suspenders and succulents

Lately, I've been thinking of different ways to sew some of my plush dolls.  I love the basic shape and parts of my typically boy plush design, but wanted a little something extra to set him apart.  Hats?  Glasses? Super hero cape? Spacesuit?  Pretzel in hand? 

I recently finished one of the ideas I had in mind.  The newly worn item.......suspenders!

I especially am loving the buckles! 

Here's Hendrik:

And here's Hansel:

Both are available in my shop.  Look for more fellows with suspenders coming soon!  (As well as some other new accessories/parts for the dolls.)

Also, just listed a mere 30 minutes ago:

A fabric soft sculpture succulent plant!  Comes in the vintage tea cup shown, but can be moved in another similar sized vessel/cup if you prefer.  I've been working on these for a while and am so happy with the results.  Look for more fabric sculpture plants soon!

south carolina...take two

One of our favorite places we visited while in South Carolina was Brookgreen Gardens.  This is not just a garden, but also a zoo and the site of the Oaks Plantation which was set on rice fields.  The zoo portion had all kinds of animals from bald eagles and otters to alligators and foxes.  

The garden portion has wonderful collections of flowers and huge sculptures all over the grounds.  

Here's Kinsey in the Palmetto Garden.  I'm in love with the brick wall in the background.  It's two bricks wide on each section.  This would be great in our backyard...maybe in the future?

An overview of the Palmetto Garden.  The palms are on all four sides and hundreds of poppies line the pool.  The poppies are such a great burst of color.  I'm so happy they were in full bloom when we visited!

Foxglove up close.  I'm thinking about getting some for next year's garden.  

Me and some new friends. 

Just one of the many smaller sculptures in various beds throughout the gardens.  

In the middle of Live Oak Allee.  These are centuries old Oaks with Spanish Moss hanging off the branches.  Another favorite spot!  Below the trees are beds of hundreds of daffodils.  Unfortunately, they were practically over blooming when we visited.  I can only imagine how great the yellow flowers looked against the green leaves and dark trunks.

Of course, we did visit the beach.  We went to Huntington Beach State Park and the beach within walking distance to my grandparents' house in Murrells Inlet.

Kinsey isn't doing a crazy dance in the picture below (at least not at that moment).  He's bending down to touch the water on our last morning in the Grand Strand.  

This is a huge fish/shark tank in the Charleston Aquarium.  Twice a day or so, someone dives in the tank and feeds the fish.  We weren't here when that happened, but it must be crazy to see. 

The albino gator.

Hello Mr. Turtle...(or Mrs. Turtle).  

The week and a half went way too fast!  We're hoping to go back sometime in the next year.  This was our first visit in 7 years!

backyard garden projects

Last week, we decided to make another flower bed in our backyard.  This is the first tiny step in what we hope to be a massive backyard renovation.  Two major things we'd like to do include:

1-  Build a new patio.  Either by putting stone pavers over our existing concrete one or removing (which I assume would be very time consuming and not to mention rather backbreaking!) the concrete and laying flagstone in a free form pattern. 

Here's our current patio...

 I really like these pictures of what the flagstone could look like. 

2- building a shed.  The shed we have now is a small plastic one and isn't really too practical for storing garden tools, containers, and really anything other than our bicycles.  Ideally, we'd like to building on the very back of the yard in the far right hand side of the picture below.

Which brings us to our current project of the new flower bed.  We already have a small bed along the left side of our yard, so we decided to put this one on the right side along the rail fence.  We eventually want to make the bed a lot bigger and more in a half circle shape.  Possibly even with a bird bath in the middle once the ground is level.  But for now, we opted for a simple rectangle to get things started. 

First, we started by making shovel indents in the grass where the bed would be.  

Next, came over turning all the grass clumps and digging through and removing all the various objects we find in our yard....glass pieces, huge rocks, marbles, broken pottery, plastic lions, and the usual things. 

Once the soil was nice and clean of debris, I planted the new flowers I got from Kinsey's mother that morning.  

More plants, including my new favorite: Lamb's Ear (front center)

Rose Campion

Columbine (one of my new favorites)

These are not in our yard, but Kinsey's parents.  I love the circular shape inside the flowers and this dark color.  We plan on getting some in these color for our yard soon.

"Moonless Night" daylilies, which are supposed to have a dark maroon and black flower.  

Here's Kinsey giving the new transplants a nice long drink. 

Here's the finished bed after putting some leaf mulch around the plants.  (The green at the close right side by the post is daffodils.  They bloom along every post by this fence in the early spring.)

early may flower garden

Here's some spring pictures from our flower garden we took recently.  About this time every year, I always wish I could take the next four months off and do nothing but gardening (and crafting of course!).  Maybe someday.

Nice mix of colors on this tulip.

