family

While we’re STILL waiting for the house to close (you could say I’m frustrated today – translation, instead of moving, Zac and the boys are playing video games and I’m enjoying a margarita while writing this) I thought I’d share a bit of what our family has been up to over the last few months.  Can you believe these fun snowy photos are from the first day of spring?!?  Crazy huh?  And you can tell that we don’t get too much snow here in the Willamette Valley in Oregon – jeans in the snow – didn’t work out so well for us.

Please tell me you love Josiah in the photo on the right below – so him!

We spent a lot of time at the ball field this spring – one little t-ball player and the best brother cheering him on!

Had to get a shot of the best husband in there . . .

And a little sneak peek of what will be in the backyard eventually – so excited for this asian pear tree!  Look at those little babies – someday they’re going to be grown up!

another vertical garden

While I was thinking about making that first vertical garden I thought this version would be fun too!  Pretty much the same process as here except I used an entire pallet instead of half (the only downside is it’s really heavy).

The boys were home sick this day but were dying to get outside into the sunshine so I let them play in the dirt for 10 minutes before I sent them back inside.  And a little wine usually helps on projects like these where you don’t have to draw any straight lines.  You’ll notice between the next picture and the last I added some extra flowers we had – definitely helped fill in the holes.

project #1

While we’re waiting for our new (90s) house to close I can’t help myself and have a list of projects to take over to the new place.    We had a couple of nice sunny weeks a few weeks back (which let’s face it, rare for an Oregon spring) and my Mom and I found ourselves wandering around nurseries (also a Mother’s day tradition).  Pallet projects are all over Pinterest (speaking of – follow me on Pinterest here) and I saw this one in a magazine (Ladies Home Journal I think) and I was inspired.

I started with half a pallet (cut down the middle vertically and patched on the side – thanks Les!), then used some regular old garden fabric to close up the back (I sandwiched a layer of the plastic grid in between two layers of the fabric).   All I needed was a nice staple gun to hold it all together.  You’ll see below that next I cut squares of the plastic grid to cover the front openings.

Next I laid out the plants where I wanted them to go and cut little openings with a box knife and slid them in.  I let the whole thing lay on it’s back for a couple of weeks so everything was nice and settled.  Last week I propped it up against a post and it’s doing wonderfully.  I can’t wait to get it to the new place so it can find it’s home.  It’s going to be so fun when it’s all filled in and thick!  Yay for the first house project done!