Garden Trellis

Well, our garden for the summer is just about over, but it worked particularly well this year due to one major thing.  A trellis:

And lots of helpers!

It just gets too darn hot here in the summer to grow anything.  Well, that or its too hot to be outside long enough to water the garden in order for things to grow....but either way, last year's garden was a bust.  

We built the garden up a bit this year and we planted some grapes outside of it which, of course, needed something to climb. 

And then this handy guy I know (thank you Love!) built a trellis (all out of his own head) that gave us both a shade for the garden AND a trellis for the grapes.  It looks really nice (I think he wanted to be in on the blog!).

Everything seemed to thrive.  The melons (that I'm sure I never planted) managed to squeeze up through the top, but were none the worse for a little extra sun.

 

The lettuce and beans did great.  The jalapenos and tomatoes put in a good showing, but the watermelon and cucumbers were still failures.  Next year we're planting more of the mystery melon (we think it was honeydew) because it was delicious!

And hopefully in a couple of years the grapes will be producing.  We're keeping our fingers crossed.

- Jen

Baby Toys

So its not EXACTLY refashioned, but I did a little recycling when I made these. Plus they turned out super cute!  Anyway, on to the project....

First, I had a little nephew on the way (who is now three months!) and wanted a special present for him so that I would be his favorite auntie!  So this is what I came up with:

I wanted the pages to be cute AND fun, so, to make it crunchy when you touch it, in between each page is a cereal box liner which I just sewed in when I put the pages together. Like this:

I think the most difficult part was trying to figure out how to do the words. I wanted to make sure they were all the same size (and that you could read them), but an embroidery pencil doesn't work on felt, so in the end I had to get creative, but it worked really well.  Probably people more experienced than I do this all the time, but I thought I was a genius!

I wrote out each word on paper, stitched over the letters and then peeled the paper away. Worked like a charm!  And then the rest came together easily.  Heres a look at the pages:

This next toy is for a baby dedication we are going to this weekend.  Just a simple little bird.

My favorite part is the legs!  This one also has the cereal box liner, but I only put it on the front side and  if I were to make it again I would have lined the back also for maximum crunch.  I also thought of stuffing it with shredded cereal box liner, but thought that might not be the safest thing for a baby if she managed to get the thing pulled apart!  So I stuck with a cut up old sock (clean, of course!).  

Its good baby hand size, bright and hopefully crunchy enough to keep her interest.  Something special for this special day.

-Jen