I'm A Winner! Part One!

I've actually won two (2!) blog giveaways! This one is a vintage quilt block from this giveaway on Giddy Goat. It turns out that she doesn't live too far from me (or, more accurately, I live rather close to the ballpark!) so she dropped it off in my mailbox. What a wonderful surprise! It is really beautiful with gorgeous vintage fabrics. I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet, but I like really like this pillow idea from Tallgrass Prairie Studio.

The Fall Garden

Fall is not the vegetable garden's most beautiful hour. I'd bet many gardeners wouldn't dare post photos of the messiness of the end of the season. But I love it in all its over-grown, jumbled craziness. I actually leave my garden standing throughout winter and clean it all up in spring, when I'm itching to start it all over again. I love the winter interest of the garden covered in snow. The sunflower is very important to the winter birds. I see Goldfinches on it year 'round!

Fall is also when gardeners reflect on what they did wrong and what they did right. So here are my "Lessons Learned"
1. Don't grow it if you won't eat it (unless it's really pretty). For our family that means turnips, cucumbers and cabbage. The space would have been better used for spinach, lettuce, peas and beans.
2. Our family can't have enough of: peas, beans, tomatoes, peppers, spinach, lettuce. Grow more!
3. Plant outside earlier. I always like to start seeds indoors, but honestly they never do well once transplanted. This year I planted everything from seed directly into the garden and I had great success. I could have been more successful had I planted earlier (I'm still harvesting my first ripe tomatoes - it's October in Wisconsin! way too late...) I have raised beds so next year I will experiment with plastic sheets of some sort pulled across the top of the beds.
6. Thin your seedlings! Ugh, no more itsy-bitsy carrots and radishes!
7. Reseed the lettuce and spinach after harvesting.
8. Harvest the broccoli before it flowers! (although the flowers are really pretty)

And my "I'm so proud of you" list:
1. Gourds - really hard to grow and I have a bumper crop!
2. Tomatillos - but they grow like weeds in my yard, so nothing to be proud of except that I was able to reign them in a bit
3. Corn - I managed to harvest 2 ears, but they look so dramatic in the garden!
4. Square Foot Gardening - it's not a gimmick, it really works, although next year I will plan better.

I can't wait for next year!

Still Working on the Dining Room

The chairs have been painted and are in use and the table has been refinished.

Originally we planned to stain the table a dark walnut, but I had a change of heart early in the project. It's an old (if you consider the 1980s old) country-style pine table - solid and heavy as...heck. It has a lot of character, some probably added at the factory before shipping and the rest added by us. It really needed to be refinished so I thought we'd update the entire room with a dark-stained table and white chairs.

Well, after stripping off most of the old finish and looking at the beautiful color of the pine, I just couldn't change the color. It's so rich and orangey-yellow and gorgeous. So I bought a spray can of matte polyurethane and left it as is - warts and all (actually, stains, marker and some of the old finish and all). We LOVE the way it turned out, very rustic, very much like raw wood. I had to change some of my ideas for the room (the color of the chairs and curtains, for example) but I'm flexible and actually had wanted to go with a colorful room all along - I just thought it might be too much. I just love it so much. We're still working on the curtains and the china cabinets.

The end chairs were sold to us by a friend at his rummage sale (for $3 a piece) and I sooo wish I had a before picture of them. They were blond wood with a faux green marble vinyl seat cover. Underneath the chairs they say "Room 209" and they most likely came from a mid-priced hotel chain - I can so see them in the corner by the round table with the lamp. I spray painted them and recovered the seats with one of my thrift store fabric finds.

Close up of the fabric, a very small blue hounds-tooth pattern (more blue than this photo would have you believe):

Tomatillos (and some tomatoes and a pumpkin)

For those wondering what a "ripe" tomatillo looks like, look no further. My first post on this blog featured the delicate-looking "lanterns" of the first tomatillos and here they are ready to be picked. Below is a bowl of picked tomatillos ready to be cooked and made into salsa (also a few more tomatoes from my paltry harvest this year).

Below, my pumpkin is finally turning orange. I really thought I was going to have to make do with a green pumpkin this year, but I just needed some patience!

Sentimental Quilts

Mr. Monkeysuit is featuring Sentimental Quilts this week for Quilt Month. I only own two handmade quilts, and both qualify as sentimental. This yellow quilt was a gift for my first born. It is not a crib quilt, but a lap quilt. I love the design and the fact that it is yellow. I understand that quilters shy away from yellow because it is such an attention hog it is hard to match it with other colors. So, the perfect solution? A yellow quilt! When I first received it I planned to hang it and display it. I was promptly scolded by the quilt's maker (a family friend) and told this quilt was made to be used! It is a favorite of all 3 kids and their dolls and I'm so glad we're using it and enjoying looking at it.

The pink quilt was also a gift for my first born, but has a sad story behind it. It is a hand-quilted wholecloth quilt that was made for a baby girl who never quite made it into our world. The family held on to the quilt for more than two decades, two sons and two grandsons and then decided it needed to be passed along to a baby girl. It's so pretty and delicate, I hope you can see the flower pattern in the middle and the prairie point edges.