My weekend full of projects.

Happy Easter everyone! Hope everyone is having a great weekend and that it's sunny and nice wherever you are.

We had a Easter brunch on Friday morning here and that's pretty much all we did Easter wise. It's been a great weekend to get things done around the house. I've actually been able to cross quite a few things off my list I posted recently.

I got our hedge trimmed outside. It runs along one side of our house and is about 30 feet long by 12 feet high. It definitely wasn't a small task as I used garden shears, some clippers and sheer man(woman) power. I think we may have to invest in some electric trimmers, because it was not easy!

I've made some progress on the chair I am painting and reupholstering. It took a coat of primer and three and a half coats of paint to get it finished. I've started reupholstering the cushions, but I've run out of staples for my staple gun, so that's on hold for now.

As I type, the coat of primer that I put on our front door is drying and is almost ready for the first coat of paint. I can't wait to start painting on the colour, which I will blog about shortly.

I also got around to framing our other bathroom's mirror. I've had the moulding for that for a long time and finally crossed it off my list.

I'm also getting other little things done in between coats of paint. I'm going to be making some banana bread for our new next door neighbours that moved in last weekend. Who knows, maybe I'll even bake some for my husband (if he's lucky!)

My Current Project List

I'm the type of person that needs to have multiple projects on the go at once and I go from one to the other, eventually finishing them all. I have quite a few big projects on my list right now and I'm slowly making progress on them. These are the things I'm working on right now or will be starting soon.

• Reupholstering and painting the chair that was given to me.
• Painting the front and garage doors.
• Framing our other bathroom mirror.
• Installing posts for a clothesline.
• Creating raised garden beds for our back yard.
• Putting up new pictures around the house.

I'm sure I have more to do that I can't think of right now, but there's nothing wrong with being busy! Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

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).