Hello All!

Welcome to my blog! My name is Stephanie, I am 27 years old, and I reside in sunny southwest Florida. I live on a mere quarter acre and I am a beginner gardener and avid crafter. I am also a full time student with a BA in less than a year! Woohoo!

My husband and I purchased our first home last year and have had a blast crafting, decorating, and now gardening. I plan to share all of these experiences with you in hopes that we can be some inspiration. By being novices at most everything, we will undoubtedly be the collective guinea pig so that everyone may learn from our mistakes. We would also love feedback and suggestions from you so that you may inspire us in return.

                                     

Okay, I am literally in the beginning stages of gardening. I have purchased seeds from Burpee, Gurneys, and The Seed Kingdom. I started planting my seeds in January (we have an early season in Florida) and I have done one large planting each month since (it’s March now). When we first purchased our home we had several citrus trees in our backyard. I say this past tense because I had to make the heartbreaking decision to remove them. They were extremely misplaced by being right next to our screened in back porch and also under the shade of our live oak trees in the backyard so that they never received proper sun and became diseased. However, I replaced these trees in proper areas with new, already blossoming trees from HD. I immediately purchased a key lime lemon tree combo but we took too long to replant this tree and the lemon tree ended up taking over the key lime tree and in turn, it became our back porch lemon tree – or should I say the cats lemon tree.

Sookie (right) allowing Doja (left) in her lemon tree barrel.
They think they are cute ;)

So, for Florida Arbor Day this year we planted a new key lime and lemon tree in addition to a new orange tree. They are doing extremely well and are even blossoming a bit too much for their sizes. We added supports until they can become more established.

My husband is an amazing woodworker and made me a four-tier garden bed on wheels to put on our patio. He was originally going to make me an additional one, but instead we decided to go all the way. So, we will instead be building raised beds on the other side of our back porch. I am super excited about this project and I will post the transformation as it happens. In the meantime, I will update you on the seedlings that I currently have and the others that are still germinating.
I originally wanted to purchase Cow Pots but my local garden center only had Jiffy Strips, which I felt were fine with Organic Miracle Gro. I knew that I had to have biodegradable pots for the seedlings that were supposed to be directly planted and to avoid the stress caused by replanting for the other plants. I labeled each pot and also dated them so that I had an exact time frame for each plant because germination lengths vary. Here are the original few which have grown exponentially.

I left town for four days to visit family in Louisville and my husband managed to kill 50% of the seedlings so he ordered me the plant form of most of them :P ! From this situation, we can see who will be taking care of the plants and who will not be touching them again ;)

 

My garden bed only contains one cherry tomato plant that was purchased as a baby a little over a month ago and has grown so full and fast that it gives me hope for the rest of my plants once it is time for them to be planted.

Here is the plant as of today:

As you can see from a previous photo I planted garlic cloves from a head that was in my refrigerator into a regular kitchen bowl as an experiment and they took off. I now have them planted into their permanent container:

My original five cloves have grown so much that I have had to trim the leaves which I used in a recipe and they were quite delicious. The other five cloves I planted a few weeks ago are already sprouting. I used advice found on the internet and planted the largest cloves from the head. I plan to replant cloves from the head I will receive from this planting and continue this process indefinitely.
Another plant I planted from kitchen scraps were my onions, which I planted in my front yard garden bed a few months ago as an experiment. It has produced about five bulbs. For my onions in my container, I planted them from seeds. However, I think I will use the kitchen scrap method again next time since I did not even really attend to them and they grew so well.

My husbands plant massacre can really be witnessed with these onions.

As you can tell by now, I am also attempting container gardening.
Here is the list of the plants I plan on growing:
Luffa Gourds, Eggplants, Summer Squash, Zucchinis, Peas, Green Beans, Black Beans, Red Beans, Slicing Cucumbers, Pickle Cucumbers, Various Hot Peppers, Asparagus, Sweet Potatoes, Potatoes, Container Corn, Porterhouse Tomatoes, Floridade Tomatoes, Carrots, Pak Choi, Spinach, Mesculin Mix, Lettuce, Broccoli, Kale, Loganberries, Strawberries, and Grapes. Yeah, I may have bitten off more than I can chew. For the asparagus I ordered two year old Jersey Knight and for the Grapes I ordered one year old seedless Concord. I plan on doing a couple crafting projects, especially for my herbs – which is another extremely long list. I will update you as everything happens which will be quite a bit within the next two weeks. Wish us luck!

Faux Carriage Garage Door Curb Appeal

One of the fun and rewarding projects my husband and I completed was our garage door. This project added major curb appeal to our drab gray door with old-style Florida-retiree sunrise/sunset window inserts. I’ll stop describing and let the picture do that for you.

As you can see, our plastic lights were also done for and we seemingly had a dent on the door.
On top of the gray, we had an off-white trim around our home that only added to the dreariness. Like I stated previously, this is our first home and I am a full-time student; meaning, we are strapped for cash. We clearly could not buy a new door and also paint our entire house.

The First Problem: The drab gray.

The Solution: PAINT! We purchased the most pure white paint without gloss that we could find, from the Po (my affectionate nickname for the Home Depot :P ). The one we found was BEHR 1-GAL.ULTRA PURE WHITE EXTERIOR PAINT for $30.97. We also painted our off-white trim to match. The best part is that we did it all with one gallon! For price considerations, the paint brushes cost about $7.

The Second Problem: The ugly window inserts (ugly in my opinion and only because they do not go with our theme).

The Solution: Pop them out! The inserts popped right out and all that was needed was a stepladder and screwdriver.

We were then left with beautiful square windows! If you do not have windows Home Depot also sells Faux Windows for $99.

The Third Problem: That ugly “dent”.

The Solution: That “dent” was actually not a dent and was caused by a broken hinge on the door. We purchased the new one for about $5 which looked like this:

The Fourth Problem: Those ugly lights! They were original with the house (2001) and plastic. In Florida, plastic probably lasts 1/4 of the time it does elsewhere. See for yourself.

The Solution: We were really liking the pure white theme so we purchased three Hampton Bay brand, metal and glass outdoor lights at $39.97 a piece.

The Last Problem: We needed to add a little spunk to our garage door.

The Solution: We purchased a faux garage carriage door kit. Here is the link: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Crown-Bolt-Black-Traditional-Decorative-Garage-Hardware-Kit-10011/203233029

The final product:

Before and After:

Of course you do not have to go to the extent we did, but any of these changes will add some major curb appeal to your home.

Happy crafting!