Oats to the Rescue!

I know it doesn't look like much, but I'm super excited about this little green terrycloth pouch.  Jason whipped up some to go with a Christmas gift and we had a few left over.  So there is the set up.

We were heading out to Tillie's birthday party yesterday and the shirt I wanted to wear was not quite acceptable.  It wouldn't necessarily classify as dirty but it smelled.....off.  I REALLY wanted to wear this shirt.  What to do?  I filled one of the terrycloth pouches with a cup of old fashioned rolled oats...

...and added a few drops of my favorite essential oil and popped it in the dryer with the shirt for a few minutes.  You know what?  IT WORKED.  Not by masking the smell with another smell...the oats actually sucked the smell up!  This will certainly not become a replacement for actually washing clothes, but in a pinch, this trick works like a charm.

Don't have a terrycloth velcro pouch lying around?  Just use a sock that has lost its twin!  Pour a cup of oats in it (add a couple drops of amber, sandalwood or your favorite essential oil, if you'd like) and tie it up tight.  A few things to note:

• Don't use it on wet clothes or the oats may turn into oatmeal

• Make sure the sock has NO holes in it

• Don't use the packets of Maple & Brown Sugar - or any other flavored quick oats.  The flavor powder may seep out of the sock and yuck up the dryer.

Christmas Crafting

I've been up in the art loft all morning knocking out Christmas gifts...I'm biting my lip. It's all I can to to NOT post what we've done so far!

Here is a gift that Jason and I made from last year.



Every year I say that I want to make the things I crafted for Christmas to sell...this year I've got some G-R-E-A-T ideas and it's looking like a public art studio is in our near future. I will keep you posted!

Update from the Man Cave

Jason and I went, over 4th of July weekend, to visit my family that lives in Vermont. My father is a pen turner who LOVES to share what he knows...and Jason LOVED learning about turning pens. Now we have a whole corner of the workshop converted into a wood turning shop. Here are some of Jason's latest creations, just in time for Christmas.

Home Away from Home

Jason took me down to visit friends in Austin for my Birthday a couple of weeks ago. By the end of the trip, we all shook hands in going in halvsies on an old Airstream trailer. Our plan is to gut it and turn it into a dorm/lounge that we can use on the Wells family land near lake Texoma. Two weeks later, let me introduce to you our 1971 27 ft Overlander Airstream that is currently settled in our back yard. It's been gutted and scrubbed down. Now for the lipstick and rouge~

The Art Loft

I have always had some sort of space where my art supplies are stored...and some sort of space where I can make art. The problem was, the space where I stored supplies and the space I made art in were two separate spaces.

We have a little loft in our house that was built over the garage. It is tucked away which made it the perfect dumping ground. Anything that we could not find a home for ended up there...including the cat box and the 600 National Geographic magazines dating back to 1951.

Over Labor day weekend, we changed all that. We found homes for the randoms, slapped a new coat of paint on the walls and ceiling and gave ALL of my creative supplies a well organized new home. I see ALOT of art making in my future :)

Lipstick and Rouge

Our neighbor, Dock, gave us this chair last year. I am enamoured with the aging process of things that rust and get round with time. However, rust has a way of making things fall apart. Rustoleum to the rescue!


I was afraid to sit in this chair in clean clothes, but now it's my favorite seat in the garden.

A trellis for our Tomato Tree

Jason and I found a HUGE young tomato plant at the Cleveland County Farm Market today. As I was carrying it around, people came up and asked "What kind of tree is that?". I've been learning about how to prune tomatoes to create a thick bushy plant and felt like this would be a great one to prune. Jason wasn't too keen on the idea and our tomato cages were not big (or pretty) enough to cage this beauty in so I told him I wouldn't prune it if he made me a trellis tower...so he did :)

Green house

I have been trying to post for a month and could not find the time! So, I will be retroactively filling in the gap between here and the February post. The biggest upgrade so far this spring is the addition of our greenhouse...this will be a lengthy process and may not be complete until it's time to take the plants in for the fall, but it is already becoming a functional staging and storing area for spring gardening. We bought a metal greenhouse frame last fall, but recently decided to create a wooden frame around it to hold windows and the awesome door we found at the Cleveland County Habitat for Humanity Re-store when we went to pick up the two pallets of re-purposed bricks....here is the inspiration: The greenhouse will be attached to the east side of our workshop in front of a window that is near the workshops gas furnace so we can easily warm the plants during the super cold nights. The north side will have no windows (which will help keep the brunt of the winter wind from getting in) and will, instead, have hangers for 'shovels and rakes and other implements of destruction' (name that movie). The south side will hold a very open screen door that lets in ALOT of light with a clear plastic insert for the colder months. The east side will have a bank of four windows that we will be scouring The Restore for and the ceiling will be framed in corrugated plastic sheeting. Enough of the explanation...here's our progress:

It was so hot Saturday before last that we decided to start the digging after sunset...

The next day we put in and leveled the gravel and sand, then laid the landscape fabric...

We started laying the bricks last Saturday night...

and finished on Sunday afternoon...

by Sunday evening, we had the inner frame set up and all the pots, soil and amendments set up in their new spaces....

