My New Chair

As I mentioned before, I have some pretty great people in my life who are constantly finding great pieces of furniture and things for our house, or giving us furniture that they're no longer using.

One of my work colleagues recently gave me a great chair that he no longer had room for it due to the eminent arrival of their newborn baby. 

 Beautiful floral carvings on the seat base and back.

I plan on painting the frame a bright colour (maybe purple) and reupholstering the cushions. I also need to add webbing to the seat for support as it has nothing at the moment and the seat cushion is sinking in slightly. I'm probably going to wait until the weather is nicer outside and paint it out there. Another project to add to my ever growing list!

Garden Update #2

There's been some growth in all the different seeds that I've planted. My tomatoes are still growing like weeds, and the others are slowly coming to life.

Tomato growth. I planted a few seeds in each cup. I'm going to have to separate them into different pots soon to thin them out. I've also read that I should cover some of the stalks with soil so the plants form a better root system. This makes the plant nice and strong. 

Chili pepper plants slowly coming up. 

Only 3 of the 10 flower seeds have come up so far. Let's just hope they are slow growers.

My Avocado Experiment

I eat quite a few avocados and I've always wondered if I could grow a little avocado plant at home. I looked up some information on growing them from the large seed in the middle online a while ago, but then never got around to doing it.

A few days ago my cousin, who has quite a green thumb, posted a picture of her avocado seed on Facebook. The seed had cracked open and had roots and a little plant shoot coming out of the top. She said that it took nine months of the seed sitting in water in a window and changing the water weekly to get to this point. This spurred me on to try it myself. I did some research online, ate the delicious avocado, and got ready to go!

Steps to starting your avocado plant:

Step One - Cut open your avocado and carefully remove the seed from the middle.

Step Two - Wash the outside of the seed with water until clean and gently dry with some paper towel.

Step Three - Insert toothpicks into the sides of the avocado a little closer to the pointy side of the seed. You don't need to stick the toothpicks in very far, but just enough to support the seed's weight. The pointy side goes up and the rounded side with the 'belly button' goes down. The toothpicks are used to suspend the seed out of the water so it's not fully submerged.

Step Four - Fill a glass about two thirds full with water.

Step Five - Place the seed in the water with the rounded side down. Make sure at least a third of the seed is in the water.

Step Six - Wait one day. Once the seed has been in the water for a day, take it out and peel the outer skin off  of the bottom part of the seed (the part that is in the water). This is supposed to make the seed root a lot faster.

Step Seven - Wait, and then wait some more! Make sure to change the water every so often, and if you see the water level go down, just top it up.

I don't expect to see any action for quite a while, but I'm excited to see how long it takes. I'm going to prepare another seed today just in case one of them is a dud and doesn't do anything. I'll post an update as soon as anything happens. If you're interested, there are YouTube videos with grown avocado plants in them. I know that my plant will never get large enough to grow actual avocados, but I think it's pretty neat that you can grow something from a seed that is usually just discarded.

You can plant almost any seed from your fruits. My cousin has also grown a pomegranate tree from seed, and my Mom planted lemon trees from seed as well. My next experiments will be growing a mango tree from the pit and a pineapple plant from the top leaves.

My lemon tree from seed. It's recently grown a baby. It will soon be time to transplant them to a bigger pot.

Tips for Keeping African Violets Happy

One of the flowers I now love are African violets. My Mom got me one around a year and a half ago. It was tiny when I got it, and now it's quite the beast (as far as African violets go).

The very happy and healthy African violet plant that my Mom gave me in it's special pot.

These are the easiest plants to keep if you give them the right environment. African violets love to be evenly moist all the time. It's hard to get them to be like this with just a normal pot and a watering can. There is a special kind of pot that has an unfinished clay pot that rests in another larger, more decorative pot. Once the plant is potted in the smaller pot, you fill the larger pot with water and then set the smaller clay pot inside. This means that the plant can take water through the clay when it wants and it stays moist all the time. I only have to fill the larger pot with water every 3 weeks or so. Walmart has some of these pots for around $10 and they come in a few different colours. 

