Where Baby Bean Will Sleep

I’m sorry the photos are a bit blurry. It’s a dark Columbus night, but I was antsy to take photos and cross something off my list.

Here’s what you’d see when you first walk in the door (if you are a camera and your flash catches mad glare off the photo on the wall, that is):

Notice the purple walls, the dresser and closet on the right, the handsome and proud soon-to-be-daddy, the fun bookcase with crazy stuffed animals from Ikea and the very very drafty windows.

Here’s a better photo of the closet/dresser wall, though I still caught too much glare off the photo to see it properly. Click here to see the peacock in all his (her?) glory.

This is the wall immediately to the left of the doorway as you walk in:

Turning a little more left, you see the cool train photo Scott picked out for the room. (Many thanks to my co-worker, Andy Williams, who took every photo you see on the walls!)

And finally, the beautiful crib my parents gave me, and the glider and ottoman Scott bought me when my belly got too big to balance a laptop on. (This photo is hanging just to the right of the crib, and this print will be hanging above the crib as soon as my dad brings it out from CA. It hung above my bed my whole life. )

Welcome to the Jungle

The view from our sliding glass door:

The morning glory who ate our fence:

Our “large tomato” plants:

Our “small tomato” plant, who is fraternizing with the squash in the middle of the patio…

… and has taken over the trellis and ironically enough, found the tomato cages stacked in the corner. It seems to like them after all! Oh, and there’s our in-the-ground basil plant sharing the space as well.

Our biggest pot o’ basil:

And… the fruits of our labors.

I believe in God

Here is one of the many reasons why:

The Timeline
Wednesday, March 21st: I planted seeds and watered them nervously

Friday, March 23rd: I watered the seeds again, just in case

Saturday, March 24th: I woke up to this lovely picture, danced around the little nubs with joy and tried to resist the urge to poke them. I had growing things! And so soon!

Sunday, March 25th: I just laid down on the floor next to them and stared in amazement and awe. My little seeds had grown so tall, overnight! New ones that I had never seen before had pushed through that soil and grown several inches already. The first picture in this post shows my hardy zucchini sprouts, only four days after planting the seeds! To think that these glorious fuzzy green stalks came from plain old seeds and some dirt and water is just more than I can comprehend. What a beautiful earth we’ve been given!

I love how different each veggie is. Here’s a shot of our delicate Gardener’s Delight tomatoes, complete with dewy drops on each leaf:

I’m already in love with my little plants! For the curious, we planted the seeds in a little peat moss/plastic hooded haven:

In a totally uncharacteristic move, I resisted the urge to fill up every little peat cup. I took a long, hard look at our narrow little strips of dirt in the backyard, pondered our complete inexperience in the area of gardening, and decided to start off on a small-scale for our first year.

We have a mint plant thriving inside, and that gave me courage to start two peat cups of basil. For the outside garden, we’ve started three varieties of tomato (green grape heirloom, delicious, and gardener’s delight), zucchini, and crookneck squash.

Now in general, I hold to the “Go Big or Go Home” philosophy, particularly when it comes to food. I looked at our tiny little peat cups and almost got out the potting soil and the rest of the seeds when I noticed the encouraging sentiment imprinted on the top of our plastic “humidity” hood:

It was then that I realized even just one little growing green thing is something to be proud of.

Please excuse me… I’m going upstairs to sing and dance to my “seedies” some more.

p.s. I’ll preemptively say here: No, I haven’t named each sprout. Because Scott won’t let me I’m not that attached to them!

And you thought we couldn’t be contained…

Now, on to Saturday, where The Beans shake things up. To truly appreciate this occasion, you need to know that Scott and I don’t really shop. Sure, we enjoy grocery store runs… but buying stuff for our house? Doesn’t happen very often. However, we’ve started a system in 2007 to spruce up our Bean Abode.

After living in an apartment in Provo so tiny that our coursework filled up every cranny… when we walked into our 3-story apartment in Columbus, our jaws dropped. What would we do with all this space? Our moving truck had one level of stuff about knee-high in most spots. We didn’t even have to stack boxes!

Based on financial limitations, lack of confidence in our capabilities relating to interior design, and busy-ness, we didn’t do a thing. Our bedroom consists of an alarm clock sitting on the floor, a very small dresser and our bed without a frame. Two built-in closets hold our shoes and clothes. No curtains, no fun paint, no pictures on the wall, nada. I should say here that we are not fans of buying stuff just to buy it… and we hate the idea of accumulating clutter. In fact, we both appreciate how open and spacious our apartment looks with uh, nothing in it.

That notwithstanding, we decided that starting January 2007, we would improve one room of our apartment each month. We didn’t suddenly acquire loads of cash or any creative talent whatsoever, but we did want to add some personal touches to our home.

For January, we picked the smallest room in the house: our guest bathroom on the main floor. It already contained the one picture hanging in our house, of mountain goats, incidentally. We decided to leave the goats but go with a sort of Moroccan theme. We spent around $15 and purchased a rug, two fun towels, and a $1 garbage can. I didn’t blog about it at the time because, well, who DOESN’T have decent towels and a garbage can in their bathroom?

You’ve already met the goats, here’s the rest of the gang:

February was dining room month. We didn’t manage to put any pictures up, but I did buy lots of cute things for our dining room table, remember?

March is… drumroll…. kitchen month! Oh boy, why move on? Let’s just keep kitchen month forever, mkay?

WARNING: Very detailed recap ahead. Click through at your peril.