Our balcony garden pallet

 


The story of our balcony garden actually begins about a year ago.

For Mothers day of 2013, I asked Mr. River if he could get me just a few small herbs so that I could have an herb garden. The girls and I were doing a garden theme, so it also seemed like a good chance to teach them about herbs.

I also had a few plants I wanted to better organize. We have a nice balcony, but it was hard to find room for both plants and kids' toys that left enough space to actually sit (or play) out there and enjoy them. Planters just take up so much square footage, even though we had several hanging on the rail.

While looking at more vertical options, I came across a how-to guide on a vertical pallet garden. I was in love. Mr River was in love. The guide is here.

Our challenges during this process:

• "finding a pallet" isn't actually that easy. Where we live, it is illegal to remove pallets from behind stores - that is their property and they have to pay to replace lost pallets (or so we were told by several store managers when we asked). The pallets are essentially recycled for shipping, so they aren't just free for the public to come take.
• Even if we could just "find a pallet" I did not want one that had been treated. With small kids, pets, and herbs, I didn't need to be adding treated wood to the mix.

So Mr. River built me one :) It actually wasn't hard or expensive at all. He made the cuts and nailed it together in less than an hour. The plus side was that we were able to choose the wood and make it the exact size we wanted.  I even got to choose the spacing. here is where we were starting to line up the boards:

We then stapled burlap on the back, as it was far cheaper than other options at the hardware store and it seemed to be the best for drainage. 

The girls tested it for durability and helped us sand it down (since they would have a lot of contact with it and water it, I wanted it to have smooth edges):

And we painted the top of it and added the girls' handprints so that it would be extra personalized. this is probably my favorite aspect of my pallet - especially now that we have had it a year and I can see how tiny their hands were.

The girls were soooo excited to choose the plants for it and help plant it. We also planted many many seeds in little pods to later plant in it. Now, this was quite a startup cost compared to "just a few herbs." We had 10 open slots and 2 top slots to fill up! And my excitement over large lush plants meant we had left huge gaps between the slats... But it was absolutely worth it. We propped it up at an angle against our balcony wall and Mr. River secured it over the rail with an anchor so that we wouldn't have to worry about the girls pulling it down.

Some of the things that I absolutely love about my pallet garden: 

• it makes for an absolutely beautiful wall. It makes for a great "atmosphere" for when we sit on the balcony with the girls, have summer dinners out there, or the girls play in their water table out there. When I'm sitting in the living room or the dining room and look outside, instead of a stucco balcony wall I see my garden.  it is lovely :)
• It has a very small footprint. We do have it leaning against the balcony wall, so that added a bit more, but it still comes out maybe 14"? It isn't far at all. I get 6x the space for planting as 1 planter box's footprint. 
• Again, a vertical garden is just beautiful. It is such a different aesthetic to have it go up rather than everything low to the ground.
• It is the perfect height for the girls. I gave them the bottom three levels for their flowers and plants to take care of, and I put my herbs in the top two. Then we just added flowers up top.
• It makes for a great backdrop for pictures :)

Lessons we have learned from it:

• Setting it up is a bit tricky :) So after you plant the garden, I have seen some sites recommend letting it lay level for several weeks to let the roots take hold. We let it stay horizontal for a few days while we watered it just to make sure the soil was moist, but we weren't giving up our balcony for several weeks for the roots to take hold. Plus, keeping it at an angle, I think it didn't need to be quite as strong as if it were fully vertical.
• Watering it is a bit tricky... being at an angle has made this a bit easier. But Mr. River wishes he'd put in or figured out some kind of pvc piping irrigation for it. We water the top then try to carefully water the front. But too much water and the dirt pours out, and you don't want to completely drown the plants at the bottom (keeping it at an angle also helps some of the water drain out the back rather than all go down to the bottom).  You also have to water it very regularly because if the dirt gets too dry, it just cascades out as you start to water :(
• Burlap works out GREAT for drainage, but it is a bit more fragile than other options. It has been a year now and we need to replace the burlap. one tiny hole led to an entire layer falling out because the hole expanded within seconds!
• Planting it means thinking a bit more than I usually do about water/sunlight needs. Our balcony has a half-roof, so the shading and sun on the pallet is different for the different sides. For the most part, the right side gets full sun and the left side gets "partial sun" (4-6 hours) a day. The plants up top, the watering was easy, but for the plants in the slots, it was taking into consideration that the ones at the bottom levels would definitely get more water just because of gravity. 

