Getting Our Hands Dirty

This weekend Nick and I took a trip to the Home Depot for some miscellaneous supplies and got to work on projects around our home. For our backyard, we bought five bags of mulch to cover the weeds and mud. Nick spread the mulch around while I painted the white interior door we bought to use as my new desktop. We also bought a couple small chains to hang a light fixture that I'm using to grow my seedlings. I spent most of the day organizing our guest room/office, condensing the couple boxes we have left from the move, and hanging decorations above my new desk. We still have to secure the tabletop to the cabinets (you'll get the idea when you look at the pictures), but otherwise the room is pretty much complete!

I had a lot of fun putting the decorations together. The frames are from the dollar store and Ikea and the mirrors were a gift from Jodi a few years ago. The flower photo is one that I took a while back of some poppies and I painted the other flowers with acrylics when I lived in Rohnert Park. The other pictures are actually postcards from Ikea. This entire set-up only cost us $25 for the door--we had everything else on hand already.
To the right of the desk/under the window is where I'm growing my seedlings. Because the light was on when I took the picture, everything is over-exposed. But I think you get an idea of the setup.

I am trying to sprout cauliflower, lettuce, onions, chives, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, parsley, basil, rosemary, and sage. I've got seedlings growing in eggshells, milk cartons, egg cartons and plastic tomato & strawberry containers. In addition to my indoor sprouts, I decided to begin my outdoor gardening today, too. I planted some lettuce, catnip and cauliflower in the ground as a sort of experiment. I'm not sure how good the soil is, so we'll see what happens. I also hung my "over-the-door shoe hanger" outside today. I saw this idea online somewhere and thought it'd be perfect for our backyard because we do not get a lot of sun. The little sun we do get shines against our back fence, so this setup should be perfect for our circumstances. I planted basil, chives, rosemary, sage and parsley seeds in the top pockets.

 There are still several pockets left that I'll fill with my indoor seedlings once they get stronger. This is the first year that I have had my own garden, so it is a giant experiment. We'll see how it goes!
I had some good company while I was planting, but then he started doing some digging of his own and got in trouble. He had to watch from inside after that.

Here's one last picture from our second bedroom. The futon sits on the wall to the right of the window/my seedlings.

Now it's time for class! We'll share a picture from the auction Nick and I went to in Eugene last night once we get them sent to us. We had a lot of fun and got to dress up in western garb. More soon!