The Garden Has Arrived

To refresh your memory, here’s what our garden looked like a month ago when we planted the fall veggies:

We used lots of composted manure mixed into the soil and planted organic veggie starts/seeds from our neighborhood nursery (chard, two types of lettuce, carrots) and cupboard (purple potatoes that sprouted). We then covered the ground with mulch to help retain moisture and heat.

And here is it today, not quite four weeks later:

Hello, leafy green vegetables!

I find it hard to believe that it’s grown so much in such a short period of time! Our veggies have easily tripled their size and we’ve been busy harvesting too!






We still have around a hundred green tomatoes (because of our cool summer), but everything else is growing beautifully.

Once we get tired of the lettuce or give up on the tomatoes, I’m pulling them out and planting kale. Stay tuned!

Sticker Fun

Do you know about Mrs. Grossman’s stickers?

I remember playing with them when I was a little girl back in the 80s.

Andrea Grossman started the company from her home here in California in the 70s and moved to a gorgeous facility in Petaluma, CA in 1995.

If you live in the North Bay and have sticker lovers in your house, you can tour their factory!

They give you lots of stickers just for visiting and you can buy directly from them at their shop, which also has sticker seconds (with barely noticable imperfections) and surplus stock at a deep discount.

I recommend picking up a few of their $2 takeout containers with miscellaneous stickers inside. A fun treat to open, you never know what you’ll get inside!

A note of caution: try not to go overboard in their gift shop. We only spent about $20 and still came home with too many stickers. And by too many, I mean it will take us years to get through this stash.

Not that we’re complaining! Stickers are fun!

Laminated Cotton: a less-toxic alternative to oilcloth

I love the idea of oil cloth, but hate that it’s made out of PVC (polyvinyl chloride). So I’ve never bought any. And my table looks like this:

Terrible, right?!

I’ve been trying to figure out a reusable, washable, and easily wipeable tablecloth for craft projects.

Enter laminated cotton. It’s fabric that is laminated with a polyurethane coating, rather than made out of vinyl or PVC. It’s also free of phthalates and BPA!

Thanks to the brilliance of Amy Butler designed fabric, it’s gorgeous too!

I ordered one yard and it fits our table perfectly.

Now I just need to order two more yards to use when company come over. :)

Lean more about laminated cotton here.