Kickoff to summer Giveaway WINNER

Congratulations to....

 

Southern Gal!

(I'm so happy that a fellow southern gal won! haha)

I'm looking forward to my beach vacation as well,

as in: counting down the minutes and seconds!

You'll be getting an email from me shortly about the details of receiving your prize.

Thank you so much to everyone who entered.

I enjoyed reading all of your comments.

Sounds like a lot of you have plenty of use for these wet bags!

For anyone interested interested in purchasing one,

just click here.

I have just a few left in my Etsy shop.

If I sell out, I'll probably get a new batch done soon.

 

I hope that everyone has a great Memorial Day Weekend,

To all of our military: Thank you.

Please take a minute this weekend to remember in a special way those who have died for country.

May they rest in peace.

Why, Aphids? Why?

Amongst the many questions that I will ask God when if I get to heaven,

one of them will most certainly be:

Why did you create aphids?

Aphids are pesky little green bugs that love SUPER love pepper and tomato plants.

You'll often find them on the bottom sides of the leaves,

and if you don't take care of them quickly, they'll be the demise of your garden.

I started many of my vegetable plants from seed this year, 

and overall it's been a success

with two exceptions:

tomatos and peppers.

The tomato seedlings died awhile ago and had nothing to do with aphids at all,

rather with me leaving them in the hands of my husband while I left for a long weekend.

The peppers, though, I can COMPLETELY blame on aphids.

Some of them made it through to planting, though, and luckily I caught the problem pretty early on.

The only good thing about having an aphid problem is that they are pretty easy to get rid of.

There are a lot of sprays that you can use, and most of them treat the problem (kill kill kill the aphids) rather quickly.

But I'm always weary of using any chemical sprays on plants that my family and I are hoping to eat at some point.

So, I've tried a couple of different organic sprays, and this is my favorite:

Note: if you buy a spray bottle with a little filter at the bottom,
you don't have to strain the garlic out of the solution.

Organic Aphid Spray:

Fill a spray bottle (under a dollar at most home improvement and discount stores) with water about 3/4 of the way to the top,

add a squirt of biodegradable dish soap,

and a couple cloves of garlic, minced.

Mix it all together, let it sit overnight for greater strength,

and spray it on your plants.

You can use it pretty liberally,

and you might have to go back a couple of times.

The dish soap will kill the aphids

and the garlic will deter them altogether.

Be sure when you spray your plants to get under the leaves since that's where aphids love to hang.

Hope this helps you all!

Things are looking great in the garden, and I'm hoping to have an update of the progress up soon.

With Fear and Trepidation

I am trying to sew from a pattern again.

I HATE patterns.

Mostly because I'm afraid of them.

I've written before about how trying to follow a pattern for me is like trying to read a book written in a language that I don't speak.

And when I've taken on this endeavor before, it ended up somewhat disastrously,

with me ripping up the pattern and starting over from scratch, making it up myself as I went along. Thankfully, that was just a bag.

But I found a project that I just have to try,

that I can't just make up on my own...

so I'm going for it.

Because it's a gift, I'll have to keep you all in the dark for now and just share cryptic close up pictures,

but rest assured that I will tell you all about it once this person has received her (or his... no let's be honest: her) gift.

Wish me luck!

And if you have any sage words of wisdom related to pattern-following

(or you just want to leave a little encouragement for a freaked out but ambitious sewist),

please leave me some love. :)

And don't forget to enter my Kickoff to Summer Giveaway

by this Friday at midnight (EST).

Kickoff to Summer Giveaway (Closed)

Alright, here we go...

I'm psyched to be participating in the one and only Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day!

Woo Hoo!

This is a  HUGE collection of giveaways, so even if you don't want to enter this one, you should definitely check out the others over at Sew, Mama, Sew.

There are giveaways for kids and baby, accesories, home, bags, craft supplies... I mean, really, check it out.

So want to know what I'm giving away?

The pool opens this weekend. HUZZAH!

So I'm kicking off Summer by giving away one of my 'On the Go Wetbags'.

This bag is made of waterproof PUL material, so it's great to take to the pool for wet swim suits, clothes, and such.

It's also perfect for the diaper bag to contain messes.

I use mine for dirty cloth diapers.

(It fits about 4-6 cloth diapers for cloth moms out there)

So want to enter?

Yes?

Okay, here are the deets:

This Giveaway is open to everyone. (WELCOME, international friends!).

To enter, please leave a comment on this post telling me what you are most looking forward to this summer.

Want an extra entry? Okay! Follow me in one of the following ways: email subscription (to the right), Google connect (to the right), or "like" Handmade by Meg K on Facebook (also to the right),

then come back here and leave another comment.

If you are already a follower (thanks!), just let me know that you already do so. :)

Please, please, please leave a comment for each entry and be sure that your email is included if it is not already attached to your profile.

The Giveaway will close at midnight on May 25th.

The winner will be chosen by a random number generator, and he/she will be notified by email.

Winner sends me an address, and I ship! (by June 1st)

Easy Peasy.

Good Luck!