saving the rex begonias.

Published on by Quandie10 Comments

Good morning from the garden.

This year the Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a first frost date of October 10 for us in the Twin Cities.  It seems a bit hard to believe since it has been in the mid-80’s and humid for the last two weeks.  But I’m heading out to California, and then Vegas, next week and I won’t be back until after the 10th.  So, I decided I’d better pot up my rex begonias and bring them in the house just to be on the safe side.

In case you don’t remember, I planted two really gorgeous rex begonias in my front window box this year.

They did amazingly well in there.

In fact, this has been one of my favorite combination of plants (here’s my post about what all I planted out there this year).

Here’s how everything looked when first planted it in May.

Not terribly exciting, I know.

But here’s the look when it filled out.

As expected, the Blackie sweet potato vine grew like mad.

The white caladium took a while to take off, but once we got some hot and humid weather it filled out nicely.

The Charmed Wine oxalis ended up being overtaken a bit, and the white New Guinea impatiens were almost totally crowded out in the end.

But overall I was very happy with the 2024 window box.

That brings me back to saving those begonias.

There are several different options for overwintering a rex begonia.  First, you can let them die back after the first frost, clean the soil off the tuber, and then store it in a warm dry location over the winter.  I have tried this method twice with caladium and failed miserably both times.

Another option would be to propagate new plants from leaf cuttings, and then nurture those over the winter in pots.  They would be a more manageable size if space is limited in your windowsill.

An even simpler method is to cut a stem off the plant, pop it into a jar of water, keep the water topped up and wait for it to grow some healthy roots.  Then pot that up for the windowsill.

My original plan was to just pot them up and try to keep them alive as houseplants over the winter, but as I was re-potting them I did a little pruning and then decided to put some of those stems in water too.

I admit I’m a little nervous about the houseplant thing after reading this advice from Proven Winners:

“Rex Begonias are a bit more of a challenge for indoor growing, but with a high humidity level can be gorgeous with bright filtered light. These plants like constant moderate moisture, high humidity, and regular fertilization. They do not go dormant, so never allow them to dry out. They are very sensitive to dry roots and quickly decline if not cared for.”

My house is definitely not humid in winter, so I’m going to have to work on that.  My plan is to place them in low tray filled with pebbles and water, sometimes called a humidity tray.

But first I had to pull them out of the window box and pot them up.

And let me tell you, I really had a tough time convincing myself to pull them out.  They looked so good, I hated to mess that up.

I was surprised to find that neither of them had established very deep roots, so I googled it and sure enough rex begonias have shallow roots that prefer to spread outward rather than down.  Which means I have provided the wrong kind of pot for them.  I should have put them in large shallow pots, rather than deep pots.

Well, strike one.

But I got them potted up and for now they look pretty good.

The one on the left is a tad droopy so far, but the one on the right is standing up perfectly.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

While I was at it, I also decided to re-pot the succulents that were in my newspaper roller for winter.

I overwintered succulents in this container last year and it was a bit of a hassle because I couldn’t water it without making a mess.  Plus it took up a lot of valuable real estate on my window sill.  I have to fit those rex begonias in that spot this year too.

I have to admit that I don’t usually get great results overwintering plants.  I usually do really well until around January, and then I get tired of taking care of them.  I’ve tried overwintering pelargonium (a.k.a. annual geraniums), scented geraniums, oxalis and those succulents last year, all with very limited (or no) success.

I did do well with the streptocarpus last year …

only to kill off all but two of them this summer when we had so much rain.

To be honest, I’m not really sure it’s worth the effort.  It’s far easier to just buy new plants in the spring.  But I’ll give it a shot with these rex begonias and see what happens.

Now, how about you?  Are you planning to try and overwinter any plants this year?  Or do you have experience with overwintering things in years past?  Leave a comment and let me know.

farm fresh pumpkins?

Published on by Quandie12 Comments

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not really into Halloween/Fall decorating.  Unless you count a whisk broom wreath.

One other notable exception is the fairy garden.  I do like to dress that up for the season with a few tombstones and a skeleton rising up from the ground.

Those fairies are a bit ghoulish!

I like to add a few fall touches to the rest of the garden as well with a few mums and ornamental kale here and there, and of course there is my Farmers Market sign.

I consider that fall decor as well.  If you’ve followed me for a while you may remember that this sign is two-sided.  The other side is painted in a more springy/summery green (Dixie Belle’s Kudzu) and has a Flower Market stencil.