Next up is the stem wall and frame :)

Adding a bit of Reality

I spent the day refining my Vision. Jason likes seeing examples...so do I.

Dreaming

This morning was the first spring shower. Between that, the sporadic warm weather days and a shock of blooming bulbs, I'm itching to get outside and dig in the dirt....instead, I drew up my plan with my handy dandy computer drawing tablet. It was almost as fun (without the backache tomorrow)

Fun in the Workshop

After weeks of gardening, the workshop had become a disaster. At long last the workshop was clean and we decided to make use of it...so while Jason was building a bird house, I decided to break into the bag of clay I bought last fall but realized I needed a specific tool to be able to pound the air bubbles out. So Jason and I made a wedging board out of stuff lying around: an old canvas that I cut from the frame; a guitar string from Jason's old guitar; and a peice of MDF that I had attempted to make art out of; and a few other impliments. While I was working on our first toad abode Jason finished the woodpeckers' new home...now all we have to do is hang it 15 feet up in a tree.

Ready for Planting

Well, two full days of hard work leaves me feeling quite fulfilled. Now I REALLY want a wood fence!

The Cleveland County Farmers Market opens on Saturday...I have a feeling that Easter day will be filled with planting our new plot :)

The Squash Plot

Most of the soil on our property is in spectacular shape...except for the little plot that rests between the sidewalk and our new garden path. It's full of clay. I added some partially decomposed leaf litter and a bag of peat to help it along. Then I decided to transplant some clover patches from the grass free parts of our yard. I'm just winging it...I think I'll join a forum.

In my forum joining search, I came across my new inspiration - Garden Girl. She has converted her Boston property into a giant garden with vertical gardens, raised beds and a mini orchard. I like her style and she's already done what Jason and I are wanting to do, so why reinvent the wheel when we can learn from someone who's already done it...and there's a forum :)

Some other good news...I went to a local nursery (K&K Nursery) in search of some native plants to start our wildscape off with. I mentioned to the fellow who was helping me out that I wanted to keep the frogs happy and his face lit up. He said a woman works there that is wildscaping wise and I was told to have a block of time free whenever I came to visit with her because she LOVES to talk about it. PERFECT. I'm going back tomorrow.

Now All It Needs is Plants

I'm glad that we decided to lay the path early...it looks pretty in the snow!

Ouch

Impatience is a virtue that generally causes me much soreness the next day (and Jason too). I'm told we are getting snow on Saturday so we decided to go ahead and make a push to get the garden path laid last night...the stones can cure on top of the ground or in the ground just the same.

It's about a third done and my glutes are really not looking forward to continuing this process, but my mind is saying (in Okie) 'GITTER DUN!'

Workshop Project

Jason was raised with an array of two, three and four wheelers...I have never driven anything with less than four wheels and two doors. I suppose he thought that this doesn't seem fair so he found a great little scooter to restore. It's torturing me. I don't know why, because it's still too cold to drive but my inner eight year old is feeling VERY IMPATIENT.

Christmas Workshop

(This is a small sampling of Christmas gifts we made this year)

I have always made my Christmas gifts. I always start late. By the time Christmas rolled around in years passed, my little apartment was a creative DISASTER and I'd be completely spent. Fortunately, I had a creative gift making partner, two little helpers and the perfect workshop this year. We had a great time.

Maybe we will start earlier next year...but probably not.

Halloween

When I was a kid, my favorite part of Halloween was helping make my costume. Jesse and Tillie weren't sure what to think when I let them know that we'd be continuing this tradition...they were accustomed to 'buying off the rack'. After it was all said and done, however, they were converted to the custom costume way.

A New Order

We put the crown molding up in the living room at last. Everything (save for one box of randomness) has its place in the kitchen. All the books are unpacked and are finding their nooks. Most of the clothes are either bagged up to donate or resting in their proper places. The workshop is beginning to reveal itself now that the boxes are thinning out.

So, while Jason and I were tending to all these things, Jesse and Tillie thought they would do some decorating of there own...by covering no less than fifty feet of sidewalk, from the workshop door in the back yard and up to the front of the house. We took them out for ice cream for a job well done.

New life to old stuff

Eating as a family is very important to us but that old "re-gifted" dining room table had to go. We found a 1950's chrome and laminate kitchen table at the Habitat for Humanity's ReStore that screamed for me to buy it for $10. I repainted it with chrome spray paint and we found a 4x8 piece of beautifully veneered wood and put the two together to give that old table a whole new life for a total of $55.
The aging barka-lounger didn't make the move either, so I put our new orbital sander to use to sand and then re-stain this mid-century modern chair that I rescued from a dumpster quite a few years back. I stored it in my garage because I had nowhere to put it but I knew a gem when I saw it...even though it was (cosmetically) in dismal condition. When I moved in with Jason, our dog Jasper used it as his favorite teething toy.
With a few dollars in Rit dye, I dyed the cushions from a faded wheat color to a subtle chartreuse. Total cost $10.
I don't know if this chair will make it either...he misses the comfort of a cushy recliner.