Square Foot Dreams

We're actually underway... my sister-in-law, Jes, and I are embarking on our very first square foot garden. Our awesome neighbors (and dear friends) are allowing us to use their yard to grow our plants. They are tending two of their own 4x4 gardens, while we wrangle ours.

I've always considered myself to have a black thumb, so I'm honestly going into this with pretty low expectations. It would be SO WONDERFUL though, if we could grow and eat our own food!

This was our original plan, and we pretty much stuck to it except that we decided to swap the locations of the carrots and herbs, and we're going to do only one square of cucumber, and add a square of squash.

And here's our cute little box that our neighbor built for us. We filled it with a combination of top soil and a mulch type mix (sorry for my lack of detail!).

And this is what it looked like at the end of yesterday. We're going to fill the empty squares with bell peppers, squash, tomatoes and cucumbers in a few weeks when the risk of frost has passed.

And that's what's happening so far!

So Pretty

Look at this fantastic project

I ran across today! I just thought I'd share the genius. This brooch would make a great Valentine's Day gift.

Look What I Found!

I went to one of my favorite stores in Phoenix the other day (it's called Rust and Roses), and I found this fantastic green chair!

The wood is painted green with gold highlights, and the upholstery is allegedly vintage linen from Europe (I know. Fancy shmancy).

Anyhow, I thought it was a pretty great price (which I can't even remember now, and I don't feel like looking it up... I do know that is was well under $100), and it was a welcome addition to our office.

Butterfly Cards

I decided to branch out and do something crafty that I've never done before. I made a few cards for my mom. First, I bought a blank card set at Michael's for $1 (don't tell my mom... then again, she might be proud of my thriftiness :). I'm pretty sure they always have cards like these stocked in their discount section. Then, I used a butterfly shaped hole punch by Martha Stewart, an alphabet stamp set, and my sewing machine.

I love the way all the elements work together.

There you go. A hand-made card set for not much money. These make great gifts!

Poor, Poor Powder Room

This little half-bath has been neglected ever since we moved in.

We DID add the bead board which helped a lot, but other than that, it only has a mirror with broken pieces, southwest-style copper accessories (not my style), a decent but not awesome light fixture, and no artwork on the walls.

First, I really like the idea of putting a big mirror on the wall that stretches over the toilet and the vanity. (I found this photo here).

Now, about those blank walls... I was thinking about having it wallpapered, but then I had an interesting idea: I could possibly stencil it. It would be much less expensive than wallpaper, but I'm sure it would be quite a time investment. Before you get scared, hear me out. I typically think of chickens and grapevines when I think of stencils but that's why I was blown away when I found these pretty, modern ones. This store has some really cool Moroccan styles like this:

And here's what the actual stencil would look like:

And then I found this AWESOME one with birch trees:

Does anyone have any experience with this? Is it worth the time?