Buy Handmade in the USA

I'm a part of this great group of artists and craftswomen called the Military Circle of Friends. I met them all through Etsy.com and have come to know them pretty well over the past two or three years. They are all military spouses or are retired from active duty. They all make the most amazing handmade items.  This is a talented bunch of ladies!

You can "like" the group on Facebook with the link above to get a full list of on-line shop links and occasional updates on sales, items, auctions, give-a-ways and more.

Here are just a handful of the shops:

If you know any military spouses you know how hard it is for them to build a career as they follow their active duty military spouse from station to station. Home businesses help spouses with career continuity and support the US economy. Keep these shops in mind for your fall and holiday purchases and go browse the other shops in the Military Circle of Friends by clicking the links in the left side column on the Facebook page.

Sue

TODAY'S SPECIAL

Take $4.00 off your order when you purchase any two pairs of earrings.  Use the coupon code EARRINGS4 at checkout on my website.

 

If you would like to order off my Etsy or Artfire sites instead, e-mail me.

More Landscaping Update

Well, we're rushing around getting ready for the movers to come tomorrow, but I wanted to put up a few last photos to remind myself of some of the landscaping we've done since last summer. We wanted to do much more, but then found out we were moving. I would have liked to till up the garden area and really plant it, but just had time to clear out the brush, pruned up the blackberries and raspberries and put in a few heirloom tomatoes and a compost bin.

BEFORE garden area

AFTER garden area

AFTER garden area with compost bin

Last Fall front flower bed after a lot of work

Last Fall side flower bed after a lot of work

This Spring flower bed after some plantings and mulch

The plantings don't really show in these photos since they are small, but I hope to come back someday and photograph them when they are bigger. You can't really see the hardy roses I put in or all the starts of flowers my friend, Marie, gave me. You can just see in the side yard how well the irises seem to be doing since I transplanted them from other places in the yard last fall.

Landscaping Update: The SCARY SLOPE

Before

I wish I had gotten better "BEFORE" pictures, but this is a photo of what we have come to call

"THE SCARY SLOPE." 

It came with the house in Utah we bought last summer. The photo above is after my husband lit into it with a machete. Imagine what it looked like creeping over the sidewalk before that. Most of the slope is hidden behind the trees. Notice you can see a small part of the random rock pile, the stray redish scalloped concrete tree surround pieces in the foreground and the volunteer sumac leaning over the sidewalk. Then call your attention to the tangle of crown vetch cascading down the slope covering over frightening hummocks of overgrown trailing cottoneaster bushes. Now imagine lots of little scampering sounds coming from somewhere deep inside the tangle with the cat from across the street acting as a frequent sentinel and pouncing on things periodically. One of the first things the adjacent neighbor told us when we met him was that he wouldn't mind if we did something with that slope.

All spring I've been spending hours working my way into that mess with loppers and thinning it out. It was just a tangle of long snakey cottoneaster tendrils. Imagine my surprise when I eventually discovered there was some pretty rock terracing under some of it.

After. See my neighbor's house? He's pleased he doesn't have to view that tangle anymore.

This slope really needed some sort of feature to make it interesting. Since my husband wouldn't buy me the huge and expensive natural stone obelisk that I've been admiring at the stone yard, I decided to recycle that heap of rocks and scalloped tree surrounds into terracing for a pathway that would meander up the slope and through an opening in the rose of sharon hedge into the front yard. My son liked taking this secret shortcut when coming home from school even before the trail was built. Here is the new trail (yes, there were that many rocks heaped up on the slope in a pile). The steps are covered in landscape fabric and mulch to keep them looking nice.

The rose of sharon hedge at the top is just starting to leaf out. It will be bloom from late July through frost.

The concept for the landscaping here is to keep it "meadowy" and to incorporate a few plants that will look well in late summer and fall. My friend let me "shop" for plants in her verdant yard. Alongside the trail I've put in several white daisies and a couple of purple aster plants that I'm hoping will naturalize into the grass. I still need to find a bush that will give me nice autumn color and winter berries for the birds for the left side. We planted two dwarf apple trees to shade the slope (and very likely feed the deer).

One of two new dwarf apple trees. The crown vetch is difficult to get rid of, but now that we can actually reach it with a trimmer it will help.

"Secret" entrance through the hedge.

Once the daisies and asters take hold and start to spread there will be flowers along the path softening the hard edges.

Like I mentioned most of these materials were recycled from my own yard. The cost has been $26 for two small bare root apple trees, $5 in mulch purchased from the landfill where they chip up tree branches and trimmings that people drop off, $13 for landscape/weed fabric and $6 for pins to hold the fabric down. And did I mention the MANY hours of hard work?

Totally worth it ☺

We'll be moving soon so it may be years before I see how it all turns out with the plants growing. I'm glad I took the time though.

Sue

Household Hint: Preserving Memories--School Art

It's the end of the school year once again.  My son, Caleb finished up 4th grade. The last week of school he brought home armloads of artwork and projects from the year. Sure, we're saving some of it, but we're moving soon and we're doing the pre-move purge. As much as we like them, the 2 1/2 ft long fish with glitter and the "parade float" made from a shoebox and Legos must go. The memories can be preserved with photos. We went outside this morning and snapped photos of him with his artwork. Now that we have lasting documentation he's happy to let some of them go. Later we'll scan some of his schoolwork papers and save them as files on the computer.