Just checking in.

We had a lovely weekend even if Sunday turned out cloudy and cold. 

Saturday was warm even if the breeze had a coolness to it. That just made it more comfortable to work outside.  I weeded the front flowerbed and decided to plant my broccoli there. It gets great morning sun then when it is hotter in the afternoon it gets the shade.  We shall see how the broccoli plants like it there.  I have a small lot so I must make the best use of space that I can.

This is the before…



Yes, my front yard looks a bit shabby still. 

My husband was helping me Saturday by hauling wheelbarrow loads of compost from one spot to another and he perused the homeliness of this front space and asked with a disdainful curl to his lip, ”Does it always look like this at this time of year or is this year particularly bad?” 

It does look bad this year but you would too if you had 6 feet of snow sitting on top of you for several months!

He is more used to it looking like this, and this is not really up to par. 



This is my broccoli in the ground.  It is small and if the deer will leave it alone it will fill in fast(note hoof print in ground, already, and I am missing a broccoli plant) , also we need the sun to warm back up.  We had starting temps in the mid-30’s this morning…brrr. Last week it stayed in the 40’s at night.



So slowly I am getting the yard tidied.  I cut back my broken down Butterfly Bush, it should recover quite nicely.  My tulips out front are starting to bloom and so are my Hyacinths. 

My tomatoes in the greenhouse are more than ready to be planted, but I must wait until after the 3rd weekend of May.  Our last projected frost date.  Lots of Brandywines, some Marzano’s, Camp Joy cherry and my favorite sauce tomato, Costoluto Genovese.



My English Delphiniums are coming along, I have only lost one seedling and that was my own fault, it dried out and keeled over. 

When I get so many plants going in my greenhouse some get overlooked.  I need to get rid of what I am not keeping then it will be more manageable.  Plus it got fairly warm last week, 2 days it hit 80 degrees here so it really heated up in the greenhouse. 

This is one of the mixed colors but my blue ones I started a couple weeks after these are catching up quickly.



The chicks are getting big, the 4 to the right are the Black Copper Marans and the 2 on the left are the Welsummers.  All lay the darker brown eggs.  I can’t wait until they start to lay to see how dark.  Of course, some of the Black Copper Marans may well be roosters.  I know one is as he is noticeably more aggressive than the others. 



I now have them in the pen with the older hens. I only keep them cordoned off so the big hens do not eat their special food and visa versa. 

You can see the fencing separating them in the background where the green waterer is

I have let the hens out a couple days this last week to forage and scrounge for worms, they love pecking the green sprouts (be gone weeds!) and roaming.  I keep an eye out for local dogs (I need my yard fenced), coyotes or other chicken killin’ critters!

I was thrilled to see that not all my Raspberry Ripple geraniums were taken out by a weird fungus.  This one survived, thankfully.  I love the fun sprinkles on the bloom.



Yesterday afternoon I tested the Chalk Paint I want to use on my potting bench. 

I am painting a sign using the leftover cedar fence boards from building our potting bench and I base painted it with the Old White and some of the Country Gray.
I have to say I am already loving it. 

 Karen at Classic Wall Finishes explained to me that the Chalk Paint weathers beautifully outside with no protective finish, like wax or the varathane I use.  I am anxious to see how that does go.  I will only use the paint on my potting bench with no other product and give it a test run. 

Well, today I need to get all my shopping and errand running done.  I have a large order of signs on my docket and I need some painting supplies.  I need to make out the weeks menu so meals are easy and I can be sure to have all ingredients on hand then the rest of the week I can focus on painting. 

Happy Monday!

To see my signs just click the photo below, it is a link to my website.

I goofed up my last POST!

Somehow, someway I goofed up the html in my rose tutorial post.  It seems it is not only painting tutes that I can completely destroy! 

Anyways, Blogger will not allow me to add the links to the linky parties I wish to share on so I am going the long way around that if you don’t mind..

Here is the sign I was sharing yesterday that I attempted to do the tutorial with. Now it has the lettering added…



Here is the last photo yesterday that I am using as the one to link with to the parties, I am going to use this post to link with so I can make sure and link back to the parties and play fair.  To go to the tutorial…click on this photo!



Or click here…How NOT to do a Rose Painting tutorial

Okay, let’s see if it works now…

How NOT to do a Rose Painting Tutorial!

As some of you may be aware I have stated I would do a tutorial of painting one of my roses.  I am sharing this post with you all to show that I am trying but I think doing step by step tutorials is going to be a trial and error event for me for quite some time. 
UPDATE: TO VIEW THE POST ON HOW I PAINT A ROSE JUST CLICK HERE.
I need to learn to snap photos with my left hand (or wait until we are able to get our tripod residing in Idaho at the moment and a remote for my camera) before I can produce a quality tutorial.  I did start out okay…
First I showed how I sketch out the pattern (this is for a sign that was ordered from my website recently) I know it is faint but I really don’t want the lines to show up in the finished product and I just need guidelines.

And I move on to showing how I base the leaves.  I do a couple coats or sometimes three to get the paint good and opaque. 
First stroke..

Second stroke…voila..a leaf!

Then I get going and paint all the leaves in.  See how much more opaque they are…I did not say they were great, just opaque so no critics here, I admit to being a sloppy painter and yet it all comes together in the end!

Now I was thinking, so far so good. Right? 
Nope, I completely forgot to show you HOW to hold the brush, load the brush and squiggle on the u strokes…

Then I really got bad, here I was trying to hold the camera and take the photo in my left hand and the brush in my right.  I never realized cameras are generally set up for right handed people.  I think my hand was covering something important while taking the shot, or maybe it was blocking the flash, I was so involved in trying to do two things at once I did not notice.

I continued putting down layers of petals and somehow did not check on how my photos were turning out as I went along.

And in this one I am not sure how I got a clear shot! But you can see the layers starting to form the rose.

There’s that mischievous shadow again.

Here I am starting on the second rose…then I gave up on photos completely.

I went on to finish it up with no more photos.  So sorry I can’t do two things at once…but it was good practice.  You can see the inspiration photo in the background.  This one they wanted the roses to be a darker more intense pink.  Now to add the wording and we will be finito!

Maybe I should go straight for trying to learn how to do video tutorials instead.
UPDATE: TO VIEW THE POST ON HOW I PAINT A ROSE JUST CLICK HERE.
A VIDEO SHOWING ME PAINTING A ROSE:  ROSE VIDEO

One thing is for certain, I learned I cannot man my camera with my left hand.  Tutorials are a lot of fun to look at but they are rather a lot of work as well.
I received my paint in the mail for my potting bench, now I am mulling over how exactly I wish to do it.   With the 70’s degrees + temps the past few days the wet cedar fencing boards should’ve dried out.  They were dripping wet as we screwed them together when building the bench. 
I was going to paint a design on the back then decided I would rather put a sign on it, then I can switch it out as I desired.
Last but not least, I wanted to say I enjoy all your comments and compliments.  I do try to reply to most of you that are not ‘no-reply blogger’ and I was answering those too before I figured out it was going no where but sometimes life gets in the way and I don’t get to it.  I just wanted to be sure and let you know it is not that I don’t appreciate you all.  Life is most likely going to get crazy for awhile and I will pop in as I can.  There is tons more projects I want to tackle and checking in here and sharing gives me added impetus to get them done. 
So come back and see me when you can and I promise to keep trying to get a decent rose tutorial done for you.
Until we meet again….


Check out my website for more signs..