We had to replant the bottom left of the pallet after a month because we realized it just wasn't getting enough sun: 

We slowly added more plants as our seedlings grew and by mid-summer we had an amazing vertical garden. 

Our cat Thistle, though, seems to be a leaf eater and devoured the bottom two layers in just a few afternoons of being on the balcony. Baby Bear then pulled off several flowers in her curiosity. So by winter, the garden needed to be replanted. 

We have replanted it this past weekend and I will post the new garden in another post :) We have done succulents this year and are super excited to see how they come out!

DIY Laundry Detergent - 10 days later

I know you were all eagerly anticipating a follow-up to my post on our homemade laundry detergent adventures. 

Well it's been 10 days and we have no complaints! Mr. River uses about 2tbsp worth on his scrubs, but we are using 1 tbsp of detergent on everything else and it's working great. Stains are coming out, clothes look clean, no fading, and they smell normal :) Most importantly (ok not stinking is pretty important, too), neither Mr. River nor the girls have had any skin reactions to it! Hurrah!

Choosing and Making a homemade Laundry Detergent

I've been wanting to make my own laundry detergent for awhile... I have a few friends who make their own and love it, saving a lot of money on detergent sounds fabulous, and since we have a lot of skin sensitivities and allergies in our family the idea of not having all the extra stuff sounded wonderful.

However... I kept putting it off. First, I couldn't find "laundry soap" or "washing soda" in our store. The liquid detergents sounded like they were a lot of work to make (maybe not?) and I just don't have room to store a huge 5 gallon thing of detergent in our house. I was also really hesitant to risk stinky, stained, or ruined clothes because of a flawed laundry detergent attempt. 

But then I found Fels Naptha at the store, ordered washing soda online... and discovered that you can make a powdered detergent and weren't restricted to liquid (though liquid sounds like it goes further and so saves even more money). So I gathered up all the supplies...

And then it sat in our cabinet for many months because I couldn't figure out which recipe I was going to use. There are a gazillion different homemade recipes, and they were all significantly different. Some had a 1:1:1 ratio of 1 bar Fels Naptha, 1 cup borax, 1 cup washing soda.. others had a 1:2:2 ratio. Some used 0.3:1:1 while even others did 2:1:1.

And they also all had different amounts of finished detergents that you used within the wash... some said 1 tbsp of detergent while others called for 1/4 or even 1/2 cup. 

Of course, they all ended with a vague "adjust as needed for your needs." This wasn't nearly as exact as I wanted, and I didn't want to risk our clothes as I tried to "figure it all out."

But, after too much time spent on laundry research and talking with friends who make their own, we have finally ventured into making our own homemade detergent tonight.

Because this is our very first night, I can't really say the long-term thoughts on this process... but rest assured that tonight, our clothes do not stink and they didn't dissolve into a million tiny bits of thread. They actually don't look any different than they do when washed with our store-bought detergent.  Nobody is wheezing or breaking out.

So what did I decide for the recipe and how did I decide? Being how I am, I just researched the crap out of the ingredients to try and figure out why everyone uses a different recipe.

What the Ingredients Do

The three main ingredients that most recipes use are laundry soap, borax, and washing soda. Here's what they do:

Laundry Soap: The cleaning agent. I even looked up how soap works - how interesting! it acts as an emulsifier, suspending the oils/dirt off the material. 

Borax: detergent booster. It helps remove stains by creating a type of hydrogen peroxide, and it disperses the soap which helps the soap work better. It inhibits things from growing, which is always good when it comes to laundry. It works best in hot water. (How Borax cleans). 

