Adventures in Gardening

These dianthus are from last year. I left them in the ground and they grew again this year. They already have flowers too!


Geraniums in hanging baskets!

Rhubarb is growing!

Today little E and I went outside to do some gardening. I had him all set up in his stroller with toys and a good view and managed to weed half of one garden bed before he started fussing. I also ordered 3 yards of dirt for the flower pots and my new garden bed. My dad is going to be building this for me and I'm excited to get planting.

My mom came over to babysit for me today and as soon as I went outside it began to rain! Then after it stopped raining I attempted to take a load of dirt to the backyard in the wheel barrow and discovered that the wheel is flat. Grr. It rained off and on about 3 times. I was slightly ticked as I finally had a babysitter to watch Evan and give me some un-interrupted time in the garden and it kept raining.

Oh well. I managed to spray some roundup, weed both garden beds, hang my shepherd's hooks and hanging baskets and plant a few planters. I also discovered little rabbit "chew chew" had munched on a few of my plants that were sitting on the deck waiting to be planted. One was chewed down to a nub! I know know that plant needs to go in a hanging basket!

I have hubby assigned to fix the wheelbarrow wheel and hope to get some more work done this weekend. Hopefully my baby sitter will return! We are feeding Nana some Chinese food tonight to keep her coming back!

I planted about 50 tulips, daffodils, crocus etc last fall. At last count there are 6 purple tulips that bloomed in the front yard and about 5 red tulips in the back yard. Also some muscari that amazingly grew! The bunny has been chewing on the tulips as well!

Rhubarb Crisp

Made some rhubarb crisp with rhubarb from my mom's house. My dad brought over a chunk of rhubarb and planted some in my garden but it isn't quite big enough to pick yet. It was tasty and delicious! I mixed a little sugar, cinnamon and some tapioca in with the rhubarb and it tasted just right! Served it up with some vanilla ice cream. Yum!

Next project - maybe

Well I had been saving some old t-shirts that are worn out/stained for my next project - making t-shirt yarn! However I read this post for directions on how to make t-shirt yarn and discovered that the t-shirts I had planned to use are not suitable as they have side seams. Now I need to be on the lookout for some old t-shirts in groovy colors. Value Village has 50% off day on Monday so maybe I will pick up some shirts there.

I found another potential project that I could use my old t-shirts for. I have been reading the blog Helping Little Hands and this blogger uses old t-shirts to create appliques for children's clothing. She uses t-shirt material as it doesn't fray and is easy to applique with. I have visions of cute clothes for Little E. He definitely needs a shirt with a tractor on it for his visit to Papa's house as he will likely be going for his first tractor ride.

I also want to try freezer paper stencilling as well. Just have to find some freezer paper - which has proven surprisingly hard to find.

London Drugs Shop

Well today Little E and I went to London Drugs to do a quick shop. This was the first mommy and baby solo shop for us. The stroller was loaded!

Here's what I got:

Cascade Dish Detergent-$3.79 x 3- coupons (and had 2 buy a gel get action packs free) $1.60 each
Old Spice Body Wash - $3.99 x 4 - coupons = free!
Herbal Essences Shampoo - $2.49 x 2 - coupons = $1.75 each
Febreeze Luminaries - $12.99 x 2 - coupons = $2.99 each
Gillette Fusion Razor - $9.99 - coupons = $1.99
Gillette Deo (buy one get body wash free) = $3.99 plus body wash ($4.99 free)
Old Spice Deodorant - $2.99 x 8 - coupons = free!
Glad Reed Diffuser - $10.99 - mail in rebate for free trial = free!

Grand total of $48.55 ($14.37 of that was taxes) less $10.99 for mail in rebate) = $37.54

Coupon savings of $85.57

Pretty good for a LD shop! Lots of free stuff too!

If you are looking for some tips on how to do "stack coupons" read this post.

Baptismal Thanks

The gown is finished and the baby baptized and no thanks to me! I have to say that my entire contribution to this gown was sewing the lace on the yoke. That's it. Oh well.

Thanks to Nana for stepping up to the plate and finishing the gown for little E. Great job on embroidering the little westie as well. Also - great cake! Love it!

Thank you to S & C for being god parents to Little E. You did just fine.

Thanks to Dad for all of the help the night before getting everything ready for the lunch. Peeling potatoes and eggs and carrying things up and down stairs. Thanks to my cousin E for taking great snapshots of all of the action.

Thanks to all of our family and friends for celebrating with us and for the lovely gifts too!

It was a great day!

Baptismal Gown

Little E helps Mommy and Nana with sewing. Not really but he looked so darn cute I had to start off this post with this picture!


I had the wonderful idea that I would sew a baptismal gown for little E for his baptism on Sunday. After looking at the gown my mother sewed for my brother I figured that I could sew one just the same with little or no trouble (and with some coaching from her).


