Ponies and Plants

Another quick post here, that's most of what I've been doing this week it seems.  I'm trying to make blogging a habit (again) and so I'm going to keep cranking out posts, even if it's late at night and I can't think of much to say, ha.  Oh, I do have a TON of things I could write about and a billion pictures to share, but maybe not when I'm one foot into bed...  

Went to Tractor Supply today and spontaneously got, um, a bunch of their Stablemate blind bags:

One of them was the blue and white chase (top left).  That one is super pretty.  I'll probably keep a few of these OF and then either sell or CM the rest.  Probably CM - or at least plan to.  

Today's biggest project though was repotting and propagating my "leopard lily" plants. 

I turned three pots full of them into 50-60 individual pots and cups.  In a couple of weeks, I have a vendor spot at a plant sale.  I'll be selling these baby plants and also some laser stuff (crafty/home décor things).  I used to do this every 6months-year or so and used to joke that I was a leopard lily farmer.  They are prolific little plants and keep popping out baby bulbs.  It's been several years since my last round of "lily farming".  It was nice to get back into it.  

A fun bit of trivia: these are actually all descendants of my original leopard lily plant.  I sent some bulbs to a friend before we went to Japan.  As soon as I returned, she sent me back some bulbs.  They took a while to get started; I don't think they appreciated leaving AZ to come back to the Dakotas (they are a desert plant), but they have been going really well for a while now.  


That's about it for today, lots of plants and some plastic ponies.

Studio Plant Nursery - Japan Edition

My studio has often doubled as a plant nursery.  I love plants and at our house in SD, the window in the studio was one of only a few to get sunlight.  It was also a room I could close off from the cat who loved to eat some of my plants.  So the studio window sill always had a collection of plants in it.

Out of habit, I suppose, I've been keeping my small collection of Bonsai supplies in the studio here, as well as a few of the trees themselves.

As of today, a few more plants will be joining the studio plant nursery.

We went to an Orchid Festival today in a town about an hour away.  I took a bunch of pictures, of course, and will probably do a post with them soon.  However, I wanted to share the new additions to my plant family right away!

First up is an orchid.  There were many for sale, and it was hard to make a decision, but in the end I chose this one:

Pretty flowers.

Many of the orchids had no tags on them, but this one did.  It has the name on the front and care instructions on the back - in Japanese.  I'm hoping I can translate them, or find care info online.

I am nervous about having an orchid; I've always heard they are hard to care for.  I hope I can keep this one alive!  We did some reading on our smart phones/tablets while there and about all we learned are that there are thousands of types of orchid, all with different needs.  Yikes.  They do seem to want humidity and it certainly has that here, at least in the summers.  This one, while gorgeous, was one of the cheapest...  I just wasn't comfortable spending much, since I'm not confident I can keep it alive.  They had some stunning orchids for sale at upwards of $150.  (I'm sure some can go WAY higher than that...)  Mine was $8.

Next up...  I was excited to see a few Fittonia for sale.  This was a favorite plant of mine back in SD.  It is another one that I had learned wants high humidity.  Hopefully it will do well here.

I love the red-vined leaves.

I also got another Jade plant.  (I have three of them here now).  Jade have always been a favorite of mine and of all of my house plants that I had to rehome to come here, my "mama" Jade was the hardest to give up.  It was "mama", because I had taken several leaves off along the way and sprouted "baby" Jade plants from them.  I had actually resisted getting another Jade plant here, because I know I'll have to leave them behind when we leave.  However, we are going to be here for a while and I really enjoy them..  so, as of today, I have three.

This little one kinda looked like it needed some love.  I had to bring it home.

The last addition are these tiny succulents.  I don't think these little ones are very happy (they were sold to us with quite a discount).  But I thought they were very cute (they are all itty bitty) and maybe I can help them.  I used to be good at saving plants off the "clearance rack" - most of my collection back in SD came from those parts of a store.

I'm excited about my new little additions!  They now join my collection of: bonsai trees, a large Jade that I bought not too long ago, a small philodendron that came from a clearance rack (had been marked down a few times and was not happy - now it has new leaves), and a tiny succulent garden in a pot.  :)

Time Warp and A Sign of Things to Come

I swear, I am stuck in some sort of time warp.  After Christmas, it seemed like time stopped.  The days were dragging on, it felt like each day lasted 3 or 4.  This last week has flown by so fast I'm not even sure what happened.  I'm speeding ahead toward this next weekend when my husband will finally be home after a 6 month deployment.  I can't wait to see him.

I've been crafting this past week, finished up another cross-stitch saddle pad, probably my last one for a little while.  I've told myself I won't make any more until I record the patterns on the ones I've made and get them all finished and photographed.  I'd like to get them listed up for sale or otherwise decide what to do with them - I'd like to donate at least a few.  Then and only then will I embark on making more of them.  That's the plan anyway...

The newest pad, done stitching:

All six of the 18-count pads I've made so far.  The stitching is done, but they all still need to be cut out and finished:

Last night I started working on my big horse head cross-stitch again (the one that I'll probably finish about the time I'm 80 - along with the Stagecoach project).