I also like to come up with some sort of painted pumpkins every now and then too.

Last year I mostly went neutral.

I painted them in Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage and Sawmill Gravy.  I finished some of the stems using DB’s Gilding Wax, and then added various transfers to them.

I did a few smaller pumpkins using re.design with prima’s Middy label transfers in some very non-traditional fall colors too.

I did something similar back in 2020 with neutral colors and transfers.

I tried my hand at some toile pumpkins back in 2018.

But I found it a bit tricky to apply the toile transfers so I ended up only creating one before discarding that idea.

I ended up selling all of my pumpkins last year except this one …

Perhaps that lovely Dixie Belle Sea Glass color just isn’t ‘fall’ enough for most people.

So I decided to schedule that one for a makeover, and I also pulled out a few other faux pumpkins that were in my stash.

This year I’ve decided to add a little patina to the pumpkins using Dixie Belle Patina Paint.

I started by giving all of them a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Caviar.  You can use any chalk paint as your base coat, or you can use the ‘official’ primer from the Patina Paint line.  I like to use black paint because I find it easiest to then cover up with the Iron patina paint, which is the paint I added next.

It’s important to note that I stipple the Iron paint on with a pouncing motion.  If you brush it on you will inevitably get brush marks, which will then collect the activating spray.  And then they look pretty obvious.

So, I stipple on a first coat of Iron paint and let it dry thoroughly.  Then I stipple on a fresh coat.  Before it had a chance to dry, I also stippled a bit of the Bronze patina paint around the pumpkin stems.  Then I sprayed it all with the Green patina spray while the paint was still wet.

Once the spray dried, I very lightly dry brushed a little more of the Bronze paint on the stems and around the pumpkin just a bit.

Seriously, how cool are these pumpkins?  I love the way they turned out!

One note here.  I painted and sprayed these in the morning, and took these photos that same evening.  Usually the rusty patina (Iron paint and green spray) takes several days to fully appear.  It also continues to develop more over time, especially if the item is out in the elements (you can learn more about that here).

Since I was on a bit of a roll with the fall decor, I decided to do a quick suitcase stencil job too.

This vintage suitcase was one that I had in my occasional sale, but no one snatched it up.  Likely because it has a water stain on the front edge.

But I thought it made the perfect canvas for the Farm Fresh stencil from Dixie Belle, and displaying it standing up rather than in a stack makes that water stain less ‘in your face’.

I stenciled it using Dixie Belle’s Coffee Bean paint and their Best Dang Brush which is my favorite brush for larger stencils.

Now this is my kind of fall decor.

Although ‘farm fresh’ might not be the best description of my patinaed pumpkins, what do you think?  And how would you display this vintage suitcase?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Thank you to Dixie Belle Paint Co for providing all of their products used in these fall makeovers.

a winter project.

Published on by Quandie30 Comments

Do any of you remember back when I said that I was giving away my dollhouse?

That was way back in 2017.  Gosh time flies!  Seven years have flown by in the blink of an eye.

If you weren’t around back then, the story behind the dollhouse is this.  My dad retired early from I.B.M. on his 52nd birthday.  Not only did he have a pension, but I.B.M. also paid for health insurance for both my mom and dad until they were 65, and they gave him an early retirement bonus where they added the amount of social security he would be eligible for at 62 to his pension payment for the next 13 years.  Can you imagine any employer offering that kind of a deal now?  It was too good to pass up.

However, he had been fairly recently transferred to Lexington, KY, and he wasn’t finding much to keep him occupied there.

So when I suggested it might be fun to make a dollhouse, he jumped on the idea with gusto.  It was helpful that there was a really fantastic dollhouse supply store near him in Lexington with owners who quickly became his besties.

It took him about 9 months to finish it, and as you can see, he spared no expense and added every kind of detail imaginable.

He also took photos every step of the way.

I chose all of the colors (egads! what was I thinking?), wallpapers, furniture, etc.  But I was already living here in Minnesota then, so we did everything by phone and/or mail.  Remember when long-distance calls cost money?  And there was no such thing as email?  Or Amazon?  It was a different time for sure.

But anyway … back to giving the dollhouse away.  Flash forward to 2017 and it was just gathering dust out in the carriage house.  I felt like it should go to someone who would appreciate it and take care of it.  So I offered it to my in-laws. They love working with miniatures, so they were happy to have it and planned to refurbish it.

