How-To Make Your Own Seed Packets

Now that summer is in full swing, if you have a garden you are or soon will be enjoying the fruits of your harvest. When preparing vegetables from your garden, set aside the seeds whenever possible. Wash them in a colander and lay them out onto paper towel to dry. Once dry store them in Seed Packets you make yourself!

I have included a link to the Seed Packet Template here

and a link to the Fancy Seed Packet Labels here

For my own hand made seed packets, I have printed the labels out on regular printer paper and traced the seed packet template onto a paper grocery sack. I like the look of the brown paper sack and it is a great way to RECYCLE and REUSE. If you want to go even one step further, print the labels on the back of already used pieces of printer paper or junk mail and reduce your paper waste even more.

This is a great way to have seeds on hand for planting year after year and you can even give filled seed packets to friends and family who enjoy gardening as well.

Happy Harvesting:-)

Chevron Wrap

My Cousin Holly,(her blog is hollymarieknits.blogspot.com), made this wrap for her mother and then one for herself. Recently, while my grandfather was in the hospital another one of my aunts saw the wrap and requested that Holly make one for her too. Holly did, but this time using only 2 skeins of yarn instead of the 4 called for in the pattern. The result was a nice shorter wrap that just fit around the shoulders and loose about the arms. ( The wrap is very long with 4 skeins). I liked it so much that I made one for my mother, and then because I am a little larger, I made myself one using 3 skeins and I attached some polymer clay buttons I had made at one of my knitting guild meetings. I really like it. I am going to attach some buttons to my mother's wrap as well.

This shawl was made using Lion Brand Homespun yarn. It is the only acrylic yarn I really like because it is soft and stays soft even after washing.

The pattern can be found at www.lionbrandyarn.com/patterns/justwrap.html

New Year's Resolutions

Rest........that is what I am looking forward to this weekend. The holidays have finally passed along with the frantic hustle and bustle that comes with them. I have spent the last week trying to get the house back in order, tidying up the loose ends, wrapping up the late presents that are arriving in the mail, and reaching out to all the family and friends that were unable to make it to visit for the Holidays. Now...this morning.......I can finally sit back and take a few moments to rest.

Amidst all the chaos from Christmas the New Year swept passed me completely unnoticed. Now that I have regained my sanity from the Holidays, I am ready to face the New Year with NEW goals and NEW ambitions.

Here are few of my TOP 2o New Year Resolutions:

Number 1: Put God FIRST in all things. I will seek His guidance in every aspect of my life, no matter how small the decision seems to be.

Number2: Family - I will spend more time with my family. Seeking them out amidst the chaos of our lives. We all have a tendency sometimes to separate ourselves from each other. My house is a perfect example of this. I share a home with my brother, but he lives in his room, upstairs with his TV and computer. He works nights, so I am never certain when he is awake during the day. Sometimes I go an entire day without even knowing he is home until he comes downstairs for something. My daughter also lives with me, but since she is 18 she comes and goes as she pleases, and I am never certain when I will see her. When she is home, she is usually watching TV in the living room, or playing Nintendo DS, or Xbox, or on her computer and I am in my room or in the kitchen watching another TV, cooking, knitting, sewing etc. It seems that maybe with a little more effort, we can all spend some of this time at home together, in the same room, even if we aren't all doing the same thing. And once that happens, maybe we can go one step further and have a conversation.

Number 3: Improve my Health - I quit smoking a little over a year ago, September 25 2007, to be exact. It was the day my sister gave birth to her son Elijah. My sister and her Children were staying with me temporarily during her divorce, and one day I realized that I did not want to be a smoker any more. It was smelly and expensive and by smoking anywhere near my family, even standing at an open window, I was still exposing them to secondhand smoke. So I quit, right then and there, COLD TURKEY. Now over a year later, I can honestly say I don't miss it at all, and whenever I am near anyone who smokes or is smoking, the smell is so strong I feel like I can't breath. It just makes me even more committed to never smoking again!

