Feeling Scrappy Now With My Home Depot Rubbermaid All Access Organizers...

This shop is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group™ and Home Depot & Rubbermaid, but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #AllAccessOrganizers  http://cmp.ly/3/8vNxcO.

I am not going to lie. When I was selected to try out the new Rubbermaid All Access Organizers from Home Depot, I was ecstatic. I have been needing a good kick in the pants to finally get my scrapbooking supplies organized.

I mean, they are a mess.

So much a mess that I have avoided working on scrapbooking my wedding... that happened 2 years and 2 months ago.

And I haven't even started on my baby girl's baby book.

She will be 18 months in about a week.

Yeah... it is that bad. See for yourself...

Honestly, I feel awful that I am SO behind on putting all those precious memories to paper.

I even feel a bit ashamed.

But now since discovering the Rubbermaid All Access Organizers, I have no more excuses!

My scrapbooking supplies are organized, pretty, and oh so easily accessible with their clear drop-down doors. No digging through a tote or a box anymore!
(Oh, and no more cardboard boxes for storing my scrapbooking supplies! Can we say ugly??)

I used the smaller All Access Organizer for storing my scrapbooking embellishments, stickers, and letters for baby girl's baby book...

I used the larger one to organize the various sheets and pads of scrapbook paper I have gathered for both the wedding scrapbook and the baby scrapbook. I divided the scrapbook pages for each using the albums themselves.

I also stashed all the wedding photos and embellishments for the wedding scrapbook right in front of the larger Rubbermaid All Access Container...

And yes, I did jazz up both of my All Access Organizers with a little washi tape. It only seemed like the scrapbooky, crafty thing to do. ;)

Even though I chose not to stack them, they are totally stackable! You can stack all the same size (they come in 2 different sizes, FYI) or smaller ones on top of the larger ones.

The wheels are already spinning with all of the other rooms and spaces that I need to go buy more Rubbermaid All Access Organizers for!
Like maybe organizing my jumbled mess of food photography props...
Or my Christmas gift wrapping supplies...
Or baby girl's heaps of toys strewn about our living room floor...
Oh, the endless possibilities, folks! :)

Make sure you visit and Like The Home Depot Facebook page and the Rubbermaid Facebook page for more creative ways to get your home organized and functional!

What room or area would you use the new Rubbermaid All Access Organizers in?

Organic Edible Gardening- A Natural Extension of My Kitchen #DigIn

I am so thrilled to have this opportunity to work with The Home Depot and to have received product to help make our dream of growing an organic edible garden a reality.

I have high, high hopes for this summer's organic vegetable garden.  Our attempt last year at a small raised garden bed yielded okay results.  Not nearly what I had dreamed of when my husband and son first put together our little 3 foot by 3 foot wooden frame for our raised bed.

But this year is different.

This year we have ample room to raise our garden.  No more small raised garden bed for us!

This year we started our garden with organic Bonnie plants and USDA certified organic seeds from The Home Depot.

This year we had the expert advice and helpful tips from The Home Depot Garden Club.

Growing organically, naturally is important to me.  To my family.

There is pride and satisfaction in knowing where the vegetables and herbs that we are growing are from...

Our own backyard.

It is nice to know that all of our organic edibles are being fertilized naturally.  Yes, I saved egg shells for WEEKS just so we would be able to crush them up and use them to fertilize our tomato and pepper plants.  

This year we have decided to attempt to grow cucumbers vertically using a trellis netting.

This is also our first time ever attempting to grow our own cucumbers.  I have usually avoided planting them because of the fact that their vines take up so much space in the garden, and space has always been a precious commodity when gardening for us in the past.  

We found a Nylon Trellis Netting at our local home depot to use for the cucumber trellis.  It was actually super easy to make.  

Click Play on the video below to see how we set our's up...

It has been exciting to see our seedlings popping up through the ground.  My husband and I walk out to the garden almost every day and marvel like children at how quickly our pumpkin plants have come up, and how tiny our bibb lettuce looks right now.  We are looking forward to the fall when these little pumpkin seedlings will be long vines with bright orange pumpkins attached to the ends.  It will be fun to see baby girl's eyes light up when she realizes she has her very own pumpkin patch. ;)

Our experience with organic gardening has inspired us to take on another new project soon- a compost bin using an old storage tote.  I used to compost a couple of years ago and had a dedicated corner of my yard just for composting.  I miss it and feel guilty now every time I throw out a banana peel or strawberry hulls or potato peelings.  It will feel nice to not be throwing out as much and to be creating our own organic material for fertilizing our edible organic garden.

