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Thanks for visiting These Good Ideas. If you're looking for more frequent posts from me please visit my new blog! Husband and I recently bought a house and it is a fixer. We have lots to do and lots to blog about and lots of great ideas we'd love to share with you! You'll find all kinds of interesting ideas and tips over there and the posts are much more frequent. Thanks for reading!

www.twoseekhome.blogspot.com

3/16/11

Good Idea #26: Eco-vacation in the Virgin Islands


I'll be taking a hiatus from blogging for the next couple weeks, but I wanted to share a little bit about where I'm going!  I'm not just excited to got to the Virgin Islands for the first time and spend a week on the beach during away from the rainy Portland spring, but I'm also excited that the resort we'll be visiting is entirely environment friendly.  I'll share pictures of our trip when we return, but for now check out more about the resort at www.maho.org.

3/10/11

Good Idea #25: Happy Birthday Birthday Cake


Today is my Birthday!  How fitting that Apartment Therapy just featured this awesome birthday cake mold today from Generate.  Such a good idea.  The only thing that would have been better is if I could have gotten it in time to make myself a cake for today!  Here's what I did instead:

Husband and I began the morning early with breakfast at Black Sheep Bakery, a local (mostly) vegan bakery that is just a couple blocks from our apartment.  I was planning on trying the vegan biscuits and gravy (the gravy is vegan, too) but they were out of gravy.  So we went ahead and got some very non-vegan egg, cheese and bacon on our vegan biscuits.  All parts, vegan and non-vegan, were a delicious and filling beginning to the morning.

Husband headed off to work for the day and after washing down my breakfast with some coffee and delicious chocolate-covered macaroons (a birthday gift from husband) I got a rare chance to chat with my very busy east-coast best friend, Marcie.  It is always wonderful to hear from her!  Her lovely little daughter's birthday is today, too, so I know I will always have a chance to chat with them on March 10th!

I also got to talk to my whole family today.  My sister, Nana and parents all called to say hello and wish me a good day.  I got to do a little writing, too, before Husband came home to make me a birthday dinner.  After dinner I made myself a batch of cupcakes.  Yum.  And finally I got to take a little time to sit down and share my day with you.  Happy Birthday to me!



3/9/11

Good Idea #24: Getting Rid of Fungus Gnats

Hi my name is Caroline and I have fungus gnats.  Gross.  But actually not all that gross.  If you have houseplants you may be familiar with this pesky little problem.  Fungus gnats are little flies, similar to fruit flies, that live in the moist soil of house plants.  They are completely harmless but are annoying and can quickly get out of control if you don't take action (note:  by "out of control" I really just mean "very annoying and difficult to get rid of").  Today however, I came across some very timely help for getting rid of fungus gnats.  Let me begin by telling you the story of this very sad little lemon balm plant:


I've had trouble with fungus gnats in the past and have often resorted to throwing out entire plants to get rid of them (sad story, I know).  This time, however, I am determined to save my little plant.

Lemon balm is supposed to be an extremely easy herb to grow.  It grows quickly and can be invasive if planted in a garden but on it's own it thrives.  Recently, my lemon balm started to deteriorate and I discovered that it had been growing so well that it had outgrown its little pot.  So I re-potted it in this nice big terracotta pot, but now I have a new problem.  The number one way to get rid of or prevent fungus gnats is to let the soil dry fully between waterings.  But this pot is so big and the terracotta hold so much water that I can't seem to get the soil to dry completely before the plant starts getting very thirsty.  Now I have fungus gnats AND my plant is dying. 

I was just noticing a few little gnats flying around my apartment when I sat down at my computer to scan through a few of my favorite blogs.  Almost immediately I came across a post by Ashli from Maillardville Manor on getting rid of fungus gnats!  Ashli suggest a few things that I already knew about like drying soil thoroughly and using those little yellow sticky fly catchers, but she also gave me two new tips.

I will now by adding potatoes and sand to my fungus-gnat-fighting artillery.  Apparently, if you cover the top of your soil with fast drying sand the gnats will think your soil is dry and won't lay eggs there.  Also, the larvae are apparently attracted to potatoes, so placing a fresh potato wedge on top of the soil each day will allow you to easily throw away many of the little guys before they become annoying adults.

I will be trying both of these tactics and I hope they will help other plant owners out there, too.  Check out all of Ashli's tips at her original post by CLICKING HERE.

Now I'm off to meet with a real estate agent for the first time about possibly buying our first house!  Have you been following all of those new developments?  Check it out at: www.twoseekhome.blogspot.com!

3/6/11

Sweet Home 3D Update

I've been working on finishing up my apartment in Sweet Home 3D and wanted to share the results.  Now that I'm done, if I want to rearrange my apartment all I have to do is move furniture around in the program and see how it looks.  Here are the photos of my finished product as my apartment is now:


Read my original post on Sweet Home 3D or visit www.sweethome3d.com to learn more about it and download the program for free!
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