Now on to a much heavier subject - WEIGHT! I consider myself pretty much the average American Woman. I am overweight, constantly struggling to lose this pound or that pound. Like many women I gained more weight than I should have when I was pregnant and just never really put in the effort to lose it until, over the last 18 years, more and more pounds have seemed to creep up on me. I am not really a junk food junky or anything, although I do like sweets now and then, and a loaf of bread will turn to dust in my pantry before I eat all of it. So what is it that keeps me from looking in full length mirrors and hiding from family and friends with a camera. Personally I think it is just a lack of physical activity. I have worked a desk job for over a decade, leaving the house before dawn and coming home just in time to go to bed. Unless I was going to work or the store, I never left my house. Now, after being laid off for almost 2 years, I have started to expand my horizons. I started an Etsy store in the hope that I might be able to leave my 9-5 days behind me, I have a part time seasonal job doing taxes (this will be my 5th year doing this, only this time it won't be in addition to a full time job). I make an effort to go out with my dad to the movies occasionally, and I meet my sister and her kids for outings to local fairs and interesting events. But although that helps meet the needs of my emotional health, it doesn't do much for my physical well being unless I am meeting them for a picnic on the side of a mountian and I have to hike up to the campsite. So I am making a promise to myself that I will take my 3 dogs for a walk twice a day until my limbs are weak from the influx of blood flowing into muscles that have been inactive for over a decade. I promise to bring my Tony Little Gazelle Elite that I bought 6 years ago and never used, out of the basement, put it in the dining room and use it for 10 minutes a day to start, while I watch Law and Order every afternoon at 2pm. I may even dig up my Windsor Pilates DVD's to spice things up and keep me motivated when I get bored with my Gazelle and feel like quitting.

The list goes on....but lest you get the feeling you are reading an excerpt from a novel...I will save them for another day.

So with those final promises in mind, I will sit here at my local Biggby Coffee, completely guilt free, sipping my Super Caramel Marvel and contemplating getting a piece of Lemon Cake to go with it:)

The Journey Home

Well, I have finally returned home after spending the summer visiting my parents in SC. It feels a little strange to be home again after several months. Many things have changed here. When I left I was sharing a 4 bedroom house with my brother, one of my sisters (the other one lives in Kalamazoo) and my sister's 3 kids (baby boy less than a year, daughter 3, Son 13) and my brother's children(2 girls 7 and 8) visit him several times each week. In the beginning, my daughter (18) had moved out with her boyfriend and since they broke up recently my daughter (Molly) has come back home to live, with her puppy dog (Loki). Upon my arrival home I was told that my sister and her 3 kids had gotten an apartment in a nearby town and were moving out within the week. So now it will just be me and my brother, and my daughter, and my brother's girls when they are here to visit him.

Right now I am alone at home, my sister and her kids are gone to her friends house, my daughter is out at a friends house, and my brother is at work. After being at my parents with their 5 dogs, and 2 cats, add in my 2 dogs and 1 cat, and my mother working from home (She makes soap), it seems oddly quiet around here. I am sure that as I get settled in I will develop a new routine and will become accustomed to being alone again. We'll see.

Every time I call my parents they ask me if I am ready to come home yet. Funny, I have only been away from their house for 3 days, counting my driving day.

I am still tired from the long drive, and my dogs are off of their schedule and a little out of sorts. I am always very tense when I drive to and from SC. I really, really, really hate driving through the mountains in the Virginias. I have to force myself to stare only at the road ahead because if I even glance to the side and see the tops of trees below, my stomach does a flip. Suffice it to say, my fingers are sore and stiff from the death grip I had on the steering wheel most of the way here.

Here are some pics of my jeep as it was packed for the trip home. ( I came back with much much more than I left with).Once I was able to shut the back door, I wedged some small loose items in the gaps....including a small crate of peaches wrapped in a plastic bag to keep the peaches from falling all over. I am going to make some more pies with them this week.


I left a portion free in the back behind the front passenger seat for my dog Isabella. That is where I put my pillows and blankets, so she had a comfy ride.

Here is Isabella.......isn't she precious?
Where you see the pink blanket in the front is where I had to put one of my duffel bags of clothes. The other one is on the floor in front of the front passenger seat. I covered them with a pink blanket and that is where my dog Princess stayed during the trip.

Here is my little dog Princess.....and my fat cat Omi (Oh-Me) who rotated between sitting with Isabella and sitting with Princess. I was really surprised at how well they did together in the car, especially Isabella. Isabella is only 8 months old and had never really been anywhere except her backyard. I actually had to pick her up and put her in the car that first time. But now, after a 16 hour trip of stopping to go potty and get gas or food, she is a pro at jumping in and out of the car.

