10 products to help grow your spring garden

It's safe to say that everyone's been looking forward to the sun to come out and flowers to bloom. 'Tis the season to start thinking about your home garden and the beautiful flowers and textures you want to fill it with.

From a perfect pair of gloves to avoid invasive thorns to the must-have hand trowel of the season, these are the 9 products you need to successfully bloom your spring garden!

Nesting Bunny

via  On Sutton Place

Oh my I don't have any words for this very cute little bunny. I found this a couple of years ago and I feel deeply in love with how cute and simple this is. I love that the whole thing has a vintage spring look to it. I feel that the vintage Easter/spring look is so beautiful and I have been slowly changing all of my spring collection to be vintage. 

I can't wait to get this made for my own home. I feel bad keeping this beautiful secret to myself so I thought that I would share this even though I haven't made my own yet. 

What do you think? Is this cute or what!

DIY Yarn Bunnies!

So, you all know about my illustrious grandmother who was a professional tailor, right? And how, as a consequence of her instruction and mentoring, all the women in our family in the generation after hers are accomplished garment seamstresses? Now, Grandma lived with us for many years before she moved to a nursing home. I was in elementary school then, and too young to be interested in drafting and tailoring, which was a shame. Fortunately, Grandma also loved crafts of all kinds, some of which were kid-appropriate. Her closets were full of fun craft supplies that I spent many afternoons digging in, just to see what I could find. Sometimes, she would take me to a store called Golden Dragon, which was the Singapore equivalent of Michaels, the craft store we have in the US. And, like Michaels, this store offered classes. The one I remember most vividly was on making pompom animals - you'd buy their pompom tool kit, yarn, glue and scissors and they'd teach you for free. When I was about 8 or 9, Grandma brought me there, sat me down at the tables, made the necessary purchases and we spent that afternoon making a chick and a rabbit. When we left for home, she bought more yarn for me so I could continue the happy making on my own.

Which I did. I made a chick family and a rabbit family, plus felt food befitting the needs of their species. Not very adventurous, I know. But wait - here it gets interesting. The chick family was frighteningly improper. I constructed, by using the same pompom templates in different sizes (what people in fabric circles refer to as "grading"), gigantic chick parents and a bunch of small children chicks. My mother, bless her scientifically-precise brain, gently suggested that the parental form of this particular avian species was the "chicken". Which was not the same as "chick". Her theory was that chickens were anatomically different and that chicks, no matter how volumetrically superior, could never be parents, and would always remain in their juvenile capacity. I pooh-poohed her; everyone knew, I maintained, that the large version of any animal was the parent and the small, the offspring. End of story. My mother eventually surrendered, as I knew she would, and I happily played with my genetically-bizarre chick family.

I am happy to report that, thanks to years of Biology lessons and appropriate children's literature, I am no longer a devotee of the Large Parent Small Child belief. Which is fortunate; otherwise, my Chicken sewing pattern, beloved by my children and blog readers everywhere, would have turned out quite differently. Looking back, I also marvel that my children now subscribe to exactly the same Large Parent Small Child theory that I did as a kid, with the exception that they generalize it to inanimate objects as well e.g. "The big pancake is the mother pancake, and the small one is the baby pancake." The scientist part of me thinks that it is how children make sense of their world and the relationships between the millions of random things around them. The mother part of me, however, just laughs at how crazy-funny it all is, and mourns the day when my kids outgrow their whimsical beliefs and become the dead-boring logical realists that adults are.

Back to rabbits now. The rabbit family I'd made suffered none of the criticism endured by the poor beleaguered chick family. This was because -and my logical mother would be relieved- baby bunnies were exactly the same as their parents, only smaller, and could therefore be safely made with the same templates graded down a couple sizes, without breaking any laws of nature. I remember that story while making the bunnies for Kate's party because they are almost a replica of that rabbit family I made years ago. I modified their faces, inspired by this delightful tutorial, but otherwise, they are the same pompom bunnies from my childhood.

Here's how we made ours. We used the thickest yarn we could find. Thick yarn is best for pompoms because they fill the forms quickly, which is especially important when you are mass-producing dozens of them. 

Read full article and get instructions here... Yarn Bunnies

Spring to Summer Wreath

This has to be one of my favorite Spring wreath of all time. Ann from On Sutton Place made the easiest and cutest tutorial on how to make one yourself! The first thing she did was cut apart the bushes of flowers. Just fan them out and use wire cutters to cut the stems off as close to the end as possible. You want single stems that can be easily inserted into the grapevine.

Read the rest of the tutorial here.... Spring to Summer Wreath

Spring has Sprung Printable

Oh am I in trouble. It had hit me hard. I officially have spring fever. Ever since February we have had great weather, and I mean great. Jacket wearing, almost shorts wearing weather. In fact for the past week it has been in the 70's. I mean where has this weather come from? I am not going to jinx it though. I love it. 

In fact everything is starting to bloom and the leaves on my trees are even starting to bud. Easter is in a couple of weeks and you can definitely feel it in the air. So in honor of Spring making it's glorious entrance back to my neck of the woods, I have decided to make this cute printable. Yup, it's free as usual! Get it here and please if you like this check out my face book page here and like it so you can follow along and keep up with everything in my 30 something life!

Thanks for stopping by!

All My Favorite Easter Decor!

One thing that I like to do is collect ideas. Let me tell you how excited I was to find pinterest! Easter is a fun holiday to decorate for because you get to have all of the fun inviting spring colors. I love to decorate with pastels with the more natural antique look.

Elegant Easter Tables

Easter just happens to be one of my favorite holiday's to decorate for. I love to pull out the bright happy spring colors when the outside world is waking up from it's long winter nap. Spring is also a time of new birth and growth of flowers and tree blossoms, and while it is fun to watch it all outside, it is even better to bring some of it inside.

The Most Adorable Easter Wreath!

via

Okay I just about fell off my chair when I found this Spring/Easter wreath. I mean isn't this just the cutest wreath that you have ever seen? I am so in love! This will for sure be on my to do list for spring decor. I am not sure if I will get to this this year, but for sure next year!

Spring Printable

I thought that I would whip up this cute little printable for spring. You can get it for free here!

30 Days of Thankfulness in November - Day 6

Day 6 - Today I am thankful that I live in a state that has all four seasons. I grew up in Utah and Nevada and I sure did miss those winters with snow. I know that I am not like normal people because I love the snow. I love how peaceful and quiet the world seems when it is snowing and then the pureness and crispness of the fresh white snow. I love it! 

I am also a huge fan of the Fall colors! I am lucky enough to live close to many different mountain ranges and we often find ourselves out on an adventure, and what better time of the year to do that than when the fall foliage is in full swing.

I am very grateful that I can live in such a beautiful place. What is your favorite season?