Advent Time Again

… and this year I finally have the advent wreath I’ve been wanting.

Early Summer Garden

Well, the end of the school year has come and gone. I had a sinus infection and then strep throat — not supposed to get that with no tonsils — Katie had two big dance performances, Tristan rode his first mountain bike race, Papa keeps working and the garden keeps growing. Here it is, newly planted, on May 14:

On the left there are two tomato plants, three hot pepper plants, and a lemon verbena. In the empty space in the middle of the left box there are 64 onion sets. In the right box are two more tomatoes, two more hot peppers, two basil, two eggplants, and two nasturtiums. We added the two boxes this year so we could plant a pumpkin patch inside the fence. You can also see we took the gate off the fence. We still are pet-less so we don’t really have need of the gate, especially since it doesn’t deter the rabbits. Here is a shot of the garden on June 13:

I moved the potato bins over between the blueberry bushes and the tops had really started to wilt and fade — they’re totally faded now, time to harvest. The plastic is up inside the fence since we had planted the pumpkin and squash in those beds that morning. Now you can see all those onions growing in the left bed and obviously everything has gotten much bigger. That photo was taken two weeks ago and everything is even bigger now. In fact this morning I picked the first two sungold tomatoes. All the squash seeds germinated but some of the pumpkin did not so I think we’ll re-seed, maybe even today.

Holiday Home Tour – Have a Treat

If the sugarplum fairy ever visits this is where she’ll be hanging out, I’m sure. The dining room is definitely the land of sweets.

Holiday Home – Grab a Seat

Today I’ll be showing you our living room. This is our fancy room so it has the fancy tree. That means it’s filled with mostly glass ornaments and other ornaments I don’t want to find broken/ruined. We have another tree in the family room that is much more homespun looking. But in the living room I try to keep it elegant.

Holiday Home Tour – Come On In

Hello and welcome to the urchin home. So glad you guys stopped by to see us. I decorate the porch with my childhood sled, a grapevine wreath, a vintage red lawn chair, a lot of pinecones, and some rusty jingle bells. The large pinecones are from sugar pines and the smaller pinecones are the cinnamon scented ones. Their scent would be way too much in the house but on the porch it’s rather nice. The bells are oversized and rusty.

I try to keep the entryway fairly simple when I decorate for the holidays. We have one cabinet in there and I don’t like the top of it to be cluttered with decorations, I do enough cluttering of it daily with my keys and mail. The little pillow hangs from a front closet doorknob and says “star bright… Christmas light” and has the year Papa and I were married on it. The snowman sits at the bottom of the stairs right next to the living room which is where we’re headed tomorrow.

Please be sure to drop by these friends who will also be showing off their holiday homes this week:

Daisy

Eren

Grace

Heather

Julia

Melody

Melissa

If you’d like to join the tour just post some photos to your blog or flickr and let me know so I can add you to the list.

Holiday Home Tour

I was recently talking with Grace about holiday decorating and I told her I would take a photo of a little vignette I always do on our front porch for her to see. It got me thinking about holiday homes and how much inspiration can come from seeing what other people do. Now don’t get me wrong, the images in magazines are really magical at this time of year but they often seem unattainable too. I certainly don’t have the budget or skills to create one of those kind of rooms. And honestly, I don’t want my home to feel like a magazine, especially at this home-y, cozy time of year. So this week I’ll be giving a little holiday home tour of the urchin house and I’m hoping you might want to join in. I’ll be posting every day but you can post as little or as much as you like. Let me know and I’ll make a list so we can all be inspired by each other’s holiday homes.

Harvesting

Just this last week we’ve started harvesting some veggies from our garden. It started with the onions, sort of on a whim, last Friday and we pulled them all. Weeds were seriously encroaching into the bed and the tops had pretty much died back. I bought two packs of onion sets back around St Patrick’s Day on a whim for something like $2. One was for regular sized onions and one for little ones. Ours definitely were on the small sized but hey, onions from our own garden! And tonight we dug out our potatoes. The tops had totally died back. I was very skeptical about what we would find since I forgot to order potato sets and had just cut up some organic potatoes I had in the pantry at planting time. We also discovered a fairly sizable zucchini and three ripe tomatoes. Many more tomatoes will be following shortly as well as a whole bunch of yellow squash. What’s growing in your gardens?

Making Me Happy Today

:: wearing matching outfits with my girl on Mother’s Day ::

:: first berries of the season, and consequently the first canning session of the season as well ::

:: herbs in pots on my deck ::

:: a vegetable garden that is planted and ready to grow ::

Almost May

My goodness, where did April go? Seriously. The month is almost over and I don’t feel like I’ve finished much of anything. In fact I haven’t even started my mystery blanket — the project for April — from the Knitter’s Almanac. Enough bellyaching and time to get back at it. Hopefully on Monday I’ll have some finished stuff to show you. In the meantime, you can enjoy the fruits of another Mama’s labor. She’s been outside my study window and on Thursday that little guy hatched. I think his little brother might join us today.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day