Garden Markers

Just before Christmas I bought a box set of metal letter stamps on ebay for the purpose of making old spoon and fork garden markers. It was lots of fun making them and I followed this tutorial http://mossymossy.com/?p=491 

  

Here is all the equiptment needed for metal stamping bar the rubber mallet.

 

Unfortunately these are my first 'worst' batch as I gave the best looking ones as Christmas Gifts. But in the end I wasn't 100% happy with the look of them, I think I need to get thicker, smaller and deeper metal stamps as the letters came out too faintly. I got all of my silver plated spoons from a Salvos shop at 20c each!

 

 

And when I tried them out in our veggie and herb garden they just looked lost as the garden is too big, they would suit a potted herb garden better.

 

So I bought these beauties from the very lovely Letitia of The White Shed shop and blog!

They are heart shaped blackboard markers and are MUCH better suited to our garden.

When I have to go outside at night to pick herbs for my cooking I can see the names quite clearly as they stand out on the black chalk board.

Our Basil is on it's last legs before it dies off over winter :(

I hope to use my metal stamps for other purposes though, I used them to stamp words onto my Christmas clay tags which was fun.

Do you have a veggie garden? What do you use as garden markers?

Have a lovely day,

Our weekend

We had a very nice weekend.

Saturday morning we had lunch at a local cafe/nursery/gift shop. We went there to buy some garden things. Take a look at what we got...

A sandstone birdbath for that little spot out the front.

A sandstone bench for down the bottom end of the front garden (the garden still needs to be finished off). And we also ordered matching sandstone square planter boxes for either size of the garage.

Then on Sunday when we came home from church we popped next door to say Hi to our neighbours who were all working and playing in their front yard. While we chatted. Will started walking along the path in front of their house with the girl's old little dolls carriage. Then suddenly splat, he fell over forward with his hands still holding the handle bars and his knuckles and fingers were sandwiched and scrapped between the cement path and the carriage handles. OUCH!
My poor bubby was crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrying and screeeeeeeming and shaking and when we checked his hands they were bleeding and one of his fingernails was half off and hanging by a thread.

I'm sooooooooooo not good with blood or anything and lucky our neighbour is a nurse. She cleaned up his hands and gave us some good bandages. But when we took him home, Glen had to take the remainder of his fingernail off. Talk about trauma... I was crying, Will was obviously crying and then we had to bandage it up despite his protests.

OUCH!

Will says please don't laugh at my bandaged finger or the fact that I was walking with a dolls carriage when the accident occurred.

My poor little man is back to his normal high spirits this morning which is good and we have a lovely day ahead.

How was your weekend, what did you get up to?

Are you good in those sort of medical 'emergencies', do you freak out a bit like me?
(I know I'm going to have to get used to it, what with having an active little boy etc - Ek!)

Have a great Monday,

Front of house & garden - before and after

Here are the before and after pics of our little house and front garden!
The before photos were taken when we found out we had just had our offer accepted on 'The Crappy House'. This was the nickname we called the house when we were looking at it to buy.

Before



During
That's the huge skip bin which was filled with the contents of our front garden including the grass on the council strip to the left which was a hotch potch of different grass varieties and just never did well. We got a bobcat driver in and he just ripped everything to shreds, pulled trees out roots and all it was amazing but very dusty!

After




Before
The garden in front of the house was all mulch and broken roof tiles!!!




After
Now beautiful Sir Walter buffalo grass, stepping stone paths and garden beds with paved edges. Lots of space for William to play cricket one day.



Before
I didn't like any of the existing trees and plants they had in the front garden. There were palms, hibiscus, lavender, azaleas with a leaf disease to name a few, so we wanted to start again with a blank canvas.


After (see Minky walking down the path?)
As you can see, we painted over the mission brown soon after we moved in. It was everywhere from the window frames, garage trim, letterbox post, the railings up to the house... ahhh!



Before


During


After


Before


After
The magnolias are said to grow to 10mts in 10 years which should look lovely framing the driveway.

You can just see the baby lavender plants next to the buxus and our rose bush and frangipani trees.

We would like to get a little white bird bath to put in this garden bed which should look quite cute next to the house.

As you can see we've only mulched the right hand side of the garden beds and the beds against the house. (My car decided it didn't want to shift out of Park at the ANL nursery where Glen was getting more mulch yesterday. We've had to get my car towed to the Subaru Service Centre this morning and the trailer is still stuck at the nursery!)

We plan to put a white garden arbour in between the two beds with the stepping stone path leading to the front door. We will grow jasmine up over the arbour for some more greenery.


I can't wait till the Murrayas grow up into a nice thick hedge at the fence line!

We are trying to decide if we should put a white picket fence up or even just white picket gates to go across the driveway and the arbour when the hedges have grown a bit more so that William can't run onto the road so easily.
What do you think??? Fence, gates, just hedges?

So that's our little garden tour for today. It might not look like much but after all the digging, planting, painting and planning we are quite proud of the change.

I hope you have a great start to the week,

Sunday Rose

No not Keith and Nicole's daughter but the pretty roses I picked on Friday which are just opening up today. So beautiful.

Have a lovely Sunday,

Roasted pumpkin salad with honey and balsamic dressing

As the cooler weather is approaching us here in Sydney, it's nice to get into more hearty salads. And I think this Roasted pumpkin and spinach salad hits the mark.

I have made it a few times before but today will be a bit different.
I am making a variation of this salad for our ladies church group lunch that we are having at my friend's house down the road today. And instead of using the Baby Spinach (which I LOVE) I will be using my own produce! YAY!

Sorry, I couldn't be bothered rotating the photo.

This is a small sample of the lettuce we have been growing in our veggie garden the past month and I'm so excited as it's been growing like crazy lately with more than I know what to do with. So into the salad bowl it will go, along with a few shallots thrown in for good measure too :)

I will have to take a pic of our veggie garden to show you sometime soon; as it is Glen's baby with a Fort Knox-like security system to keep the little furry intruders out.

So back to my salad...
I'll be using our home-grown lettuce, pumpkin I roasted last night, pine nuts I toasted last night and I thought I would sprinkle some feta on top too. And below is the dressing recipe.

Honey and balsamic dressing

• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Yum, I hope it turns out well and is enjoyed.
And I hope that you have a lovely day too!!!

Flowers for our garden

Yesterday we spent some time planning the next stage of our front garden landscaping project.
I am tempted to show you before and after photos already because the change that has occurred will SHOCK YOU! hehehehe!

But I will wait till our new plants are in as the makeover will be even more amazing then. (I'm trying to make it sound very dramatic aren't I?!?)

Here are the plants which we have decided on, and will be putting in over the Easter weekend if all goes to plan.

Gardenias
Image via here

5 Magnolia Trees
Image via here

Lots of Lavender
Image via here

Hedges of Murraya
Image via here

We already have box hedges which we planted in the last stage and we have kept our two roses and the Frangipani trees in front of the house.

What do you think, can you picture it already???

Thank you for all your get well wishes, I am feeling SO much better today. The same bug seems to be going around and a few people have taken a week to get over it so I am very lucky it's only been a few days for me.

I hope you have a lovely start to the week today,