DIY Life

Leave it to Better Homes and Gardens. Somehow, they're able to inspire me without making me feel like a second-rate Martha Stewart wanna-be.

Since we joined our CSA farm last year, it's been a pleasure to have new fresh flowers in the house every week. BHG has created a gallery of flower arrangements that can be done in five minutes, and that look positively stunning. Some of their winning combinations:

• poppies surrounded by hosta leaves
• geranium leaves, roses, and trailing vines
• lavender stems and geranium leaves
• hydrangeas with bachelor buttons
• mounded zinneas with bleeding heart foliage

What I really love about BHG's arrangements is that most of the blooms could be found in your own garden, or even in a wild flower field. That makes these arrangements economical, too.

I've been combining wild yarrow with daylilies and daisies for a pretty display on my kitchen's center island. What's you favorite quick and easy flower arrangement?

Join me each week as I explore the naturally aromatic side of DIY. Helpful recipes for your "scentual" pleasure: from essential oils, herbs, and other botanicals to soap-making, body care products and other useful blends.

I admit it -- Diane's Avant Yard post, 75 tricks to get your kids outdoors, inspired me. It's one thing to enjoy scents, to make scented products, and to use essential oils and herbs in your daily life. But have you shared your love of scents with your children?

Inadvertently, you just may have. I know my three-year-old wanders through my garden with me, picking leaves off the basil plant for nibbling (he knows which plants are the edible ones), admiring the hard-working bees at the lavender plants, and of course, stopping to smell the roses (stereotypical, yet true).

Kids catch on, through your modeling, to the things you love. If you feel like spicing it up a bit, though, how about creating a scent hunt for your kids?

Colony collapse disorder, the mysterious phenomenon that has entire colonies of honeybees vanishing into thin air, has brought the state of our bee population to the forefront. Not many people realize this, but bees pollinate about 90% of our flowering crops. What that means is: without bees, we don't eat.

Creating a bee-friendly yard may not solve the issue of colony collapse disorder, but it is a great way of doing your part to encourage a healthy bee population. It'll also ensure that any of your own fruit, vegetable, and flower crops get pollinated, so that you have fresh food to eat and a beautiful yard to enjoy. In addition, the same plants that draw bees bring other pollinators, like butterflies.

So how do you go about attracting bees to your yard? It's not difficult at all. Read more about it after the break.

At my house, we really try our best to live in an environmentally friendly way, for our health and the Earth's. We eat local, fresh food as much as we can, we never use chemicals on our lawn or plants, we don't clean the house with chemicals, and we have quite the raging compost pile.

It seems that we got a bit overzealous with the composting, in fact. Last fall, after carving a stunning Jack-o-lantern, we responsibly dumped the innards of the pumpkin into our composter.

Throughout the autumn, we had several pumpkins displayed on our walkway and stoop. When it was time to put up the Christmas decorations, we plopped the pumpkins in the composter. Follow me after the break; I'm going somewhere with this...

I have a large flower garden in my backyard. Last year, my son had just moved in with me (I adopted him from the US foster care system). I was never able to get him very interested in the garden. This year, however, he's been a bit more involved. He's enjoyed seeing the plants spring up from their winter slumber, and he's even potted his "own" annuals.

Working in the garden has been a great learning experience for him. We discuss everything from flowers to bugs to environmental responsibility. When I stumbled across this article about dyeing flowers using food coloring, I knew it was a fun experiment my son would enjoy.

All you need is white flowers (carnations work well, but almost any long-stemmed white flower will do), food coloring, glasses or vases for each color, and water. Simply color the water and insert the freshly cut flower, then wait for the magic to happen. While it's fun to see the color change, don't forget to take advantage of the educational aspect. PBSKids has some information on how the process actually works.

If you are looking to give the perfect wedding gift, you can do it in style with the stenciled trivets I found over on Design*Sponge. Get out the spray paint and con-tact paper!

Derek and Lauren are back from vacation and decided to take a trip to the hardware store, where they purchased some 6" x 6" white tiles normally used in a kitchen or bathroom for a mere 45 cents each. To make the stenciled tiles, they printed the flower design directly onto the con-tact paper, applied the paper to the tile, and then cut out the design with an x-acto knife. A couple coats of spray paint and four rubber pads on the back of the tile completed the project.

I really think the trivets would really make a blushing bride happy. For that matter, I think they would make an awesome gift for anyone that loves to cook, me included. My husband is the artist in the family, so I think I should have him make some for me and his mom. Who would you make the lovely trivets for?

I don't know what it's like where you live, but every time the stores come out with something new for the garden, I start seeing the item popping up all over town. Soon enough, that unique new ornament is commonplace and a bit trite.

I can honestly say that I've never seen a "tipsy" flower pot tower, though; it looks like something I want to try in my garden. To put it together, you'll need:

• A tall, sturdy metal rod. (The instructions call for a 66" rod.)
• One 12" round clay pot.
• Four 10" clay pots.
• Potting soil.

The tower looks simple enough to assemble. Drive the rod into the ground, and thread the 12" pot onto the rod. Fill with soil. Then thread the 10"pots on, balancing each pot sturdily on the pot below. All that's left to do is to fill it with your favorite flowers.

I have a secret: I've made elaborate crowns of silk flowers, but I've never in my life successfully made a real daisy chain, or understood how they were constructed. Do you tie the stems into loops? Cut the stems? Where do you cut the stem, and how? What connects them? I've clearly been missing out on all the summer fun.