But that never happened.  Instead it ended up just gathering dust at their house too.

Meanwhile, after working on the toy barn makeover back in March …

And then my clock case project back in April …

I kinda got the bug to work in miniature.  So I decided to ask if I could have my dollhouse back.  The in-laws couldn’t have agreed more quickly.  They were clearly happy to see it go.

So last week Mr. Q and I drove out to their place in Wisconsin and brought the dollhouse back home.

I plan to give it a refresh.  It has a bit of a dated vibe, and not in a good way.  So why not give it an update?

I have to point out that the photo above was taken before the dollhouse went to the in-laws.  They subsequently stripped away all of the landscaping, and also repaired the upper level railing.

They had also boxed up all of the contents except for the bed in the master bedroom, and now aren’t sure exactly where that box is.  But that’s OK, I’m calling this a blank canvas.  I can start fresh from scratch with furnishing the interior.  Many of the furnishings were pretty dated, and no longer my style anyway.

But first, I had to get the exterior painted.  I thought it would be easiest to paint the outside while I could still work in my carriage house workshop.  It can get too cold to paint out there as early as October (it’s not heated).

So since I’m taking a two week trip out to visit my mom and go to Disneyland with my sister and niece in just a couple of short weeks, I needed to get cracking.

I’ll have to get all of my paints back into the house before I leave.

The pepto pink with seafoam green and teal trim just wasn’t cutting it for me anymore, even though they were my picks back in the day.

By the way, I had made all of the ‘plants’ using FIMO clay.  I’m not sure if I’ll attempt that again, or try something else in those window boxes this time around.  Stay tuned on that one.

But first, the exterior painting.  Naturally I pulled out my favorite warm white, Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth, for the siding.

As I was painting I quickly realized that my dad had a bit of an advantage.  He was able to paint everything before installing it.  I was never going to be able to get the same level of detail while painting things in place.

So this …

Became this …

I also quickly realized that my dad had a lot more patience for detail work than I do, so I went with just two colors on the exterior rather than four.  Well, technically three if you include the doors which are painted in Dixie Belle’s Gravel Road.  The window trim is painted in Dixie Belle’s French Linen.

But the really fine details like the corbels along the roof line, or the railings on the porch are all just painted in Drop Cloth now.

I also added a French Linen wash to the roof shingles.

  If you’ve never done a wash, it’s super easy.  Just water down your paint until it’s quite thin (like the consistency of 2% milk maybe), brush it on, then immediately wipe it back with a rag.  I really love the subtle change that made to the roof.

I have to admit, this paint job took much longer than I anticipated.  There were so many nooks and crannies!  And so many things to paint around like the ‘galvanized’ downspouts.

By the way, the slate that is around the foundation of the dollhouse came from a field somewhere around my parent’s house.  My dad just went and picked it up from the ground.  The foyer floor is also made out of this slate.

This more subdued color palette is much more my speed now.

I’ll be working on redecorating one room of the dollhouse at a time over the winter.  Eventually I’ll also re-do the exterior landscaping.  We’ll just have to wait and see how that goes.  Will I get tired of it before I finish?  Will it take much longer than I anticipate?  Will it completely blow my budget?  All of the above probably.

In anticipation of the many blog posts that will come out of this, I’ve added a new category to my blog called “mini’s”.  If you’ve never explored the categories, when you’re on a computer you’ll find them over on the right hand side of the screen under “sorted.” .  If you are reading this on your phone you have to tap on a specific blog post (any post), then scroll all the way down to the bottom past any comments and then tap on “sorted.” and select a category.

I’ve already started accumulating some fun decor for the next step in this process.

So be sure to stay tuned to see what I do next.

saving dried flowers for fall and winter.

Published on by Quandie2 Comments

Good morning from the garden!

You probably don’t remember this, but back in September 2022 I harvested and dried big bunches of my panicle hydrangeas.

After using some of them to make wreaths …

 I hung onto the rest to use in winter arrangements.

But I got busy and in the end I never used them in my fall/winter window boxes that year.  I stored them until the following spring, but then as I was cleaning out the carriage house one day I decided that they were just taking up space and I’d never be able to use them all, so I tossed them.

It wasn’t until I was working on my fall/winter window box arrangements last year that I really wished I’d kept them.  What was I thinking?  They were gorgeous and I just threw them away.

