I Would Drive 500 Miles

I had a freaking whirlwind of a weekend.  I believe I drove about 700 miles this weekend.  Left Beacon Saturday morning, went to a family party in the north part of Massachusetts, went to Shrewsbury to catch up with my BFF Allyson so we could talk details about her upcoming wedding, then Sunday morning I drove back to Beacon to wrap up a few things before heading down to Brooklyn for WORD's Momma Said event. 

Why was it worth a 3 hours round trip to go to Brooklyn for 2 hours?

Check out her new earrings.  Love.

Cause Piper, author of the blog My Mom the Style Icon was one of the hilarious writers reading a little something in honor of Mother's Day next week!

Packed house!

So packed people were forced to sit in mini chairs.

Scrap Felt Rug

Recently I've noticed that I just get plain old jealous of people that have time to do creative projects. My to do list of craft projects is way longer than amount of free time I have. When I saw this rug on Martha Stewart blog my jealous-o-meter shot off the charts. It's aweeeesome. Way to go, Kristin St. Clair! I want a large rug like this in every room of my house.

photos via MarthaStewart.com

Hudson Valley Hotspots

A couple weekends ago my friend Chelsea (now living in San Francisco) came up to visit us in Beacon. We only had a couple days to fit in all the sites, but managed to hit all the hot spots...even a quickie visit to DIA: Beacon before we treated ourselves to a trip to Target.

What visit would be complete without a trip to Southern Dutchess Bowl?

Walkway Over the Hudson - 212 ft in the air.

Guess who's tired?  This guy!

2010 Beacon Barks Dog Parade

This weekend was the 4th annual Beacon Barks dog parade.  Main Street was shut down for several hours for the parade and so people could wander around with their dogs and check out the vendors set up along the road.   It was insane how many dogs were at the parade...I'm guessing people came from other towns? 

Not-so-coincidentally, this was also the weekend my parents came to visit with Phoebe and Zeke.  They liked being at the parade for a little while and when they got tired we took them "swimming" (P & Z think swimming means sitting in the water wearing their leashes).

Zeke enjoying a snack.

Phoebe wondering why people think Zeke is cuter than her.

DIY: Upside Down Planters

About 5 years ago I learned that tomatoes could be grown upside down and it changed my life.  I was living in Brooklyn, NY at the time and being able to have a mini vegetable garden on my fire escape temporarily satisfied my cravings to move to the country.

Fast forward a few years and here I am with my very own yard!  The possibilities are so overwhelming that I'm finding myself sometimes frozen when it comes to making garden and landscaping decisions.

I should also point out that I don't exactly have 400 acres of land to till.  We're talking a small plot of land in the center of town with a mega layer of rock about 6 inches down. So, I'm finding myself revisiting the upside down garden.

Resources

•  New York Times article Growing Vegetables Upside Down
•  The Cheap Vegetable Gardener - How to Make Upside Down Planter in Your Garden
  
•  The Cheap Vegetable Gardener - 1 Gallon Milk Carton Upside Down Tomato Planter
  

• 14dollarz on YouTube has an amazing collection of videos all about upside down gardens.

I've done it in the past years using plastic pots that you can buy at any garden store.  Recently I was reading Design*Sponge and saw Kate's project for making your own pots from various containers you have in your recyling bin and I thought that was brilliant.  You can find instructions on how to create your upside down hanging planter all over the internet, but Kate laid out a great tutorial that looks cute.

July 2010