A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

Here’s a random sampling of some of the things that I’ve been up to lately.

1.  Decorating

I saw somewhere (probably pinterest, source of most of the cool ideas in the universe) a tutorial for making a lamp out of a big clear vase.  I was intrigued.  Then I remembered the navy vase I’d recently seen at Goodwill.  Then I went back and bought it so that one day I, too, could make a lamp.

You know, one day in the future when I have a house again.  But then one day I just had the random idea that in the meantime I could set my tiny touch lamp on top of the navy vase.  So I did.

And as I was standing and looking, I started wondering if I could put a big lampshade on top of the tiny touch lamp.  So I did.

How’s that for a new lamp?  And it’s still a touch lamp.  I love it—it makes much more of a statement than the tiny touch lamp did.

 

2.  Gardening

First of all, lots of balconies around the apartment are sporting hanging baskets.  Lush beautiful hanging baskets of petunias or fuchsias.  (Fuchsias are big here.)  I couldn’t bring myself to buy a ready-made hanging basket because they were all $30+.  So I made my own.  Here it is, 6 weeks later.

  Ummm….not exactly lush.  And if I add together the cost of the hanging basket and the flowers, it might have cost me $30.  I’ll probably try again next year to see if my theory (that my flowers just haven’t had long enough to grow) is right.  But after that I might have to just buy one.

I’m having to learn new things about gardening here.  For instance, mold.  In all of the dirt, all the time.  It’s better if I water them from the bottom, but they can still get mold when there’s not a lot of sun.  Now I have a spray of some (I’m sure nasty) stuff that I spray the dirt with from time to time.  (The white stuff on the dirt is the mold.  A light case of mold.)

Learning how to judge watering here has been tough too.  In North Carolina it was so hot all of the time that if it hadn’t rained I knew things needed to be watered.  Here it’s a different matter.  Originally I thought since it was so cool things didn’t need to be watered.  As it turns out I was wrong.

 

It also turns out that while the completely wilted leaves will revive, for some reason the flower stems do not revive and the poor flower is permanently damaged.  I lost quite a few gerbers figuring out that they do actually need to be watered, even when it’s cool out. 

In other gardening news, I planted one tomato plant in a big pot on my balcony.  I am pleased to report that it has several (5?) tiny baby grape tomatoes on it, and one that is turning red.  Pretty exciting stuff.  I also decided that this year I wanted to try to grow a tomato upside down, but I am too cheap to buy the ugly $10 upside down tomato holders.  I did some reading online and decided to plant in an empty 2 liter soda bottle.  I finally got around to assembling it on the 4th of July.

For a while there I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get my arm out of there.  The yellow tape is to protect the roots from the sun so that they don’t burn, but I’m also hypothesizing that the warmer roots might help the plant grow more quickly.  Boy this plant needs to be watered a lot.  Here’s how it looks now—it’s grown quite a bit, and it’s interesting to see it growing upwards.

 

3.  Remodeling.

Last year sometime I bought a few pair of pants at Goodwill for the express purpose of making them into skirts.  Here’s the first pair—a very bright pair of capris—fabric that I loved, but that I didn’t want to wear as a pair of capris. 

And here is my almost finished product—I’m still going to take some of the fabric cut from the legs and use it to make a vent in the back instead of a plan slit.  Much nicer that way.

Excuse the stuff all around me in the picture, please—we don’t have much space here for standing around taking pictures.  Don’t you like how tan my legs look?  Me too.  Too bad it’s just a trick of the lighting…  But I do love how the skirt turned out—I think it will be lots of fun to wear.   Now if I could figure out if I could wear this cool scarf I just found at Goodwill with it…what do you think?

 

4.  Constructing

When our house in North Carolina went on the market my nifty earring storage board went into storage and my earrings got piled into a too-small jewelry box.  Once we were here and kind of settled in I decided that I had to do something—I couldn’t stand having to search for and untangle every earring I wanted to wear.  This time I didn’t have an old bulletin board sitting around to use, but I did have an abundance of cardboard.  I picked up some fabric at Walmart to use for a base and a little ribbon just to spiff things up, and while the kids were on trek I finally put it all together.  So nice to have them all neat and tidy again.