Cutting Back Mother-In-Laws Tongue

 Don’t worry my wonderful mother-in-law, Jan, is safe. Sansevieria trifasciata, a plant better known as mother-in-laws tongue is one of my favorite house plants.  It tolerates neglect and low sunlight and is the ultimate plant for someone who just can’t seem to get anything to stay alive.

 

Mine, as you can see got a little out of control. I couldn’t find a good visual out there on pruning this plant, but I did read that you could simply cut back the fronds in the same shape as they grow. I tried it for myself cutting a few fronds into points. A couple of months later the plant is still as hardy as ever.

Now that I know this plant truly is indestructible I plan on being a little more aggressive with my pruning. I did read that this may stunt the original mother plant, but force new shoots to grow.  With any luck I should be able to split it later this summer and share with family and friends.

What are your favorite house plants?

One Down Two To Go

All of the toilet seats in our house have some sort of design. This was not one of the big selling points in our house, but we figured it was an easy fix.

A year and a half later we finally got around to replacing one with a plain seat. As you can see my husband was getting a little more help then he bargained for. He has been doing most of the home improvement projects lately, including painting the office. Time for me to step it up and cross some things off the to do list!

A Work In Progress-The Wall

Ever since we bought the house I have wanted to make a gallery wall in our front hall. Because of how the basement door opens and how much stuff we lug up and down the stairs there really isn’t room for a bench or table. This space really needs some wall art. Getting pictures into frames is a process for me and displaying the mismatch frames in a pleasing way scared me. So many holes…... Then I saw a gallery ledge on Pinterest and knew I had the answer. With a ledge I could easily switch my arrangement as many times as I wanted without the risk of adding new holes. I would love to stack three ledges here just because I’ve found that number to be pleasing to the eye. However I’m going to start with one eight foot ledge and go from there.

I saw a few ledges, but decided to make my own when I saw Ana White’s plans for a DIY $10 ledge. My lumber cost a little more, but it was still much cheaper than anything else I’ve seen. Thanks to some help from my brother and his Kreg Jig it was put together fairly quickly. Weeks later it is still sitting in our basement waiting to be sanded and painted. I’ll get to it soon…I hope…

Displaying Baby Bracelets

I don’t save too many trinkets, but I still have the hospital bracelets for both my children. For a long time they lived in my jewelry box, but since I have a wall to fill I thought that these would be a fun display item. On my first try I put the bracelets in a shadow box with some hospital pictures. I didn’t love the pictures and I kind felt like they were more of a focus than the bracelets I was trying to display.  I like the more simple approach I took here on my second try with craft paper and scrap booking stickers. It is a sweet reminder at how little my babies once were. 

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I See My True Colors Shining Through

I hinted in my last post that our house is a bit stark and I would really love to give it that homey feel. (This may be understating the situation.) Well we have made a huge step in that direction. Most of the main floor has been painted with new colors. Living with someone else’s colors and décor has been driving me nuts and I’m so glad we finally did something about it. I was absolutely paralyzed when it came to choosing colors. I just didn’t have the talent to pull together colors that would work with our wood floors, counter tops, and finishings. Lucky for me I have a friend who is an interior decorator and was willing to save me from my fear. She helped me find colors I liked, worked together and worked with what we currently had. Once I made up my mind the rest actually happened quickly. The colors we choose were Versatile Grey for the living room and entry way, Serious Grey for the kitchen, and Stratton Blue for the Dining Room. It feels a little more like my home now.

How I Save Money- Programmable Thermostat

For Christmas I got a programmable thermostat, a penny pincher's dream gift. Minnesota has some pretty extreme temperatures. In the winter we keep the house too warm for the kids. They never keep the blankets on through the night. I loathe waking up any more than necessary and until they figure out the blankets I choose sleep over pennies. It makes me feel better that I can set the program to save us a little during the day while we are out. There is some debate if these actual save money, but according to Energy.Gov “By turning your thermostat back 10° to 15° for 8 hours, you can save 5% to 15% a year on your heating bill -- a savings of as much as 1% for each degree if the setback period is eight hours long.” Even if we are closer to the 5% range this thing will pay for itself in no time.