Organic edible gardening just feels like a natural extension of how I love to cook and feed my family.  I look forward to the summer days when I can step right outside my kitchen and bring in tomatoes picked right off the vine or a fresh bell pepper for a salad.  

The food I feed my family is my love language.  

The better that food is for my family, the more I feel like I am showing them my love.

How better to show that than by cooking with homegrown vegetables and herbs in their favorite home cooked meals from me? :)

Interested in starting your own edible organic garden?  Be sure to check out my Steps in Planning an Edible Organic Garden post.

It’s home improvement time, and The Home Depot has everything you need to #DigIn for Spring. No matter what projects you want to tackle, they have great values on all you need. They’re ready to help you with renovation ideas and expert advice, too.

Get over $300 in email exclusive savings each year, sneak peeks on new products,      monthly lawn & garden ideas for your region and access to The Home Depot’s gardening experts. Click here to join the world’s largest garden community today! Or go to http://gardenclub.homedepot.com/ to see some of the many benefits of membership.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Home Depot.

Finally Got to #DigIn & Plant {& A Recipe for Spiced Pineapple Mojitos}

I am so thrilled to have this opportunity to work with The Home Depot and to have received product to help make our dream of growing an organic edible garden a reality.

Yes, yes... I know.  That looks tasty and refreshing, right?  ;)  I promise we will get to the recipe for my Spiced Pineapple Mojitos in just a sec.  But first we have to put in a little hard work, sweat just a little to earn one.  I mean, seriously.  This cocktail is the best ever to sip on your deck in the evening after a hard day of yard work or gardening.

And about that garden...

I am sure some of you all are curious as to how our attempts at growing an edible organic garden are going so far.  When we last left off, I was giving you all a glimpse of our shopping trip to the Home Depot to get everything that we would need to get started with our organic vegetable garden.

Since then we have tilled.  (Okay, not we.  The husband did. ;) )

And ended up with a nicely tilled, perfectly sized plot to start planting our garden in.  

Yep.  We were all ready to go.

And then five straight days of rain came.

And then a two night cold snap that made me glad we had not got our vegetables in the ground the weekend before like I had wanted to...

Yes, my entire vegetable garden still in there Bonnie pots are under those sheets.  Temperatures dipped below 30 degrees for two nights in a row.  

Craziness...

But I was able to at least get started on potting our herbs on the deck before the cold snap hit.  You all may remember when I was planning our edible organic garden that I wanted to keep all the herbs potted on the deck since the door off from the kitchen leads straight to the deck.  I love being able to just hop outside for a moment while making dinner or a salad and just snip off a few fresh herbs that I need.

I planted the basil and the parsley together on a deck mounted planter we found at our local Home Depot.  The mint got it's own pot.  I have grown mint before so I know of it's aggressive tendency to completely take over wherever it happens to be planted.  Potted by itself is best. ;)

Now, we did get the garden planted last weekend.  

Finally.  

I consulted The Home Depot Garden Club website to make sure I had the planting times, depths, and so forth correct before we started. 

We have 3 tomato plants in, 4 different kinds of peppers, cabbage, 4 mounds of cucumber seeds planted, 2 rows of carrot seeds in the ground, and we also planted spinach and lettuce from seed.  We reserved the bottom end of our garden plot for a small pumpkin patch for baby girl to enjoy come fall.

There hasn't been a ton of progress as far as growth goes yet.  The tomato, pepper, and cabbage plants look wonderful though, and we are still waiting for the seeds to sprout.  I would say by this time next week we will start see little seedlings popping up in rows. :)

(And why yes, I am wearing the super cute gardening gloves I just had to have from The Home Depot!)

But the one plant that has been doing well (as would be expected) is my mint plant...

And what can you make with fresh mint??

You got it, folks- Mojitos!! 

And not just any mojitos for us...

Spiced Pineapple Mojitos, please!

What you will need:

1 lime, quartered

handful of fresh mint leaves

1/2 cup of fresh pineapple chunks

2 tbsp sugar

1/2 cup of spiced rum (like Captain Morgan)

ice

Splash of club soda

Squeeze the juice from the lime quarters into a cocktail shaker.  Throw the quarters in there and then add in the mint leaves, pineapple chunks, and sugar.  Using a pestle or a wooden spoon, muddle together everything in the bottom of the cocktail shaker very well.  Then pour in the spiced rum.  Place the lid back on the shaker and shake, shake, shake.   Fill two smaller glasses with ice.  Pour the muddled rum mixture evenly into the two glasses.  I go ahead and pop in a little of the mint leaves and the pineapple chunks and lime quarters into each of the glasses.  Then just top off each glass with a little club soda and give it a quick stir. 

