Fun in the Sun

I think I may be getting sick...but can you get sick from too much sun and mosquito bites?  I think I have about 20 mosquito bites yuck!  I love the weather right now but hate hate hate mosquitoes.  When I lived in Las Vegas that was the BEST thing about being there, hardly any bugs and especially no mosquitoes.  Those bugs were totally designed by satan himself, evil little creatures.  

In between swatting at mosquitoes and basking in the sun we (and I mean my husband) were able to get our yard looking like spring has sprung!  We planted an Orange tree that smells heavenly.  Did you know Orange trees have flowers, and those flowers smell an awful lot like jasmine?  I was so happy I had to get one, and BONUS...it will bear fruit one of these days!  So you cant really see it but the picture below is the Orange tree, its pretty small but dont worry it will get bigger!

 The best thing about spring is it tells you if a plant has lived through the drought and the winter.  My pecan tree was my biggest worry through the whole mess last year, and see above there is a green bud!  I have been watering it like crazy (see the water gator below, its a 10 gallon sack you fill with water and it drips out to water the tree), gave it miracle grow citrus tree food stakes and talk nice to it (totally works) and look its coming back!  I knew it loved me and wanted me to be happy :)

 Even the herbs are sprouting up, and we planted 2 tomato plants because they smell good too and you can always use some tomatoes around the house!  We also make salsa and home made pasta sauce so it will come in handy fo' sho'!

 See the basil!  It was the fastest to come up and there is a lot of it there...I cant wait for it to get more mature.

 Another big YAY from last year is my strawberry patch.  Its a little overgrown because Joe thought these were weeds, thank goodness i stopped him before he started yanking because I have strawberries growing!!  We planted these from little seedlings we got from walmart and I really only expected like 1/2 to survive, but all of them are flowering and have fruit growing.  Really surprised and happy about that!

 See this strawberry plant has some baby strawberries and the pretty flowers growing, so happy to have my own strawberries, they are so tasty.

 And who could forget the front of the house!  We planted 2 yellow rose bushes (yellow rose of Texas anyone?!) and white plant that I dont know what it is but hey it was pretty and a smller multi colored flower thing.  Yes thats the technical name, you can google it! (please dont its not really real I was just kidding!).

All in all I only had 5 plants die from the drought, 3 of which were $5 berry plants from walmart that I kinda thought would die anyway.  The other 2 were a tragedy because they were pretty and purple but I cant find them this spring so we replaced them with a bottle brush plant which I will share pictures of tomorrow.

Im so happy spring is here and even more happy that I can now sit under this beautiful umbrella more now that its a little warmer.  It was dusk and hard to get a great picture but the shape of this umbrella caught my eye and cherry on top the pattern is amazing.  It makes me do a happy dance whenever I see it open :)

Project Housewife Out!

Herb Garden Finale

This morning is not a good morning.  You know those morning when you wake up confused because you thought it was Saturday  but your alarm is going off so you should probably get up only to realize its really Monday and booo the weekend is over and you do have to go to work.  Ugh that was this morning.  Nothing is worse than thinking its Saturday when its really Monday.

Other than having a SERIOUS case of the Mondays...I get to share the epic conclusion of the Herb Garden saga with you.  Ok so its not really epic and it wasnt a saga but it just sounds better that way!  To see how to build the garden check out part 1 here.  To see how we waterproofed the garden check out part 2 here.  All the hard work is done now its time to have a little fun!

At Home Depot they had a pretty good selection of potted herbs and herb seed packets.  Ultimately we choose to do the seeds because the seed packets were only $1 whereas the potted herbs were $4.  What we decided would be best is using a pot to contain each herb but cut the bottom out of the pot so they roots can grow with no problems. Each pot cost $1 each and we bought 8 total, so for all the seeds and the pots we spent $16

To cut the bottoms out just get a knife and start slicing...it takes about 2 seconds.

Pots are prepped now we need to prep the box.  First we drilled holes in the box so any water can drain out the bottom and not just sit and fester and become a gross breeding ground for mosquitoes.  We live in Texas so thats a real concern, those bugs are straight from Satan...if you have never been bitten consider yourself the luckiest person in the world.  Here is what the drilled holes looks like.

My hubs works at a plumbing supplier so he brought home some heavy duty shower curtain material to keep the box from excess water damage.  We did waterproof the bottom of the box but since this is the area that will have the most water contact much more frequently than the rest he thought it would be a good idea to take an extra precaution as well.  This material cost $15











We used a staple gun to attach it to the box.  It doesnt look pretty but it will get the job done!

Now we can add the mulch!  We bought compost, garden soil and potting soil so the plants could have a good mix of nutrients.  We actually lucked out and were able to get 3 bags of garden soil at 50% off because we bought bags that had been ripped yay!  For all the bags you see below the cost was $35

After we moved all the mulch and the box to the backyard and the box was in place, we dumped all the bags into the box and mixed it all up.  With gloves of course compost is nasty.

