Round Here: June

It's summer, the weather is beautiful, and my garden is going crazy.  Almost literally.  I have had training and other school-related work for the past couple of weeks, and my tidy veggie garden has turned into a jungle.  There's a lot of work to be done to get it back under control, but I'm still really enjoying it.  Here is a sample of what's growing...

From bottom left to top right, there is:

1.  Climbing rose, "Mermaid," also known as "Barracuda" in my family because of how aggressive the rose gets.  Mine is currently about 10 feet tall, and small for its variety so far.

2.  My first tomatoes!  I've been waiting for tomatoes for 6 months...

3.  Morning glories.  These are basically weeds in my garden...and I love them!

4.  A miniature variety of zinnias.  I planted them to help with attracting pollinators to my garden, but I'm enjoying their sunshiney faces.

5.  Rue.  I'm sure this herb has wonderful healing properties, but darned if I can remember what they are.  However, I've been enjoying the star-shaped blossoms, and the bees like them too.

Making the Most of a Tiny Kitchen

As I've mentioned before, my house is TINY.  It's cute, I love it, and I wouldn't trade it, even for 1,000 more square feet.  But it's really small.  So in order to stay happy with my lack of space, I have to be careful about how I use it.  I have lots of tricks, especially in the kitchen.

1.  Keep items that live on your counters to an absolute minimum.
Every item on your kitchen counters takes up visual space.  Some are necessary, like my darn coffee maker that I can't seem to ditch, some are aesthetic, like the ceramic bowl I made in college, and some things are just clutter, making the room look smaller.  If you're unhappy with your space, it's important to evaluate how many things are visible in your kitchen.  Are they making your kitchen into a pretty, useful place?  Or are they just there making your room look cluttered?

2.  Use every spare inch.
If your home is like mine, you probably didn't have appropriate storage when you moved in (Why are old houses notorious for the lack of storage?) Space is such a hot commodity in a tiny house, and sometimes, you just have to create it for yourself.  When I moved into my house, there were only three miniature drawers in the entire kitchen.  None of them were wide enough to hold a normal utensil organizer.  So, I had to get creative.

I started hanging things from the insides of the cabinet doors.

Command hooks work so perfectly for hanging things up because they're removable and won't damage the wall they're hanging on.  I have pulled some off and placed them elsewhere when I didn't like where they were.

3.  Pare down kitchen items ruthlessly.
The picture below is a good example of NOT following that rule to the letter.  I have two glass measuring cups and two graters.  I really don't need two.  It's just that I have been keeping two around so I don't have to wash dishes so often.  Which is a pretty dumb reason...

Anyway, the cupboard from that picture (the part unseen) is habitually running out of room and disorganized, despite my best efforts.  This summer it will be getting a much needed overhaul, and the duplicates have to go.

4.  Invest in extra shelving and organizational systems.
Unless you live in a house with a custom-built kitchen, chances are that your cupboard space is not ideal.  In my house, some cabinets are way too big and awkward, while others are too small to fit anything useful.  The key was buying tools that would keep my things neat without wasting space.

In the examples below, the drawer where I keep my knives was way too narrow.  I already had the knife holder from my old kitchen, but it was just a little too wide for the drawer.  So, I counted how many spaces I needed in the holder, and had Awesome trim the organizer so it was exactly the size we needed.  Then there was bonus space left over for our pizza cutter!

The other picture is of my baking sheet/cutting board/cooling rack cupboard.  The original space was really strange.  It was the depth of a standard cupboard, but only had one tiny shelf in it.  There was so much wasted space!  So I bought that nifty organizer.  I think it is meant for baking sheets.  Now I can basically "file" all my cooking and cutting boards away and they're ready to go and easy to access.

5.  Make it functional AND pretty!
That rule has been the biggest aha that I've had in this house.  I always used to keep aesthetics and practicality separate.  Then one day, on a whim, I "wallpapered" the inside of my medicine cabinet with scrapbook paper.  The epiphany I had was that I got a happy feeling every time I opened up the medicine cabinet (which makes tooth-brushing much more pleasant), and I also put more effort into keeping the cabinet neat and uncluttered.

