This is what it looked like before I did anything.

Here it the original mailbox flower bed from October 2003

Here are some photos from the original project in April 2005.

and the original “finished” product

Sometime between April and September of 2005 our mailbox post rotted out and our mailbox fell over.  It has been cemented into the ground and since we have an in-ground sprinkler system we didn’t want to mess with digging the old concrete out, so we got a new mailbox and moved it over several feet. I also changed out the edgers on the bed and put in some more plants, including a forsythia sprout my mom gave me.

April 2009- Things look sad

Last March (2010) I put weed barrier fabric down over the whole bed and covered it in mulch, it took me two days and it didn’t even slow down the weeds.

A couple weeks ago I decided I wanted to re-do this bed, AGAIN.  This time, I wanted to replace the crappy plastic edgers with concrete ones and put river rock down.

Saturday, I went and bought 15 bags of river rock and started cleaning off the bed

Sunday I went and bought 24 concreted edgers and started the rest of the work, which included digging a trench for the edgers

First half of edgers in

First half of rock in

This part is “finished”.  I want to put in some more perennials and I still have to switch out the edgers on the mailbox bed, but that will have to wait for another day.

At this point I estimate that we have put approximately $300 into this flower bed and in excess of 50 hours of labor.

on this lovely candle holder on my dresser.

The problems with the candle holder jewelry rack:

1. the necklaces get tangled together

2. you often have to remove more than one to get to the one you want

3.  I can’t see my pretty candle holder

So, after pondering different solutions here is what I came up with.

We have this LARGE armoire that is part of our bedroom set.

Said armoire has a curved front and inset panels in the doors.

So I went and got some command hooks

and placed rows of them inside the doors, like this

Where I then placed my necklaces!

You can find the article here http://www.cookinglight.com/cooking-101/techniques/cooking-questions-tips-00400000064986/ as well as in the magazine.

My most common mistakes from the list?

#2, #3, #9 & #22

What are yours?

Matthew got me a Nook eReader for Christmas. I love it but felt it had one drawback, I couldn’t read in the bathtub. Reading while taking a looooong bubble bath is one of my favorite things. I mentioned this drawback to Matthew and he made me very happy with a single word-ziploc!
I put my Nook in a couple of ziploc bags and enjoyed my book and bubble bath.