Home

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Baby Shower Gifts!

Bags & Shannon's stars 001

Two of my friends have recently given birth to their 4th and 3rd children respectively…

As I pondered what to make/give them in congratulation, I came across a reversible tote tutorial and thought, what a great idea! These moms already have TONS of kid stuff, both of their babies are girls, and both have big sisters and tons of hand me downs.

How about I make a gift for MOM to help with BABY stuff?

Bags & Shannon's stars 002

 

So thanks again to Dana at Danamadeit.com (I love her blog…she is so creative and has TONS of great ideas!) I whipped out 2 canvas reversible totes!

Both mom’s loved them, and one of them confided after opening it, that she was dreading all the ‘pink’ gifts, because she really doesn’t like pink. She received the tree/yellow stripes tote and was in love with it!

What a fun easy project! Of course I SHOULD make a couple for myself one of these days…

Sunday, August 19, 2012

CRAB SPIDER!

Crab Spider! 001

Lookee what I found in our back yard last night!

Crab Spider! 020

Some kind of crab spider is my guess… not the smallest spider I’ve ever seen…

Nice and fuzzy.

Crab Spider! 017

My kids are in ‘bug heaven’ of course..

In my 10 years of living in this house, and gardening in this yard, I have never come across anything like this. Neither have any of my avid gardening neighbors.

Very interesting….

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Sew Stormy Quilt Along

Bags & Shannon's stars 004

My sister over at Sew Stormy has decided to host a Star Sampler Quilt Along.

I’m so ridiculously busy lately, that I actually laughed at her when she called to invite me to participate… but whaddaya know… the NEED to create something with fabric has overcome me this weekend, & I actually completed the first weekly block!

I’m using a favorite line of mine, Modern Meadows by Joel Dewberry. This is a line I have been HORDING, waiting for the perfect project to come along for it. I gotta say, a Star Sampler has to be one of the most perfect projects out there!

So THANK YOU Stormy for coming up with the idea!

Stay tuned for block 2!

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Backyard Bunker Visit

We had an opportunity to visit with a friend today at his home. He is a retired Vietnam Huey/Cobra Helicopter pilot who is very involved in emergency preparedness.
**I apologize for the picture quality… I didn’t think of taking my good camera, (duh! smack to forhead!) so I made do with my iphone camera**
The first project he showed us is one he’s currently working on…PeePee stations!
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 060
You can see a screen covering the hole, it is being used to keep unwanted bugs and critters out.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 061
He’s making these out of hardware store supplies. This is a basically a funnel, large enough for a body to sit on, with a screen taped in above the hole, and foam lining the rim.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 062
He then plans to dig a hole deep enough to accommodate the green tubing on the left, and a couple of feet of gravel below it. Once the tube is set, one of the green ‘sprinkler’ covers on the right will be placed on top of it to conceal it until needed. The seat can be installed when needed.
The urine will filter through the gravel and leech back into the soil underground.
I’ve found a bunch of conflicting info. about using urine to water/feed plants with, for example:
Urine is an excellent source of minerals including potassium, magnesium, and especially nitrogen, albeit not in the correct form right away. Diluting urine and watering plants is good.
The salts that are in urine will be broken down by the "microherd" residing in your gardens and compost heaps.”
And:
Keep a watering can near the door and outside tap. Collect urine in (marked)Nalgene containers, which have screw-on tops that really do not leak, even if dropped. mix 1 jar with a watering can of water, and water selected plants. Comfrey and rhubarb, which are both nitrogen loving plants can take a very strong solution. Most other plants require a much more dilute preparation, as the acid will burn them. I do not use urine on food plants where the urine will contact the part eaten withing 2-4 weeks of picking.
It's best uses are for bushes, shrubs, and trees, the comfrey patches, ornamentals, for compost, and for off-season fertilization when sheet mulching, etc.
Both comments were posted HERE
So basically what I’m getting out of it is; it is safe to leach urine, just don’t water food plants with it either directly or close enough for it to soak into them.
Onto the next subject….
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 068
This is his garden. IT IS BEAUTIFUL! I didn’t get pictures to do it justice, but you can see it being built on his website.
He uses ‘depression’ beds, which are basically 3 inch deep squares/rectangles where he plants his veggies. He floods them to water them, somewhat like rice paddies…
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 071
Each ‘patch’ is in a 3” depressed bed.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 072
He grows his squash vertically in these wire frames he’s made out of concrete wire mesh. He makes them 12, 10, and 8 squares wide, then they stack inside each other for winter storage.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 063
Beds of carrots, bush beans, and an empty bed where his peas were this spring. (volunteer beans here and there)
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 066
The whole garden is elevated and surrounded by raspberry bushes. The garden itself sits on top of the bomb/earthquake shelter. You can see one of the 2 vents from his shelter in the raspberries here…(the rounded brown thing almost smack in the middle of the picture. And no, that is not his house in the backgroud)
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 075
Speaking of shelters… we found the hatch!
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 074
The shelter is built to Nuclear Bomb ‘specs’ but is not insulated/buried deep enough to qualify as a one. The hatch slopes down into the ground at about a 60/65 degree angle, with a steel extension ladder to back down on.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 086
At the bottom of the entry tube is a 90 degree angle and a 10 (or so) foot pipe leading into the shelter.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 076
The shelter itself runs 90 degrees to the entry pipe. The entrance is actually tucked back to the right of this picture, behind the 4 white boxes stacked on the right.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 084
The shelter itself is a long corrugated tube about 9’ x 24’. and is made out of a culvert pipe. Take note of the braces for the lighting. He built them with a “single pin” in each corner to allow flexibility/compression in the shelter in an earthquake.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 087
I  should have made sure this shot wasn’t fuzzy. This is looking down the length of the shelter from the access point. Say Hi!
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 078
The far end of the tube. The table converts to beds of course, and 1/2 of the supplies leading to this end can be moved into the opening of the shelter to create more bed space. He said he can sleep 12 people in this shelter.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 085
That number brought up the discussion of sanitation of course. He showed us some of his PooPoo solutions down below.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 079
This is a Sanitation kit for 50 people. You can see the contents here. He told us he paid $15 for it at Smith and Edwards. I don’t know how long ago that was, or if they still stock them, but if you’re out and about, it’d be a good thing to keep an eye out for!
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 080
Here’s another product I hadn’t seen before. The EZ Towel. These are paper/cloth towels compacted into tablets. just unwrap the tablet and add water. Very durable, he had one out that we stretched and pulled without ripping it.
I found them on Amazon ranging from $3 – $8/bag of 50.
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 083
And these are holders/reflectors for glow sticks. (See the yellow one on the right). You clip the glow sticks into these and reflect more light from them. Clever! He said he got them online (I believe?).. I’ll have to ask again because I can’t find them. May be relatively easy to make however!
08-01-2012 Steff's Phoe 069
And last, I forgot to mention the bees he keeps. This is a home for Mason bees. Each of the females in this family is fertile. They lay their eggs in hollow reeds or mud, or any long narrow tube. They do not produce honey or beeswax, but they do pollinate for you! And they don’t sting. He drilled holes in a couple of blocks of 4x4’s (all the way through, using a 3/8” bit) and you can see how some of them have been filled with eggs for next year. The males hatch first, hang out for the females to emerge, mate with them, then die. The females then gather nectar to feed the eggs, lay an egg on a mound of nectar, close the hold with mud, then repeats until the cavity is full of eggs. Great way to get your garden pollinated!