planting shoes

The Eco craft class is moving along. We planted old shoes this week. I really loved the old work boots one student brought in. I chose flowers to celebrate May Day.

Upcycled Flower Bed

This is inspired by a flower bed I saw up at Hovander Homestead's children's garden in Ferndale, WA. They added a rustic headboard and foot board to a regular raised bed.

I had so much fun thinking of how great it would look filled with flowers that it really stuck in my mind.

This weekend, while cleaning out the basement, I stubbed my foot 1/2 a dozen times on an old broken bed frame that was laying across the playroom . I complained with some colorful swearing to my husband, whose answer was to drag the bed out into the yard and say "let's make that raised bed from Hovander." So we did.

We dug the existing bed down to the ground (silly us, we put the bed up, before digging out the old one). Used scraps left over from making the fence to line the bed. Looks a little like a bed skirt. The scraps had been sitting in the yard for years waiting for that perfect project. We also sunk some of the left over scraps into the ground as stepping stones. We lined the whole bed with landscape fabric and filled it back in.

I emptied our worm bins and mixed that in. (Here is someone who hitched a ride over from the worm bins)

Now we are ready to plant.

reuser stilts

I am making my first foray as an after school program teacher. Much fun. Here is my mock up for our first project. Using left over formula cans, paint and some grosgrain. I painted a semi-realistic grass scene on one and my son painted an "abstract" on his. His description, not mine.