Clematis Josephine

Our backyard is mostly shaded.  I have two spots I wanted a climbing vine that flowers and everyone I asked thought a Clematis would be the best option.

When we went to the nursery by our house, I went down the line of Clematis' trying to figure out which color I wanted.  Then the last one I saw, was a variety called Josephine - my daughter's name!  It was a sign to get that one!  So now we have two Clematis Josephine's in our yard.  They've already grown quite a bit, maybe it's the fertilizer.  Hopefully they get enough sun to bloom a bit next year!

First location on the side of the house.  Gets more sun than the other spot, but not full sun for sure!  Here's hoping!

 The back.  Doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight, just a little bit.  The hydrangeas love it, so hopefully the clematis will too.

The plant was about half this size when I bought it, it's grown quite a bit in a week!

 Look at them wrapping around the trellis!

Update:

In a few short weeks, check out the growth my clematis has had, as well as the new flowers on it!  Too bad it's not 63 degrees out.  Hopefully it doesn't freeze and kill them. Should probably look up how to care for it....

Fairy Door

We have a fairy that moved in!  :)

Keeping your greens fresh

I try to avoid dairy.  When my daughter was born and I started breastfeeding, I was told she had colic.  She cried all the time.  ALL THE TIME.  So after some research I found the a lot of colic is actually a baby's inability to digest dairy.  I was desperate, I gave up dairy.  And magically, within a week, completely gone.  Unless I went crazy and ate pizza then she got sick again.  And after giving it up, I never felt better myself.  I'm not perfect, I eat some dairy occasionally, but overall, I try to avoid it.  That's my round about way of talking about greens.  They're a good source of calcium, so I try to eat more of them.  Sometimes, I leave them in the fridge too long and they get all limp and gross looking.  The night before I plan on cooking them, I put them in a vase of water and they perk back up.  I do this with kale and mustard greens mostly.  Don't leave them in there too long, because they start to lose their color, become less green.  I'm not sure if that means they will lose their nutrients, so just to be safe, I only keep them in there about overnight.

DIY Canvas Photos

We have a very dark house.  We back up to woods so not a lot of natural lights comes in.  We bought it as a foreclosure, so there's a lot of work to do on it.  One of the things we did recently was paint the front entryway a red color called Maine Lobster.  I think it was a Sherwin Williams color.  We love lots of color.  Problem is, it made it look really really dark in the entryway.  Eventually we want to paint the closet doors in there white as well as the trip to help lighten it up.  But in the meantime, I wanted to blow up some photos that were mostly white to help bring color in there.

I like artwork with meaning.  I don't like to just buy stuff from walmart and hang it up.  The upside is all our stuff has a story.  The downside is our walls are pretty bare.  :)

We used two photos that didn't have a high enough resolution to be blown up into a large canvas.  But I could get large prints, so I did that and bought some plain canvas to diy them onto.  I followed the below blog and you can see my outcome.  My one tip: don't rush it, wait for the black paint to dry before you modge podge.  Oops.

http://www.blissfullyeverafter.net/2011/12/diy-photos-on-canvas.html?m=1

 These are the two photos I picked and what they look like aftewards.  You can see the black streaking from not letting the black edging paint dry completely.

My husband says it looks like they're 'messed up', but then when I gave him a look he said that they must be messed up on purpose like you see in stores.  :/  My Dad said they looked good, but then scratched at them, not sure why, totally unnecessary.  So who knows.  Maybe they look horrible and no one has told me.  But in the meantime, we can't afford the large paintings and artwork I like (one photograph I found at hte Plymouth Art in the Park was $1300!  Out of my budget!), so these will stay.

At least until I find something on One Kings Lane or Anthropologie that fits the color scheme.  :)

Bumble Bee Birthday Party

For Josephine's first birthday we threw a bee themed party.  Yeah, I know, it's a pretty popular theme, but I thought it was a really cute theme.  Plus we have lots of yellow daffodils and I had already planted yellow petunias so it all just came together perfectly.  At least on the outside!

Check out the photos and highlights below.

 I made a custom order to Power Capes because I saw they had tutus, just not in the color I wanted.  I wanted yellow and black for the bumble bee theme so I contacted them and here it is!  She wasn't too thrilled with it, but it has a draw string for the waste, so I'm hoping to get a few more wears out of it when she's older.

 On the inside in our living room I had cut shapes out with my cricut to make a banner type thing.  But rather than put them all on a ribbon, I just taped them to the window.  I also added photos from her first year on the two adjoining windows.  Theme was more yellow than yellow and black, I think it turned out cuter that way.

 I used the Cricut Create a Critter cartridge and I think for the letters and the flower shapes they're on I used the storybook cartridge. didn't take too long and turned out really cute!

 Instead of collecting gifts, we asked people to donate to the Detroit Area Diaper Bank instead by bringing diapers.  We collected over a thousand!

 The cupcakes were simple.  White cake (I think just plain ol Kroger brand) with lemon frosting and a little sugar bee I bought off etsy.

 So cute!  And pretty cheap.  At first I wanted to do a really cute cake, but I got quoted over $200!  No.

 For the older kids, we had pin the bee on the hive.  I covered a box in plain brown paper.  Cut a hive shape out of brown paper as well and then spray painted it yellow.  I cut out of a ton of those bees in all sorts of colors for kids to pick from and then pin them on.  Whoever got closest to the give entrance would have won.  But I forgot to get it started.  Hey - it was a two hour party and I was busy as a bee!  Bwahaha, pun intended!  :)

On a side note, have you seen One Kings Lane?  I'm completely addicted.  It's a store that carries stuff similar to Anthropologie and maybe even urban Outfitters.  Love it.  Need to stick to my budget though!