March Madness Pinterest Style Part 1

This is the first post in a series of 3 about the challenge I gave myself...30 Pinterest projects in 30 days. The 30 days is coming to an end and not to have a spoiler alert but I'll be honest, I didn't complete 30 full projects. Let's face it, life got in the way a little, but when it comes to spending time with the fam or doing a craft, I pick my family. I've finished about 20 and I'll continue to work on projects until the 30 are complete. These are my projects.

Ok. So I decided to start of with a bang...
1) the Square Foot Garden. I originally heard about this through a friend and read a book explaining the gardening method in a very simple form. Basically, SFG, in a nutshell,is a method of gardening that makes the most use of a little space. It breaks the garden space into individual square feet and you plant the most plants of each type of vegetable as appropriate in each square. Less waste of seeds and you only plant what you need, therefore less waste of harvest. It's methodical, organized, and simple really. I was intrigued so I began searching Pinterest for more information. I found multiple sites with information here, and here. I began my planning. A useful site was here. You can map out your garden by plant, plant date, etc and it tells you the expected time you can harvest and replant. I liked it because I changed my mind a billion times and I'm visual. Once I finished, I printed it and color coded it by plant family so when it comes to replanting I can rotate appropriately.
I spent a few weeks planning and researching vegetables. I got four raised beds from a friend (2-1x4, 3x4, 4x4). Brett thought they needed to be brightened up so we painted them. (baby brain: I accidentally painted them with interior paint!I will repaint at a later time) I love the color! It's bright and cheery and I think will look really nice when all the green shows up. Then I started marking of my squares with garden twine and staples. I only marked the big beds and I eyeballed it-no measuring for me. I planted two transplanted tomato plants and everything else from seed (mostly organic): carrots, beans, artichoke, broccoli, cauliflower, watermelon, pumpkin, sweet peppers, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, corn, okra, basil, cilantro, rosemary, and dill, as well as a few flowers to keep it colorful. All in all about two afternoons outside. Not too bad! I can't wait for the harvest...yummy! (this ultimately took more than two days because our former puppy dug up everything I planted, twice! So I had to replant twice. Now that the plants are starting to sprout, there are random veggies springing up all over the place from him kicking the soil around.)

2)Chicken and Asparagus Penne. Not a total success but I wouldn't call it a failure. I love asparagus and I'm always looking for a recipe to incorporate it into. I've been eyeing this one for a long time but let's face it. Asparagus is expensive! So I waited until it went on sale, which happen to be this week. Super easy to make. I added some mushrooms and my own seasonings. It was good but needed something more maybe a sauce??? When I make it again, I will probably add fresh garlic and make a cheese sauce to hold it all together. Though it wasn't dry, it was very separated. Sorry no pic :(

3) Canning Jam! I've been looking forward to this for a few weeks. I ended up doing this twice. First time, I think I was too picky with the fruit and ended up wasting a lot. I blended it in the food processor following this method and a recipe from a really old canning book Kerr Home Canning Book copyright 1948. It was messy and involved, therefore I don't have any pictures of the process. The final product tasted great but was really thin and runny. I felt disappointed with it so I tried again...We went to a U-Pick strawberry farm and got 8 quarts of beautiful strawberries for $4. That's right $4!!! sooo cheap. And we picked them all ourselves so we were guaranteed good, ripe, not rotten strawberries. I only used about 2-3 quarts to make two recipes Strawberry Banana Jam and pure Strawberry. This time I crushed the fruit and used a recipe with pectin and the jam jellied up nicely and they taste great. Brett is obsessed with the strawberry banana. Total I made 6 full pint jars and 8 half pints. I've already given half away. I wish I would have made more!

4) Reupholster a chair. We have been in the process of making our own farmhouse dining room table with seating for 10 (future post on the final project). Brett has been doing all the woodwork and I'm in charge of the paint and chairs. We decided to go with a mixture of different chairs then give them all makeovers to have the same paint and fabric. These are the chairs. It was a rather easy process just time consuming. We are pretty pleased with the result. I got ideas off of Pinterest like this but ended up kind of doing my own thing.

5)Organizing bins for outdoor toys. I've been wanting to do this for a while. Somehow all of B's toys get spread out all over the yard and I'm too lazy to pick them up, then our yard looks trashy. I got my pinspiration from here. I've waited for so long because I didn't want to pay for the shelf or buckets. I looked online for deals but nothing stood out. So I finally broke down and bought a shelf and some galvanized buckets from Lowe's and got to work. A friend let me use her Cricut machine so I only needed to buy the vinyl from Hobby Lobby (with the 40% coup). Super easy and I'm so excited with the finished product. Now if I can only teach my 2 year old to read the labels....

6)Oreo dessert. Doesn't this look delish?????

I craved this for so long and when I finally made it...epic fail. I must of got the measurements off because it was a giant marshmallow blob in a dish with a chocolate flakes. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture to prove the failure (it got thrown out before I could). If someone makes this successfully please let me know.

7). Mason Jar bathroom organizers.

I loved this look and I had mason jars left over from a farm party so... I used the paint samples from our bedroom colors, made some chalk paint, and got to work. I painted the inside with white craft paint that I had in the cabinet, and then distressed it once it was dry. I love this! Not only is it cute but it keeps everything easily accessible and neat looking.

8)Home organizing binder. Ok so I try to be organized, I really do but most of the time I fail. I can be really messy. Since we moved I have not been organized with our bills, paperwork, etc. I really wanted to do a Home organizing binder. I downloaded some pages from here, combined it with some scrapbook paper, made my own tab dividers, and voila. Now I have an organized space for common information at a fingertip. I just need to use it!

9) DIY Garden Tags. With the garden being so big (big for me) , I really needed a way to label each plant. I searched Pinterest for ideas and found this site with some really cute one. I decided to try something on my own.

I had a ton of lids from old spaghetti sauce jars. I figured I could chalk paint them, label, and seal them (a process I do all the time), then drill a little hole and hang from a wire. Easy right? I chose the yellow paint from our bedroom, I thought it would compliment the green and teal already out there. This was the finished result. Disappointing. It took like 3 coats per side (which is really unusual) and it kept chipping. I'm am really dissatisfied and will probably do something else.

10) Cleaning stove burners. Sounds boring I know. But my stove burners and drip pans were disgusting. I cook daily and I tend to be really messy and I rarely clean the drip pans. They were gross to say the least. I tried a few methods like this with baking soda and vinegar but got only minor results. So I went with the ammonia method. I let some soak in the fumes for a few hours cause I needed to

cook dinner and I let the other two soak overnight. All I can say is WOW! If you can get excited over clean stove drip pans then this is something to get excited over. Once I took them out of the bags all I had to do was barely scrub and it cleaned up like new! SOOO Clean! Why have I not done this before? The ones that soaked overnights cleaned up easier and quicker than the ones that only soaked a few hours. Check out the before and after! Amazing!