Thursday, May 19, 2016

a frame cedar garden trellis

I'm trying this new design for a trellis for my garden this year to see if it can withstand the wind we typically get around our house. My thought was to build something I could take down and store during the winter. I made it collapsible for easy stow away.


Here's last years design. We put up a couple of pieces of lattice and bolted it in. It took almost a year before the wind took it down.


I bought a couple of packs of hinges.


And some cedar. Since this is a garden, I stayed away from the cheaper pressure treated wood. I started out with way more cedar than I needed. I only needed 6 pieces of cedar and one 1x4 piece for the header.


I wanted the trellis to be 6 feet tall so Burke could still get inside to whack the weeds down between the beds. I'll use the extra cut offs for stakes to use in my garden.


Once cut, I screwed them to the hinges and then to the header piece.


Then I cut some framing pieces to make it nice and sturdy.


Added some chicken wire and nailed it to the inside of my boxes.


So far it looks great. Nice and sturdy. All together I spent $40 between the cedar and chicken wire. I did see a similar version in the big box store for about $150, so not bad. Now at the end of the season, I'll unscrew them from the garden box, collapse it and store it away.

Tonight .... we plant!


Tuesday, May 17, 2016

butterick B6280

Matthew and Ashley's wedding and I needed a new dress. After a false start on another dress, I settled on this pattern. 


I chose this light linen fabric that has a great drape.  Thought I would embroider something cool on it. Well ... it was a good thought.


Time was getting down to the wire. I downloaded a rose to embroider, but it's not exactly the coolest.


But hey .... we left coolsville quite a while ago.


The pattern was super easy to make - and I had no issues with understanding the instructions.


It took just a few hours.


The sleeves I modified. The pattern had a long sleeve, but I wanted something to cover a little of my flabby arms.  Not hard at all - just shortened the pattern.


Haha - aren't we a pair. I do love the dress..... and that handsome guy too.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

girls who code graduation

The Saline Girls Who Code had our final meeting last week. We had the girls parents come in the last hour and had a presentation of our final projects. We had a lot of fun and I snapped some pictures of the girls. Sure will miss these guys!