And there you go!  Two refreshing Spiced Pineapple Mojitos to cool off and reward yourselves after a day in the garden. :)

Are you growing herbs this year?  Tell me you bought a mint plant, right? ;)

It’s home improvement time, and The Home Depot has everything you need to #DigIn for Spring. No matter what projects you want to tackle, they have great values on all you need. They’re ready to help you with renovation ideas and expert advice, too.

Get over $300 in email exclusive savings each year, sneak peeks on new products,      monthly lawn & garden ideas for your region and access to The Home Depot’s gardening experts. Click here to join the world’s largest garden community today! Or go to http://gardenclub.homedepot.com/ to see some of the many benefits of membership.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Home Depot.

Our Organic Edible Garden ~ Before You Can #DigIn, You Must Shop!

I am so thrilled to have this opportunity to work with The Home Depot and receive product to make our dream of having an edible organic garden this summer a reality.
The timely advice and reminders in The Home Depot’s monthly national to-do list helps millions of members enjoy their yards and gardens more. Additional to-do lists focusing on specific regions help you stay ahead of seasonal changes specific to your part of the country. Sneak peeks and reviews help you plan your garden purchases before cutting edge products and new varieties have a chance to sell out.

Even the best laid plans hit a snag or two when it comes to actually carrying them out.  Our shopping trip to The Home Depot to gather the plants and supplies that we would need to start our edible organic garden was no exception to that.  We had scouted out our local Home Depot a little over a week before our actual trip there to buy our organic vegetable gardening supplies.  We had decided on each variety of pepper, tomato, what green leafy vegetables we want to plant for summer salads... even which herbs we would plant on the deck.  We had covered each Step in Planning an Edible Organic Garden. But apparently a lot can change in just a few short days (aka, be sold out completely)...
We had to make a few improvisations for plants that we had already decided upon, but were no longer available at our local Home Depot. (Lesson here?  Get started early on your organic edible garden if you want the best selection and to be able to plant exactly what you want!)

Baby girl enjoyed our shopping trip.  I think she was just fascinated by how many leafy green plants we were loading up the shopping cart with! :)

We were still able to get quite a few of the Bonnie plants that we had decided on earlier.  Which I was happy about it because I am not as confident in my ability to grow vegetables from seed.  Plus, I love how easy the Bonnie plants are!  Just peel off the label and plant the biodegradable pots directly into your garden or potted soil. Easy, peasy, right?  (Psssttt... the Bonnie Plants Organic Garden Starter pack is a great way to try your hand at a little edible organic gardening. )

We made a few substitutions with Bonnie plants that they did have readily available such as broccoli (scratch that- I just realized that I have two Flat Dutch Cabbage plants and not broccoli- oops!) and strawberries.  I have never grown either one of these edibles before, so you can bet I will doing quite a bit of research at The Home Depot Garden Club before I commit them to the ground. 

What we couldn't find any longer in the Bonnie plants, we were able to find in seed packets.  Our Home Depot had a nice variety of USDA Certified Organic seeds, like their Martha Stewart Living and Burpee Organic collections.  We decided to plant Carrots, Lettuce Bib, Cucumbers, and Spinach from seed. (Wish us luck!)

We also decided to add a separate little pumpkin patch. We thought it would be fun for baby girl to have her own little pumpkin patch in the fall! :)

Okay, I may have been a little giddy over the gardening gloves display at The Home Depot.  I mean, there is no reason not to have a cute pair of gardening gloves to help you tend to and harvest your homegrown organic bounty, right? ;)

Although we didn't purchase any of these fun and colorful tomato plant cages during our shopping trip, I may have to return for a few.  We had originally planned to re-purpose some old stakes to use with our tomato plants (more economical and eco-friendly, right?).  But these pretty tomato cages would look so nice in my brand new garden... ;)

Now that all of the plants and the essential gardening supplies have been bought, it is time to actually plant our organic vegetable garden and herb box on the deck.  If I hit a snag during our planting, I know I can turn to the Garden Club Community Forum and ask an expert any question I may have.   No need to have to run back out to my local Home Depot- they make it easy to have expert answers just a few clicks away! 

Stay tuned to the next installment in this series... the actual planting of our organic edible gardening!

Have you or will you be planting a garden this year?  How important is it to you to grow only organic produce?