I'm sure you saw all the cute paper backings in the above pictures.  Having the insides of my cupboards look pretty makes a huge difference in how I treat them.  I'm more inclined to keep them neat if they look nice.

What tricks do you have for organizing your kitchen?

How to Keep a Tidy[ish] House

My house is little.  It's super cute when it's clean, but even one pillow out of place makes it look disheveled.  I've learned the hard way how to keep it from getting too out of hand.  Here are a few of my tips for keeping your house tidy.

1.  Put rooms to right twice a day.
For me, that means folding throws and putting away the remote and dog toys right before I head out the door to work, and right before bed.  I also put away anything out of place in the bathroom whenever I'm in there.

2.  Put things away as soon as they come in the door.
I don't know about you, but I have someone in my house who walks in the door from work and leaves a trail of belongings behind him: coat in the living room, mail on the kitchen counter, wallet and keys on the couch...it's Sam, of course.  Just can't seem to train that dog yet ;)  But anyway, one of the things that clutters up a tiny house quickly is not putting things away as soon as they enter the door.  I have a routine for putting everything away before I do anything else--keys and lunchbag in the cupboard, purse on its hook, and laptop bag in the spare room.  All ready for tomorrow.  It takes me a couple minutes to get in the door and get everything settled, but then I don't have to worry about my stuff cluttering up the place.

3.  Make the bed.
Amazing how just a tidy bed can make your whole bedroom look better.  Don't believe me?  Try it.  Making the bed seems unnecessary but it can give you a real boost.

4.  Do the dishes.
We're really bad at this one.  We fill up the dishwasher and run it, then the dishes stay there.  And all the new dirty dishes back up.  Then we spend an hour on the weekend cleaning up a disgusting kitchen.  I've tried banning the dishwasher and instituting a no-tv-until-the-dishes-are-done rule, alas, to no avail.  Right now I have a sinkful of dirty dishes, and absolutely no motivation to clean them up.  Obviously we have a lot of work to do to fix this habit.  I'll keep you posted on how it goes.  Just be sure not to follow my example and do your own dishes.  It will make you feel better.

5.  Do periodic decluttering.
If I look back on the past seven years, I have transformed from a person who couldn't have anyone over because of my messy place (Awesome will tell you this is true.  He didn't get to visit my apartment for a very long time when we were dating), to a place where I could have people over comfortably in the next 15 minutes (very kind people who love me a lot and who won't go into the kitchen).  This is primarily because I started decluttering and organizing on a regular basis.  I realized at one point that all my stuff was just responsibility hanging around my neck, making me feel stressed and inadequate. I asked myself,  If my stuff equals extra work, emotional baggage, and responsibility, then do I really want it? No, emphatically NO!

We still have a long way to go before my house is as clean as I'd like it to be, but these 5 tips have helped me over the years.  I hope they help you too.

What tips do you have for keeping your house tidy?

7 Goals for the New Year

I don't know about you, but time is flying by!  Someone told me recently, "The days go by slowly, the months pass quickly, the years fly."  I think that matches my experience too.

I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions, mostly because they don't seem to last past January, but seeing how 2015 is passing so quickly, it just seems to be a natural time to look back on the past and make plans for the future. I've been thinking back on the person I was at the start of my marriage and who I am today--and so much has changed!  For the better, I think.  I'm much more comfortable with myself now than I was back then.  The way I live my life is very different too, not just because I share a life with a wonderful man, but because together we have made choices that have helped us to move toward meeting our goals, focus on what is important to us, and cut out everything else.

So instead of resolutions, I decided to make goals for what I hope to accomplish this year.  

To keep with my resolve to be a more balanced person, I have made the goals in 7 general categories. You can keep things as general or specific as you wish, depending on what you want from your life.  

1.  Life/Personal

     This category is for those large, overarching goals you may want to make.  What do you want your life to be like?  Are you headed in that direction? Are the decisions you make on a day-to-day basis leading you toward what you really want long-term?  

     For example, my goal for this year is to increase our human family from two people to three. Because of the impact a new baby has on a family, all our decisions, whether career, financial, or health-related, are all leading us to be in a better position to be prepared parents.           