Over at Bella Dia, recently, Cassi wrote a dual tutorial: it both teaches you how to make a daisy chain, and how to write a good online craft tutorial. All you need to make the chain is a number of flowers with strong stems, and your fingernails or something sharp: split the stems, and slide the stem of the next flower on the chain through the split. If I had known it was this easy, I would have been making them for years!

Incidentally, all of the instructions Cassi gives for writing a tutorial are things that the other writers and I try to do here at DIY Life (although I don't personally like to list the amount of time a project will take; I find that's variable based on who's doing the project, and think that it's best to try to work out the probable timing for yourself as you read the instructions).

If you use Cassi's suggestions to write a tutorial of your own, why not let us know about it in the comments?

Let's face it: everything today is expensive. Where they really get you, though, is with anything wedding. You can always benefit financially from doing-it-yourself. You've probably thought about making and assembling your own wedding invitations and favors, but have you considered creating your own wedding bouquet?

Simple bouquets are more stylish these days, and that works in your favor. Some general tips for making your own wedding bouquet are at All Wedding Ideas and include:

• coordinating colors and tones with the bride's and bridesmaids' dresses
• making sure to have at least eight of the main flowers in your bouquet on hand
• arranging starting with the largest main flowers and work out from the center
• accentuating the finished floral arrangement with beads, tulle, ribbon, and lace

These simple homemade cards add a personal touch to any gift or greeting. In fact, packaging a variety of them in a box or simply tied with a ribbon makes a great gift in and of itself. You'll need the following materials:

• Card stock. Soft pastels, cream, or even black work well.
• Paper cutter. While scissors would work, a paper cutter helps you get a perfect edge.
• Fabric. This a great project to use up scraps of fabric. You'll need a green for the foliage, yellow or orange for the center of the flowers, and a variety of colors for the petals. For added interest, opt for subtle tone-on-tone patterns or mottled fabrics; solid colors tend to look flat and lifeless on the cards.
• Glue stick. Make sure to choose a glue stick that works with fabric and paper.
• Fabric scissors. Sharp scissors with a fine point (such as scissors made for quilters) work best.

I'll discuss how to make your greeting cards bloom after the break. You can follow along step-by-step in the gallery.

Flowers are a wonderful gift, if only they would last longer. With these flower gifts that you can make with your kids, they will last perhaps longer than the recipient would like them to! Or the flowerpots are perfect for presenting real flowers or plants.

Make this photo flower bouquet from paper, using photos as the center of the flower. Glue onto a chenille stem and present as a bouquet or in a vase. I like the idea of using patterned paper; handmade paper would look stunning, as would scrapbooking paper.

It is so easy to paint this clay flowerpot. All you need are some acrylic paints and your creativity. You can plan a pattern with your kids beforehand, use some stencils or let them go, Jackson Pollock style. You know they will come up with something spectacular, and uniquely "them."

Just about every crafty diva has lots of tape measures laying around. Why not use one of these to make one of the coolest hand-made accessories around: a flower brooch made from a tape measure!

You can purchase these in a wide array of colors at craft stores, so you can make up a bunch to match just about anything.

You really only need a needle, thread, tape measure, button, and brooch finding, so there is a good chance you'll have quite a few of these things around your home.

You don't have to stop at just making brooches out of these flowers! You can make smaller ones for earrings, or even turn one into a pendant to hang onto a necklace. Whichever way you decide to show off these sweet little flowers, you'll be recognized for the crafty goddess you are!

I've seen lots of cute barrettes. Spring has sprung, and I wanted to craft up some barrettes that might represent the season.

I really love all of the flower and butterfly barrettes that are out and about now. While making up some of my own, I thought, why not birds too? I remembered seeing little birds used in flower arrangements at my local craft store. Turns out they are the perfect size! You can also find butterflies in the same department.

You really don't have to have a lot of crafting skills for this project, so it's good for beginners, as well as crafters who've been at it a while.

You'll need bobby pins, french clips, alligator clips, or snap clips, whichever you prefer to wear, thread, sewing needle, E6000, and an assortment of fake flowers, buttons, birds and butterflies.

Follow me through the break and I'll explain how to make a few different barrette styles.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Michaels Stores, Inc., has issued a voluntary recall of about 310,000 seasonal writing pens. The surface coating on each of the Flower Writers, Christmas Writers, Easter Writers, and Spooky Writers pens, contain high levels of lead which violates the federal lead paint standard.

Manufactured in China and sold exclusively at Michaels retail stores from August 2007 through March 2008 for about $1, the recalled pens were sold individually as part of a series of four pens. Each pen has decorative ornamentation. Please check the CPSC press release for more information.

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled pens and return them to any Michaels store for a full refund. For more information on the product recall, contact (800) 642-4235 / (800) MICHAELS, or visit their website; www.michaels.com.

I'm excited about the new season, and all the glorious things that come along with spring. In Vancouver, this means April showers, and lots of them. This is when we pack up our winter boots, and pull out the good old rubber stompers. Both boys wore the same tiny boots, and now my youngest has outgrown them. I wondered how I could re-purpose the boots and preserve the memory.

This week's Kiddie Craft does exactly that. The color splash boots make a fun flower vase. Having them painted by your little ones, and using their old boots, make a great keepsake. Even if you're not looking to hold on to yesterday's tiny feet, these boots make a creative addition to any front door-step.

Materials

• Rubber boots
• Soap and water
• Acrylic paint - waterproof
• Paintbrushes
• 2 jars or cups
• Flowers

Follow me through the break for step by step instructions. As you can tell from the gallery pictures, my boys had fun smearing the paint. If you're working with older kids, ones who actually follow instructions, or working on your own, I'd suggest applying less paint and letting each color dry before working with the next.