How does your garden grow?

First, thank you all so much for your wonderful (and sometimes hilarious!) comments on our bathroom renovation! It's been great reading what everyone thinks about it. :)

Now let's talk gardening for a little bit, shall we? I'm not a huge gardener. After living in a condo or apartments for pretty much all of my adult life, it wasn't until we bought our house last year that I had a garden of any kind and grew anything more than a basil plant, indoors. We have a nice, petite city yard that's a great size for us. Big enough to dip our toes into gardening, but small enough that we don't get bored with all the yard work. Sure, I'd love more privacy, but that comes with having a city neighborhood house. So what if I sometimes run for cover when the neighbor comes out and I'm taking photos of myself? But I digress.

I thought I'd show you a few highlights from our garden this year. I haven't yet done much planting in the two main backyard beds we have. One bed has gorgeous well-established peonies in the spring and Asiatic lilies in early summer, with some gaps (and obviously, weeds). I can't tell you how much chives I pulled out this spring. And yes, I like chives just fine, but I don't need to grow enough for the entire Midwest.

In this bed, I'm still learning what comes up where, and what I'd like to add in the future.

Just for kicks, I did try to grow a few other things in this bed this year. I only got one little loney anemone early in July, pretty as it was...

But the gladioluses have been much more successful! Except they were supposed to be red.

Yeah, totally not red.

The other bed is next to our chain link fence on our neighbor's side, and is kind of a hot mess. It's a mix of four rose bushes, one random hibiscus, a big patch of day lilies, and some sedum. All spaced really far apart, with old-as-dirt lava rocks between them. There's also lots of weeds growing, some of which (like practically prairie grass) grows over from our neighbor's yard and drives me bananas. The other weeds in the bed don't really bother me much right now since we haven't really done anything with this bed, so we just pull the really bad ones.

We have to do some serious thinking about this bed for the future, but at least in the meantime we have some pretty bloomers.

The hibiscus (a luna rose, which I was able to identify last year from some sleuthing) is just starting to bloom today!

This bed, because of all the weird gaps, is also where I put my container tomatoes. So far we've had some delightful cherry tomatoes!

Our juliet grape tomatoes are just starting to ripen, and we've had our first large patio tomato, which was twice the size of our largest last year!

 With a second soon on the way!

I also love to fill our deck with containers of annuals and herbs, since it's a favorite summer spot for us.

Our thyme is growing nicely from seed...

Earlier in the summer we had cilantro and our first crop of radishes, plus catnip for Dinah, all grown from seed as well.

And two kinds of basil plants (sweet and Greek) are going to town. We've already made yummy pesto and need to again!

Now see those huge leaves on our lattice, to the right of the basil up there? That's our pole beans. When my dad was here to remodel the bathroom, he made us a cedar bed, where I intended to grow annuals each year, switching things up if I wanted. Here's what it looked like at the beginning of June, before we completely turned over the grass and filled in with soil and some peat moss...

I planted pole beans and zinnias from seed, and have been very patient. The pole beans are now growing like crazy, and the zinnias are just starting to bloom. I'm so excited!

Let's not forget our favorite gardening assistant!

The zinnia seeds are a mix of red, pink, yellow and white, and it's delighting me to see which color blooms next!

Since lots of other colorful things in the garden have come and gone or are fading, it's so much fun to see the zinnias just kicking off!

How about you? What are you growing this year—in your garden, on your balcony or deck, or in your home?

In which I confess my shoe love while working on a house project

True confessions, Karen style: I like shoes. A lot.

Yesterday, I posted a photo on Instagram of my shoe collection. Which up until yesterday, had been (embarrassingly) mostly stacked on one another on the floor of my closet. So I finally bought a shoe organizer at Target and put it together yesterday afternoon.

I posted a photo once I filled it up with shoes, and then we went out to the side of our house to work on this:

With our house came two beds covered in lava rocks (insert huge groan here), one being inside our small yard (which we haven't dealt with yet, more groans), and one on the alley side of our house. It really was an eye sore... pieces of at least three types of weed barrier pulling up and showing, plastic garden edging that wasn't tucked in fully any longer, and covered in weeds. At least the one in the yard has some nice flowers in it.

We finally we came up with the idea of doing a couple of layers of cement blocks from Home Depot as a defining border. They match some that are in one of our flower beds in front of our house, and also act as a border so cars don't accidentally drive up on it in the winter when you can't see the alley for the bed because of snow. Then we'll add a bunch of mulch and plant a few shrubs. We're not going too crazy because we literally almost never see that side of the house, it's in the alley, and we have to send a hose all the way from the other side of the house to water it. We wanted simple.