After the soil was added we put the pots in also and put some more soil in the pots.

Save the best for last and thats adding the seeds.  Read the back of the packet to make sure you are planting them at the right depth, each seed is different.  Also as a side note, I have seen many people posting that you need to start them inside.  I didnt see those until after I planted my seeds, but I have to tell you Im not sure it makes a difference.  I already see the Basil and Dill sprouting and its only been 1 week.  So you can start these inside if you want but I didnt and its turing out ok for me.

And there you have it, easy peasy!  I will post again once you can see the herb sprouting, it should be pretty cool to see what happens with this!  Oh and total cost for this project was:

Herbs $8

Pots $8

Soil $35

Plastic Shower Cutrain $15

Waterproofing Paint $25

Total $91

Not bad all in all...if your building a smaller container than Im sure your soil wont be as expensive as ours, we had to put 5 bags.

I hope you enjoyed making an herb garden...I pesonally cant wait until Im using fresh herbs in my food rather than all the dried stuff I use now!

Project Housewife Out!

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Herb Garden Part 1

Last week I mentioned that I was thinking about building a herb garden and I had some pins for inspiration (check it out here).  I loved all the ideas but none of them were really perfect for my space so I decided we needed to make our own.  My husband brought 3 more big pallets home and we went to town.

 Prep station...we have a circular saw, a mitor saw, a jig saw, hammer and nails.  In the background is a band saw but I think thats the one tool we didnt use lol.

 My husband hard at work, taking apart the pallets was the most time consuming because you have to be careful not to break the wood but at the same time use enough force to get the nails out of the boards its attached to.  Good thing I married a strong man otherwise we would have had to do a different project!

 What you see above is the base for the herb box.  On the inside is the brackets that held the pallets together.  What we did was leave the bottom board on the pallet and leave a little extra bracket to attach another board to so that they were supported.  The with all four sides made in the same way we nailed them all together to form a box.

 Since soil is going into the box it needed a bottom, we cut a bunch of the boards to the length we needed and nailed them to the bottom of the box.  They are 100% flush but thats ok we are lining the box with a plastic so that the water wont corrode the wood.

 Now its time to make the rest of the box...lets call this part the stand.  As you know we have a beautiful border collie Oreo.  We love our dog, but Im pretty sure he doesnt need to be eating herbs so we decided to make a stand that was tall enough so that he cant easily eat the plants but not too tall that it looks silly.  The top picture is the beginning of building the stand.  Same as before we left the bottom board on the pallett  so that we had support brackets to use and attach the other boards too.  For the front we put boards on the entire length of the side but for the back we only used 2 boards for structure (top and bottom) since you wouldnt see it we decided to save the wood which was good because we had literally just enough.

 Here are the two sides of the stand, we attached two boards to the top of each so that there was a little support there for the box.

 Here is the box ontop of the stand.  We did the two long sides of the stand first so that we could line them up with the box before closing out the stand.  So to make sure they were aligned we put each leg on the two sides and matched them up.  Once that was done we attached a top board to the two sides of the stand then took the box off the top and went to adding the rest of the boards all the way down the stand.

 Almost done, we added the box back to the stand and nailed it all in place.  Let me tell you this project took a really long time and Im sure we did a really complicated version of it but its what I had in my head (well its a little shorter than the version in my head that version was as long as a section of the fence).

So thats step 1...which by the way was only $0...all the pallets were free yay!  Oh and my silly husband put an ugly board on the bottom of the front of the stand so we will be burying this box so you cant really see it.

Step 2 is this weekend...check back for updates on that!

Project Housewife Out!

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Have you Herb?

I have been wanting to plant a herb garden for a while.  #1 fresh herbs get expensive, #2 if you dont use them they go bad and you wasted the money #3 they look and smell nice in the backyard.  When I was growing up we used to have a vegetable garden and I really liked having it there.  Of course my mom did most of the work but I liked going in there seeing everything growing and smelling all the fresh veggies.  My backyard now isnt big enough for all that but I would love to do a herb garden of sorts.  Enter Pinterest.  If you arent hooked on pinterest already WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!  Im just kidding, but seriously I do find some great inspiration there...and a lot of recipes...mostly recipes to be honest but I have found some great crafts and home improvement ideas from there.  Today Im going to show you some of the pinterest herb garden ideas I have pinned because Im trying to figure out what I for sure want to do back there...suggestions are totally appreciated!

This first one I thought was an easy project, you can see the site here

I thought the use of pots here was really cute and seperated the herbs well.  See the site here

I liked this one because it was in the ground, but the pots keeps them from spreading out.  No source here.

This one I loved because of the wine barrel, a really unique look that you dont see everywhere...now if only I could find a wine barrel.  You can see the site here.

So what do you think?  Which one would you do?  They are all such great ideas I am having a hard time making up mind!

Project Housewife Out!