New Year, New Ideas

Welcome, 2013! The vacation has been really relaxing and while I wish it could go on for a couple more weeks, the end of vacation only mark the beginning of something else. I jumped in the new year in the company of my husband and some very good friends and their little baby girl. It was nice to be among people I care about to welcome a year that I hope will be filled with positive energy and creativity.

Can you feel the celebrations?

Now, I have a rested head, renewed energy, and of course, a ton of hobby ideas!! One of the things I really want to develop is more experience/ understanding on how to crochet pieces of clothes. So during vacation, I crocheted my very first cardigan ever! I made it for my friends' baby. While it's not as big on her as I had anticipated (and so won't fit her as long as I wanted),  I am very satisfied with how it turned out. :)

First cardigan ever. I had fun making it! 

The other big hobby thing on my mind is to get going again with painting. I have not painted as much as I wanted to in 2012. But you guys won't believe what I received for Christmas from my wonderful husband... 

I received........ Every shade of green!

My Every Shade of Green

I can't wait to use my new colours. I already know which canvas I will start with!

I would like to wish everyone a very happy and healthy year 2013, and i want to say thank you for reading these little pieces of my life.  :)

What are YOUR resolutions for the new year? 

Dried Flowers and Leaves

Do you remember my flower press? (click here) It is about time I let you guys know how this experiment turned out. I let the flowers and leaves dry a few weeks, and when it was finally time to open the press and see the results, I was very exited and curious! But my excitement died a little when I saw that the previously pretty and colourful flowers had been turned into fade, dirty looking and rippled ones. :( I knew they would loose some of their colours, but I didn't know they would become quite that fade, and didn't think the white would become quite that brown!

As you can see, the pretty red poppy flowers are now a dull pink. The pure white flowers became brown and spotted. The rich pink ones and the purple ones became dark fade violet.
However, the tiny blue/purple ones are the ones who survived the drying process the best by keeping both a nice shape and a vibrant colour.
I also made the mistake to use rippled cardboard. It was not rippled on the surface, but once pressed, the texture showed through and as clearly visible on the far right of the picture, printed itself on the delicate flowers. What a sad result. :( Lesson learned!

But all was not lost! The leaves, which are by nature more robust to start with, turned out pretty well! They dried nicely and retained most of their lovely green shades.

These are now stored safely for future use. I'm sure I'll be happy to get a little taste of summer by finding and using them in a project somewhere in the middle of the cold season. We'll see.

I will of course try again with different flowers and with even more leaves. I think some flowers react better to drying than others, so it will be a little quest to find out which ones give good results, and which ones should be avoided.

Oh, the zucchinis... and the other green things

I can safely say that my very first vegetable garden is successful, if not as varied as I had planned at Spring. I've had so much fun harvesting zucchinis, sweet peas, lettuce and yellow and green beans, as well as various fresh herbs. I must say, though, that we have zucchinis coming out of our ears, as even giving some away is not enough to keep our stack down. I have already decided on only 1, maaaybe 2 zucchini plants next year, in stead of 4. (What was I thinking growing 4 of them, right?)

There's also the issue of mildew on zucchini plants. This is the white'ish layer you see on the leaves on the following image. The fruit is still very safe to eat,  but the plant is less healthy. I am trying to remove / control this powdery mildew with a homemade all-natural remedy (2 teaspoon potassium bicarbonate, 2 teaspoon vegetable oil and 2,5 L water), but it has not been an easy task! The only real solution is to remove all affected plants so it doesn't spread. :( I am still reluctant to revert to that solution at this point!

Garden in August

As it is now, the rest of the vegetable patch does not seem to get affected by the mildew. However, the tomatoes seem to have a hard time turning red. I have a lot of them, but they're all green, even though we are nearly at the end of August. I can't figure out why! 

The pumpkins, on the other hand, have grown quite a bit bigger and in the last couple of weeks, have taken a very lovely pumpkin color! Even though the plant itself is huge, and comes up with tiny baby pumpkins all the time, I only have 3 pumpkins that seem to be developing properly, and here's a picture of the biggest of them, at 2 different times this month. 

pumpkins - August 10, 2012

pumpkins - August 24, 2012

Meanwhile, on the terrace by the shed, my chili in pots are producing cute little chili peppers. Like the tomatoes, they are still green, and I don't know if they'll have time to turn red before the colder season, but it's still fun to see! 

Will they turn red before winter, you think?

I think that's it for the garden update!

I will end this post by saying that there soon will be a new exciting development in our garden, and I CAN'T WAIT to share the whole thing with you guys! So stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.

Oooh my oh my. :) :) :)

Green

Green is the accent color in my bathroom. A nice, bright lime/apple green. Green is also what covers the walls of my living room. A relaxing, pale and creamy moss green.

Green reminds me of nature... Green is a peaceful color. Not that nature is always that peaceful, mind you.

"The word green is closely related to the Old English verb growan, "to grow". (wiki)

I like to think that I grow a little each day. Life is a journey through which one learns every single day from birth to death. Physical growth may halt, but knowledge and experience will grow to the day one turns their last page and closes their eyes for the last time.

To me, green is the color of hope. I hope for a lot of things. I have huge hopes for little things, and little hope for huge things. Go figure... but I also have deep hope for deep things; things that mean the world to me. Hope is the last thing that dies out in a person's dream.

Life is of many colors... but perhaps even more importantly, life is of many shades. Happy is not just happy. Happy can be a little happy, or a lot happy. It can be genuine, or a tactic to cover another color - sad, for instance, which is also of many shades...

You get the point.

I like green. Every shade of it. 

I'm not much of a writer. Well, I actually can be, but I'm also a very talented "select-all and delete" person. I second guess my thoughts and end up keeping my writings well protected in a corner of my heart. 

I shall attempt to reconnect with my inner journal and print it out here on these pages.