Actually, I know what I was thinking.  I was thinking I’d have plenty more come fall again.  And I would have, except I forgot to harvest them at the right time last year.  Instead I left them all on the bushes thinking I could just cut them off when I was ready for them.

That was a mistake.  Over time the hydrangea blossoms that are left on the plant turn brown.

I like to leave some in place for winter interest …

but the brown ones just aren’t as pretty in arrangements as those with some color, so I should have harvested some earlier.

Well, I won’t be making that same mistake this year.

The best time to harvest hydrangeas for drying is when the blooms are just past their prime and starting to dry and/or change color on the bush, and that is about now for the Vanilla Strawberry, Limelight and Little Lime varieties here in my Minnesota garden (FYI, I’ve read that my new Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas will start blooming about a month earlier than the others, so we’ll see about that next year).

After experimenting with a couple of different ways to dry hydrangeas, I’ve found that you don’t need to do anything special.  Just cut them, place them upright in a vase/bucket/basket/crate, and then put that in a dark, dry room.  I put mine upstairs in the carriage house.  There is only one tiny window up there, so it stays relatively dark.

In addition to the hydrangeas, I also decided to cut and dry my astilbe flowers this year.  I had a beautiful crop of them this summer.

I left them on the plant until mid-August when they had turned brown, and then I cut them all and put them in a bucket to fully dry.

I also had a bumper crop of allium this summer.

So I made sure to save those as well.  I also just leave these in the garden until they are dry, and then they just pull right out of the ground with no pruners needed.

I love the way they look like little fireworks.

I plan to use all of these dried flowers in my window boxes for both fall …

and winter …

Let’s hope that I can time those right this year.  I often end up leaving the winter arrangement too late and the dirt freezes solid making it difficult to arrange the dried stems.

And for now I can’t bear to dismantle that gorgeous front window box for fall.

So I may be getting a late start on that one.

How about you?  Do you dry any plants from your garden for winter arranging?

Leave a comment and let me know.

nnK’s dresser.

Published on by Quandie31 Comments

As I was gearing up for my Carriage House sale back in June, my neighbor nnK asked if she could put a dresser in the sale.

So I took a look at it, asked how much she wanted for it, and then bought it myself.

It’s rather plain, but was in great shape.  I thought it would be the perfect canvas for the I.O.D. Joie des Roses transfer.

It’s only taken me nearly all summer, but I finally got ‘er done.

I started by stripping the top of the dresser.  It had a thick, shiny poly finish that didn’t appeal to me so I wanted to take it back to the bare wood and go from there.

While that was underway, I discovered that two of the drawers were missing their runners.  So my neighbor/handyman Ken made a couple of new ones.

Next I gave the rest of the dresser two coats of Dixie Belle’s Putty.

Now it was time to apply the transfer.  I have to admit, I procrastinated a bit on that step.  I was kind of worried that I would mess it up.  The transfer cost me around $40, so I really didn’t want to get it wrong.  I’d seen a few online reviews where people had some issues getting the 8 sheets of the design lined up properly.

In addition, the overall height of the design was about 4″ too tall for my dresser.

But in the end I decided to just go for it.  If I totally shanked it, sure, I’d be out $40, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

I started at the top center of the dresser and worked out from there.  After applying the upper half (or 4 sheets across), I realized that if I just lined up the bottom 4 sheets then the oval medallion at the bottom would get cut off somewhere in the middle.  That would look odd.

So I decided to trim off the upper part of the lower 4 sheets.

The blue line above shows approximately where I trimmed each sheet.  I left enough so that I could slightly overlap the top of each sheet with the sheets that were already applied.

The beauty of this plan is that I didn’t really have to worry about lining up the tops of the last 4 sheets with the bottoms of the top 4 sheets.  I just let them overlap.

I then used the bits that I had cut away to fill in a couple of spots that ended up looking a bit wonky.

It couldn’t have been easier.  In fact, I think it ended up being far easier to use it this way.

As for the top of the dresser, after sanding it smooth I gave it one coat of Varathane’s Early American wood stain followed by a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax.

I had initially planned to go darker … or maybe lighter … but in the end I decided to match the original wood knobs for the dresser.

If you look back at the ‘before’ photo you will see that nnK had switched out the original knobs for some modern stainless steel knobs.  Fortunately, she had hung onto those wood knobs.  In fact, she had even stripped them at some point.

So all I did was give them a coat of clear wax and put them back on.

Once the knobs were on, it made sense to stain the top to match.

