A Bath for the Birdies

For the last few weeks I've been searching high and low for items to make a bird bath with, for my bay-Friendly Garden. The coalition members are coming this Sunday and I want it to be set up and functional before they get here!

We went to Urban Ore to try to find materials to make a bird bath and ended up having a miserable experience. I looked at new bird baths online, not finding one I liked for under $250.

I decided to go to TJ Maxx, to see if I couldn't find a really awesome bowl to use for the bath. Ladies and Gentlemen, I found exactly what I was looking for, at the low price of $7.99. It's a thick glass bowl with metal paint on the bottom:


I ordered a bird bath stand online for $19 buckaroos:

And collected some cool stones from around the neighborhood (so the birdies don't slip):

And we have ourselves a bird bath!

The metal paint on the bottom reflects sun rays and keeps the water at a nice temperature for the birdies, somewhere around room temperature.

The best part? I did this all for under $30. Much better than $250, and I got exactly what I wanted.

How Does Your Garden Grow??

One of my favorite hobbies is gardening. I love to garden. When I moved in with Jory, I left behind a 300 sq. foot garden that took many, many hours of labor to perfect. When we moved into our new home I was very pregnant and couldn't wait until I would be able to garden again.

And now, I'm gardening again!

I knew I wanted to build another raised plant bed again, but I didn't want to buy redwood. Redwood is rot resistant, making it perfect for plant beds, but you never know if it's old growth or not when you buy it from somewhere like Home Depot. Thankfully, I was able to find this redwood from an old deck. It was going to be thrown away and I was able to recycle it. It made me feel good to use reclaimed wood, especially if it is precious redwood.


I made a design and started building.

My cheerleaders:

Lots and lots o' dirt:

Once the bed was complete, it needed to be placed. The corner posts protrude 6 inches from the bottom and go into the ground to stabilize the bed. Once it was placed, I filled it with dirt.

Oh, precious dirt:

My plant bed was complete. It is to be filled with organic veggies and herbs. But where would my flowers go? I would have to tear up some grass and make a flower area.

I tore up the grass and filled it in with mulch, which holds moisture and in turn saves water. The first plants in the flower bed are gardenia and Australian tea tree. Eventually I will fill it in with native California plants and other perennials.

In the raised bed I am germinating arugula, broccoli, spinach and California golden poppies (which will go in the flower bed). I also have a sweet basil and jalapeno plant, which will be planted tomorrow:

To help keep my organic garden pest free, I lined the raised bed with copper tape, which repels snails and slugs.

And that concludes the first chapter of my gardening saga. I am hoping to complete my checklist of Bay Friendly gardening criteria and get my Bay Friendly Garden plaque from the Bay Friendly coalition. Next, I'll be looking for a bird bath. Anyone have one they're tossing???

Getting Organized.... Still.

We've been living in our "new" place for close to 5 months, and we JUST unpacked the DVD's. I guess setting up the baby's room and office took priority. I also just realized I hadn't posted any photos of the office on this here blog.

But first... Jory's newest project. This might be the simplest of our projects (OK, it definitely is) but I think it made the room look much better. He stained a piece of pine and mounted it. Easy, right?? We still have my DVD's to find a place for, they will probably go on the side of the TV after Jory creates more shelving.

Before:

After:

Behold.... my favorite room of the house, the office:

Cooper's Chair

Our very aweosme coworker gave us a rocking chair that was his when he was a little boy in the 60's. It was a little water stained but sturdy as ever. We decided to paint it to match Cooper's room. Now he will have a rocking chair to read his favorite books in.

I sure to love spray paint. It is a true transformation tool.

:)

The Nursery... My DIY Project

At long last, I am posting nursery photos. It's come a long way and I've gotten quite a bit done. There's still a little more to do, but I'm very pleased with it thus far (click on photos to enlarge).


This is the nursery a couple weeks after we moved in:



This shelf was in my bedroom when I was a little girl. It was pink. I'm not sure what the hell my mom was thinking when she painted it recently... it's a mess.




I have no idea what's going on here:






Fixing!:


It looks like I have a basketball in my shirt:

My Grandma Sue sent Cooper this card with a letter on the back. It was so precious. I hope he always keeps this card from his Great-Grandma Sue:

I got this amazing idea from a website Tara introduced me to, http://www.younghouselove.com/photo-gallery-2/our-first-house/. In their first house they had cards hanging on a line from clothespins. I loved the idea and hunted down the perfect cards on Amazon.com. I found these for under $10 and fell in love with the art:

Jory hand cut me some wooden stars in our shop at work, to be used to hold the strings up:

I painted them:

When I was done I had some pretty cool line holders:

I attached the line and used clothes pins to hold my cards:

I had quite a few extra cards, so I put up some cute shelves to display a few more of my favorites and to take up some of the extra wall space:

And it started all to look more complete...

I played with these Raggedy Anne and Andy dolls when I was little. Grandma Sue kept them all these years:

And the crib:

That's all for now. We still need a rug for the nursery, which is not in the budget at the moment. I am pretty happy with what we have so far and I'm pretty sure Cooper will like it too.

Crafty Boy

Jory has become quite the carpenter around here. He has been improving our home one step at a time. He just finished making the numbers for the outside of our house, which he hand cut out of pine and then painted.

They looked so good he decided to make some for Tara and Nino next door!

DIY Friday

When The Boy and I moved into our place, the "needs to be repaired" list was more than two pages long. The owners of our 3 bedroom rental really didn't give a shit about out quality of living and we realized early on that we'd have to take most repairs and fix-up into our own hands. We were lucky to get new carpet (which may I add was replaced weeks after we were completely moved in) after I emailed the property management company multiple times, complaining that the cigarette burns were gross and old-cat residue was making me wheeze and the frequency of needing to use my inhaler wasn't good for my unborn child. In this case, using the pregnancy card was completely necessary.

The knobs in our kitchen were different colors and some of them were broken or missing. When we asked the repair man to replace them he brought white knobs to add to the blue ones, thus making our kitchen look even worse that it did before. Jory went to the local hardware store and purchased brand new wooden knobs and painted them himself (and then glazed). He used the paint we used on our walls, "Butter and Beans", which was color coordinated with the art hanging in the kitchen. Now all the knobs match and we are one step closer to having a pretty kitchen.

Old:

New:

While The Boy was busy making the house pretty, I headed to our local used bookstore and purchased a used book that was my absolute favorite as a child, "Oh, the Thinks You Can Think" by Dr. Seuss. The book was on sale for $1.50 and I left very happy. When I got home I ordered another copy off Amazon.com (for under $3.00), so I could rip apart the used copy and frame the pictures.

Book: $1.50 Frames: Under $10

Finished product:

In all we've had a pretty successful DIY weekend. Tomorrow I plan to hunt for more DIY opportunities. I have less than a few months to get the room together and have everything settled for when Baby Cooper arrives (or before I get to uncomfortable to do this stuff).