It was a week of harvest. On Monday we ate carrots (and I froze the rest of it)

and on Tuesday it was beans.

Then I got the flu. But yesterday I felt better and we had ourselves a little harvest fest. I picked the beans and pulled out carrots, while Theo harvested the sweet corn.

There’s more corn, I was already boiling some when I took that picture.

These went into the freezer.

Just like over two kilograms beans and over two kilograms of carrots.

But we also enjoyed some of it that same evening. We had a nice harvest diner.

All from our own garden (well, not the pork chops). Sweet corn, beans, carrots and sauteed mini leeks (sown too close and never replanted, but tasting very good).

It was wonderful!

Wishing you all a great (fall) weekend!

I do visit the thriftstore a lot, but usually I leave empty handed. Last week I didn’t.

I love tins. It’s in my genes, I think. My mother has a large collection and I really have to retain myself from buying every treasure I spy in the pile of old metal in our thrift store. But these had to come home with me. I love the colors. And I think my grandmother had one, since they make me feel so peaceful when I look at them. I have no idea what to do with them, but maybe I’ll just leave them there, on the cupboard. They do add a little color to my living room.

And maybe I’ll leave this book next to them (or under them?). It does have the same colors (I only noticed that after posting these pictures).

I picked it up because of the title. So positive. And I love that it’s about the medicinal and edible plants you can find in the wild (in the UK, but most of these can be found here too).

Just a few things that came home with me last week. How about you? Any good finds?

After all those years of blogging I still forget to take pictures of thing I was planning to post about. That’s why I don’t have any photos of sorting through the mess in the little hallway. I just got working and forgot all about blogging.

I did remember to take pictures of assembling my new office chair.

But then I forgot again when I was cleaning up the carport. I remembered when I was already on my way to the junk yard, so I did take a close up of my little car filled to the brim with rotting wood, but I didn’t have the nerve to get out and take pictures of it in public.

That was only the first round. I think I will need to go at least one more time. And that day I did go twice too.

Yep, that’s our spare mini container. since our other one is chipped now (we pay per load) this one is obsolete. And I never really needed two anyway. We first thought it would come in handy for other things, but I never use it and I don’t like the look of those containers anyway (we have one gray and two green), so having a spare one doesn’t make sense.
I did take a picture to show you how not to shove one in the back of your car. Closing the door was quite a challenge.

My list of Three Things to do this month:

1. paint office walls

2. clean out hallway clutter

3.clean out carport (I’m halfway done)

I wish I was an all-weather-gardener. But I’m not. The rain we had last week made for another week of hardly being in the garden at all. I did pull out all the cauliflower and the broccoli (in the pouring rain, I might add), but that’s about it.

The plants don’t mind. It’s green all over the place.

Well, most of them don’t. I thought I could leave the carrots in for a while, but all the green is dying, so I guess I’ll have to harvest. This week we’ll eat mostly from the garden, I think. I like that.

The radish didn’t do so well. The rain washed away the soil and I don’t think the bulbs will form this way. Oh well, nice try.

My calendula is doing great, I will plant them out this week, but I doubt they will flower. It’s funny how in August, when we had such great weather, it seemed summer would never end. But now it really feels like fall and everything is slowing down.

I’m ready to start putting the garden to bed for the winter. It’s sad, but I’m also already making plans for next summer. That will give me something to look forward during the winter!

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

Painting those office walls had a few side effects, as I knew it would. Removing that table and putting it upstairs was just a little sidestep from all the other things I had to do. So I made myself a little sewing nook.

Those of you who have been reading here for a long time may wonder what happened to my sewing room. Well, we broke out the wall between that room and our bedroom and that was the end of it.

Early this year I also got rid of the sewing table I had in our (now bigger) bedroom. I figured since we had a real office now (meaning my husband would mostly work there) I could go back to sewing in the living room. Well, it turned out I couldn’t. Pulling the sewing machine out of the cupboard was just too much of a hassle (it didn’t help that I had to force all my supplies and fabric in, so taking out the sewing machine meant having to remove a lot of other stuff).

So I’m back in the bedroom. It’s not a studio, or even a sewing room and all my stuff is in plastic boxes. That worked great when it was in the closet, but now it’s just a stack of boxes. I think I will be changing things around here, but for now, I’m happy. I missed having a little corner of my own to make stuff (hmn… I think I really need a new bag).

I was happy enough to finally tackle my growing pile of things to mend. I have a habit of forgetting about those things. When the girls were little I often never got to repairing cloths, since they already grew out of it when I finally sat down and sorted through that pile. This time there were also some things that had been waiting for me to do something about it for over a year.

So I added some straps to a sagging strapless dress, repaired a few torn seams in a dress and pj’s, closed a tear in some trousers, fixed a body, repaired a hole in a sock and hemmed some jeans.
That last part was so much easier than I thought. I found a link on pinterest that showed you can simply use the original hem, by sewing close to it and folding it back. Like so:

It worked like a charm! Wished I had known that years ago.

So now my to-mend-pile is a pile of mended things ready to put away.

Of course I now think I could keep up with those little mending jobs. It feels so good to have that out of the way. Ha! Who am I kidding? I know myself… Maybe I should forbid myself to do any other sewing when there is something to mend…

I had high hopes to finish my three things early this month, but last week wasn’t very productive. I had some editing to do on my newest novel and that took way more time than I expected. I kept finding things that needed to be changed. But even the second time I read through it, I almost cried when my main characters broke up, so I guess the story is okay.

When I was finally finished I decided I really needed to paint that office (I had been looking at those ugly walls for hours, afterall). But than I realized why I didn’t do that earlier. Painting those two walls (the other walls are paneled) isn’t that much work, but moving everything away from those walls is.

I don’t have pictures of the actual painting and I’m glad nobody filmed it either, since that would be rather embarrassing. I started painting in the evening, after closing hours of any diy stores. I didn’t think that would be a problem, since I thought I had two rollers and four handles. I did, but nothing matched. So I rolled, forgot that I had to hold it in the right angle, dropped the roller, messed up the floor, picked it up, rolled, dropped… you get the picture.

Luckily it was just latex, so cleaning up was easy. I got everything off the ground and I think it’s out off my hair too (I am going gray, but I had a little insight in what I will look like in ten years).

To refresh your memory (and mine), these are the three things I want to get done this month:

1. paint office walls

2. clean out hallway clutter

3. clean out carport

Luckily I still have two weeks left…

No oversight pictures again. I was too embarrassed. My garden is a mess and I didn’t have time (or energy) to do anything there this week.
So I’m just ignoring the big picture and focussing on some details.

The purple basil is turning green, but I do like how it looks.

My lettuce and endives bed looks promising. I think we will eat a few meals of this soon.

Unless all the rucola starts blooming (it can still be eaten, but they say it doesn’t taste as good as the pre-bloom rucola).

I do have some good news too: beans!

It seems today I’m not even capable of taking one little picture for a quick Friday post. Oh well, there’s so much good and inspiring to find on the internet. I’ll just share a few of those today (clicking on the pictures will take you to the pinterestpage which should link to the original source).

Have a great weekend!

p.s. if you don’t know pinterest yet, please stay away, it’s highly addictive. If you’re already a victim to it: my boards are here.