Insta-April

April was a wee bit long this year. We got back from Arizona to find that the snow had all melted while we were away (Yay!), but then it snowed again...and it snowed A LOT! After about three more snowstorms, the snow finally melted the last week in April and it warmed up quick. So that's why there's an odd mix of summer and winter attire in these shots...

Now that spring has officially arrived we're spending a lot of time outside, so if you want to see pictures of all the pretty flowers in my garden, follow me on Instagram @michelledupuis, or check out my Instagram profile on the web at instagram.com/michelledupuis. You can also see all of my semi-monthly collages of favorites right here.

3 months!

Last week our girl turned three months old and man, is she a happy baby. Just look at her! Tell me you don't want to squeeze her... 

That's what I thought.

Edie is such a fun baby. Every morning she wakes up (a bit earlier than the rest of us), and after nursing for a bit, she's usually ready to play. I'll lay her on the floor in the "baby gym" and she happily kicks, grabs, and talks to the animals until she's ready for more milk and a nap!

When she's in the mood, she'll hold long conversations with us (or anyone who starts talking to her), and always has A LOT to say. No idea what she's saying but I sure wish I did! She also talks to her stuffed animals. Oh, and she's already acquired a lovey! It's an old monkey toy of Abe's that he never seemed interested in, but she loves snuggling with it.

She's finally started sleeping through the night which is awesome. Unlike her brother, she sticks to a very strict bedtime. If she's not in bed at 7:30 she gets very crabby and does her best to let us know she'd rather be sleeping. 

She usually only takes short naps during the day, but she goes down for those pretty easy too. I like to tell Abe that I need his help getting baby sister to sleep, so he'll lay down with us after lunch for a little while at least. Some days he asks if he can get up and play quietly, but other days he'll hold her hand and drift off to sleep himself. 

It's been so much fun watching them interact and play with each other. Abe loves his baby sister and often tells us "Baby sister is my best friend!" If she's not in her crib when he wakes up in the morning, he comes in our room, looks in the cradle (which is usually empty), and asks "Where's Edie?" She always has a huge smile for him when he climbs up to say hi.

So I'm posting this a week late, but I actually remembered to take pictures on the right date. Win one for Google calendar reminders! You can look back on all Edie's monthly photos right here.

Deck : Before

So I haven't really started working on the deck, although I did buy some fabrics and accessories, and of course, painted the doormat.

I love our little deck. It really is tiny (just big enough for a table and a couple chairs), but there's a crab apple tree on one side and along the fence on the opposite side is a row of lilac bushes. It smells amazing out there when everything is in bloom!

The furniture on our deck, however, has been slowly collected over the years and that's what it looks like...but not in a good way. I'd like the deck to be a little more inviting...and attractive, so this is my plan for making the not-so-pretty pieces we already have work together to create a relaxing space that we can all enjoy.

I'll be using royal blue, aquas, chartreuse, white, and grey. The rug is just going to stay green or we'll flip it to the whiter side. I also plan to add a bit of pink if I can find some good flowers that will survive on our mostly shady deck. And here's what we have to work with: 

This creaky, wooden rocking chair we picked up at Ikea a few years back, but I'm working on a new cushion. 

This gorgeous little cedar table made by Noah and his mom. It needs a fresh coat of stain, and the legs need to be trimmed a bit. It feels really tall, although I think the real problem is the chairs. They're about 4 inches shorter than our dining room chairs. I suppose they're made for relaxing... 

I'm not in love with the "look at me" blue of the chairs. We bought them on sale at Target last summer and I remember wishing at the time that they had some better colors available. They're still a huge improvement over the hand-me-down plastic chairs we used to have out there.

We've been eating out there a lot since the snow melted, but during the day the table is where my tomato plants live. I started them from seed and planted the first few in my herb garden the other day. The rest will go in my raised beds soon!

We bought this indoor/outdoor recycled plastic rug when Abe was a baby. It's not my favorite thing ever but it is easy to clean and provides a soft spot to play with a baby. 