Carolina Peach Pie

Our local Farmer's Market had a sale on 25lb crates of peaches for just $15 and I decided I would try my hand at making some semi-homemade peach pies. I am a big fan of Sandra Lee and Semi Homemade. Even though I am able to cook 100% homemade, I have learned some nifty tricks to making a big baking project (or family dinner) a whole lot quicker by using as little as 1 pre-made item.For the pies, that pre-made item was the piecrust. Southern Home is a popular store brand here in the Carolinas, and I used a ready made crust by Southern Home as the foundation for my Fresh Peach Pie.

Now, having never made a Fresh Peach Pie before, I was unaware of the fact that you needed to peel the peaches before slicing them and putting them in the pie. So my first pie included the peach skins. (once it was baked you couldn't even tell the difference between the peeled and not peeled peaches).

After a little giggle, my mother informed me that I needed to blanch the peaches briefly in boiling water and then submerge them in an ice bath to make the skins peel right off in one easy swipe. This process left me with a bowl full of glistening gorgeous peaches.


After that, I cut them in half, removed the pit, and sliced them up.


Then I added 1/4 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon to the peach slices, gently folding it in until all the peaches were coated. The blanching causes the peaches to soften a bit and release their juices, so the added sugar and flour creates a sweet golden colored glaze on the peaches. Once that was done, I poured the prepared peach mixture into the pie crust. It was so pretty of course I had to take a picture of it.

I topped that off with another ready-made pie crust, pinching the edges, I cut four small slits along the top for the steam to escape, covered the edges with foil and popped it in a 400 degree oven for about an hour to an hour and ten minutes.

The result was a scrumptious Fresh Peach Pie with just the right combination of sweet and tart in the filling.

Of course I topped each piece off with some Ready Whip!

I used 8-10 peaches per pie and made 4 pies with all those peaches:-)

The Big Deck Project

A few weeks ago my dad tore down the old roof to his backyard deck with a plan to cut new rafters and redo everything. Well, my parents are very interested in the Caribbean since they took a trip to the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic many years ago, and they thought an ocean theme would be great in the backyard. I made the mistake of mentioning how great it would be to paint the rafters in an under the sea theme with all kinds of tropical and ocean fish and sea shells etc. My mother's exact response to my suggestion was "that's a great idea, why don't you do that". So it was decided that I would paint the rafters and I was told that I had 1 week to paint them all so that my dad could put the roof back up over the next weekend. Suffice it to say I spent the next 5 days painting morning til night. I couldn't wait to see the end of painting all those fish, imagine my chagrin on day 3 when I realized that I had to paint both sides.
Luckily, my parents decided that 3 of the rafters could be painted to look like sand and we could put dried starfish and sand dollars on it along with some sea shells to break up the monotony of all the fish and add some interesting 3 dimensional elements. I was quite relieved because until that moment I hadn't been sure that I could complete this project in just 5 days. With this change I was able to finish by the weekend, but..........
......... let's fast forward about 3 weeks and the roof is finally going up today. We still have to order the starfish and sand dollars that will go on all the sand painted boards, but the rest of them are complete and have been put back in place above the deck.

I will post some pics when it is all done so you can see the finished project. They are going to totally repaint the deck and add a Palm Beach Ceiling fan in the center over the table and chairs.

I couldn't help but mention how nice it would be if they had a painted Mural on the side of the house so that it looked like they were on the land end of a long dock stretching out over the blue greens of the ocean with a sunset on the horizon...................I need to be careful what I say or I could spend my whole summer painting the house:)

What is a Star Box?

I don’t know why the box was created, but my earliest memory of the Star Box is when I was 10 years old. One day I asked for some small piece of nothing that you might generally find in someone’s junk drawer and was told….”Go look in the Star Box”. The Star Box was an old red and brown card board box of unremarkable size, it’s most distinctive characteristic was a large black star drawn right on the center of the lid in permanent marker. There were no words written there, just a big black Star. Why the star came to be is unknown to everyone except my Mother. She drew the star so many years ago, and until now I have never thought to ask her what her intentions were in marking the box that way. All I know is that the Star Box became a home for all manner of items that still retained some useful life and lacked a permanent resting place.

Now many years later I have created a Star Box of my very own, and all those loose buttons, errant paperclips, various broken bits of jewelry and scrap pieces of twine, basically anything that has the potential to be transformed by the imagination is tucked safely away within the Star Box. One day as I carefully peruse the contents, gently fingering the tiny treasures, inspiration will take hold and these lost little pieces will find new life…..as art.