I had the honor and pleasure of checking out Housing Work’s Design on a Dime event hosted in NYC this past week. If you aren’t familiar with Housing Works, you can check out their site and get to know their cause in more detail. Basically, really well curated home goods are deeply discounted and sold at the Design on a Dime event, and if you don’t live in NYC, you can always check out their online auctions, which are also pretty sweet. All the money goes to helping those with HIV/AIDs with housing, medical, support, and other services. It’s such a well organized and brilliant organization.

I know a bunch of designers just cringed at me exposing this gem of a source.

I am so excited to show off a few of my favorite “rooms” for those who didn’t make it. Enjoy the beautiful chaos!

 

 

I tend to kill plants. Like every plant I have ever bought. Even cacti. I have tried over and over again to nurture and love them so they flourish  yet I fail. I follow the instructions exactly, and somehow I am unable to grow anything from a seed, or keep anything alive. I had Joey build me some raised beds before winter started so I can meditate and focus on healthy plants in the box. I wish I was kidding. I blame New York. Dirty air and crapy winter kills the spirit of my plants. At least that’s what I tell my myself. I am determined to do better this year and play by the rules of the land. I did a ton of research and made some rules for me to follow. hopefully this will help other like me with a black thumb!

We are in zone 6. You can find a zone map with a simple Google search, or check out the map I snached for you below.

 

source

 SO, I did some research for what I can expect when creating a zone 6 planting schedule.

source

Tip #1: Plant fruits, veggies, and flowers at the right time for your region.

I also want lots of flowers. Right now the top three to plants that seem like they will survive my wrath are wisteria (which I think is so dreamy! And yes, I have killed the wisteria in my yard), clematis, and petunias

Tip #2: Plant the right stuff in the right place.

The veggies that will work in the raised bed we built that I am excited about are potato, garlic, and carrot. Our raised beds aren’t ideal for strawberries, but I am going to try anyway.

#3 Use the right soil for the right situation.

At first, I dug right into the ground and that was a bad idea for a few reasons. I learned the soil is probably the most important part if you want anything to grow properly. Organic soil is pretty cheap, especially if you are just backyard farming in raised beds. For about $5 a cubic foot, you can get going in the right direction for dirt cheap. Har har.

#4 Prep your soil.

Break up the soil and add organic material to it like composte. If your soil is sandy or clay-ish it’s even more important to pay attention to prepping your soil.

#5 Wait for a cloudy day.

When you decide to sow your seeds, do it when it’s overcast. Your seeds will not get baked from the sun this way. Make sure to moisten the ground the day before as well.

With even more info under my sleeve, I am really hoping to have some success this year! 

If you have any tips for a successful garden, please share in the comments below!

 

 

Hello friends! I feel like I have been in a cave and lost track of time. I guess that’s kind of a true statement. It’s cold here in New York, and freakishly windy, so we haven’t left the house all that much yet. It’s also feels like one long day since Atlas was born. I think I got three hours of sleep last night, but don’t quote me on that. Time has been a precious commodity to say the least, even more so than sacred sleep. We were shocked when we realized yesterday our little man was already four weeks old. Please someone, tell me where I can get a pause button. It’s amazing how kids really shine a light on time and how quickly it passes.

Speaking of light…..

We were so in love with Atlas’ bathroom light from Barn Light Electric (and it’s color!), we decided to go for it with another light from them for the side of our house. If you remember the side entrance from the post we did about building a flower bed, you know we have some work to do out there.

Basically this tiny space has a laundry-list-of-a-wish-list going on. This door leads into the garden room, which is next to my office. You can see that glob of green is covering my office window and pretty effectively keeping the sunlight out. That sad arch around the door is made of wood and has seen better days. We are figuring out exactly what we want to do as far as replacement because we are just going to paint the whole house and get it over with. But first, we start with inspiration. Sans tacky red light, and hello shiny blue friend.