Washing soda (washing soda! not baking soda!): also a detergent booster. It helps remove stains and helps laundry detergent work in hard water by binding to the minerals. (How Washing soda works) It dissolves fast but it can also leave deposits unless thoroughly rinsed off.

Different Recipes

So after reading up on that and reading various forums and peoples' responses... it makes more sense why recipes and peoples' experiences differ. If you have hard water, for example, using more washing soda and borax (which help soften the water) makes sense. If you have tough stains and need more stain remover, using more washing soda and borax makes sense. 

There seems to be mixed responses on whether borax causes colors to fade in laundry. Some people have used it for years with no issues. Others said that when they sprinkled borax to boost their detergent, it faded their clothes in spots. After reading the various posts and how borax works, my thoughts are that the differences in opinions probably are from different amounts of borax used, water hardness  of the house, amount of detergent used, and water temperature. For example, if you have soft water but use a 1:2:2 recipe (bar:cup of borax: cup of washing soda) and then put in 1/4 cup of detergent and then wash on cold... it's working differently than if you use 1 tbsp of that same recipe with warm hard water where there is less concentration of borax, it dissolves easier (it is very rough on clothes if rubbed on them), and is in hard water.  This is where the "use as best works for your needs" comes in with those recipes :)

So after all of that, this is what I factored into when deciding on a recipe. We have hard water, typically wash on warm, and our clothes need a lot of stain and stink removal because of kid stains and gym smells.  We have an HE machine, so using 1/4-1/2 cup seemed excessive and I decided to do either 1 or 2 tbsp of finished detergent.

Final note: We are doing Fels Naptha this round, if sensitives show up after a few days we will switch to a milder soap and try again. So far, so good.  Because of Mr. River's profession, using a "milder" soap makes me nervous - his clothes and gym clothes get really dirty. 

What we did

We used the 1:2:2 recipe. So:

1 bar laundry soap, grated. 

2 cups borax. Again, we have hard water, we wash on warm.

2 cups washing soda

I first cut the soap into a few sections and then put it all into the food processor. I was a bit skeptical that it would finely grate it but it downright pulverized that soap in just a few seconds. I was amazed.  Then I added the borax and washing soda to the food processor and blended it all together to make sure it was well mixed up and that there were no clumps of washing soda or borax. Then I just dumped it all together. I used a small old oxiclean container to hold just a small portion of it to bring to the laundry room, the rest is in a giant food storage container. 

The whole thing took less than 2 minutes to make. All that hemming and hawwing and it was ridiculously easy to make!

I used about 1.5 tbsp to wash... why 1.5, well I couldn't decide whether to use 1 tbsp or 2 tbsp so I used 1.5 to see how it'd come out :) 

If we had different lives or different water or a different washer, I would likely not start with this recipe.  For example, if we didn't have to worry about dirty unhealthy things on Mr. River's clothes, we would probably use a 1:1:1 recipe. If we did not have to worry about Mr River's clothes *or* the kid stains, we would be using cold water and would probably do more like 1:0.5:1 using only a half cup of borax.  I never washed on warm until Mr River went into his current profession.  If we lived in MS, where the water is extremely soft, I would likely do a 1:0.5:0.5. If we had a normal washer and not an HE, I would probably use 1/4 cup of detergent mix rather than the 1-2tbsp. So that's kind of my thoughts on why the recipes are so very different for different people and diffferent needs. Hopefully it makes sense :)

One final tip I saw, but have not tried, was to add a bit of vinegar to the rinse cycle when washing to make sure that all of the detergent is gone. Plus it helps soften up clothes. I haven't tried that but with only using 1.5 tbsp, I wasn't too worried about residue being left. Some people also add essential oils to the detergent, but several reviews I read said it really doesn't make them smell any differently after coming out of the dryer - the heat takes off all the scents. So might as well save the essential oils. Since we have skin sensitivities, we will not be adding anything scented. 