My newer violet. Can you see the pot within the pot?

If and when a flower wilts and dies, simply pluck it off and discard. A while later you'll notice some little flower buds in it's place. They also go through periods where they don't flower. I found that this was in the fall and early winter last year. It doesn't take long for them to go back into bloom (I guess everything needs a little down time). 

Another important thing to think about is placement. They like light, but prefer indirect sunlight. I keep them on my dining room sideboard about 5 feet away from a window. 

It's a beautiful plant that comes in many different colours and varieties. I would definitely suggest this as a starter plant for someone who is just starting out with houseplants. Not only are they easy to grow, but they're also really cheap and widely available.

Garden Update #1

It's been a while since my last post. My little Lola got spayed, so I've been preoccupied with making sure that she's healing well and also making sure that she doesn't jump on/off things. She's doing well so far, but I think she's going a bit stir crazy. She is used to going for an hour long walk each night, but for 10 days after her operation we have to hold off on the walks. We're on day 5 now, so we're half way there.

Lola in recovery.

In my previous post I mentioned that I'm going to plant a garden. I started my seeds out about 10 days ago, and so far so good! I've got some sprouts coming up and they look pretty healthy. I made the mistake of not labeling the little pots. I made sure I planted the same seeds in the same kind of cups, and thought my memory would serve me well enough to remember which plant was in which pot, but my memory has failed me.

I think these are my heirloom tomatoes. They are doing the best out of everything. There's still time for the others to catch up though.

Tomato plant?

I think the recent heat wave has helped them to grow. There's been plenty of sun beating down and everything is flourishing. It's been around 26 degrees for the past few days, which is extremely warm for where we live in March (I think the average is usually around 4 this time of year). 

I can't wait to get out and start everything. I'll have to be patient, because at this time of year, weather changes can be drastic. It could snow! (Let's hope not).

I'm going to plant my very first garden this year.

I've always loved plants and growing things, but we've never lived in a place where we could grow a garden until now. In England our first place was on the fourth floor and therefore had no garden or balcony and our place after had a little back area, but it was completely made of concrete. When we moved back to Canada, we were living in a rented townhouse and had a yard, but we couldn't dig it up, as it wasn't ours. I've grown some herbs from seed and I also had a cherry tomato plant out back in a pot at our last place, but nothing major.

I'm trying to think up ideas for a garden. I'm really liking the look of raised garden beds and think that's something that I could do here, but we'll see how adventurous I'm feeling when the ground thaws.

I've started to grow a few things from seed that specifically said to start the plants inside early. A lot of plants can be planted right into the ground, but others seem to need a 6-8 week head start.

I started by planting the 3 seeds above. I plan on drying some of the chili flakes and using the rest for hot pepper jelly. I thought the tomatoes looked really nice a colourful. Nothing beets a tomato fresh off the plant. I love the smell. I also decided to get these flowers. They're  supposed to stay in flower until the frost in the fall, so they'll keep everything looking nice and cheery. 

I planted everything in coffee cups that I cut down a little. I planted the seeds at the suggested depths on the backs of the packages, and covered the cups loosely with plastic wrap. 

I'll have to wait between 7 and 14 days to see any growth. Hopefully it's worth the wait.

Fingers crossed!

Broccoli Salad

We're going to my parent's house today for a family party to celebrate some of our Birthdays. We always have a potluck style lunch where everyone brings something different. We always end up having so much food and have a feast. I'm bringing broccoli salad today. There are so many variations of this salad, and I'm going to show you two today. I always use the same dressing, but the vegetables, nuts/seeds and dried fruit I put in always vary. Just don't forget the broccoli!

I started making broccoli salad when we were living in England. I would make it for barbecues and other occasions.

Before I left my Mom gave me a cute little recipe book. I filled it with all of my favourite recipes of hers so that I could recreate them when I was feeling a little homesick.