I love this old crab apple tree for the one week every two years when it's in bloom, and hate the rest of the summer when it's dropping tiny crab apples all over the deck. Well, I don't hate it. It does provide a nice amount of shade and a place to hang my cafe lights. Those however are going to be coming down. I'm not sure what it is with the squirrels in our yard, but they've had a problem with my lights ever since I put them up. They chewed through the cord once, so I fixed it and left them up. Then they chewed through it again, and again I fixed it. This spring, they chewed off the end of the cord (that plugs into the outlet) and later I found a single bulb, still in its socket, sitting by the base of one of the big ash trees in our backyard. I'm thinking maybe the squirrels like the lights so much they are trying to steal them, thinking "this light fixture will look great in my nest made of dead leaves and garbage." I suppose if I kept the lights plugged in this problem would have solved itself years ago...

So there you have it. An official "before" post of our little deck, which I'm hoping will look a bit more pulled together the next time I take pictures of it! 

Mother's Day Gift Ideas

I'm sort of a last-minute kind of girl. Birthdays tend to sneak up on me, as do holidays like Mother's Day. Blogging, however, requires things to be done ahead of time. That said, I have nothing ready for Mother's Day this year. Oh well, here's a few last minute gift ideas in case you're like me - still wondering what to do for your mom for Mother's Day. 

Flowers are always a nice idea. You can make mom tissue paper flowers...

...or give her real ones. These are just small pots of gerber daisies that I picked up at the nursery and stuck in a wooden whiskey box. You can find small wooden crates at thrift stores, or pick up a new one at the liquor store. Use the box and save the bottle to give to your dad for Father's Day!

You can also buy flowers at the store (or pick some from your garden) and make your own bouquet for mom.

Umm...chocolate is always good. This chocolate cherry cake would be a nice addition to a Mother's Day brunch.

As would these super easy chocolate croissants. Yum!

You could offer to do the dishes for your mom on Mother's Day, or leave her with a few of these cute fruity dish towels...or both!

Jewelry makes a great gift and it doesn't have to be expensive! Last year Abe and I made bracelets, earrings, and pendent necklaces from recycled plastic containers for Mother's Day gifts.

Love Instagram? Make mom a canvas print of one of your favorite photos!

You could also make her small silhouettes of her grandchildren, or big ones if you have the time!

Not a gift giver? Most moms also like spending time with their children and grandchildren. Take her someplace special like your local arboretum!

You can find more of my Mother's Day projects here, or check out my Mother's Day board on Pinterest for even more great ideas!

Rug Redux

Winter lasted waaaay too long in Minnesota this year. Once the snow melted though, and we cleaned up the deck a bit, I started thinking about what I could do to make our deck a little more inviting. I used to watch those shows on HGTV where they're always creating "outdoor rooms" and I always wondered which state you'd have to live in to have such a room - California? Florida? Hawaii? Lord knows Minnesota is not one of the places where an "outdoor room" would really work, but I suppose an outdoor space that can be used a few weeks out of the year is almost as good. Right?

I'll be posting more about our deck transformation over the next few weeks, but I decided to get my deck decorating started with a project for...

My inspiration pin came from The House that Lars Built. The fruit slice doormats are super cute, but I had an old rectangular doormat that I figured I'd just reuse instead of buying a new one. 

This is what I started with. An old coir mat I bought last summer, or maybe the summer before, that was still in good shape although badly faded. I started by shaking it out and hosing it down, then I let it dry. 

When I went to pick it up from where it was drying on the driveway, 6 ducks swooped down and almost flew into me! (I thought they were ravens at first. Been watching too much Game of Thrones.) They turned at the last second to avoid hitting me and four of the mallards landed in my backyard, while one of the males and the single female of the group landed on the roof of our garage. I have no idea what they were drawn to in our backyard, but I wouldn't mind if they stopped in for a visit every once in awhile. I love ducks.

Anyways, once the mat was dry I sprayed the entire thing with white paint. This is where things didn't go as expected. First of all, the mat DRANK the paint! I don't know how many coats I put on, but the best I could get was this grayish color. Also, I had to hold the spray can 2-3 inches from the surface instead of the recommended 10-16 inches. Once the paint was dry, I cut some strips of duct tape (painter's tape did not work) and stuck them on the mat.