I posed the dresser in front of my Little Lime hydrangea, adding some books and an old brass birdcage.

I was then plagued by a photo bomber for a bit …

Lucy is always drawn like a magnet to photo shoots.  She thinks there must be something super interesting going on, so she has to check it out.

But she finally got bored and I was able to finish my photos.

I love how it turned out, but I have to admit that it isn’t really nnK’s style.  She’s probably secretly horrified by what I’ve done to it.  But what do you think?  Leave a comment and let me know.

This dresser is for sale locally so be sure to check out my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details if interested.

Thank you to Dixie Belle Paint Co for supplying the paint and wax used on this project.

garage sale finds.

Published on by Quandie12 Comments

My friend opK and I headed out to the Inver Grove city-wide garage sales last Friday and I found a nice little pile of goodies.

I will say that we stopped off at quite a few of what I like to call ‘you should have gotten a dumpster’ sales.  It always boggles the mind what some people will take the time to set out for a garage sale.  Things like previously worn bras, or stained Tupperware.  I also saw lots of the things that I sent to Goodwill as part of my Swedish Death Cleaning, like cut glass serving bowls and such.

But luckily there were 66 sales to choose from in a semi-concentrated area, so we were able to quickly move on from the stained Tupperware sales (as opK likes to call them) and continue looking for gems amid the rubble.

Let’s take a look at what I brought home.

First up, I found a small black vintage suitcase.

I plan to add a stencil to it for Christmas.  Is that weird?  I’ve done a handful Christmas suitcases in the past, and they can be hit or miss as far as selling them goes.

But I rather love them, so I think I’ll give it a shot.

Next up, this fabulous toolbox.

This one has already been painted and I think the patina on that existing paint job is pretty sweet.  However, it has some stains that I don’t love, so I may just add a quick coat of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth to clean it up.  I’m planning to paint the interior as well, and will probably add some transfers to the exterior.

I snatched up this crystal doorknob at one sale.

I’m not sure yet whether I’m going to actually put it on one of my doors, or take it apart and add bottle brush Christmas trees like this …

Over the years I have replaced the majority of our door knobs with either black or white enamel knobs, but I still have a couple of plain brass knobs on some closet doors in the bedrooms, maybe I’ll switch one of those out for crystal.

I couldn’t resist this minnow bucket

It looks great for fall with the addition of a simple potted mum.

The price was right on this watering can … or is it technically an oil can?  I’m not sure.

Either way, I plan to dress this one up and will likely hang onto it for the next Carriage House sale.  FYI, I’m leaning towards having my sale in mid to late May next year and giving it a garden theme.

I was amazed to spot this next item in someone’s ‘free’ pile.

Won’t that be a fun makeover?  Stay tuned for that!

I also nabbed this kid sized chair, mainly because I love the color.

I’m not at all sure what I’m going to do with it though.

I found some fantastic vintage ornaments at one of the last sales we visited.

The seller told me that they’d belonged to his mother’s grandmother or some such thing (sorry, it was a bit of a convoluted tale) and he estimated they were 100 years old.  One of the boxes has a small label that says “Poland A 346 S 1 doz” on it, so I’m sure these are at least pre-WWII.

There were three broken ones out of 2 dozen, so that wasn’t too bad.  I have replaced the broken ones with others from my stash, cleaned up the boxes and then nestled the ornaments in some Tim Holtz tissue paper.  I plan to sell these at the shop this holiday season (unless someone wants to snatch them up sooner).

It took the last of my cash to buy them, but I think they were worth it.

Find of the day status goes to this next item from that same sale.

It wasn’t a bargain at $15, but I still snatched it up.  I very rarely find these toppers anymore, even at antique stores.  Although this isn’t the prettiest one I’ve ever seen, it will be a great addition to my non-collection that I display in a painted toolbox for Christmas.

All in all, I’d say we had a pretty successful day at the Inver Grove sales.

Which find would have been your favorite?  Leave a comment and let me know.

this was a rough one.

Published on by Quandie12 Comments

Good morning from the garden.

Well … I have to say, this gardening season is coming to a close on a less than stellar note.

It started out great.  Although the deer once again ate most of my tulips, I had some lovely daffodils and grape hyacinths in the spring.

My peonies were gorgeous, although short-lived as usual.

The alliums were lovely this year too.

I had great success with my clematis after fertilizing it in the spring for the first time.

We did end up getting a hail storm at the end of May which damaged a few of my hostas.