I can happily say after last night, part two (part one was weeding) is now complete! Unfortunately I didn't get a before photo, but trust me, this is a vast improvement. I think this modest look will do our 1950s ranch proud.

By the way, it will eventually extend to that small stem wall sticking off the side of the house you see in the distance (between the day lilies, a peony you can't see, and a shrub in the front yard at the far end of the photo). We'll have to transplant one of the lilies as it's too close to the edge of the alley for us to get the stones in, so until fall we just made the little wall curve back around to the house instead of go straight, since there wasn't room. 

But back to shoes. While we were working on that, people were going bananas on Instagram over my shoes. I aired my dirty laundry (well, shoes) there, so I'm airing it here too. I rarely wear shoes out to the point where I have to get rid of a pair, so some of them I've had quite a long time. There's even two 40s pairs in there that my mom recently gave me, and she personally wore them in the 80s.

And my confession now:

I swear it didn't look like that much when they were in the closet. What can I say, I really freaking love shoes. And now you have proof.

I've always thought I had a much smaller wardrobe and less accessories than many bloggers I follow, but shoes are another story. I could get rid of all my jewelry, carry one purse forever more, cut my wardrobe in half (maybe not my knitted sweaters, heh heh), but so long as I had several pair of shoes, I'd be happy. :)

What do you love most in your wardrobe?

Made and Making No. 4

Happy Friday! I know I never did post a Made and Making last Friday, but I was just too busy with my dad in town. So today's rendition wraps up a couple of weeks. There's a lot that went on in the Golly Ranch House that I'll talk about soon (small but important projects like replacing receptacles, and finding some interesting tidbits on prior wall treatments and tile in the house), but for now you'll get a couple of small tastes of what we've been up to.

{all images link to Flickr for full size}

Clockwise from upper left

1. New retro porch light. Oh good grief, was our light situation sad on our deck/porch. It was an old, rusted fixture with no globe and a bare light bulb under the covered portion (that I kind of think of as the porch), and then on the uncovered portion (that I think of as the deck, which is a couple of steps down), a huge honking fixture that was ugly. It looked like it could have been several decades old, until I looked closely inside and saw a tell-tale modern sticker. Its fate was then sealed when we saw the same one at Home Depot! Bye bye. So instead, we found this very cute, inexpensive light to replace the one on the porch and just ditched the ugly one. I'll show better photos later, but the upper edge is scalloped! What could be more 50s than that for our little ranch! And for only $20, it was a good deal, too.
2. Green skirt in the living room. I've really been wearing my bias-cut green skirt a ton. Here I've paired it with a Jitterbuggin blouse (same one in my blog header). I took a gamble recently and ordered some twill that had a bit of stretch to it to make a couple more versions, and it was a mistake. The stretch content is just all wrong for me. So I'll have to send it back and pick out something else. This is in our living room, which as you can see is still un-decorated. That rectangular white spot on the wall behind me is one of two glass block nooks in the living room.
3. Zinnia about to bloom. I decided way too late to plant the zinnia seeds that Mel's mom brought over this spring, but I had the seeds and a container so I went ahead. And they've been growing like crazy! They're now just about to bloom as you can see.
4. Freshly painted cold air return covers. Unexciting looking, yes. While my dad was here we were going to replace our cold air return covers, however the same size new ones actually ended up being about 3/4" too big, so it would have involved cutting the baseboards and base shoe. Instead of all that hassle, I scrubbed them down and sanded them to get rid of as much of the years of latex paint as I could, and spray painted them glossy white. They aren't perfect, but they look SO much better now.
5. Spiral cut hot dogs. While he was here, my dad saw a video on how to spiral cut hot dogs for the grill, so we had to try it. Fun! In this pic you can see a bit of our original 1950s half round display shelves in our kitchen, which are currently holding a bunch of my vintage Pyrex and my Juice-O-Mat. Eventually, we'll be swapping out these 90s/2000s counter tops for a more 50s look.
6. Red Queen sweater in progress. Yes, this is not my Unicorn and Lion sweater, but my Red Queen sweater. I mentioned it in my Coronation Knits blog tour post, and then suddenly had the urge to pick it up again after several months and I've been flying along.

Remember, this evening the Coronation Knits giveaway closes, so last call for entries!

Made and Making No. 2

Happy Friday! Here's the second installment of my new Made and Making series. Gosh there's been a lot of sewing this week, which is very unfortunate for the knitting project I'm really supposed to be working on!