Isn’t he handsom? I think it was love at first sight. I was a little worried about using this as an outside light, but it’s been holding up so well. Good lookin’ and sturdy, just what a lady wants. Now, please forgive these awful pictures – it’s winter and everything is dead and gross outside, not lush and green like the picture above.

This little light has kickstarted a slew of ideas. I think it’s great when little edits make huge impact. Here is what we are thinking:

A warm white base on the house with a light black on the detail work. The brilliant blue from the light will then be used around the outside as an accent on other things like the mailbox, doorbell, etc. I also want to deck out the back with some amazing brass lights, and go a little wonderland with topiaries. If you can’t visualize it, here is a little somethin’.

I am super anticipating the weather to get better and work to begin outside. Have you kickstarted anything for spring yet? Hanging this light has me working on Spring to-do lists like mad!

 

 

 

 

Thanks so much for your kind words, advice, encouragement, and blessings through our pregnancy! We are super happy to announce we gave birth on 1/23/2013 to a healthy baby boy we lovingly named Atlas Archer. He has gobbled up our attention, and I am sure he will continue to do so indefinitely.  A lot has happened since our last post. A LOT. We will catch you fine folks up bit by bit, but let’s start will a small victory pre-baby!

This isn’t us being cheap, trust me. We had a rotting tree in the very front of our yard which housed carpenter ants and/or termites and we got some quotes to get it removed. First quote, $2,000 smackers. Yep. $1K to cut it down and $1K to get rid of the stump. Next quote seemed reasonable at $800, but what do we know? We never had to have a tree removed before. The closest thing we got to this was throwing away a Bonzi that my awesome green thumb happened to kill. This was serious, and not in our DIY ability.

So while chatting with our neighbor who is older and wiser, she exclaimed “Have the city do it! That’s a city tree!”. That idea was totally up our ally. This also supports my case of we are not being cheap but me telling you a little TMI. Guess how much we pay in property/school tax? Go on. Guess. $25,000 a year on average. We have no children in the public school system, and we wont. We have paid something like $75,000 since we moved in and this was the first thing we were requesting. Yes, yes we know they take our trash and deliver our mail and fix our roads (which they are pretty awesome at up here in Westchester), but for $75K, heck I would DIY that if it left me with some extra money in the bank. So saving a grand or two made us very happy and somehow justified our $75K in tax contribution over the past three years. So back to the tree…

Oh man. This tree. If you ever want to practice being a Real Housewife of New Jersey, then try and get the city to take down one of their carpenter ant/termite infested trees which just happens to live on the edge of your property. If you can get someone on the phone in less than a dozen tries, tell me where you live because I want to move there.

I suspect where we live is a bit overpopulated and that’s why it was such a pain in the butt, but I have some tips and tricks to help you get that nasty thing off your property and replaced with a new one if you want.

How to get your tree removed for free:

1 – Make sure your tree is within city guidelines of being a “public” tree. For us, it’s he first three feet of property is owned by the city, hence, their tree, their problem. When you call, someone will most likely come and inspect the tree to confirm if it’s theirs to deal with.

2 – Do a search for “Bureau of Forestry + your town”. You want to find the contact information for the City Tree Inspector.

3 – We called because they hadn’t yet set up the online form. I am sure every town has it’s own process and perhaps a small fee. Ours was $25, but they never charged us.

4 – Be prepared to call and follow up. Over and over and over again. It must have taken a dozen calls to have them come and remove the branches (step 1), and then we had to call about 10 more times to find out when the “stump” would be removed only to find out there was no budget left until January. Once January hit, we called every day until someone finally someone called back and told us the stup would be removed. Victory!

5 – Tree planting is offered in most towns as well. We like having a pretty tree there, just knot the gnarly termites/carpenter ants, so we will be requesting a replacement next.

The moment the tree finally came down, Joey was able to catch it on his iPhone as he stayed nice and toasty inside as it found it’s way to the ground.

Right now things are looking a little more like this:

Winter really kills the landscape around here.

We really hope this was helpful. We had no idea the city would remove the tree at no cost with just a bit of pushing! Do you have any tips to share?