How'd the clothes come out? They came out great. They look normal, they smell like clothes... no fancy smells, but then we haven't ever had fancy smells because we can't use scented detergents :) Normal dirt and stains are gone (woot!) and my big container of the detergent looks like it will last a really long time. So yay for saving money! We'll see how we feel after testing it out for awhile :)

Dollhouse Furniture and Bendy Dolls

Dollhouse furniture is definitely a learning process... Mr. River insisted on making things out of wood, so it's a lot of cutting... figuring out how things would lock together, trying to make tables and chairs not wobble, etc. After a week spent of looking online for "dollhouse furniture plans" and not coming up with much that *we* could make... Mr River took to lined paper and drew out the designs. And wow is he good at it! He made the bed and chair in a "locking" design so that the pieces go together a bit like a puzzle. They're very sturdy this way without the need for nails :) 

Mr. River made the table and chairs. We found the small wooden cups and barrels and bucket at Michael's in the unfinished wood section. The pies I made out of bottlecaps using this blog for the idea. The blueberry pie is straight from the tutorial. The cherry pie, though, I just cut small circles from red felt and then used brown felt as the pie crust and I think it looks much better than the foam + cardstock. also, I didn't bother drawing around the pie crust before cutting strips, I just cut strips, wove on top, and then trimmed after it was all dry.

My favorite is easily the rocking horse :)

I made the girls "bendy dolls" as the dolls for the dollhouse. I used the size of the dolls that Elves and Angels sell for the dollhouse, which are a 1/12 scale dollhouse. So a 5-6" doll.

For Blue's birthday, I got a book on making fairies - and they're extremely straightforward and easy to make. Bendy dolls are the same idea. I looked at a few blogs to learn how to thread-wrap the pipe cleaners for a cleaner look. The Enchanted Tree has a really awesome tutorial.  A few lessons I learned on Bendy Dolls though...

1. I took two pipe cleaners and twisted them together for extra strength for the adults. For the kids, I used the "star" shape design of the Forest Fairy Crafts book, which already doubles up the pipe cleaner. 
2. Use a bit of tacky glue on hands/feet to keep the thread from unraveling.
3. The hair is tricky. If you loop it through the pipe cleaner like The Enchanted Tree does, just plan on fitting the clothes on the body from the foot up or with a big enough neck hole to fit over the head. I wasted several nights trying to figure out how to put the head on after I got the doll dressed, which is impossible if the hair is on and it's impossible to get the hair on after everything is "fitted" with head on the thread-wrapped body.
4. I found clothes patterns to be extremely annoying. Rather than trying to print and use any clothes pattern as a template, I found it far easier to just cut a large rectangle with a neckhole, put it over the doll, then trim to size. If you want an applique on the dress or shirt, just figure out essentially where it will be after trimming (i.e. in the smack middle of your rectangle), and applique it before sewing up the clothes. 
5. For pants, I used the Forest Fairy craft idea of a rectangle with leg slits and the felt is wrapped around the leg with thread. I tried sewing nice little pants, and the bendy-ness of the legs was significantly impaired because the pants didn't have much movement to them. Thread-wrapped felt pants move in any direction you want. Also, using a rectangle that is mounted over the head/shoulders for pants makes it so you dont' have to worry about them falling down :)
6. I first tried to sew on felt shoes - the little boy is the only one with felt shoes. After that painstaking process, I realized I could just thread-wrap the feet with shoe-colored thread. I feel a bit silly about the hour spent on those felt shoes now :)
7. The Forest Fairy Craft book recommends putting a coating of like modge podge on the head before drawing the eyes. This is true - permanent marker will bleed if you don't have a base coating of something on the head. We discovered it was true on the sugar/flour cannisters :) Paint probably won't matter like permanent marker does.
8. I couldn't get boys' hair to work quite right, so they just got hats. Size 3 thread with a D hook if you know how to crochet :) 
9. The baby is just a wooden peg that I first thread-wrapped, then wrapped in felt that I stitched together as a "swaddling blanket." The hat is crocheted.

