nature

Beach Fun and Finds

September 27, 2018 by Jessica 3 Comments

This summer has been one for the books! We took a lot of time during this transition to enjoy our new surroundings and that meant quite a few beach trips. The girls really enjoyed going so we were inspired to go at least once a week. While they enjoyed playing in the sand and water, my favorite part was looking around for sea glass and interesting shells and such. I have just always loved the “hunt.” Whether it is thrifting, looking for crystals in the mountains, or looking for sea glass on the beach….. I really enjoy it.

This above shell was from our very first beach trip this summer. Not too much, but it got me (and even my husband and daughters) into making the hunt a part of our beach time.

Of course, I mainly look for sea glass as I have ideas for it, but I also think it’s fun to find interesting textures and colors. Even broken down things can be beautiful when you can see them that way. In the above picture, the pretty blue chunky piece was actually gifted to me as I was searching the beach. A passerby asked if I was looking for sea glass and I said yes and he gifted me the gorgeous piece. Made my day 🙂

Another day we were all excited to see all kinds of sea sponges that had washed up on the shore. The girls really thought it was neat and my oldest found this empty horse crab shell to put her finds in.

Now my husband has found the most unique pieces so far….pottery!!!! Both pieces shown in the pics. I couldn’t believe it! ha! The one who wasn’t even really looking for anything finds the cool stuff, right?

One time I found some driftwood pieces and when I got home I looked at them and felt like they all looked like types of animals! I quickly took pics of them on a white background and drew over it using an app on my ipad. This would be so fun to do for a kid to draw over, or even an adult like me!

Sometimes things wash up that are unfamiliar too. Like this creature above. We looked it up and believe it to be a blue button jellyfish. I think the hurricane pushed them up this way as it seems they are usually down in the Florida area. But they sure were pretty! It looked almost like jewelry. Nature is just the prettiest.

Now it’s time to start embracing fall. Usually I’m chomping at the bit to buy a porch full of pumpkins and decorate in all things fall, but not this year. Maybe it’s because there’s so much on our plates with working on buying a new home, getting girls adjusted to school, and all the other good stuff that happens this time of year. I still plan on taking some walks on the beach to see what I find even when the weather gets cooler though. I can’t wait until I have some time to sit down and create with some of these finds. Does anyone else enjoy combing the beach? -jess

Faux Succulent and Fern Wall Planter

March 30, 2018 by Jessica Leave a Comment

Faux Succulent and Fern Wall Planter | happy together
Whenever there is a blank wall that needs some decor something with plants is almost always a good option in my opinion. Especially if the plants aren’t real and require no maintenance. So when this lovely wall needed something, I dreamed up a diy wall planter to hold faux succulents and ferns. I was inspired by the succulent walls that Pottery Barn sells and some faux plant installs I have seen in stores and restaurants.This piece has added some lovely color and life to this little corner.

Faux Succulent and Fern Wall Planter | happy together
Now I always try to work smarter, not harder (hahaha) so I was hoping to create a piece with as little wood cutting as possible. There are these lovely inexpensive pieces of lauan plywood and the 2’x4′ (like this) was a great size for the space. So I started with that as the base and bought some 1″x4″ ‘s in the lengths I needed to cut the outer frame and create the center X. I decided to add that X feature to break up the plants and help hold them in place, but it’s not necessary. I think I bought five of 1″x4″x6’ pieces of wood, but I was actually just shy of an inch on one of the last cuts for the inside pieces. I fortunately was able to just cut another small piece to fill it in and knew the plants would cover it, so it worked out. I first cut the outer frame pieces at 90 degree angles and used wood glue and my nail gun to put them together. Then I glued and nail gunned the lauan plywood to the back. The inside X was harder for me as I am just not very good at cutting angles. But I managed to make it work! One piece goes completely straight across and the other side of the X in in two pieces. Now, I should have written down what angles I used, but I had to play around with it to get them just right (and even then it wasn’t perfect). But again, plants will disguise the not so perfect. Oh, and there’s wood filler too. I used that on all the seams and it helped create a really nice finished look.

Faux Succulent and Fern Wall Planter | happy together
Once it was all together and the glue was dry, I used Minwax Early American to stain it.

Faux Succulent and Fern Wall Planter | happy together
I will not lie. All of these plants cost some money, so I suggest waiting for sales and using coupons. If you have the time, you can slowly accumulate what you need too. All of these succulents came from Hobby Lobby and then I found all of the ferns from Michaels. I started by hot gluing the ferns in place first. I used wire cutters to cut plants apart, trim off leaves, or cut off the stems. Some of the ferns were too full, so I used the pieces I cut off as fillers in other spots. Once the ferns were spread out to my liking, I added the succulents. I tried to spread out the similar ones so it was more pleasing to the eye. Then I used moss to fill in any spots that were bare.