2.  Career/Intellectual

     Making a goal in this area seems fairly obvious to me, like changing jobs, learning a new skill, or going to grad school.  Or it could be simpler, like taking an adult education course or reading a book that will help you grow intellectually.

      I'm hoping to take a little break to care for our baby, so I'm not making any career goals for now. However, I am working on learning Spanish.  I won't be fluent anytime soon, but I'm making progress towards my lifelong goal of being bilingual.

3.  Financial
     Let's face it: we can all stand to make financial goals, right? Financial goals can be small, like saving a little each month or making a budget, or big, like paying off a student loan.
     For us, since I'd like to be a stay-at-home mom for a bit, financially we are trying to pay off as much debt as possible, while also saving as much as possible.  Sounds tough, right?  Well, we've been doing that since we bought our house, so to a certain extent, it has become a habit.

4.  Health
     This one sounds easy: how can you improve your health?  I think it's easier said than done, though.  Take exercise, for instance.  I'm really good at starting an exercise routine.  And terrible at keeping it going.  This is a lifetime battle for me, and I intend to keep fighting.

5.  Spiritual
     I plan on going to church more this year.  It's a chance to meet up with people socially, and a chance to dwell on something greater than myself and my problems.  We could all use something like that, right?

6.  Home
     When you own a fixer-upper, there is always something that need to be done. This year we plan to switch out our front lawn with drought tolerant plants, as you know.  I also need a new automatic watering system installed in my garden in preparation for summer.  I'm sure other projects will present themselves too, but for now those are my goals for the year.

7.  Creative
     For a balanced life, it's so important to find a creative outlet.  I personally need creativity a bit more than the average person, I think.  Actually, recently I've been bingeing on creative craft projects at home, and I've found them to be very satisfying.  It's just a good reminder that I need to make projects where I can be creative a priority in my busy schedule.

Front Lawn Transformation: Planning Stages

The time has come...to get rid of our front lawn and start a more water-wise, environmentally friendly landscape.

Our house, when we bought it, came with a very tiny--but very attractive--lush green triangle of lawn in the front yard.  The previous owner was obviously a lawn man, and the grass was golf-course perfect.

Awesome and I are NOT perfect lawn people.  I love gardening, as you know, but in a more meadow-like, wild, natural, and free way than the more manicured garden usually associated with lawns.  And Awesome, well, he loves the park-like lawn in theory, but since that requires a lot of work, it just isn't going to happen.

Four years and a Northern California drought since we bought the house, and the front yard triangle is a lot more brown than green.  Unless you count the weeds.  Those are green.  

I've been dreaming of transforming the front border since even before we moved in.  My roses and picket fence are crying for the company of a lot of cottage garden plants. And the "lawn"...well, it just has to go.

We are lucky to live in a town that has a Cash for Grass incentive to give homeowners money for replacing their lawns with water-wise plantings.  The program offers $1 a square foot for replacing the lawn.

We are unlucky to have such a tiny lawn.  It probably isn't worth the twenty bucks we'd receive to go through the approval process.  So we aren't going to go that way.  However, if you live in the Bay area and have a larger lawn that you'd like to replace, I'd recommend checking the program out.  It seems like a great deal.

This is what our yard looks like now:

Ugh.


This is what I'd like our front yard to look like:

Image from http://www.finegardening.com/front-yard-garden-no-time 

(Yeah, yeah, I know my yard is the size of a postage stamp, but it's still possible!  On a miniature scale.)

I've been researching steps to get the soil ready for planting.  There are several methods to choose from, some involving herbicides and shovels.  It seems to be highly recommended to sheet mulch your lawn, which basically means covering the grass with a thick layer of newspaper and compost, and waiting for a season before planting.  That would be a great method for us, if it was fall and the lawn was in the back yard, but I want the place to look better, not worse.  I found one site that says you can use the same method, but cut holes through the newspaper for the plants you are adding, so they can get established while the compost is doing its thing.  That's what I'm planning on doing, because I need somewhat-instant gratification in this case.