For the boys' hat - work in the round. This is a super informal workup of what I did:

Rnd 1. 4sc in magic ring (4)

Rnd 2. *Sc in each stitch* around (4)

Rnd 3. *sc, inc* around (6)

Rnd 4+. Continue *sc, inc* around until the hat will fit on the head, then just sc until length desired. You want it to fit snug. 

Christmas 2013

Merry Christmas :))

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year! We have quite a slew of annual traditions that we've built over the past few years. We saw the Snow World at SeaWorld back in November. We watched the Bay of Lights boat parade at SeaPort Village here in San Diego. We went to Christmas Card Lane up in Rancho Penasquitos with Blue's friend. We saw the Living Nativity at the local church, and Blue was an angel this year! For decorations, we added a crochet and felt fireplace to our crafty wall - which I will hopefully one day get the pattern written up. We made ornaments, baked cookies, had way too much sugar, hung up our lights, and sang a ton of Christmas songs.

Mr. River had to work on Christmas day this year, but we did get to have a nice, quiet dinner together on Christmas Eve since they gave him the 24th off. Truthfully, he would rather have Christmas Eve off than Christmas since he does get to spend Christmas morning with us before going to work. 

This Christmas, we aimed to do more handmade items to give to the girls. First, we have been trying to minimize the quantity of toys that the girls have and focus on quality instead. Blue is four now, and it's easy to see that a quality, open-ended toy can invite and sustain years of play.  It grows with them and becomes more cherished as the adventures grow. We've also been trying to declutter, a lot. When Blue was a baby and toddler, she was our only kid so it was easy and tempting to want to add more toys whenever we found something that looked fun or was decently priced. And since I shop at a consignment store mostly, it was easy to buy since items rarely cost more than $5.  But as Blue got older and we added Baby Bear to our family... soon we just had so much stuff.  And although the girls played with pretty much everything, the open ended toys definitely saw a lot more play. Things like miniature animals, dolls, role-play items (kitchen, dress-up), blocks, art supplies.  We decluttered at least half of the girls' items and it actually enhanced their play since they now had more room to do it. 

So now when we add toys... it's a lot of hemming and hawwing over whether it'll add enough in fun to be worth the amount of space it takes up.  

On another level, we are deeply uncomfortable with the materialist, toss-away path of us as a culture, and we as adults are definitely not innocent of our role in it but are trying to get better. 

One thing that has definitely helped is that our girls don't really "want" much. If you ask Blue what she wants, she'll likely surprise you with a very simple answer - like "I don't know." If you pry, she may say "paint" or "a leash for my dog." Without cable/TV networks, the girls aren't exposed to commercials or product pushing. They don't really know what's out there unless we are in a store, at which point Blue transforms into a normal four year old and wants one of everything. But as soon as we say bye to the toy aisle, thoughts and wants of the toys leave her mind. So that makes it easy :)

So all of this led to Christmas and our desire for more handmade. Our original plan was for Mr. River to build the girls a Waldorf-inspired playstand, where they could play house, host a market, use it as a fort, whatever! But as Christmas drew near and I grew possessive over the "real estate" of our apartment that I so painstakingly cleared over the last year.. we realized the playstand wouldn't happen this year. Maybe when we have a house or at least more room we can look at it again. So then the plan was for a dress-up tower that would also function as a puppet theater, and I would make the girls a stuffed animal and quilt each. I already have the fabric, so it was just a matter of making amends with my sewing machine - which has been banished to the closet for the past three years.

Me and the sewing machine are still not speaking. 

So the quilts didn't happen.

And then Blue asked Santa for a little house for her little people. So our energies shifted to thoughts of dollhouses and what we could make. Mr. River became quite realistic and admitted he would not be able to finish a dollhouse in time for Christmas, so I searched online for one that looked open-ended, large enough for multiple kids to play, and was well made. I came across the Maine Natural Dollhouse from Elves and Angels and was immediately in love. I really loved the size of it, that the first floor was easily visible and accessible even when it was on the ground, the natural wood and lack of "assignment" of rooms, the design, the open-ness of it to all sides, and that it was handmade in a family-owned woodshop in Maine. More hemming and hawwing over the price of it, but eventually we decided to get it as the big gift to both girls.