What wonderful vegetables will be sprouting up in your gardens? :)

It’s home improvement time, and The Home Depot has everything you need to #DigIn for Spring. No matter what projects you want to tackle, they have great values on all you need. They’re ready to help you with renovation ideas and expert advice, too.

Get over $300 in email exclusive savings each year, sneak peeks on new products,      monthly lawn & garden ideas for your region and access to The Home Depot’s gardening experts. Click here to join the world’s largest garden community today! Or go to http://gardenclub.homedepot.com/ to see some of the many benefits of membership.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Home Depot.

Steps in Planning an Edible Organic Garden

I am so thrilled to have this opportunity to work with The Home Depot and receive product to make our dream of having an edible organic garden this summer a reality.

Go green this spring with the latest organic gardening tools, equipment and supplies. The Home Depot has a large selection of raised garden beds, composters and everything you need for your garden. Check out their expert tips for growing great vegetable and herbs in your raised garden bed.

When the opportunity arose to work with The Home Depot Garden Club to #DigIn to spring and get ready for a summer garden, I knew this was right up my alley.  Growing my own vegetables and herbs has been a passion of mine since last summer.  Last summer we tried a raised garden bed with some mixed success.  This year I vowed it would be different, so I was beyond thrilled when I was chosen to grow my own Organic Edible Garden using Bonnie Plants.

Growing organic has always been front and center for me when considering a summer garden.  I love knowing exactly what is in the food I am preparing and feeding to my family.  Growing my own organic vegetable garden means that I have complete control and total knowledge over what I am putting on my dinner table and into my family's bodies.  

The first step in organic gardening is planning.  This is not always easy for me.  I get excited, dreaming of the armfuls of beautiful, dirt caked vegetables I will be carrying into my house and then I shortcut the planning to get right to the planting.  

But good gardening takes planning.  

The first step in my organic vegetable garden plan?  A visit to my local Home Depot to get an idea of what organic vegetable plants were available to me locally.  This was strictly a planning visit.  We made no purchases during this trip.  We walked around, perused the wide selection of Bonnie plants that were available and started making a list of our must-plant veggies and herbs.  

We also took into consideration which vegetables we could readily buy at our local farmers at an affordable price.  We decided against planting corn, zucchini, and summer squash because all of these take up considerable space in a garden, and we knew we could purchase these for relatively cheap from local vendors and farmers each weekend at the market.

The next step in our organic vegetable garden planning was surveying our space.  We knew we had plenty of space available to us for our garden this summer.  The question was just how big of a garden would we want to have to create and maintain. We settled on this square of space that was used by previous owners in years before.  It has some partial shade in the late afternoon, so this part of the plot would be the perfect spot for planting our lettuces that can't take a full day of direct sunlight.

I plan to find a box planter that we can hang here to grow my herbs in.  I prefer to have the herbs in close proximity to the door leading off from the kitchen so I can run out & grab a few snips or leaves as I am cooking.

Step #3 in planning our organic vegetable garden was online research.  And lots of it.  

Where did I head first? 

The Home Depot Garden Club, of course! :)

They have an entire section dedicated to just Edible Gardening.  You can find anything and everything you could possibly want to know about growing your own organic edible garden there.  I found the post on Vegetable Garden Planning especially useful.  

I researched the vegetable plants we had decided on during our planning visit to the Home Depot.  I found out how much direct sunlight they would need, how many inches apart they should be planted, which vegetables should be grown near each other & which ones should not.

I did a little research on what we need to do to make sure that our soil is organic vegetable planting ready. 

I also may have spent a considerable amount of time perusing The Home Depot's Garden Club Pinterest board, finding inspiration and repinning those projects and ideas that I really want to try for myself.

After all the online research, this is the rough draft of the plan that we have for our summer organic vegetable garden.  

One of my favorite things that we are going to try is to build a trellis for the cucumbers so that they do not take over the entire garden.  I am looking forward to our actual shopping trip at The Home Depot so we can ask for some expert advice on how to go about building one.  

How about you?  Are you attempting an organic vegetable garden this year as well?

What have you done to plan for it?  

It’s home improvement time, and The Home Depot has everything you need to #DigIn for Spring. No matter what projects you want to tackle, they have great values on all you need. They’re ready to help you with renovation ideas and expert advice, too.

Get over $300 in email exclusive savings each year, sneak peeks on new products,      monthly lawn & garden ideas for your region and access to The Home Depot’s gardening experts. Click here to join the world’s largest garden community today! Or go to http://gardenclub.homedepot.com/ to see some of the many benefits of membership.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Home Depot.