Lessons by Leeson

I mentioned in my last post that I was working on another Independence Day decoration. I still haven't completely finished it, but I'm close enough. The idea with this project is to paint wine bottles (or sparkling grape juice bottles in my case), to resemble the American flag. Pinterest Idea: Of course, I couldn't find a blog or website that actually told me how they made this; so I took it into my own hands. I already had the bottles and was feeling confident that painting them wasn't going to be an issue.  I don't have a picture of the bottle before painting, but I'm just going to assume you have seen a glass bottle. Okay, moving on. While I was at my dad's house this weekend I grabbed some wooden dowels (pictured above), this made painting the bottles fairly easy; you get better coverage and you don't have to be careful where you set it while it's drying. Speaking of the paint, I used regular white spray paint that I got from Menard

I love holidays and decorating for holidays; be that as it may, I am to much of a procrastinator to actually get decorations up before the holiday gets here. Unless it's Christmas, since I normally decorate for that around Thanksgiving. My plans for the 4th of July this year were big - for every decoration I was making for myself I was going to make another one to sell. Hmmm well since the fourth is only six days away I would say I'm not doing very good. I did get one project complete and I started another one yesterday My complete project is my holiday coasters. I made these last year for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day; last years coasters were not good quality at all so I tried something different this year and I like them a lot more. Materials:  Plain white kitchen/bathroom tiles. I got mine at home depot because of the military discount. There are like fifty cents a piece Mod Podge (Glossy or Matte) Something to smooth the Mod Podge with (old c

Let's just start with the fact that normally my gardens do very well.... that being said, my garden this year is dreadful. Going back to previous years, I have generally grown enough vegetables to make two home-made batches of salsa and eat summer squash for supper every night for a few months. Last year I also grew carrots for the first time, which turned out great. As well as small watermelons, green beans, and green peppers. Speaking of green peppers - my current pepper plants are pictured below. Raise your hand if you think they will produce anything......... yup didn't think so.   If we are being honest here, and I promise I am, I didn't necessarily prepare my garden the best this year; or at all really. This was my first time planting in a community lot (since we moved to base in the winter last year). I had friends tell me about the downfalls of planting on base, but I really wanted my garden and figured with my wonderful past experiences with gardening th