I am so so so so glad we did! The quality and craftsmanship is just astounding on this and we know it will easily last through our girls' children. The size is perfect - all FOUR of us can sit around it and play. And I love the design! I was originally looking at a three story "treehouse" kind of design, but realized after looking at other pictures that you can't really see the first floor in most dollhouses.... unless they're on a table or you're laying on the floor. This one is perfectly designed. 

So that was the girls' big gift. And Mr. River and I have spent quite a bit of time making the dolls and furniture for it. 

I made the girls their stuffed animals - Blue got a purple dog (using Little Owl's Hut's pattern) that she said she wanted for Christmas over the summer (and then forgot she asked for it haha). Baby Bear got a blue unicorn (using Dawn Touissant's pattern), which she isn't quite sure what to make of it. The pressing question we all don't know the answer to: do unicorns say "neigh"?

Mr. River made the girls a wooden puzzle each, which they love!

I made them each  a pirate map for their stocking.

And the nonhandmade items they got: Baby Bear got a piggy bank (Blue got one for Christmas when she was 2). Blue got a Barbie that someone at Mr. River passed down to her. For their stockings: they each got a Melissa and Doug puzzle. Baby Bear got a Jellycat Cow that we actually bought for her *last* year but forgot to give her haha!!  She immediately squished it upon seeing it. And Blue got a kid's Timex watch so she can learn to tell time (she really wants to learn).  They also each got a new set of watercolors.

They also got the HoneyBee Game and the super cute movie Prep & Landing as their Christmas Eve gifts.

The adults' gifts weren't quite as exciting but things we definitely love! The girls got me a "kitty" calendar that they picked out, Mr. River got me a new pillow, and we got him a Survival Strap bracelet

Pirate/Fairy maps, yarrrr!

Blue is a huge fan of drawing up maps for our adventures.  There are no treasure chests on her map, oh no. Our goal is to get across all of the obstacles she puts in our way -  from stinky rivers to ogre dens or crocodile piles.  The maps come with us and she consults them regularly to make sure we are on track to... whatever our adventure may be.

So for Christmas, the girls got maps in their stockings. I was torn between having this be a craft project to work on with Blue, allowing her to create a more permanent map, or offering one as a surprise gift. I wound up making these on my own but will definitely be making some more with her :) After deciding I would make them more permanent maps, I looked around online and found a ton of great suggestions on how to go about it!  People have made all sorts of cool pirate maps - from brown paper grocery bags that to paper to cotton or canvas. 

Here is what we did:

Supplies

Canvas material. I just used an old Trader Joe's reusable grocery bag that I cut up

5 tea bags

Permanent marker

Paints - either fabric or acrylic. I used both.

Step 1. Cut up the canvas material to be whatever size/shape you want. Since I used an old grocery bag, I handwashed it with a bit of dishsoap.

Step 2.  Bring some water to a boil, add the tea bags and canvas. Let it boil for about 5 minutes. I didn't measure the water, but you essentially want enough water that will cover the canvas in the pot without diluting the tea too much. I used 5 oolong teabags because I wanted a bit of a darker tea stain (and we apparently don't have black tea)

Step 3.  Remove pot from stove and carefully pour out the tea water, fill pot with cold water so the canvas cools off. Once the canvas is cool, run it under cold water until the water runs clear

Step 4. If the canvas isn't already squished, squish it up a bit :) Then lay it out flat to dry (don't smooth it)

Step 5. Once the canvas is dry, use the permanent marker to draw your map.

Step 6. Using fabric or acrylic paints, paint in where you want details. I watered my acrylic paints down a bit so that lines were still visible. I wanted to use watercolors for a more watery look but am not sure how they'd come out on the canvas

Step 7. Let dry :)

The edges of my canvas aren't finished or seamed or anything else except for the edges that already existed on the bag. They're unraveling a bit. I think that adds to the charm, but if they unravel too much I may just put a bit of fray stop spray or glue on it.