Then, things kind of started going downhill from there.  As I’ve mentioned way too many times, we had a really wet summer.  Lots of rain, and lots of wind.  We lost a good sized branch from our pear tree in one storm giving it a lopsided look.

So much scary wind led to my neighbor/handyman Ken having the beautiful maple tree in his backyard removed … leaving a rather sun scorched landscape where once there was a shady oasis.

Everything I have growing in that back perennial bed is looking really stressed now after going from partial shade to full sun.  I’m trying to look at the bright side though, no pun intended.  I was able to put in a row of Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas …

And I plan to re-work that entire “L” shaped perennial bed in the spring, pulling out the shade plants and replacing them with some sun loving things.

Because we’ve had so much wet weather this year, my lilacs have a bad case of leaf spot fungus which causes their leaves to turn brown and fall off.  This is happening all over our area, and many lilacs look far worse than mine.

The wet weather has also given us a massive crop of earwigs and slugs, and they’ve made mincemeat of my hostas.

A week or two ago I mentioned that at this point the panicle hydrangeas were the only thing still looking good in my garden.

I think it was the very next day that we had a torrential rainfall that practically flattened them.

The giant flowers were so heavy after being saturated with rain.  There was one large section that broke off completely, but I was hoping the rest would bounce back as they dried out.  Unfortunately, they weren’t able to stand back up again.

That being said, they are still gorgeous.  Just a little droopy.

And that brings me to my most recent discovery.  It appears that I have jumping worms.

If you remember, I posted about jumping worms back in May.  They are a non-native earthworm that strips the nutrients from top soil.  And according to Ramsey County they are an emerging problem in our area.  They can be introduced to your garden in mulch, compost and potted plants.

Little did I realize at the time that I would end up having a problem with them myself.

It was the beginning of August when I started to notice that I seemed to have far more worms in my garden than usual.  I thought it was just due to the wet weather.  But then I noticed that my soil was looking funny.  Sort of crumbly.

Then I realized that a patch of creeping sedum that I had was dying off.  I could pull it right out of the ground, it didn’t seem to have any roots left at all.  As I was pulling it, I noticed that the worms were in abundance in that area, and the soil that held the sedum just crumbled away.

Now, creeping sedum is shallow rooted by nature, and this particular patch was growing over flagstone.  So, it was extremely shallow rooted.

That being said, I’d had that patch of sedum for a couple of decades or more.  Here it is in happier days.

It grew right over that flagstone.  And now it’s completely dead.

I’ll also point out, as you can see, that the English ivy is still doing just fine.  It can literally grow without any soil at all, so apparently it’s a good choice if you have jumping worms.

So far the creeping sedum is the only obvious victim of the worms in my garden, but I don’t know what the future will hold for the rest of the plants.  Fortunately many of my hostas have been there for a long time and are really well rooted in.  Hopefully that will save them.

Also, I’ve read that the jumping worm population grows exponentially in a wet year v. a dry one.  So it’s possible that this isn’t the first year I’ve had them, but just the first year that they have been this bad.  This summer’s wet weather strikes again.

The problem is, so far there are no definitive solutions for eradicating jumping worms.  I’m not going to go into all of the details here, but if you are looking for more info on jumping worms and possible ways to deal with them you can check out this link.

I’m going to have to do some experimenting to try and mitigate their damage.  Also, I will no longer be sharing plants from my garden with others which is a bit of a bummer.  But better safe than sorry, right?

As as sidebar, if you grabbed one of my sedum cuttings at the Carriage House sale, don’t worry.

The cuttings were taken from the tops of a taller sedum (not a creeping variety), and potted up in new potting soil.  They would not have contained jumping worms or their eggs.

So at this point, I’m ready to throw in the towel on gardening.  I’ve always struggled with garden burnout around now, but this has been a rough one for sure.  I think I’ll be happy to button things up for a long winter’s nap.  I’m sure next spring I’ll be ready to face it all again.

How about you?  Are you ready to call it good for gardening season this year?  Leave a comment and let me know.

just taking up space.

Published on by Quandie19 Comments

You may have noticed that I’ve been slowing down a bit lately when it comes to sharing projects here on the blog.  That’s because I’ve been focused on something else.  Swedish death cleaning.

Let me explain.  First off, if you haven’t heard of Swedish death cleaning, the most basic description is that it’s the process of getting rid of stuff that you no longer need/use, and that no one in your family is going to want after you die.  The idea is to save your family from having to clear out a lifetime of stuff once you’re gone.