To finish the rug, I sprayed the whole thing with RustOleum's Satin Lagoon. I did one thick coat to start, let it dry, and went back after about 10 minutes to touch up any spots where the gray still showed through. The dark paint covered much better that the lighter one. Once the paint was dry, I pulled off the tape and voila! It looks like a brand new rug! 

I honestly don't think I'll be buying pre-designed doormats anymore when it's so easy to customize a plain mat with whatever color, design, or message you want! Oh, and it's cheaper too. I already had the doormat and white paint, so all I spent was $3.50 at Home Depot on the can of blue spray paint. A new rug would have cost me at least $15!

You can see my previous Pinterest Challenge projects right here, and don't forget to check out all the other entries at Young House Love, Bower Power, Sparkle Meets Pop, and Red Bird Blue!

Terrarium

I like to imagine that I'm a pretty good gardener. I'm not, but it doesn't hurt to pretend. Well...it sort of hurts when all the plants I buy die off or refuse to come back the next spring. That's why, even though I started this terrarium last July, I didn't write a post about it until now. I was just waiting for all the plants to die. Since they've survived this long, I figured I must have done something right, so here's what I did...

I found this huge glass vessel at a garage sale last spring and picked it up for $6. The minute I saw it I knew it would be perfect for a terrarium, the only problem is, it's so big I still haven't quite figured out where to put it. For now it's taking up too much space on the table in our sunroom.

I picked out a few succulents from the huge selection at Tangletown Gardens, a bag of cactus soil, and a bucket full of rocks.

As always, Abe was excited to put on his "glubs" and help me. First, we put a thick layer of rocks on the bottom of the vessel and covered that with a few inches of fast-draining cactus soil. 

Then we added the plants. I'm not sure what this one was called but it did die off shortly after we planted it. Oh well...I like the one I replaced it with better anyway.

I wish I had a picture from when we finished planting it (to see how much everything's grown if nothing else), but I forgot to take one. (Although I did take this picture a few months later.) 

I keep it in a sunny window and give it about 3 cups of water once a month. I've been thinking about adding a layer of pebbles on top of the soil to prevent soil from splashing up on the glass when I water it, but so far I've just added a couple interesting rocks from my childhood rock collection...

...and a butterfly that Abe and I found in my garden last summer. It was dying when we found it, and when we went back to check on it a couple days later, it was still in the same spot but no longer moving. His wings are torn in a couple places but he still looks as vibrant and beautiful as a living Tiger Swallowtail. I just attached him to a short piece of floral wire that pretty much disappears against the greenery in the terrarium.

For the plants, I picked up this cute little guy to replace the groundcover plant that died. It's called a Crassula Mesembryanthemoides, and I found it with the cactuses and succulents in the gardening section at Home Depot. 

This one is a Variegated Jade. Surprisingly, I've noticed new plants sprouting from a couple leaves I accidentally knocked off and just left laying on the soil. I love free plants!

And this beauty is a Manfreda X Bloodspot. It looks like a small agave with sharp spins on the tip of each leaf.

So far it's been really easy to maintain, and considering how easy it is to propagate succulents from fallen leaves, I may just a make a few more.

Anyone else have terrarium tips? A homemade terrarium you'd like to show off? (Leave a link in the comments!) Any other wannabe green thumbs out there? I'm not a black thumb, because I don't kill every plant I touch...just the ones I really love.

Insta-Arizona

It's been about a month since my last Instagram update, so here's some of my favorites from March...

...and the first week of April. I'm doubling up this month because I took about a gazillion pictures while we were in Arizona.  Made it hard to narrow it down to only sixteen favorites. Also, I didn't want to mix shots of warm and sunny Arizona with cold and snowy Minnesota. The contrast might just convince me to move there!

You can follow me on Instagram @michelledupuis, or check out my Instagram profile on the web at instagram.com/michelledupuis. You can also see all of my semi-monthly collages of favorites right here.