Growing Things

A table full of plants: free.
Thanks to our landlord for making letting me take care of all his plants while he's gone (yeah, he said he was going to Ukraine in September when we moved in, but several delays, postponed flights, and suspicions about whether-or-not-he-was-going-to-leave later, he did... in april).

A plant ladder: also free.
Thanks Pinterest for the idea and the landlord for leaving this ladder here. Because he was totally going to take it with him, just like the plants, right?

Awesome Peruvian llama and alpaca collection: thanks dad! I really must get a better picture of them.

Finally filling in the empty spaces in the picture frame we got for our wedding: priceless.
How wonderful is it that we've grown our family to include another member? 

Actually, the price is that we have to look at these really horrid pictures of ourselves every time we walk past. Good incentive to get some family pictures done, right? It's on my to-do list.

Until then, ugh.

So during the last few weeks I've gone kind of plant crazy. Our landlord left several sprawling geraniums, a few elephant ear plants, some kalanchoe, Christmas cactus, and a horrible old aloe vera. I've sort of dedicated my time to trying to make these plants look a little better.

For starters, the aloe plant had twelve or so pups growing off of it. I was able to separate those and pot them up. Most of them look really well now. The mother plant is looking better too, but I don't think there's anything I can do for the awful sprawl.

It has to be supported by another planter. Yikes!

Next, the geraniums (blooming in red, white, and two shades of pink) look like weeds (look at how tall the one in the very first picture is). Seriously, they're ugly. I'm trying to get them to bush out more by cutting off a few of the taller sections and making those into their own plants. I think I may have been too gentle and I need to trim them even further. Gorgeous blooms though.

The Christmas cactus is a horrid old woody plant, but boy does it have some fabulous blooms in the winter. I trimmed that way back and I'm giving away a ton of the pieces as starts.

I complain, but it really is nice to be surrounded by so much greenery. It's exciting having things growing all around you. Between the plants and the baby, growing things pretty much rule my world right now.

Christmas Star

Yay for me, I'm getting an early start on the holidays this year. Starting off the festivities, I'm righting a wrong from Christmas past.

Last year was our first real Christmas on our own. Just over two weeks out from my due date, we decided it would probably be better to stay home for the holidays instead of traveling to my parent's place or elsewhere. I mean, having a baby on the ten hour car ride to my parent's sounded fun, but at the same time...

So we got a real tree. Here it is, Christmas morning, in all of it's bad picture quality glory:

Thanks to my amazing sis-in-law for the adorable stockings!

Beautiful, yes? I had a blast decorating it with all the ornaments and snowflakes and lights my mom had given me when I got married. You may notice something woefully wrong with this picture though. That's right, you adept reader who read the title of this post, there is no star!

Duh duh DUUUHHHH!

I was going to make one, but then I never got around to it, or I forgot. Woe is me. So this year, I resolved to find or make one. Because I get stuff done (ahem).

So I was browsing the racks at DI the other day, and I happened upon a spool of silver wire ribbon. It appeared to have a decent amount left, and the thought occurred to me that I could make a star with it! For last year's ornament exchange I made a bunch of German Christmas Stars (or Swedish, otherwise known as Froebel stars). I was inspired by this pin on Pinterest.

Thanks Martha Stewart!

Gorgeous, right? Unfortunately, this Martha Stewart creation has confusing directions. I really prefer to follow pictures for something like this. So I found this amazing tutorial, and followed that (the link gives a bit of history and some pretty pictures, then has a link to the instructions).

Anyways, I just love these stars, and once you've made two or three, you pretty much have it memorized and don't need the instructions anymore. You can make them anywhere. You could even pre-cut paper or ribbon and make them in the car, at the doctor's office, etc. I wanted the ones I made to be semi-permanent, so I made them out of ribbon instead of paper, like Martha Stewart did.

Pros: I feel like they will be a bit more crush resistant if they get thrown into a box of Christmas decor. Also, ribbon is perfectly pre-cut to the right width, you just have to cut it to length. Ribbon is forgiving if you fold it in the wrong spot.

Cons: Unless you select a really crisp, papery ribbon, it doesn't really fold as nicely as paper does. You won't get the crisp edges you would with paper. I worked my way around this by using a straightening iron (like you use on hair- a regular iron could work, but would be bulky, obviously) to press the folds where I wanted them to be flat and crisp. It worked really well, but you have to be mindful of not accidentally melting your ribbon at very high heats. It didn't happen to me, but just be mindful of the possibility. Another con is that Ribbon can be expensive, so unless you're shopping the sales, or have a ton on hand, this may not be the best option.

Picture to break the monotony of all these words.

OK, so all that aside, my next dilemma was that the width of ribbon I was using for my tree topper star is 1 1/2", which is about twice the size of what I was using for my smaller ones. Clearly the length had to be different.

I did some googling, and I can't remember where (sorry!), but I found that the ratio of width to length for my cut pieces (before they are folded in half) is 1:24. So for every inch wide, the ribbon pieces had to be 24 inches long. I have found that this can be fudged slightly, but don't go too much shorter. I got really lucky, and the amount of ribbon I had on the spool was perfect. 

So I folded it up, and got this lovely 6 1/2" beauty.

A bit of trimming and glue-gunning , and I have my finished star! I pull the ends through a bit before trimming to make sure they don't stick out at all, and if you're worried about fraying ribbon, you can try melting the ends when you do this.

Yay! I love it! I don't know how I'll attach it to the top of next year's tree yet, but I have a lot of time to figure that out. Until then, I guess I can make a whole bunch more mini ones to make it feel at home. I'll post some more pictures when I figure that out, as well as something to show scale.

Then I get to wondering, on a semi-unlreated note, do most people top their trees with stars, or angels? I think I personally prefer stars. Thoughts?

Oh yeah! I had a baby!

Yay! here's the "I had my baby" post, just about four months after the fact.

Michael Orion was born January 20th at 3:56 AM after putting me through a day or so of non-progressive, excruciating back labor. After going in to the hospital, being sent home because I was only at a 3 (poo!), and going in again the next day around the same time, still at a 3, I decided the epidural was the thing for me. And boy, was it bliss. After that, labor went really well, and before I knew it, I was holding my beautiful baby boy in my arms and feeling very blessed to have had such a relatively smooth experience. I am so thankful for modern medicine. I probably would have been too exhausted by the time I got to push if I hadn't been able to get the much needed sleep enabled by that epidural.

It's crazy (albeit cliche) how fast the days have gone by, but my baby is already almost four months old (just a few more days!), and he really is a sweetheart. He's smiling a lot, cooing, grunting, and even giggling now. He loves mornings, waking up several times a night to eat, and going for walks now that the weather is nicer. He is the most beautiful blend of me and Steve. I am undoubtably biased, but I think he's pretty darn adorable.

Ok, that's enough sappy fawning over my little cherub (you know, the kind that drools and doesn't sleep well at night). Here are a couple of pictures. Over and out.