༺ Rose Giveaway ༻

Hello, and welcome to my Giveaway ! I'm celebrating one year since my first sale on etsy !! It has been a great year, full of meeting wonderful artists and learning lots more about online networking. I'm excited and want to share the fun with all of you. This giveaway is easy, and one winner will receive these two pretty pink rose stems, a $7.50 value.

To enter, follow these steps: (note: worldwide entries are welcome)

> Check out my etsy shop, then leave a comment on THIS post with the following:

..... The URL to your favorite item in my shop

..... A brief comment on why you like it

..... The best way to contact you if you win: your email address and/or etsy shop name

> Become a follower of this blog

On the evening of my etsy anniversary (April 6th, 2009) I will review all entries. If you have followed all the above steps, you will have a chance to win. 

I will use the random.org number generator to select the winning comment, then I will contact the winner to arrange shipment !!

Thanks, and GOOD LUCK !!

♫ Sprouting Sweet Potatoes ♫

Over the weekend I watched a few PBS garden shows. In one segment they talked about the lovely leaves of a sweet potato plant, and how easy it was to sprout in a window sill. This sounded like an easy project, so I got a sweet potato at the market on Monday, and now have a little sprout project at my house !

The idea is to hang a potato in a vase of water and give it sunshine on a window sill. I thought we had toothpicks at home, but when I went to find them, I discovered they were colorful, but pretty flimsy. Not deterred, I figured I would just add more and they would work anyway. Here's my sweet potato, all pierced up -->>

It should only take a week or two before I have sprouts and pretty light green leaves. I hope ! When I was a kid I tried to sprout avacado's (with very little success), but this is my first potato project.

I found a pretty picture online that shows what the leaves may look like if my experiment works out. If anything comes of this spud, I will post an update later in the season. Have you ever sprouted one of these ??

Daffodils Are Blooming !

Here are some new flowers, fresh and new in my shop this week.

~ Daffodils on stems ~

~ Daffodils on magnets ~

My lilac bush is getting little buds, so the growing season can't be too far off ! What is coming up in your yard this weekend?

I Saw Bugs Today !

I'm not a happy camper at the moment because I saw mosquitoes hanging out on my windows today. Winter is not my favorite season, but at least it keeps the bugs away ! This got me wondering what the talented artists on etsy had to offer, based around my least favorite bug - the mosquito. I found these terrific items:

Details :

• GretchenKramp's Mosquito Tile caught my attention first. It perfectly captures the look of the tiny fella on my window today. 

• Artforkids creates such colorful pieces. I found this amazing mosquito, a bold yellow, orange and lime green collage.

• Loveabug's shop has some amazing creatures, including the New Mexico Mosquito, who "attracts her prey with color".

• bubblyseahorsesoap has some soap that I need to get - All Natural Citronella Bars !!

I wanted pictures of the items for this blog post, but was not quite sure how to combine them creatively. After some searching on the etsy forums, I found an interesting solution. The site I used is bighugelabs.com. I followed the link to Mosaic Maker to create the picture you see above. There were only a few setup steps, then I was able to create and save this terrific .jpg. I'm going to check out more of the site's features - it has a bunch more !!

Stay safe - Stay inside - unless you get some of that citronella soap !!

༻ Spring Violets ༺

Patio and Cold Frame Project

The weekend project at my house has been preparing an area for a new patio walkway, and cold frame setup. We collected a bunch of pavers and bricks from someone on Craigslist, and now have very cool building materials to work with. 

First up is a patio extension to help keep our dog's feet dry when spring comes to Colorado and hopefully gives us some rain.

This area is part of the house's south facing courtyard, a big square of grass we laid down for the dogs and fenced. Since most of the area around the house is still dirt because of our house construction, we had to have a grass enclosed pen to contain the dogs on wet days. The finishing touch will be this patio at the entry way.

There was not enough of any one material to finish the project, so we had to get creative and make a pattern with the supplies on hand. The edges got larger blocks, and the center walkway is made of bricks.

The patio faces south, so it should stay nice and warm, plus melt any snow we might be lucky enough to get. 

Our soil is already sandy, so we didn't have to haul in any additional dirt to lay the bricks. We did brush a bunch of sand over the top to help though. I think the dogs will really enjoy sitting on this patio !!

There it is ! A great walkway that will help keep all our feet dry !!

Next in this project is to use some larger stacking blocks to build a cold frame box or two next to the patio. We get so much sun that it will be easy to grow some greens all year long, if only they have some protection. When this project gets going, I'll post some pictures of the cold frame boxes.

I'm Exposed !!

Today I decided to advertise my etsy shop on a new website that I think will get a lot of traffic: craftopolis.com. This is my little ad:

I believe the site will get a lot of traffic because it serves an important purpose.  People on etsy always like to know if they are featured in a treasury. Before, the only way to know was to search the treasury lists page by page, looking for a little star. The star next to the treasury name indicates that an item from your shop is in that treasury. Many people do this search daily, in order to find their items and leave nice comments of thanks for the treasury curator. Now, the search is as easy as visiting this new website !!

So I have decided to take the plunge by placing an ad for my shop on the site. I had to make a tiny little picture using Photoshop. The picture had to be 150 x 100 pixels in size. That turned out to be pretty small !! I think it came out clear, what do you think? I feel a bit exposed now. Hopefully this ad will increase interest in my little etsy shop of crocheted flowers. 

Toad House Ready in Garden

Colorado's weather is getting nicer now, so my thoughts are turning to the next gardening season. Now is the time to reshape beds, work in nutrients, plan for better irrigation, build more fencing, and gather seeds for planting.

Our garden is expanding as I type. It should be about double in size this year once my husband installs the new posts. The wooden poles we got from someone moving off their farm will make excellent posts to anchor fence wire. We have to do a lot to keep chickens and rabbits out, and we also try to keep rattlesnakes and kangaroo rats out of the garden by using tiny wire around the base of the fence wire. The new poles are wonderful, and will give the garden fence so much new stability. Here is a picture of the new poles, plus a few of our chickens who are looking for early spring bugs.

The new garden is being prepared with some composed turkey manure we got last fall. After some rototilling, the beds will be furtile and ready to grow our greens. 

Last year's garden was mildly successful. We were able to jar up some pickle relish, plus we froze tomatoes, beans and spinach greens. Onions and potatoes dried in the shed and were enjoyed well into the winter. I loved making Thanksgiving dinner with our own garden products.

I took a walk through the existing garden this morning and saw that the blue flax plants are making their appearance. They make such lovely blue flowers all summer long. Maybe I should move a few clumps around to spread the beauty !!

I also arranged the toad house, getting it ready for inhabitants. I had a few toads in the garden last year, but they actually preferred the wet onion bed to the toad house. Oh well.

With some good planing and lots of work, our 2009 garden will bring lots of food to the farm. 

New etsy Treasury

I was lucky enough to snag an etsy Treasury last night. Over 900 users were watching for the magic number to appear in order to get a spot, so I feel lucky. In this treasury, I decided to focus on flowers, and here are the lovely pansy items I found.

Enjoy the Pansies !!

Just Showing Off !!

Seems like all I've been doing lately has been talking about myself. I guess once I realize this fact I can change my behavior :) But before I do, let me share one more cool thing that happened this weekend. The etsy CreateCrochet team has featured me on their blog !! Here is the story !! I'm so tickled to be featured, thanks CreateCrochet team !!

Also, someone on the team asked me if I ever made lilies, so I went looking through my picture archives and come up with these oldies but goodies. Now I will stop talking about myself (for awhile), but leave you with these historic old flower arrangement pictures.


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