Faux Succulent and Fern Wall Planter | happy together
Since this was going on a wood wall I just screwed the planter right to it. I wanted to make sure it would be really difficult to pull off since it is in a public place. So far all the plants have stayed in place, except one day some kids were in front of them and I believe their heads hit them and caused them to fall off. But I glued them back on and in worst case scenario, I could use a stapler or nail gun to help keep them in place. I thought about using construction adhesive to keep them in place, but I tried that on another succulent on wood install and it was not good. Many fell off. I also thought about liquid nails, but that stuff comes out so fast and I didn’t want to get it all over the plants if i made any mishaps. All in all I’m very happy with the whole process of putting it together and with how it came out. I think it would be lovely in a home and would really make a statement. Let me know if you make one like this or something similar 🙂 -jess

Shangri La Botanical Gardens in Orange, TX

June 10, 2016 by Jessica 2 Comments

I feel very blessed to have two daughters who love nature as much as my husband and I do. We were all so excited when we found a special place, the Shangri La Botanical Gardens right over the Texas border in Orange! It’s like a mini getaway for all of us and we have been going there when we need a nature fix and only wish we had come and checked this place out sooner. The developed acreage isn’t as huge as other botanical gardens I have been too, but I do feel like it’s one of the most beautifully planted and maintained ones I have seen. I wanted to share some pics from one of our trips this spring when they had a ladybug release day. My girls had so much fun!

There are so many nooks and little themed gardens that you could spend all day going through them all. They also have a heronry blind that we like as well. We haven’t tried the waterway tours yet but plan to do that sometime soon hopefully.

The butterfly greenhouses have been a magical place to walk around in. Oh how we could spend hours in there watching them all!

And of course they have a pretty amazing children’s area as well. My girls always run over and see whats in the “tasting” garden and try different things and then go over to pump the water onto the other vegetable gardens. Sadly we ended up having garden woes this year (huge lack of nitrogen in the soil we bought), so we have been enjoying the gardens here and our friend’s gardens too. If you are ever down in this part of Louisiana/Texas, this would be a great place to go see.

Our Very First Square Foot Garden

August 1, 2014 by Jessica 2 Comments

This past spring I decided to try and do a legit little garden for my family to enjoy. I have so many fond memories of helping my grandfather and father in their gardens, that I wanted to give that opportunity to my girls. We rent and can’t exactly go tearing up our yard to make a huge garden, so I was very happy when I discovered square foot gardening while browsing on pinterest one day. We actually had a little raised bed that we fixed up last year, but we only grew flowers then. This year I planted carrots, beets, onions, peas, a tomato plant, and spinach in our little garden bed. Then I planted a cucumber plant in a planter and a pepper plant in another planter.

These pictures are mostly from May when we did our big harvest. I should have let things stay in the ground a little longer, but we were getting ready to leave for a long trip and I knew it would be too late by the time we got back. My girls had so much fun pulling out their veggies! And let me tell you, they were so much more excited and open to eat vegetables that they picked themselves.

The peas, tomatoes, and cucumber plants kept giving a continuous harvest for a while, so they were still able to go pick some goodies to eat later.

I liked square foot gardening because it was more technical for a smaller garden space. Meaning, the sites I found told you how big to make your “boxes” with string (if you like) and how much of each thing to plant in each “box”. That way everything is spaced out correctly and has enough room to grow. I did know that our space wasn’t very deep and it was rocky once you dug down far enough, so I wasn’t sure how the root vegetables would do. Fortunately, they did pretty good! Our carrots are a little funky looking, but that’s okay. It was still fun to give them a try and they tasted fine.

Unfortunately, we came back from our few weeks trip to a very sad garden. I figured it would happen since it gets so hot here in Louisiana it makes plants dry up real quick. Aphids and stink bugs also attacked our tomato plant and it was too late to try and save it. I planted some zinnia seeds for the time being and am having pretty flowers consistently. I’m hoping to get some things planted this month for a fall harvest though. Did you grow a garden this year? What did you plant?

-Jess

From the Garden

September 4, 2012 by Jessica 7 Comments

This was our first summer living in Louisiana. I wanted to try harder at having some sort of garden while we are here, so we decided to begin this year. We didn’t try to grow too much, but it was fun to experiment.

Now, I kind of tried a little bit in Florida but that didn’t go well. The weather is similar here, so I knew I would have to be very consistent with watering if I wanted to see anything grow.

We ended up getting a good amount of lettuce and a lot of flowers. Our cucumber plant did have some on it, but we went out of town for a month and apparently that plant didn’t make it (even with the help from our neighbors in watering it).

I did also try a tomato plant. I bought it late in the season and is fine, but has not made any tomatoes yet. I’ll have to plan that a little better next year.

We got lots of sunflowers (all sizes from a variety seed pack). One stalk was ginormous though and really overtook the garden. I will not plant that again, even though it was pretty.