So about a year and a half ago, we painted stripes in our guest bathroom. When we visited my sister last week she said that she'd like stripes in her powder room, which used to look like this. She picked a paint color, decided the height of the stripes and we got to work taping. Then we painted. Aaaand we were done! I think it was definitely easier the second time around. :) It never ceases to amaze me the power of paint! It really freshened up this space and gave it a good start. :)
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We were gone for four days to visit my family in Seattle and when we came back, we were left speechless by our garden. There were so many strawberries on our little plants and many have turned red! I plucked two, one was watery and the other was very sweet! There is hope for these after all! Our sungolds are turning gold! We harvested the bright orange one and it was delicious! Mmm! David noticed half a shell left on our driveway. He thinks a baby mourning dove had emerged from it and was happy. They hydrangeas were heavy with blooms larger than the size of my face! And the mums are blooming again... Goodness. And we were only gone for four days! Thank you, Lois, for garden-sitting for us!
I hope I didn't scare my husband with the title of this post! No, we're not painting over the beautiful and perfect Dolfin Fin gray. That's staying. What I'm talking about is the wall where our bed is. Yup, the one with a gray paint swatch on it since...ooh I don't know, half a year ago? Our master bedroom has been difficult for me to get right. Here's what it looked like when we moved in. You know, it wasn't bad. I just wanted something lighter and more calming. And I think we are slowly moving in that direction. At this stage, I think it's a blank slate ready for a statement color. So I'm thinking of going back to an idea of the 90s and painting an accent wall blue. I kind of want a seafoamy, minty, coastal, happy blue. Not a moody or royal blue. But I also don't want it to be too bright and young either because this is not a nursery, it's our bedroom. I think I know what I want, but picking paint colors is really hard for me. I guess that's why paint testers exist. Don't you think a beautiful blue/mint would look so pretty as a backdrop to the nightstands? I think so. I think it'll really liven up the room and give it a personality and the room will feel more...finished. :)
A while ago I came across this beautiful fabric. And I just loved it so I bought a yard of it. The fabric is 100% linen so it is very breezy and has a great texture. I was thinking the pattern would be great (in size, scale and color) with the master bedroom so I pinned the yard of fabric on our white Ikea Lenda curtains to see how it looked. And I loved it! So I bought another yard of the fabric for the other curtain and tonight I finally sewed them onto the curtains. The real colors are more like the above pictures. I'm pretty proud of myself for getting this done because it was a lot of fabric going through the sewing machine! And I can't believe the two bands ended up looking pretty straight. What do you think? Do you like the banded version better or the pure white curtains before?
Anyway, I'll take some daylight pictures another day to show the colors but I am loving this little change in the bedroom. In general, I'm moving towards a linen beige + blue + gray color for the bedroom. I find that color combo to be very calming and relaxing. :) I think one reason why gardening draws me is how rewarding it is when plants grow and do well. Take the lettuce, for example. We planted the seeds early April and got these seedlings almost immediately. Despite having a rowdy squirrel that randomly digs around the garden bed (trying to find seeds it has buried, I'm sure), a few of the lettuce seedling survived and have nice, tender leaves today. I should probably harvest these soon before they bolt. The mint was completely root bound and we took it out of the pot, cut away 90% of the roots and repotted into two pots. And here it is today! It's nice and bushy again. Mint is so easy to propagate, it's scary. We also planted cosmos seeds in April and they sprouted into these little propeller-shaped leaves. And today we have a whole bowl of the sprouts getting taller and stronger. I really hope they become flowers. :)
I still feel the same way about our house now as when we bought it 3 years ago: I'd be content to retire here. The only exception I would make is, I wish our garden were twice the size. Over the years we've filled our garden with new plants as we try to turn our (okay, my) black thumbs to green. I've come to see that a strong bond in our marriage is our shared love of plants and nature. Life is sweet with lovely surprises like that. Last year, we got a set of comfortable lounging furniture which I still love. (And yes, I finally washed those cushions and I am amazed that they turned out sparkly white afterwards! The trick is to pre-soak in bleach + detergent for a few hours, then put them in the washing machine. They come out looking like new, I kid you not. I'll remember to take pictures of the before & after next time I wash them.) The days I feel harried and upset, I would go and sit in a chair, prop my feet up on the table, lean my head back, close my eyes and just breathe in and breathe out. Then I'd calm down a little and can begin to think about things more with my brain. As for the majority of days when I feel just fine, it's nice to sit still, look at the birds, and smell the honeysuckle. For living in the middle of a city, our garden feels incredibly comforting to me. Especially this time of the year when the garden is just growing and blooming. It feels like an English garden to me -- it's not manicured or well-kept, but it is layered and wild. I really hope someday to have a true English garden. :) The hydrangeas are the stars of the garden right now and should be until August. The delicate petals and the hundreds of blooms that each flower seem to have still draw me. I fully expect these two to grow larger and bushier every year. Someday, we should be able to see the blooms from the living room. Of all the things we possess, I think I am most grateful for the garden. For the living, breathing plants that live with us. It's definitely my favorite room in the house.
One of my favorite time-wasters is browsing the "gardening" category on Pinterest. I noticed that there seems to be a new movement going on about regrowing kitchen scraps. And a pretty common one to regrow is celery. Since we had a head of celery in the fridge, I decided to put the pin to the test. I was a bit overly optimistic about this since the pinner said it took just a week to regrow the leaves. Our celery took about two weeks before it grew to this stage in the following picture. There were roots emerging but they were very short and very few. And from there it took several more weeks until the base started to wilt and the root system seemed more established. I wasn't exactly sure when to plant the whole thing into the ground but somehow it just looked like it was ready. So I planted it in the garden bed this afternoon. It's supposed to regrow a whole new stalk of celery but we'll see. At this rate I don't have high expectations but I guess you never know. :)
It doesn't surprise me at all that tomato is the #1 plant people grow in their backyards. Check this out, we planted our 3 tomato plants on March 25th. And look at them now! It really is mind-boggling how fast tomatoes grow when the weather warms up! The last two years we've grown tomatoes in our backyard; this is our first year we are growing them on the office balcony. David ran a hose from the first floor to keep the tomatoes well-watered since there is no shortage of sun here. Tomatoes like two things: sun and water. I set up a chair here and I often sit there to look at the tomatoes and just relax. A side table to put a cold beverage would be nice and maybe a place to prop up my feet. :) One last look at the three large tomato plants. Every yellow flower has a potential to become a fruit so I am excited by how many flowering vines there are. I'm guessing we would get our first harvest in a few weeks. :) Show you then.
These pictures are probably a week old now but I'm very excited!!! All three tomato stalks are flowering and fruiting. :)
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