You Commented, and Won an Award

The Blogging World is special.  We draw inspiration from blog posts, we laugh, and sometimes cry at what we read.  But the nicest part of blogging, are your fellow bloggers. They come from all around the world, some might be in your neighborhood, some might have kangaroos, donkeys, or moose roaming their backyards, but no matter what their surroundings are or what they have lurking in their backyards, they are our family.  The great big blogging family.  We anxiously await every day for their post to arrive in our inboxes to brighten our day.  They make life fun.  They share their lives with us, their travel plans, their insane happenings on the job, their crafts, and lots of great photographs of their pets.

All of my fellow bloggers, I hold near and dear to my heart, but there are six bloggers who consistently visit and leave special comments.  To them, I say Thank You!  So today, I am giving you an award – - - “The Top Commenter Award” on Nikitaland!  [This is based on the 1,000 most recent comments]  So, to the top six, go ahead and grab your award, you deserved it, and add it to your sidebar with pride!

1. Boomdeeadda – 96 comments
2. Pride in Photography - 82 comments
3. Free Range Cow - 32 comments
4. The Misadventures of Misaki - 23 comments
5. Long Life Cats & Dogs - 21 comments
6. Our Retired Life - 14 comments

Keep the comments coming!  You’ve got a lot to say and we love hearing from you!  I also encourage everyone else who visits Nikitaland to leave a comment on your next visit and share the love of this great big blogging family!  We’ll leave the light on for ya…

If you want to make the “top comments list”, start commenting today!

Spring Storms & Blooms

Cleveland, OH is the only place on earth where you can go from 87 degrees on Monday to 40 degrees by Thursday in one week.  

On Monday, it was sweltering hot and just trying to get through the task of mowing your lawn before you fainted, was tough.  By Wednesday, the weather changed, storms arrived, brought downpours of rain, and I had to put away the flip flops for more suitable footwear.  Yep, we live in Cleveland, OH and this happens all the time. The weather here is so unpredictable.  We’re used to it, but don’t like it.  It sucks.

Doesn’t the weather man or Mother Nature know that we are trying to start a garden over here?  Geez.  I had to head outside after dinner last night, and completed covered the entire garden with plastic to protect it from the bitter cold and high winds. The garden looks hideous right now, but at least it is covered up and the plants are protected.  Hopefully this will keep the soil warm a bit.  By the time I got inside, I was soaked and freezing.  My fingers felt like they were going to fall off from frost bite.  (not really, but that is what it felt like)  What we thought was amazing, is that our rain barrel has completely filled up from the rain we got this week.  The barrel is either a 50 or 55 gallon barrel and in just a few days of rain, it is overflowing!  We might need to check back with our neighbor to see if we can get a second barrel from him and use it as an overflow barrel.  With the rate at which the barrel filled up, we will have enough rain water to water the garden all season!  Nice!  Now, we can definitely see firsthand why everyone wants rain barrels!  Not to mention, rain water is so much better for your plants than the water coming from your hose.

I love photographing the sky.  The cloud formations lately have been stunning, yet quite eerie.  I can sometimes sit at the kitchen table and watch as the darkness rolls in and changes the skyline completely.  The way the skies looked this past week is like how they would look if we were expecting Halloween to arrive, not Spring.  But, what are you going to do?  Absolutely nothing, just bundle up.  I had to put on my Cleveland Browns hat and warm winter coat just to head outside with the dogs last night.

Earlier in the week, I got some great photographs of our Spring blooms. I have to capture them at just the right time for some stunning buds.  The fern stems are all unrolling, the marigolds are magnificent, the peonies are getting ready to open, and the smell of the neighbors lilac trees fill the air.

Our warmer weather won’t be returning until about Sunday, so I am just going to sit here next to my space heater and keep warm.  And just think, June is just around the corner and I have a winter coat back on!  Something is not right here.

 

Bazinga! How to Make Cement Letters

Recently, I have been called the Martha Stewart of crafts by a few fellow bloggers (you know who you are, and thanks!) so I decided to take my craft projects up a notch.  Today, I bring you Cement Letters!

I headed to Pat Catans over the weekend and purchased two of those hard cardboard letters, and X and an O.  Because of all the love I have for my Sweetie, I decided to cement our hugs & kisses in stone, well, so to speak.  Each letter is approximately 8″ in height and 5″ in width, and about an inch thick.