I've had this recipe book for over 8 years now and it has been used a lot.

Original recipe

Broccoli Salad from Today

4 cups broccoli cut in to small pieces

1 cup thinly sliced carrots (I but the ones that are already julienned)

1 red pepper (diced)

1/2 cup thinly chopped red onion

1/2 cup apricots

1/2 cup cranberries

3/4 cup salted sunflower seeds

Dressing

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup sour cream

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp sugar

1 and 1/2 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp dijon mustard

1/4 tsp black pepper

You can make both the salad and dressing the day before, but don't mix them together until the day that you plan on serving the salad.

Mix together when you're ready!

This salad has a wonderful combination of crunchy, sweet, creamy and tangy. 

If you haven't made broccoli salad before, definitely give it a try.

If you have, what other ingredients have you put in that I didn't mention above? I'm always up for suggestions.

Spring Flowers

A while ago in one of my posts I put a picture up of what I thought were crocuses. I assumed this because the flowers that were in bloom at the store were all crocuses and thought the ones I bought would be the same when they bloomed.

It turns out they are daffodils. I'm perfectly fine with that, as I like daffodils just as much.

I can't believe how quickly they're growing.

 Daffodils really remind me of the UK. They grow everywhere around this time there. 

I can wait for the snow to melt so I can get started on my gardening. I have big plans for the backyard and the flower beds in the front.

What is your favourite spring flower?

Front Entrance - Before and After

Here are some pictures of our front entrance from when we bought our house and now. 

Before - Toffee coloured paint and builders light (not shown).

After - Lighter paint colour.

After - my antique sewing machine base table, upcycled candle holders and mosaic lamp.

After - Painting that hangs in the entrance.

New front entrance light.

Crocuses I bought this weekend and re-potted in a pot that my Mom gave me. I can't wait for spring!

New Thrift Store Finds

Last Sunday my Mom and I went to our local Value Village. We were lured in by a sale they had on. All of their clothing, accessories and footwear were on sale for 50% off. How could you resist. The official sale started on my Birthday, but if you were a card member you got to shop a day early. Knowing that it would be busy, we went for when the store opened at 10. We made it there about 5 minutes before it opened and there were around 30 other people waiting to get in. Thankfully we only had to wait 5 minutes, because it was absolutely freezing outside (about minus 10 before the wind chill).

When we got in we started looking through aisles and aisles of clothing. It was amazing how many nice things there were. A lot of the items I picked out were brand new (some with tags still on, others that were just visibly unworn). I'm not a brand whore or anything, but I know that some of the brands do offer better quality than others and I was finding some great stuff from some pretty decent stores. I found tops from Gap, Zara and Smart Set to name a few. Some of these tops would have been at least $30 to start and they were on sale for between $1.50 and $4.

I ended up bringing home 6 tops, 2 cardigans, 1 pair of pants, an infinity scarf, a hat for my niece and some stuff for the house for $57 including taxes.

If anyone reading this is not too sure about shopping for clothing at thrift stores, please give it a chance. Yes, there are some pretty weird and sometimes ugly things hanging on the racks, but within those things are some real gems. It's worth a look. I always just bring everything home and give them a good wash with lots of laundry detergent and voila! Ready to wear.

As I said previously I got some stuff for the house. I had a coupon for 25% off everything in the household section, which was great. As with the clothing you sometimes have to sift through some pretty crazy stuff, but it's just a matter of keeping your eyes peeled.

I picked up this little lamp for $5.25. The middle is glass and the base is wrought iron. It's got the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys around the base. Very cute and quirky!

Hear no evil.

See no evil.

Large solid brass platter with etched and painted floral design. This was a little more pricey at $15, but I couldn't leave it.

 Platter Detail

Platter detail

My Mom also found some great deals. We ended up staying there until 12:30 because I had to leave for Lola's puppy school. If it weren't for that, we probably could have spent a lot longer looking for bargains.