I haven’t actually read the book, or seen the TV series, so I really don’t know much about how it’s supposed to work.  But for me, I just realized that our house was full of stuff that we no longer use and that no one (family or otherwise) is going to want when Mr. Q and I are gone.  It will be so much easier to just gradually start to go through it without having any sort of deadline.

Now, don’t worry.  This wasn’t precipitated by any kind of ill-health, nobody is going to die any time soon, but I did turn 60 on my last birthday so I can’t pretend like I’m ‘middle-aged’ anymore either.

So far I’ve gotten rid of two van loads of stuff that went to the Goodwill, a few electronics that will go to the hazardous waste facility, and one entire metal filing cabinet full of stuff.

The first thing to go was old paperwork.

That was a bit of a process since it involved looking everything over to determine what should be shredded and what could just be thrown away.  I had tax returns going back 20 years.  Those got shredded.  I also had a huge stack of various instruction manuals for appliances, and in many cases I no longer even had the appliance.  Those all got thrown.  If I need to know how to use something, I can look it up online.  I had old copies of resumes, and other work related paperwork although I’ve been retired for going on three years now.  Those got tossed as well.

Once all the paperwork was gone, I realized that the cabinet could go too.  We put it out at the curb with a ‘free’ sign on it one evening, and the next morning we woke up to find that someone had taken two of the drawers.  Argh!  What the heck?  What were we going to do with a filing cabinet that was missing two drawers?

Fortunately, the person came back later and left a note saying that they wanted the cabinet, but had to find a truck.  We offered to deliver it and were happy to see it go.

Another huge category of discarded stuff was serving dishes.  I had serving dishes of all kinds; large glass bowls, glass platters, silver-plate items.

I can’t even remember the last time we used most of them.  I kept the serving dishes that we use at Thanksgiving, and a couple of platters for bringing brownies to a pot-luck, but the rest went.

I also got rid of some barware.

We just don’t entertain like we used to.  Plus that wine opener was a duplicate, do I really need two of them?

I did hesitate for a second over those really adorable stir sticks.

Aren’t they fun?  But we’ve never actually used them.  They’ve just been gathering dust in a cupboard.  They got the ax too.

There were some items that we never use that didn’t get sent to Goodwill though.  Instead, I decided it was time to use them.

That included my ‘good’ silverware.

OK, I know, it’s a bit dated.  But maybe it’s just old enough to be called vintage?  Well, probably not.  I think it’s pretty though, and it’s a much better quality than the cheap silverware we were using every day.  So I sent the cheap silverware to the Goodwill and filled the silverware drawer with this stuff.

Not only did we donate several van-loads of goods, we also filled up our trash can for weeks.  I had a huge box of old photos that I went through and pared down.  Remember when we used to get film developed?  And you could get doubles?  I always got doubles!  And probably 85% of those photos weren’t even good ones.

I even threw away my high school year books.  I never look at them, why keep them?

I did draw the line at my scrapbooks.

Although I don’t look at them all that often, I just can’t quite bring myself to part with them.  Perhaps when I’m in my 80’s I’m going to want to go back and look through them and remember how absolutely frigid it was sailing through the Wachau Valley in November 2014.

Speaking of scrapbooks, it was time to get rid of scrapbooking supplies that I was never going to use.  I think 2014 might have been the last time that I seriously worked on a scrapbook.  I have done a handful of smaller projects since then, like the index card project from 2019 or the altered recipe box scrapbook from last year.

So I am still hanging onto some of my favorite supplies.

A goodly amount of expired jars of spices also made their way to the trash can, along with other expired items from the pantry.

My Watkins spices were still good though.

I’m definitely not done yet.  I still have quite a few cupboards and drawers to go through.  And although I cleaned out the carriage house for my sale back in June, I need to go back and do a much more thorough job out there.

That job might require a trip to the dump.  Does anyone need any antique bed side rails?  Because I have half a dozen of them in there.  When you turn beds into benches, you no longer need the side rails.

I always feel like a weight has been lifted when I get rid of stuff that is just taking up space.

That being said, I still have all of my non-collections.  I have a rule about them, I only collect things that I’m going to display and/or use on a regular basis.  So I still have my ironstone …

And I still have my vintage alarm clocks and cameras, as well as my tiny furniture.