First, I cut out the back of each letter with a knife, and removed the cardboard insides.  This will be the mold for the cement.  Do not cut the sides!

Next, I mixed up some quick drying cement & water in a bucket and made a pancake batter consistency.  If it is too thick to mix, add a little more water.  Too soupy, add a little more cement.  With quick drying cement, you truly have to work quickly as it sets really fast.  Always wear gloves when working with cement and a face mask as you do not want to breath in any cement dust.

Pour the cement into your cardboard letters carefully and make sure it fills up all the way up to the top of the mold.

Now, you need to wait.  This is the hard part.  You need to wait at least 24 hours to remove the mold from the letter.  Do not pick up or move your mold during this 24 hour period either.

Once your cement had hardened for 24 hours, it is time to remove the cardboard from the cement letter.  To tell you the truth, this part took a little time, but it was not hard to remove the cardboard, as it has stuck to your cement letter.  Just get one of your kitchen scrubbies, wet it, and gently rub back and forth on the cardboard and it just rolls off the letter.  Keep rubbing all around the letter until all of the cardboard is removed.  Rinse under water.  Set your letters outside to dry a bit more.

There you have it!  Cement letters for your bookshelf, your garden, a gift, your front porch, or anywhere you wish to add a little charm!  Now, I want to head back to Pat Catans and pick up a larger letter to make a really large one for the flower bed!  And, if I can find some cardboard numbers, I would like to make some cement house numbers to sit on the front porch too!  (Pat Catans just did not have any numbers when I was in the store)

NOTE:  If you wanted to “add” a stake to your cement letter or number, all you would need to do is make a little hole in the bottom of your letter or number mold first, insert the stake up into the letter mold, then pour the cement in the mold.  Once the cement dries, your stake will be securely attached to your letter!

With Memorial Day weekend coming up, why don’t you head on up to Pat Catans or your favorite craft store and pick up some letters to make for yourself!

Our Garden Adventure Begins

Click on photo to enlarge to read our garden markers

The time has finally arrived.  The tedious task of tending to seedlings in the basement is over.  Keeping a watchful eye on them for months in the basement & babying them has ended.  It’s do or die time.

We started hardening off our plants last week, and yesterday we started bringing out all of our 40+ plants from the basement, away from the gentle warmth of the grow lights and safety in the basement, and brought them out to the cruel world outside.  We planted two of our Juliet Tomato plants, one Big Boy Tomato plant, one Red Pepper and one cabbage plant yesterday in the garden just to see how they would survive the night in the “real world”.  They all made it!

Now, today, I will be planting the rest of our plants out into the garden and hope for the best!  We hope that we get a nice rain here soon, as I want to start using the rain water in the rain barrel to water the plants, as rain water is so much better for the garden.

We are so pleased to see that our leaf lettuce is already starting to pop up in two nice straight rows.  We already have about 4 Romaine Lettuce sprouts popping up, one Cucumber has popped, and one Zucchini made its appearance this morning!  Man, we are so pleased to see this!  Yahooooo is what we actually said!

Now, this is the fun and exhilarating part of gardening.  Watching your plants grow! Nothing is more satisfying than knowing you can plant a little seed and pick veggies from it!

I hope you also noticed the little red brick plant markers all around the garden too!  What?  You didn’t notice them?  I picked up a handful of little brick slices when our city was laying bricks in town and I knew that one day I would find a “purpose” for them.  I did at that!  I painted with nail polish plant markers!  Another way to re-purpose nail polish!  LOL

Our garden adventure begins.

 

The Ah-ha Moment

Do you just throw things away and never think about them again?  Empty bottles – trash it.  Candle burned down – throw the jar out.  Empty Creamora bottles – bye bye.  It hit me like that infamous Ah-ha moment, when that invisible light bulb appeared above my head. (and yes, if I probably would have looked up, I would have seen it there hovering over my noggin)

It is the neatest thing when you get that moment and think to yourself, “now why didn’t I think of that”, then you feel stupid for not thinking of it, because it was so simple.  Don’t fret, we’ve all been there at one point or another, and I had the infamous light bulb go off this week.

