nerd

I am nerding out looking at blogs with gift wrapping ideas.  I love wrapping presents!  I actually hated it as a kid because I was the designated gift wrapper of the family.  I remember wrapping boxes of Crown Royal for my dad to give to his workers and even wrapping my own gifts from my family (lame).
Check out some of these ideas:
Make a bow from old magazine pages.

image via how about orange


and another version here

image via craftster

A whole blog dedicated to gift wrapping!

image via the gifted blog

image via the gifted blog

And finally a cute way I can use up all the cheap yarn I have!

image via bugs and fishes

new (to me)

Another new (to me) blog I love!
Jim's Pancakes.

new (to me)

Love this new (to me) blog/cartoonist!

Draw the Dog

love

images via bliss by nick brandt

glamping

I need to win the lottery soon so I can stay here.

images via four seasons.com

stumbled across via wide open spaces

garden progress

We got our first batch of sprouts!  





After the first layer of seeds went in the sprouter, I waited two days and added a second level.  The third level was added yesterday.  One tray of sprouts is enough for two (fairly big) sandwiches, so we'll have to continuously rotate the trays. 
While it's pretty easy to use, my biggest problem seems to be the siphoning action of the water dripping from the top to each tray level.  The first day it seemed to flow quite easily, and even making sure there aren't seeds or sprouts blocking the siphon, I still have a laggy water flow.  I've taken to popping open the top of the water tray to keep the water flowing, though I'm sure that's not the best thing to do.  


In other news I've done some redecorating in terms of the containers on the balcony.  Here's what it looked like before:



Our office is reducing the size of the space we're renting and so we've been having major purges of stuff.  I was able to score these file/milk crates and I figured I could transform them into planters and create a cleaner looking balcony garden.



I had looked on Google to see if there was a cheap way to line by containers, and some sites were talking about peat moss or landscape fabric.  I went super cheap by digging up old cardboard boxes and newspaper.



I ran out of potting soil halfway through so after a quick run to the store I was able to complete three of them.




Everything fits nicely now along that south rail and I was able to gain more space and depth!  Can't wait to plant more things in them! 

sprouts

We've been trying to be better about bringing home lunches, and usually it ends up being a sandwich.  We've used fancier breads (baguettes, rolls, etc) and regular sliced bread and we've tried to fancy them up with lots of veggies too.  We like to add sprouts to our sandwiches and I thought maybe we should try to grow them.  I was online shopping for wheat grass seeds (more on that to come) and the website I was on (wheatgrasskits.com) sold sprout seeds and sprouters.  
On Monday we received in the mail our sprouter and seeds.  I finally had some time last night to read the instructions and started some seeds this morning before work.
Here's what the sprouter looks like:

And here are the seeds we got.  I chose the 5 part salad seed mix.

The instructions with the sprouter says 1 tablespoon of seeds will fill one tray so that's what I did.

You put the top level on with water in it and it drips down to each level then to the bottom catcher.  You change the water ever 12 hours and in a few days we should have sprouts!

I started one tray this morning and will start the second one in a couple days and the third tray a couple days after that so we have a continuous supply of sprouts for our sandwiches or salads.

Stay tuned for results!