National Garden Month!

April is National Garden Month! I love gardening. To me, it truly keeps me sane, calms when I'm stressed and I can never get enough of it. I'm not a great gardener - pretty good, but not and expert by any stretch. I learned my gardening skills from my mother:) It all started when I was younger, but trust me, it wasn't my choice to spend all that time pulling weeds. It was punishment for fighting with my brother or her solution to my saying "I'm bored" one too many times!

But from that, I'm happy to say that I learned a lot. I learned that weeds always come back, so unless I wanted to keep pulling them, my brother and I tried to fight less and we better not ever say we had nothing to do in the summer. My mother taught me that gardening should be a joy, not a chore - and not to take yourself too seriously. She taught me that a garden was more than flowers, it was an ever changing work in progress. If you planted something here and it came up over there, you could either accept it or move it, but don't expect it to stay there forever...maybe it was smarter than you and would grow better where it was!

My favorite advice was her theory on planting. When we moved into our home, I had a clean slate, a huge empty yard to plant in. Where would I put this, where would I plant that? Mom stood in front of my home and said, just put them in and let them grow. I can hear her say "just dig a hole and put it in the dirt". Easy enough. Then there is always the "dig it up and throw it over there" method. Trust me, it works!

It's just getting warm enough here in the northeast for my gardens to start coming alive. This year, that will take on a whole new meaning for me, as my mom passed away in March. She was my gardening inspiration. Most of the perennials in my gardens came all the way from her gardens in WV. The biggest emotional hurdle for me will be when my wysteria blooms. It was started from a seed from the wysteria at my parents home! It bloomed in 3 years when "statistically" wysteria takes at least 7 years to bloom.

We always talked about what was blooming, her plants always before mine. We'd share pictures of flowers and of course, our wysteria's. I'll miss those conversations dearly.

I guess it's fitting that April is Gardening Month - my mother's birthday is April 8th. The beginning of a month that takes us from the cold of winter to the beauty of spring.

Gardening is a 12 months a year hobby though! I created a set of calendars to help both novice and experienced gardeners stay on top of their gardening. Click here to see my entire "gardening" collection.

So, take some time to plant something; vegies, flowers, trees. Teach your kids the joy of gardening - and make them pull weeds every now and then, it builds character! Click here for Gardening with Kids tips.

If you just can't wait til your flowers bloom or want a garden of flowers all year long, order the Comfy Cozy "Magic Garden" glow in the dark Pillowcase. Order one for your mom or granma...trust me, she'll love it!

Happy National Garden Month!

Click on this link (http://www.quamada.com/months.html) to check out the complete list of "months".

Belated Fantastic Friday

Yesterday I was celebrating Independence Day with good friends, brisket, beer and fireworks. So, I'm a day behind! But, it looks like Diane missed her day, too. So, I feel no guilt. Mwhahahaha!

I found the following article today while "stumbling" and thought it was worthy of sharing with my WAHM friends. We need to EAT HEALTHY TO BE HEALTHY! So read on to discover the
The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating By Tara Parker-Pope.

By the way... you can plant a couple of these in your garden.

We are running a 10% off bed sale over at Shaka Studios through July 6, 2008. We only put beds on sale about twice per year. So, if you are in the market, pop over and check us out!

I'm taking my daughter to Michaels today for The Knack event. Kids crafts are offered for $5 on the 1st and 3rd Saturday of each month. We've never gone so I can't tell you much more but anything to get the kid out of the house during summer is good. Although she was at Girl Scout camp all week so she's probably tuckered out, especially after staying up so late last night watching fireworks.

Girl Scout camp must have been awesome. She went swimming everyday, horseback riding twice and earned SEVEN badges! Oh, I wish I was a kid, again.

Snapshot Saturday!

Saturday around here is a bit hectic. First of all, I "think" I'm going to get some work done, second, I "think" I'm going to have a relaxing morning before I work in my office, third, my children don't think I'm going to do anything but play.

Working out of your home is hectic every day, but Saturday is a tough one. I'd like to "take the day off" like normal people, but that rarely happens. I usually have Comfy Cozy® orders to ship out that could wait til Monday, but I hate to make my customers wait when it will "only take a minute" to get the labels printed and run to the Post Office.

SIDE BAR: I use a lot of "..." in my ramblings. Hope it doesn't drive you crazy!

Today's SNAPSHOTS are of my office when we have a big order to ship out. It can get a little cramped in there!

The second is of our screen printing shop. We don't use many standard colors and mix all of our own shades. Those cans back there are most of them, but not all! Every product is hand screen printed using these machines. The "screen" is the pink board you see, then the pillowcases or shirts go on the lower part . It all spins around like a merry-go-round.
Claude, one of our screen printers does a fabulous job of ensuring that our designs our printed perfectly. He's just finished printing our "Camp Friends" design and next up will be our new "Puppy Love" & "Cat Nap" pillowcases. More on the new designs later.

Well, it's now after noon, guess I'll try to take a few hours off and weed my overgrown garden!