The Black Thumb Strikes Again

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that Lily the Ivy the has died. She made it about two months in my care, but unfortunately she did not make it to three. 

Surprisingly, Barney is still around! He's still not looking great, but he's hanging in. The other plants are doing great, and I've added to the brood. Ferdinand the Fiddle Leaf Fig is doing pretty well. It took a little while for us to find our groove. For the first few weeks the leaves started falling off and drooped constantly. But I upped the amount of water I give him each week and he's responded well. Ferdinand didn't really look too great to begin with, so I'm happy with how things seem to be going.  

I also added Isabella the Snake Plant. She's proven to be pretty low maintenance thus far, which has been great!

I do love having plants in the house. Here's hoping Lily is my only victim! 

Friday, I'm in Love: Cotton Candy Grapes

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know this. But if not, here's my confession: I am in love with Cotton Candy Grapes.

What are cotton candy grapes? Essentially, they are green grapes naturally bred to taste like cotton candy! That's right, according to this article by NPR, this isn't a chemical process. There aren't crazy additives to make the cotton candy flavor. Just good ol' plant breeding.

I don't know how exactly it works, but I do know that these grapes are amazing! I'm not sure they taste like cotton candy exactly, but they are delicious. They are sweet, but not overwhelming so. All in all, they are pretty perfect to me!

If you want more details about how these grapes came to be, read the whole NPR article. (Also check out the comments because things get heated!) If you want to try these delicious grapes yourself, head to a Sprouts store near you. That's where I found mine :)

How I Did It: Tiki Torch Porch

I noticed this article being shared by a lot of friends on Facebook lately. The gist of the article is that people with type O blood get bit by mosquitoes more often than people with any other blood type. I don't know how much truth there is to that, but I do know that I'm O positive and I've always been a magnet for mosquitos! I have actual scars from bites I received as a kid, and I'm currently dealing with nearly 20 separate bites all over my body, including my forehead.

So my wonderful husband suggested we outfit our pool and deck with tiki torches in hopes of saving me from all those mosquitos!

We picked up a dozen tiki torches and tiki fuel at our local Wal-Mart and got to work.

Ok, he got to work on it! The tiki torches around the pool were easy. He just stuck them in the ground at even distances while I went around and filled the torches with fuel. But the torches on the deck required a little more work. We couldn't stick those in the ground around it because Winchester would probably knock them down immediately. (We have gates that keep him out of the pool area for now.) So James decided to drill holes in the deck railings to place the tiki torches in.

He drilled one on the top railing and one on the bottom and simply slid the torches in place.

Winchester watched impatiently while James worked. It took about half an hour to do, but it made such a huge difference to our outdoor area! 

So after re-reading this, I guess the title of this blog post should be "How He Did It", huh? Because really, I just took pictures and filled some torches. James did all the hard work, so thank you babe! It looks awesome, doesn't it?