I love the shape and color of this tulip.  We have two of these in our flower bed and they always are the last tulips to bloom.

Ants crawling on the peony blooms.  As alarming as this can look, it's actually a good sign.  It means the flower is nice and healthy.

 Here's two poppy heads getting ready to bloom.  I won't lie - last year I pulled all the poppies out except one because I thought they were weeds.  I definitely learned from that mistake!  Poppies are some of my favorite flowers, so I was pretty disappointed after learning this.  Can't wait to actually see them bloom this year.

I'm not fully sure what kind of flowers these are.  Although I'm pretty sure they're a type of bluebell.

Another favorite tulip.

No idea what kind of plant this is.  I actually thought it was just a weed, but it has such pretty blooms all over and is about 20 inches tall.

Here's our very first ever blossom on our Betsy Ross lilac bush.  We got this from a friend when we moved into our house in the fall of 2009.  It was just a stick when we got it and then just had green leaves last year, and now it looks like an actually lilac bush!

 This sedum I got from the local nursery at the end of the season last year on sale.  I wasn't sure how it would transplant at the time, but it's really growing now.

And perhaps maybe, one of the most anticipated things of the spring garden...our strawberry plants!  This one is getting so close!  Hopefully we can get to it before the rabbits, or squirrels, or birds, or chipmunks, or any other critters that come into our yard!

My new favorite craftbook

About a month ago, I was reading a few different craft blogs and kept seeing the same book everywhere- Big Little Felt Universe.   The cover instantly caught my attention.  There's just something about apples and felt that makes me get really excited.  So I decided to look into this book.  

One of the first project pages I saw was the camping set.  Yes, that's a campfire and a lantern and a s'more made from felt.  Clearly, this was my kind of book!  

(above book photos courtesy of this great blog)

Then I laid my excited eyes on this photo.  Bamboo, african violets, and a cactus.  Really, who wouldn't want these lined along their windows?  No watering needed!  So I placed my order and waited for my book to arrive.  It took a week and then the package arrived.  The only downside was I was about a week and a half away from Spring Bada Bing. 

I really needed to focus on that show so I had to put my new favorite craft book aside.

Luckily, this past weekend, I was able to try my first felt project from the book.  I knew it would be a plant, I just couldn't decide which one.  In the end I went with the African Violet.

All the projects in the book are hand sewn, so you can really work on them everywhere.  Which is exactly what I did.  I took the leaves to work to sew during lunch, worked a little on the flowers outside, and constructed the pot in the wee morning hours in my craft room.

Oh, and did I mention that you can take the plant out of the pot?  This kills me.  How cool is that? 

Here's my newest plant soaking in a little sun in the bedroom.  

Up next, I'm leaning towards the cactus.  But first I'm planning on making two more of these for two lucky people for gifts.  I really loved sewing three dimensionally with the felt.  I usually do flat work, (with the exception of my owls) and liked the feeling of building something you could use or give to someone to play with or just feel. 

There's over 70 projects in the book and I doubt I'll make all of them, but it's definitely inspiring!

spring cleaning

 The past couple days here have been so beautiful!  Temperatures in the 80's and sunny.  Perfect spring weather for outside gardening and cleaning, as well as allergies.  Headaches and runny noses aside, Monday marked the first journey of the lawn mower.  Our grass needed mowed before this but every time we had the day off, it would rain.  A lot.  We got our mower used when we moved to our current house and really haven't had any problems with it, aside from needing to sharpen the blade desperately.   

Here's a overlay of almost all the backyard flower garden (the right side is only half showing).  Right before we left for Richmond (April 16th) all the red tulips were just about to bloom and when we returned a few days later, they were in full bloom. 

 We have a number of different varieties in our yard.  I  like the ones that come a little later in the season.  I have no idea what their official name is, but the edges are sort of frayed and the flower itself is orange.

(This picture is from last year.)

Bleeding hearts in bloom.  These are actually planted in the pot on the top of the steps to the right in the picture above.  These along with the other pot (which contain tiger lilies) are from the previous owners.  I don't know why, but we haven't moved these planters.  I'd like to transplant the bleeding hearts to the right side along the fence, but haven't gotten around to it.  I love the shape of this flower!

More red tulips along the left side of the yard.  If you look closely in the middle right, you'll notice two smaller pink and white tulips in bloom.  These are some of my favorite flowers we have.

Here's a picture of my in the process of moving around some of our ferns.  I love ferns.  A lot.  But the right side of our flower garden is overtaken by them.  At this stage they are rather manageable- not too big, not too small.  Big enough to enjoy but not big enough to block the view.  Give them a few weeks.  Or as it seems after just looking at them, a few days.  They get really big and seem to take over.  My plan is to move most to the far right side and against the lower fence (which you can't see in this picture).  This way the ferns won't block the other flowers, but be more natural grouped densely together.