I’m pretty sure that no one in my family is going to want any of my non-collections after I’m gone.  And technically, I don’t ‘need’ or ‘use’ these things.  So I want to add one extra caveat to the Swedish death cleaning concept.  If the items will make for an amazing estate sale, then they are also worth hanging on to 😉

Now, how about you?  Is your house full of items that will make for a spectacular estate sale?  Or are there lots of things that are just taking up space?  Leave a comment and let me know.

the rose botanical cupboard.

Published on by Quandie10 Comments

I popped over to my friend Amy’s garage sale last Friday and came away with some fun stuff!

Some of you may remember when I shared a tour of Amy’s house back at Christmas 2021.

I absolutely love her style, and find it really inspiring, so be sure to check that out if you haven’t seen it.

First up I purchased this pair of kid-sized wooden schoolhouse chairs from Amy.

I plan to dress these up for Christmas with paint and stencils like others I’ve done in the past (here, here and here).

I also purchased this amazing Mill Work sign.

At 8′ wide, it’s pretty large, but I’ve always been looking for something like this to make an impact on the large blank wall of barnwood paneling in our dining room.

Finally, I grabbed a few different cupboard doors to turn into signs including this one.

I loved the crackled paint and that vintage glass knob.

I wanted to keep the crackle, but clean things up a bit. So I gave it a good scrub, and then just applied one coat of Dixie Belle’s Putty.  Once dry, I sanded over it to reveal the crackle and some of that original white.

After vacuuming up the dust, I added a couple of roses from the I.O.D. Rose Botanical transfer set.  After those were applied, I finished everything off with a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax.

It was a super simple makeover, yet quite satisfying.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let me know.

a whisk broom wreath.

Published on by Quandie24 Comments

Remember my non-collection of whisk brooms?

I’ve used them as props in so many photos!  This next one being one of my all-time favorites.

I initially started accumulating them because I wanted to make a wreath, but even after I had enough for that I still hadn’t made one.

So I put price tags on them and put them in my Carriage House sale back in June.

Maybe one or two of them sold, I’m not sure, but most of them didn’t.  For that matter, that really cool bucket didn’t sell either.

So I said to myself, ‘you know what?  I’m going to make that damn wreath after all!’

First I went to pinterest to see if I could find any examples of a whisk broom wreath, but I didn’t find anything there.  Next I just simply googled ‘whisk broom wreath’ and I ended up on Ki Nassauer’s Lived-In Style online membership magazine.

Now I’ve been a fan of Ki for a long time.  Back in the day she had an occasional sale over on the other side of the Twin Cities.  She also was the original inspiration behind the Bachman’s Idea House (back when it was awesome).  She has since moved away from Minnesota, and the Idea House was never the same.

The Lived-In Style online magazine requires a membership fee of $6 per month.  Normally I don’t go for that sort of thing (because you sign up and are perpetually charged each month until you finally remember to cancel your membership three years down the road, yada, yada, yada), but I decided to bite the bullet and pay my $6 to see if there were any good tips on making the wreath.

Comically, when I finally got to the article the instructions were as follows:

“Arrange them on a wire wreath form, with the handles pointed toward the center and the threaded areas aligned as much as possible. Wire the brooms to the frame.”

And that was literally it.  It was one short paragraph, with one photo.

So I gathered up my supplies …

and then started laying out my brooms.

I started by spacing out the larger brooms, and then I filled in with the smaller ones.

I did get one take-away tip from Ki, to align the threaded areas on the brooms.  I hadn’t done that before the photo above, but I did later.

The next challenge was to figure out exactly how to wire them to the form without the wires showing on the front.  I began with a lightweight floral wire.

For the life of me, I could not get that wire through the brooms.  I fiddled around with it for a while, but no go.  So I switched to a heavier weight wire, but again it was a no go.

So I decided to keep it simple and just use hot glue.

I whipped out the tackle box that holds my hot glue supplies and got to work.

I found that I needed to weigh down the wire frame to make good contact with the brooms as the glue hardened, so I just used a couple of bricks and a heavy rock for that.

And that was it.

I flipped it over and hung it on the potting shed.

Now, I’m not at all sure how well the hot glue is going to hold up to the elements.  We’ll see if it lasts the entire fall season or not.  Also, as you can see, it took 13 whisk brooms to make a complete wreath, so accumulating that many might take some time.  Especially if you’re hoping to find them for $1 each at garage sales.

But I think it’s a fun and unique fall decoration.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let me know.