I had a little candle that came in the cutest glass jar with a tight closing glass lid, it burned out.  I was about to throw it away and thought against it.  Instead, I ran hot water in it to melt the wax left on the bottom.  I have big plans for you little jar!  Once all cleaned out and dried, I dumped all of my pink allergy pills (yes, I suffer badly with allergies) into the glass jar.  Just perfect!  Now, instead of looking at an ugly allergy pill bottle, I look at my new adorable glass jar that houses the pills that makes me feel better.  Ooooh, the Gate Keeper of curing puffy watery eyes!  (NOTE:  I would not recommend this idea if you have little children in your home!)

Which would you choose to sit on your counter?

Now, I need to go find a little candle or two for our other bottles of medicine.

Keeping in the re-purposing mood, I have stock-piled lots of those large plastic Creamora bottles.  With these bottles, they are going to save the world, well maybe not the world, but they will save our little plants and pumpkins that are coming up from all the chipmunks!  Yep, another ah-ha moment!  Since last year we had a terrible time trying to deter the chippies from munching on our new pumpkins plants coming up, and we tried everything to stop them.  Nothing worked.  So, I am going to try this new Creamora bottle trick to see if I can save our plants from being dominated by the chippies.

Nikita trying to sneak something to play with!

Repurposing a Creamora bottle.  Remove the plastic label from the bottle, and wash out the bottle really well.  Now, run your x-acto knife around the last groove on bottom of the bottle until the bottom falls off.  Throw away the lid.  Also, note that when you look at the bottom you have cut off now looks like one of those clear plant bottoms you buy at the store for your pots.  (another repurpose idea)  Now you have a clear bottle that you can shimmy or push down into the soil real well around your little plants that are coming up.  The lid lets air in and the clear bottle lets the sun in.  Once the plant is established, you can remove the bottle.  It appeared to us that the chippies won’t touch a plant that has matured, but they prefer the seed (and yes, they did dig out tons of our seeds from the soil) and prefer the little tiny plants.  We are going to fix that this year!

What have you re-purposed and got that ah-ha moment?

Dragon’s Loyalty Award

I would have never thought that when I woke up this morning that not only one, but two blog awards would have been bestowed upon Nikitaland, but they were!  WOW!  And, thank you….(insert humble bow here)

Angie’s Grapevine nominated Nikitaland for the Dragon’s Loyalty Award.  Thank you so much for thinking of us at Nikitaland!

Here are the rules for the Dragon’s Loyalty Award:

• Display the Award Certificate on your blog.
• Announce your win with a written post and link to whoever presented your award.
• Present 15 awards to deserving bloggers.
• Drop them a comment to tip them off after you have liked them in the post.
• Post 7 interesting things about yourself.

Here are the seven interesting things about me that you always wanted to know!

1. I have worked as a professional landscaper in my life!  I know how to build stone walls & walks, drive a Bob Cat, install a sprinkler system, and grade lawns with a tractor!  Would you have ever guessed that?
2. I love creating things!  I also have a great idea for an Invention that I have never seen ever before in stores & if I ever get it patented, I could become a millionaire!  (if anyone wants to help me get it patented, let me know)
3. I am a Law & Order junkie, and my newest favorite show is The Big Bang Theory.
4. I blog sometimes in my jammies!  It’s easy to do since I work from home.
5. I live with my awesome boyfriend and we have two furry four-legged children, Nikita & Bella.  I always greet him by the door with a glass of wine every night he arrives home.  (now that is what I call loving curb service!)
6. My camera is with me at all times, as you just never know what you will run across that you want to photograph.  (thank God I have a huge external hard drive for all my photo’s)
7. I have always wished I could sing.  If I ever ran across a Genie who granted me three wishes, that would be one of them.  Then, I could register for American Idol and make it to Hollywood!

Thank you again Angie’s Grapevine for this awesome nomination & award! It is truly appreciated!

Now, here are my nominations for this awesome Dragon’s Loyalty Award:

• Rumpy Dog
• 2 Brown Dawgs Blog
• Finn & Charley Too
• Cupcake Speaks
• These Days of Mine
• The Chronicles of Wallace & Samuel
• Humans are Weird
• A Second of Life in Greece
• Wiley’s Wisdom
• Clowie’s Corner
• The Scottie Chronicles
• The Misadventures of Misaki
• Renee A. Schuls-Jacobson’s Blog
• Love And A Six-Foot Leash
• Kirby’s Dawg Blog
• Long Life Cats and Dogs
• The Lonely Dogs

Super Sweet Blogging Award

TGIF, but what a great Friday morning it is because Nikitaland was just nominated for the Super Sweet Blogging Award by Me, You and Zu.  We are so honored and blessed that they find our blog, well…so “sweet”!  Thank You!