{all images link to Flickr for full size}

Clockwise from upper left

1. Dress in progress. And it doesn't fit on my dress form! But before you worry, it's only because apparently a 9" side zipper isn't big enough to clear the shoulders of my dress form. It fits on me just fine (with extra ease, even). It's frustrating because now that means I have to recruit Mel to help me hem it, and we haven't had time. So it's completely finished except the hem. Isn't the center front pleat cute? Well, such as it is, pinned to the front of my dress form...
2. My grandmother's earrings. Aren't they darling? My mom gave them to me awhile back. Little palm trees embedded in plastic (lucite, perhaps). They're screw back and I'm converting them to post back so I can wear them. I've been meaning to do this for ages. I have a lot of little things like that, so I'm hoping this summer to tackle some of those niggling things that linger on my mental crafty to-do list!
3. Cherries to make popsicles. You may call them ice pops, or ice lollies. I recently got a book and molds to make frozen treats on a stick. I tried to take a picture of how badly my hands were stained after, but it looked like I'd committed murder. The ice pops turned out yummy—cherries, yogurt and a bit of honey, mostly!
4. Pretty great lapped zipper. If I do say so myself! I love the look of them, and you'll often see them in vintage clothing. I've done a couple (including the above unhemmed dress) and each time it's been a little easier than the last, but this time I tried the method Casey outlined in her circle skirt sew-along last year. Along with lots of basting, I used tape to give me a stitching guideline since I decided not to hand-pick it this time. Though I think it looks better when it's not all still basted and taped and un-pressed. lol
5. The last of the first batch of radishes. With locally-made tortillas (Chicago is full of tortillerias), eggs over medium, a bit of cheddar cheese, scallions from our CSA and cilantro and radishes from my container gardening. (I forgot to mention last week that the few things we're growing are in containers.)
6. My sewing notebook and skirt pattern. Last month, Kerry at Kestrel Finds & Makes wrote a post about her sewing diary. With my sewing relatively sporadic last year, I wanted that to change. I knew my random sticky notes here and there and nonsensical scribbles were not going to help the cause, so inspired by Kerry, I started a sewing notebook. Friends, if you don't have one, get one! It's amazing the difference a little notebook can make. I have an entire page about the muslin of my skirt, a 40s bias cut pattern from New York Patterns. I love their envelopes!


Hope you have a great weekend, everyone!

Made and Making No.1

Some of my favorite posts in blogland are round-ups of goings on in people's lives, especially when accompanied by photos. I've been meaning to start a weekly series for ages, so I can document all the little things in my own week. Finally I was able to plan it out!

I'm going to call my new weekly round-up series "Made and Making", and aim for Friday postings. I'll share snapshots from my week that relate to things I've made (outfits including me-made items new and old, meals, newly completed projects, hairstyles I'm trying out, etc), or things I'm making (knitting, sewing, gardening, home decorating, etc). Snapshots, Instagram pics, you get the idea—you've seen it everywhere, now you'll see it here. lol The number of photos will vary. I'll probably be a little liberal with this "made and making" concept though, so I may sneak in a snap now and again just because. ;)

So without further ado...

{all images link to Flickr for full size}

Clockwise from upper left

1. Ruffles on my sundress. We had a very warm spell earlier in the week, and I can now attest to the wearability of cotton lawn in warm weather with my new sundress. I might have thought this fabric was a pain to work with, but it's a joy to wear. But this begs the question: why don't I own any cotton slips any longer?! I think I need to change that, stat.
2. Strawberries and cream. We joined a CSA a couple of weeks ago. For those unfamiliar, that stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Once a week we now get a delivery of fresh organic produce from a farm in southern Wisconsin. It's just now strawberry season, and we feasted Wednesday night on strawberries with fresh whipped cream. My recipe is from a 1950s Betty Crocker cookbook: with chilled beaters and bowl, beat 1/2 c. heavy whipping cream with 2 Tbsp. confectioner's (powdered) sugar until thick and creamy. I added in a little vanilla extract, too. Yum!
3. Me-made outfit and a wave. You never see me without glasses because I haven't had contacts in years. I achieved a perfect wave in my bangs, although it's not a style I find practical because I always want my hair out of my face. So it was an accidental styling. In this snap I'm wearing me-made earrings I finished this week from 50s cabochons, and a me-made feedsack blouse, one of the first pieces of clothing I ever made for myself, about 2 years ago. It has some serious issues, but I still wear it now and again.. under a cardigan. ;)
4. My first harvest of radishes! I am so exciting to finally have a little yard!! I'm growing radishes from seeds. I pulled the first one out Tuesday and got a whole bunch Thursday. It's so satisfying!
5. My current sewing project, another 1940s dress. I'm using a fun apple tree print in Japanese cotton. I've had very little time to work on it this week, but I hope next week I'll make some headway.
6. A gorgeous vintage fabric for an upcoming tutorial. Part of why I've had no time for my dress! I'll be sharing a fun little project early next week. I'm very excited about it, so stay tuned!


Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!