocket to hold my utensils, elastic straps to hold my water bottle upright, a strap and button to hold the bag closed, and longer handles for carrying. the final product makes me squeal with joy. i am actually eager for the weekend to end, so i can use my new lunch bag. okay, fine i do not want the weekend to end early, but i definitely think that i might now have in my possession the world's most adorable lunch bag.

don't burst my bubble.

today marks two years of marriage to my husband. happy anniversary to us!! it's strange how time flies. it seems like just yesterday that we said our i dos. everyday i thank my lucky stars that such a darling man picked me. i must have been born under a lucky star.

speaking of luck...while running an errand this afternoon i found myself smack dab in the middle of the miami fabric district. luck be a lady who finds beeeee-U-tiful fabric. oh how i love fabric. the idea that i have somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred yards of unused fabric might lead you to believe that i have no business buying more. i beg to differ. i was only in the market for skirt lining material, but since i drove all the way to the fabric district, i might as well have a looksee. holy bananas!! i found genuine african wax print cloth, imported from various locations around the united kingdom (that's right..genuine african cloth is conveniently made in the UK). it's not like i need the cloth, but oh how gorgeous it is. when i showed it to the mister, he actually said "that's nice." i think that's a better reaction than the typical grunt that results when i show him my "necessary" fabric purchases.

continuing my lucky streak, i also found the perfect fabric for my next house project. the neat freak lurking inside my noodle can no longer stomach the clutter zone that exists amongst the shelves in my sewing area. considering the freakishly large stash of fabric that i have, which continues growing, and growing, and growing, i have decided that storage bins must become a part of our life. i found some darling bins at tjmaxx (my personal heaven on earth), but i need ten bins and these are $13 a pop. i refuse to shell out $130 for storage bins. project time!!! yeehaw! the perfect excuse to buy fabric and make a projecty mess of the house. fun times ahead for all (well probably only me, but lets not focus on that). there is not much likelihood that this project will get off the ground this week, but when my summer graduate courses finish in eight days (hallelujah!!), watch out!