I have been blogging for two years, eight months & two days now and this blog was created because we rescued our little angel, Nikita from the APL.  She was one lucky dog to find her forever home with us & has the best Mommy & Daddy too!  About eight months ago, we rescued our second dog, Bella who has become Nikita’s best friend.

I love blogging and opening the proverbial door for you into our lives, sharing our day to day antics, a craft project or two, and capturing some awesome photographs of the dogs and a few silly poses too!

Thank you Me, You and Zu for nominating Nikitaland for the Super Sweet Blogging Award!

Here are the rules for the Super Sweet Blogging Award:

• Thank the Super Sweet Blogger who nominated you
• Include the Super Sweet Blogging Award image in your blog post
• Answer the five Super Sweet questions
• Nominate a baker’s dozen bloggers for Super Sweet Blogging Awards
• Notify your nominees on their blogs

Here are the five Super Sweet questions:
(Questions answered by Val, Nikita & Bella)

1. Cookies or Cakes? {Val} Definitely both cookies & cakes!  {Nikita & Bella} Milkbone treats for sure!  (we’ll do anything for a treat)
2. Chocolate or Vanilla? {Val} Definitely chocolate!  Anything chocolate!  You buy it, it won’t last long around here!
3. Favorite Sweet Treat? {Val} All time favorite sweet treat would be my homemade Red Velvet Cake or chocolate chip cookies
4. When do you crave sweet things most? {Val} When I’m awake!  {Nikita & Bella} Us, crave treats?  Heck, anytime we look at the “treat” jar!  We’ll do almost anything for a treat!
5. Sweet nickname? {Val} Boo Boo or Sunshine.  {Nikita} Boobilee Boop.  {Bella} Wanker

Here are my baker’s dozen+ Super Sweet Nominees to receive the Super Sweet Blogging Award:

• Pride In Photo’s Photography
• Feelin Crafty
• Boomdeeadda
• Town & Country Gardening
• Go Jules Go
• Pillows A-La-Mode
• Art Club Blog
• Free Range Cow
• Moments of Mezz
• The Renegade Seamstress
• Our Retired Life
• Olive the People
• Jaspers Doggy World
• Refrigerator Magnate

A great big THANK YOU again to Me, You and Zu for nominating Nikitaland for this awesome sweet award!

Yikes! There’s Veggies Growing in the Basement!

It is every gardeners dream to grow their own veggies.  The pride that comes from walking out to your garden and picking a fresh veggie is so rewarding.  We started about half of our garden from seeds and have probably more than 40 plants in the basement under the warmth of grow lights.  They are ready to head outside, but we are just waiting for our last frost date in our zone.  Since we had frost over the weekend, we feel that the end is near for cold temps here and gardening season will soon be full speed ahead!  We will also be planting cucumbers, leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, and celery too!

I am amazed on how well our plants have been doing and just had to share with you some of our progression photographs.  What’s amazing is that in just a few days, the plants get bigger and I have to move the grow lights up again on the chains they are attached to.  Progression.  Growth.  Smiles.

3-29-13

4-28-13

5-12-13

But what is more amazing is that we noticed a few days ago that we already have small peppers growing on a few of our pepper plants!  Amazing is what I call that!  What I would love to try over the winter, is to start some plants and see if we can produce fresh veggies during the winter.  Now that would be amazing!

Small peppers are already growing on our plants!

Awhile ago, when I was transplanting the seedlings out of the seed tray and into bigger pots, there was one Big Boy Tomato plant that kinda did not make it.  All of its leaves fell off, and all that was left was a “little stick”.  When I say little stick, it was about an inch high and looked like nothing could save this little tomato plant.  But…. I decided to try to nurture this “stick” back to health.  I carefully transplanted it into a bigger pot with a spoon as not to disturb any roots (if there were any at that point).  I watered it, and gave it a nice spot under the grow light.  To my amazement, after all of my love and affection for this little stick, it has now grown into a beautiful tomato plant!  I am going to tie something onto this tomato plant when it heads out to the garden, and will cherish each and every tomato I pick from my little stick as I have grown quite attached to it!  (NOTE:  My little stick is the tomato plant below with the binder clip on it)

I almost threw this “stick” out, but saved it! Now, look at it!