Our waste management offers organic compost that is made from the yard waste they collect.  It costs about $8 a truckload, so economically it's the way to go.  Of course, we have to borrow a truck to get it and spend all day shoveling it, but it's still worth it.

Plant criteria:
Must be able to withstand semi-drought conditions
Must be a reliable performer--no prima-donas in my yard!
Must love hot and sunny conditions but also tolerate afternoon shade
Must be perennial
Should be evergreen (a few deciduous plants are allowed, but I want the garden to look nice all year)

Possible plants:

Lavender:

Image from www.growinginmygarden.com 

Easy to grow, hard to kill, lavender looks nice all year, and blooms for at least six months.  Bees love it, and it is a cottage garden stand-by.  It also is an herb, so its usefulness is basically endless, which is a plus.

Rosemary:

Image from http://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/edibles/vegetables/rosemary.html

Another wonderful herb, I already have several rosemary plants, and love it for its ease and reliability.  Plus the wonderful smell--rosemary is a great anchor plant for any garden.  Both the upright version and the trailing version would be good for my front lawn space.  I may just transplant the plants I already own.

Thyme:

Image from bonnieplants.com

Thyme is a very versatile plant.  It comes in a variety of sizes and colors, so I may have a couple of different kinds, depending on my needs.  Thyme can make a great ground cover, and in my experience, it will sometimes reseed itself too, so one plant becomes 20 plants.

Russian Sage:

Image from dallasgardens.com

Russian sage thrives in our area.  It is being used more and more as a landscaping plant, and looks good most of the year.  I don't know if it's evergreen or not, but since I will probably only have one plant anyway, I'm not going to worry about it.

Salvia:

from galleryhip.com

from parkswholesaleplants.com

from gardencoachpictures.wordpress.com

The salvia family is huge, so there are lots of choices.  I'll probably choose a few varieties and colors.  Salvia is another performer, and like the above plants, is easy to grow and reliable.

Guara:

from gardenality.com

One of my personal favorite flowers, I have never grown guara but I love it!  It's so pretty.


There are so many other plants I could choose from.  These are just a few that I know are foolproof and do well in my area.

Obviouly, we have a lot of work to turn our plans into reality.  I'll keep you updated as our new garden unfolds.

Garden Inspiration

I have been going through a dry spell in my garden. The drought here in Northern California has taken its toll and I've been trying to do my part to not waste water. So I've lost a number of my more tender plants, the lawn is getting brown, and everything other than the tomatoes is semi-dormant. 

It's been discouraging. 

So I've barely kept the garden going while hoping and praying for rain. 

Last weekend I reached the end of my patience and put in a much-needed hour of tidying and pruning (my un-watered tomato plants are still monster-sized). 

And IT FELT WONDERFUL!

The lovely smells of good soil, rosemary, and dill, the peep-peep of my chicken teenagers as they foraged around me, the riot of purple morning glories everywhere (they apparently need little water)--it was balm to my tired, stressed-out soul. I felt like I was having a reunion with the oldest and best of friends. 

All of which tells me that, for my happiness, I must spend time regularly in my garden. 

So I've been looking through my garden boards on Pinterest, trying to keep motivated as I head into the winter lull. There are so many things I'd like to do!

Photo via fiskars.com

This beauty is what I'm dreaming about for the space between the back porch and the garden. I have the perfect area for it. 

Photo courtesy of finegardening.com

This is what I'd like to do with my front lawn. Right now it is a tiny dying triangle, a pain to maintain and absolutely useless. Some pretty, drought-tolerant flowers would dress up the front of the house nicely. 

Photo courtesy of bhg.com

This is what I would do on the road side of the front picket fence. Right now there is lots of gravel and a few weeds, definitely nothing inspiring!

So those are just a few of the pictures that are inspiring me. Hopefully they'll keep me going until I get my winter garden planted. 

Inexpensive Kitchen Remodel

When you own a fixer-upper, there is always something that needs to be repaired or upgraded. Or added. 

Most of these jobs aren't fun, like the new roof or the anti-termite treatment. 

