How To Make an Easy DIY Rain Barrel - 7 Step Guide!

Removing weeds is a crucial part of maintaining a healthy yard or garden, but that doesn’t necessarily make it enjoyable work. But the easy weeding hacks I’ve got for you in today’s post will help make the process less onerous!

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ve probably noticed there are a handful of ingredients that show up again and again in recipes for homemade health and beauty products, like witch hazel, coconut oil, and hydrogen peroxide. Now that summer is here, I thought I’d highlight another of my go-to ingredients that will surely come in handy over the next few months: aloe vera.

My garage door has definitely seen better days. Every time I pull my car into the garage, I look at my poor banged-up garage door and sigh a little bit. But I haven’t actually done anything about it until recently, because I was convinced that my only option was to replace the garage door entirely, and I wasn’t quite ready to commit to such a financial investment. A week or so ago, I had just about had it with my garage door, and was almost ready to start calling around for quotes, when I saw this post featuring a garage door makeover on Pinterest Addict.

Do you have a green thumb when it comes to houseplant care, or are you just trying hard and hoping for the best? I feel pretty confident in my outdoor gardening skills, but houseplants have always been more difficult for me to take care of.

The right plant fertilizer can help give your plants a much-needed boost, but store-bought fertilizers are often either expensive or full of mystery ingredients. Luckily, there’s a better way to feed your plants: with an easy homemade plant fertilizer!

My daughter Britta has definitely emerged as the gardening guru in our family. Today she’s sharing with us her homemade organic fungicide that is just as effective and much cheaper than the commercial alternatives and won’t hurt the environment, our pets, or our families. Way to go Britta!

Now that we are all getting outdoors more (hooray summertime!), most of us (some more than others!) are having to deal with pesky mosquitoes that love to try and ruin our outdoor fun.  :-)  I have to admit, here in this semi-arid desert state, we don’t have to deal with mosquitoes nearly as much as those of you in the midwest or back east. But any mosquito is an unwelcome mosquito!

Gardening can be incredibly rewarding work, but it can also be really hard on your hands! Between cuts and scrapes, and dryness due to repeated hand-washings, gardeners’ hands are often in need of a bit of extra TLC. This DIY “Gardener’s Salve” is the answer! It is infused with herbs that help to quickly heal cuts and scrapes, and it will leave your hands feeling silky smooth. Plus, it smells lovely, like a fragrant herb garden. :-)

Depending on where you live, you may have already begun digging in your garden this year! We are ALMOST there…but not quite. I can’t wait! I’m itching to get my fingers back in the dirt! Of course with the fun of digging in the dirt comes the related chores, but today we’re sharing a super easy project that will make at least one of those chores easier!

Yesterday was the first honest-to-goodness SPRING-LIKE day we’ve had thus far this year! I seriously wanted to find a meadow filled with wildflowers and run through it singing “Walking On Sunshine!” OK, not really….but you get the idea. :-) It. Was. A. Picture. Perfect. Day. The kind of day when our minds (and hearts) turn towards getting out in the garden again! So today’s post couldn’t have been more perfectly timed! Britta is going to share another garden idea (the girl is OBSESSED I tell ya!) that’s not only extremely PRACTICAL, but BEAUTIFUL too!

My son Erik installed some bird feeders for us a few years ago, and every summer we’ve really enjoyed seeing all the feathered visitors that the feeders attract to the yard! We’ve been able to see several species of finches, hummingbirds, and doves that live in the northern Utah area.

I’m sure at this point in the season, you’re already deep in time-honored spring/summer tradition: fighting to keep your lawn free of pesky weeds. We all have our own ways of eradicating them, from herbicides to manual weeding tools, but there’s no such thing as too many options, in my opinion! :-)