more work to do

It seems like we’ve spent every waking hour outside working on our yard these days. We’ve dedicated the month of May to outdoor home improvement and starting in June we’ll be ready to enjoy the outdoors without thoughts of digging up this or planting that. I had to take a break from the insanity and clean the inside of our dirt and dust-filled house tonight.

Last weekend we planted our vegetable garden. Unfortunately it is up for a garden redo this weekend because it all flooded after torrential rains on Monday night. Probably should have planted cranberries in there instead! We were quite bummed but are regrouping and planning to build and make a raised bed vegetable garden instead to avoid the drainage issues.

Being outside so much has given us the chance to meet and talk with a ton of our neighbors (and their dogs). We are very fortunate to have such great neighbors – always willing to lend a hand or let us borrow a tool that we need. They even clued us in to the free compost and mulch that the city offers for residents. What a great way to put last year’s lawn debris to good use!

One of our neighbors (the same one that asked us when the kids are coming just after learning our names) brought us over a dozen roses last night. Apparently his girlfriend in NY always sends him flowers and he doesn’t know what to do with them all…too funny!

yard work & more yard work

Jon and I have been busy bees lately...lots of digging, raking, mowing, edging, tilling and transplanting.

Remember this?

Here's what it looked like just before the roto-tiller hit the soil

And here's where all the sod went

This weekend we spent a back breaking 6 hours digging up sod and transplanting it to some dead spots in our yard. A few feet into the garden, we started rethinking our idea to create such a large garden, but we stuck with it. Hopefully it will pay off later this summer with some yummy vegetables!

Our garden is ready to be planted and this weekend we'll be sowing some seeds and picking up some additional vegetables, annuals and perennials for the various gardens in our yard.

We're feeling a bit overwhelmed right now, but we keep cranking through our to-do list and things keep getting accomplished. It feels so good to cross another task off our list!

some new bling

Well, I left my wedding ring set at home by accident this morning. I discovered my naked finger at work and freaked out. Shortly after I arrived, Jon called me at work to ask if I was planning on meeting my secret lover today. : )

I'm constantly playing with my ring and adjusting it all day, so I knew it wouldn't work for me to have an empty spot on my finger. So, I had to improvise.

This was all that I could find laying around the office (and yes, there are more where this came from). The funny thing is that the only time I noticed I was wearing a scary troll ring was when I caught a glimpse of the read hair sticking up on my finger. Other than that, it fit perfectly and was the right width and everything on the inside of my hand.

lunch bags & more

I found this cute little craft book in Japan and bought it with the intention of making a more permanent reusable lunch bag for work. I've been using old smaller shopping bags with handles, but they wear out too quickly and it's not very often that I shop at a store that gives away boutique bags.

The book has 6 different styles of lunch bags and gives four or five variations on each bag. I haven't made a lunch bag to use yet, but last week I did make a large tote bag for carrying around my laptop, books, and other things. It worked great for our weekend trip last week, too.

I was excited to find directions for my oft-wished for LL Bean bucket tote on a budget. I don't know why, but I've always wanted one of these tote bags. I really like the simple, classic styling. The only thing I'd change next time around would be to make the linen bottom smaller (which I would have known if I had converted the cm measurements to inches and enlarged the proportions of the bag evenly).

our new toy

Our lives seem to be getting more exciting my the minute around here these days! We bought a lawn mower on Friday night and proceeded to assemble it and mow our lawn shortly thereafter. Forget raging parties to go to, we've got a lawn to mow!

Jon is so geeked about this new gadget! He's been wanting one of these ever since he found out that they still exist did all of the research and price shopping to get us a good deal on this. Here's to many more gas-less, fume-less, noise-less, energy-saving lawn mowing times this summer!

our Dutch weekend

We took a quick trip out to Grand Rapids this weekend. Didn’t have many plans in mind when we left, but it quickly turned out to be the quintessential Dutch outing.

• we scored a great deal on a cheap hotel with priceline.com ! We paid $45 for a one night stay in a king bed suite at Springwood Suites by Marriott. This hotel was brand new…it still smelled like carpet and everything was in perfect condition.

• we had dinner at the ever-authentic Russ’ restaurant. Among the items featured on the menu are the “Big Dutchman” hamburger. I had wanted to show Jon the back room Russ’, where you don’t have to pay a tip to the wait service because you phone in your order, but alas, that section was closed.

• we went to a free concert at the Calvin Fine Arts Center …we even scored free Calvin cookies and punch at the reception afterwards…can never have too many of those yummy cookies (much of the cause of the freshman 15).

• on Sunday afternoon, after church , we went to Holland and ended up window shopping and tulip watching, because all stores in Holland are closed on Sunday.

• and we ended up at the Veldheer tulip farm in Holland, MI, where we toured the wooden shoe and Delftware factory, and saw the famous 5.5 billion tulips and bison (no idea how those are related).

Here’s where the Dutch part of our trip ended…

We paid $7 each for entrance into the tulip farm and were promptly handed a four page handout for us to pick out the types of tulip bulbs to purchase after touring all of the different types of bulbs in bloom. Sounded like a good idea to us…pick out some tulips and have them mailed to our house in October. We toured the tulip farm, saw the bison and then ordered 100 authentic Dutch tulips (Oxford red - seen above) for our garden next spring. To top off our splurge, we picked up some peony, astilbe, and dahlia plants in the garden center afterwards. They definitely made some money off of these unsuspecting tourists!

tea cozy

While we were in Tokyo, we had tea at a cute little tea shop in Roppongi Hills. We were each served a cup of tea along with getting a tea kettle and cozy filled with extra tea. Both Jon and Joel requested that I make tea cozies for them when we all returned home.

Joel and I had completely different visions for this tea cozy. He wanted to use his printed Mt Fuji fabric on the inside and a plain white fabric on the outside and he wanted a tea cozy large enough to fit over both his japanese teapot and a standard kettle, but didn't want it to be too big.

I followed his instructions as best as I could, but well...this project turned out to be a bit of a dud...

I really like how the quilting pattern that I used worked out and I like the bias tape closure at the bottom...but other than that it's just blah. Joel claims that it's just too big, but I did follow his specific directions that it fit over both a japanese teapot and a standard kettle. Here are some adjectives that were used to describe this puppy: HUGE, a bishop's hat, gigantic, big enough to fit two kettles and a cup of tea, etc.

Well, I've learned my lesson and next time I work with Joel I'll be sure to ask for design approval during each step of the process. In the meantime, Jon's requested that I make one just like it for us to use ... with a patterned fabric on the outside instead. :)