However, in the long list of never-ending, ever-multiplying, must-be-done-now jobs, my favorite to date has been my cheapo kitchen remodel. 

When we bought our house, the kitchen had decent builder-grade oak cabinets.  They weren't what I wanted or what fit the era of the house, but it was too expensive to change them out. I left them for a couple years while we tackled more important projects. 

Finally I decided to jump in and fix up my kitchen. After lots of research and some advice from a helpful Home Depot sales person, I got a Rustoleum Cabinet Makeover kit. 

I followed the directions on the kit from start to finish. 

The job took me a really long time. The instructions on the package said that you could finish a smallish kitchen in a weekend but I'm not sure that would really be possible if you did a good job. Anyway, for whatever it's worth, painting my kitchen cabinets took me about a month. 

This job is not for the faint of heart. However, it's definitely a great way to cheaply get an updated kitchen. 

I could have sped up the process by skipping the insides of the cabinets, and the doors would have been so much easier to paint if I could have spread them out in a garage. By the end of the summer I was sick of painting, but I would totally do it all over again if I had to. 

Here's the sink area ready for a party I threw. I can't believe how much brighter and cleaner the place looks. 

Here's by the door that leads to the back yard. I love it!

So, if you have a kitchen that isn't exactly what you want, but don't have thousands of dollars for a complete refitting, consider painting your cabinets. You'll be surprised by what a huge difference it makes!

5 Areas to Improve in My Home

When you move into a fixer-upper, there is a never-ending list of things that need to be updated, repaired, or made.  My husband and I have made lots of progress, but we tend to get snowed under with all the jobs that need to be done NOW! 

Periodically, I take inventory of all the things that still need to be done.

Then I get completely overwhelmed and have to take a break and have some coffee (if only!). 

What works best is to take a step back and choose a handful of areas to improve.  Here are my 5 major areas that need help:

1.      Back Yard: (the job that never ends!)  When we moved into our house, the back yard was ready to go in a lot of ways—for a much different family than ours.  There was a nice big porch (which I love), a paved patio, a pergola, a postage-stamp-sized lawn, and tons of gravel.  There was no usable space for plants, flowers, and the huge garden I had been dreaming of.  (There also were no weeds back then). 

 3 and ½ years later, we’ve made lots of changes.  We’ve moved miles of gravel, hauled several trucks worth of compost, and built raised boxes for my garden.  I’ve planted a lot, mainly vegetables and herbs, with a few roses thrown in.  We put in one irrigation system, and have plans to add another.

 We’ve also added to our collection of patio furniture so we have a comfortable place to hang out during beautiful Napa Valley weather.

 I still feel like we are fighting a losing battle in the backyard.  I have dreams of it being a beautiful, peaceful place where we can relax, entertain, and grow lots of food.  I also want it to all be easy to maintain, since we both work long hours and don’t want to spend every waking minute weeding. Sadly, the weeds grow sprout almost as quickly as I pull them. 

2.      TV room:  This is definitely the Man’s room.  It’s not pretty.  It is hard to keep clean.  There’s lots of computer equipment, weights, and guy stuff in there.  I don’t like it.  ‘Nuff said.

 3.    Spare room:  Other than the bathroom, this is the only room in the house that I have not really changed in any way since we bought the house.  I hope to turn it into a nursery soon, so there just has never seemed much point in decorating it at all.  However, I have found that a room with no purpose quickly becomes the junk-dropping zone.  Not good!

 4.      Laundry Room/Hallway Pantry: My nemesis!  Yes, I should be grateful that I have a dedicated room for laundry (I really am grateful), but this room is dark, dingy, and humid.  Plus, it’s usually a lot dirtier than this.  I really hate laundry, and this room has not made it easier.

 5.      Shed:  When you have no garage, you either need to have very little stuff, or good storage (or preferably, both).  Our shed is tiny, has very little shelving, and is sort of a black-hole for our belongings. 

     The best solution I can think of, short of another shed, is to install lots of shelving and other forms of storage.

So, there are some of the major areas that we need to improve. I'm not sure where we'll start working. Now we're building a run for the chicks so we'll see what we feel inspired to begin after that's finished.