Yesterday I spent SIX hours in the Studio room, moving things around, throwing things away, and resisting the urge to give up, sit down, and start making things in the middle of the mess.  I made a lot of progress with the (latest) overhaul, but there is still more to do.  This was after I'd been underway for an hour or two.  As usual, things looked way worse before they got better:

 

 

Moving on to a subject which I will no doubt be posting about more - and one that will eventually have its own blog is...  The Laser.  In a (VERY brief) nutshell... ever since way before I met my husband, he has wanted a commercial laser cutter/engraver.  We had talked about it for years and last summer, we had one of these big machines delivered to our house.  I have been playing with the machine a bit while he has been away.  Tonight I made a few things with it, including this little design, a stylized Arabian horse.  I did a quick, freehand drawing in our graphics software and then made it an oval cut out.  It will be part of a new greeting card that I'm hoping to make tomorrow and then post to ArtFire.  That will make it the very first tiny laser project that we will offer for sale: 

 

 

Very exciting things to come with our laser adventure!

 

 

One last bit of exciting news from the last week...  I present...  a baby apple tree!  This little one was started from a seed that had sprouted inside of a granny smith apple.  I read about how starting an apple from seed most likely won't produce the same type of apple, due to cross pollination and grafting, but I wanted to see if I could get one of the sprouted seeds to grow, just for the heck of it.  Well, here are the results so far!:

 



It will be neat to see if I can get this wee little sprout to grow into a tree!  I don't even care if it makes apples, how fun would it be to raise up this little one from tiny seed to tree?!

So Exciting!

I've made some thrilling crafty related discoveries in the last few days and I'm just bursting with excitment!!

Now, both of these may be old news to some (or all?) who may read this, but to me they are fresh, new, exciting developments in my itty bitty corner of the craft world.

I have learned of craft swaps and ATCs.

Craft swaps are, just that...  Opportunities for people to swap crafts, supplies, etc.  I've spent the last two days pouring over what seem to be the two main websites that host swaps: Craftster and Swap-bot.  I've registered with both of them and have been digging around, researching the ins and outs of the world of craft swaps. 

(Both sites have forums and fun beyond swapping.  Craftser in particular has a LOT more than swaps going on, there are many challenges going on there, with real prizes to be won.  I'm looking forward to getting involved there; I've greatly enjoyed past challenges in other groups as they pushed me to do new work and try new techniques.)

I do remember how much fun I've had in the past participating in online Secret Santa matchups on some other forums.  With Christmas coming, I've already found a few basic swaps I want to start with: Christmas card exchanges! 

The other "discovery" for me came while looking through those swap sites.  I kept seeing references to ATCs.  I found out that it stands for Artist Trading Card.  Wow, how cool!!  An ATC is basically a miniature work of art, the size of a standard trading card or baseball card.  The tradition is that they are to be given away or traded, not sold.  They appear to be an element in many swaps and indeed I've already found several swaps that are set up just for the exchange of ATCs.  I am really chomping at the bit to get started on making some of my own ATCs - fun!!

In other news, Operation Studio Overhaul is still underway, but I've made a ton of progress.  The shelves have been arranged, all of the desired drawer units and so on were purchased, and now I've just been working on how I want my supplies and projects organized in the drawers.  I'm well on my way to a true workable space again, where I can readily access ALL of my supplies. (yay!)

Organization is a wonderful thing (the shelves with drawers partially loaded - not yet labeled):

 

 

I've also wrangled the plant nursery area down to a more manageable size.  Most of the plants I had before were young shoots I had propagated.  They have since found new homes and everything fits on the shelf now, giving me more work space or another spot to store things on a PC cart I have under the window.

 

 

I do have a dozen or so cherry tomato cuttings that have taken root in water in the only other useable sunny window (the kitchen).  They need to be potted for the winter and put somewhere...  So I may soon have another young plant invasion here to figure out how to store efficiently. 

 

For now, I'm off to the Studio to play around with some ideas for my very own Trading Cards!! 

 

 

 

 

Studio Overhaul!

Well, once again I decided to do a massive overhaul of the Studio room.  I had thought about taking some "before" pictures, but it was really bad, so I declined.  (ha!)  As with many large projects, at the moment it looks worse than when I started, but there is progress being made!  It was a mess when I started, but now...  Oh my...

There was a lot going on in the room, it was part library, part plant nursery, part creative space, part storage room.  I've been keeping way too much in there and no wonder it was getting hard to go down to the actual Studio and get focused on creating new items!  

First step was to move out all of the books and bring them up to the bookshelf in our office, swapping them for straggling supplies and projects that were lingering on the shelves up here.  I organized all of my books by subject and ended up with a pretty decent little library setup.

Then I packed up some of my model horse collection.  Did I mention that the room was ALSO being used to display a few different collections of things?  Just not going to work when I need more room for organizing supplies and so on.  So into a storage tote some of my collection went.

Basically the end result of yesterday's labors is that all of the books were moved, some unneeded things were packed up, and I started adding shelves to the units in the room, allowing for better use of space.  I'm pretty happy with how that is turning out, as I have a bunch of smaller items that were taking up entire large shelf spots.  No more!:

There's a glimpse of what I'm shooting for; better storage and accessibility of my supplies and projects.

Still needing to be addressed is the "plant nursery" section of the room:

We only have a couple of windows in the house that get sunlight, this is one of them.  This is also the only room with a sunny windowthat can be closed off from her:

The resident plant-eating cat.  She has thwarted previous attempts to protect the plants and managed to make salads of plants that are supposed to be poisonous, without any affect.  She is the fuzzy bane of houseplants in our home!  Hence most of the plants now being squirreled away in the Studio room.

Also wanting to get in on the action is the junior plant eater, our rescued barn kitten.

So, I made quite a bit of progress yesterday, but still have a LONG way to go.  Once I finally get everything squared away, then comes the task of actually re-organizing all of my supplies and then labeling each drawer/container so I can reliably FIND things when it's time to create!