The material we used for the gown was given to my mom by my great-grandmother for her to make my baptismal gown. We used the same pattern that my mom used to make my brother's baptismal gown. His baptismal gown had a little blue teddy bear embroidered on it. My son's god-parents are my sister and brother-in-law and they have a West Highland White Terrier named Wilkie (who is like one of the family). Evan's gown has a little westie on it that my mom embroidered.


I started this project very optimistically. However, life doesn't always go according to plan. I would say that it is mostly due to the fact that I left the sewing of the gown till the week before the baptism. This was mistake #1. No problem for my mom - but I needed to allow room for error. And there were three in the first 30 minutes of sewing.

First thing I did was to pin the yoke to the front of the skirt the wrong way. I had the front of the yoke pinned to the inside of the gown. This had taken 20 minutes of gathering, measuring, careful pinning and matching up which had to be undone. This could have been worse. I could have actually sewed it wrong.


Mistake number two came after I sucessfully sewed the seam after re-pinning it. It was then that my mom and I looked at it and discovered that we hadn't put the lace on. Every thing had to be torn out, gathering stiches put back in, gathers re-done, and measured over again. After an hour of sewing we were back at square one.

I sewed the lace on the yoke and then my mom redid the front seam yet again. This was when little E woke up from his nap and I had to go feed him. At this point, I realized that it could take hours to sew the dress at my speed so I just let my mom have at it.



She is saving a few jobs for me to do on the gown. I will be sewing the side seams, hemming it and adding the final lace trim. I think this still counts as me "sewing" his dress.

Advice on Shopping at London Drugs

I have been asked some questions about how I'm able to get such good deals when shopping at London Drugs. I thought I would write a little tutorial with some advice and tips that might help you in getting the good deals too.

First off you need coupons. Good places to check out are:

www.save.ca
www.brandsaver.ca
www.smartcanucks.ca
www.gocoupons.com

Also you can get coupons from the newspapers. Smart Source, Brandsaver and Red Plum flyers are the ones that I have found. These flyers can be found in the Saturday paper. Coupons can also be found in store and in magazines or sometimes on the product itself.

A good blog to read for tips on coupons and deals is savemoneyinwinnipeg. Search the archives for posts on London Drugs, coupon stacking, and coupon chains. The owner of the blog, Nadine, also organizes coupon chains. Read her blog for more on this.

Once you get your coupons it helps to organize them. The best system to use is the one that will work best for you. I use a small plastic photo album to organize my coupons. Each pocket is labelled with a different category of coupon (i.e. diapers & wipes, cereal, toothpaste, shampoo, cleaners etc). Others use a zippered binder with hockey card inserts and put their coupons in there.

The next step is to make a shopping list. You have to be pretty organized to stack coupons. If you aren't the cashier gets crabby at you and you spend a lot of time at the store!

I read through the flyers and see what is one sale that week. The reason I do this is because London Drugs (LD) allows you to "price match" to other competitor's sale flyers. For example, the regular price of a pack of Pampers Mega diapers is $18.99 at LD. If they are advertised in the flyer for $15.99 at Zellers you would bring your Zellers flyer with you to LD and say that you want to price match to that flyer. Instant savings! They you use your coupons to lower the price even more.

This brings me to coupon stacking. The only store that allows this is LD. Coupon stacking means using more than one coupon on a single item. If you are using multiple coupons on one item they must all have a different UPC code on them. Sometimes you can even get items for free!

You will want to organize your coupons and flyers at home before you go to the store. Make a list of the items you want to purchase and if you are price matching them. Be sure to check your coupons for expiry dates and to make sure you are using the coupon on the correct product (some coupons specify a size ie. 4 pack bar of soap, 500 ml bottle etc). I circle the item that I am price matching in the flyer with a marker so that I can easily find it at the store to show the cashier. Get all of you coupons together and maybe paper clip them to keep them together.

When I pay, I put the item on the counter and the coupons with it (as you go). This works well for me. Make sure to tell the cashier ahead of time if you want to price match (PM). It is a good idea to do all of the items from one flyer at a time. Speeds up the process.

My list might look something like this:

Pampers - mega PM Zellers $15.99 - $10 coupons
Secret Flawless Deo - PM Walmart $2.50 - $2 coupon
Reach Toothbrush - PM Rexall $1 - $1 coupon - Free!

When you want to price match or coupon stack at LD you need to take your purchase to the customer service till. Do not go through the regular check out. Also, make sure not to try to price match too close to closing. It takes some time to do the shopping and check out. Cashiers don't like it if you try to stack too close to closing.

I think that is most of what I do. If I think of anything else I will add it up. Feel free to add your tips in the comments!