Our new rain barrel is filling up nicely with rain water and getting well stocked with what we need to keep our plants well watered this season.  This will surely keep the water bill to a minimum this summer!  Keep checking back for more progression photographs, and soon we will be taking all of our plants outside and into the garden.  It’s time to grow up and move out of the house!

Two-Story House of Evidence

It has been one week since we all heard the news that Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight were found alive after more than a decade.  The thoughts of their horrific ordeal has filled my mind since the news story of them being found.  I can’t even begin to imagine what they had gone through, but now they have to learn how to adapt to a normal life again.  A life where no one controls what you do each and every minute of the day.  I looked back on my own life over the past few years and can happily remember all of the wonderful memories of birthday’s, anniversaries, celebrating Christmas with loved ones, and everything else in between, and get a sick feeling in my stomach now knowing that these three women have been robbed of a good portion of their life and will never get that back.  Even not knowing any of these women, your heart goes out to them.  How could it not?

As we drove to the Cleveland APL on Saturday, our heads spun around in shock as we saw the street where they were held for a decade and no one knew.  It hit home.  On our way back home, we found a place to park and I jumped out with my camera and walked down Seymour Avenue.  It was the strangest feeling in the world walking down that street.  My eyes darted back and forth, looking at everything.   Ariel Castro’s house, the man who kidnapped these three women a decade ago, was just three houses down on the right side of Seymour Avenue off of W. 25th Street.  As I approached the barricade on the street, I stopped and looked up and saw the house.  Immediately, my eyes welled up with tears.  I still cannot believe that no one in the neighborhood ever saw anything as the houses were so close together in the neighborhood.  I stood there looking at the house, like a deer in headlights, shocked.  This really happened, I thought to myself, and I still can’t believe that they found these women alive after all of this time.  It is amazing, it is a miracle.  I moved over a little and got a couple more photographs of the house, and I was not the only there.  What hit me when I was walking back to the car was that all the people who stood there like I was…..said nothing.  It was so quiet.  Silence.  We were all in shock.

The house was being boarded up and a 10 foot high fence was being erected around the house to protect it.  It is a two-story piece of evidence.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Amanda, Gina and Michelle and we hope that they all can recover from this horrific tragedy that they had to endure for more than a decade and start healing and welcome life as we know it back, again.

It Was All About The Animals!

It was a cold day in May when we headed down to the Cleveland APL on Saturday.  The 8th annual Pledge For Pets Radiothon was in its second & final day of the live show, and we were excited to once again be a part of this event.

Nikita and Bella accompanied us, of course, and when Nikita made her entrance into the room where the live show was, she ran immediately over to the volunteers taking phone donations.  Everybody loved her and knows her at the APL.  ”Oh, she is so soft” was the most used phrase we heard as Nikita passed out kissies to everyone she met.  She also passed out her blog cards too, so we hope that everyone stops by and says hello!

Our local radio station, Q104, hosted this event, as they do every year.  They volunteer their time for such a worthy cause!  The radio personalities are so nice, warm, and loving and we always can’t wait to see them again.  Nikita especially loves Glen Anderson, as he always makes time to give Nikita a big hug!  Katherine Boyd and Allan Fee are always a pleasure to see and we love their great big hearts!

The Radiothon Room was filled with excitement, from people clapping to lots of “yahoo’s” when a donation came through the phone lines.  It is something to cheer about as the money goes towards such a great cause. Helping animals.

There were 31 Cash Captains, us included, who helped raise money for the APL.  Overall, the Cash Captains raised a total of $9,910 with online donations, cash & checks that they collected.  Nikitaland, raised a total of $705 and we are so pleased to be a part of this worthwhile & worthy cause.  The grand total that the APL raised with this event was $123,610.  And, if you were not aware of this, it costs the APL approximately $10,000/day to run its non-profit organization!  That is why we encouraged everyone to take part of this event, as it helps saves lives.  If you still wanted to donate, there is still time to do so.  Click HERE to make a donation as our donation page is still active & accepting donations!

All of us at Nikitaland want to thank everyone who participated with us in this event as we appreciate all of your donations.  Also, if you had uploaded one of our yellow pledge buttons on your blog, you can remove it today.  See you next year!