Bird & Bee Houses at the Rainier Community Garden

Last Saturday's "Build-a-Birdhouse" workshop was packed with people....  Lions Walt Dohring and George Johnson helped kids of all ages build bird houses and Mason bee houses.........  Great idea that Jeannine and Angie had to put on this workshop for our community.  Thank you all for the great turnout!



Lion Walt Dohring helping kids build bird houses at the Rainier Community Garden workshop.



Say hello to George from the Rainier Lions Club, our local mason bee expert. He helped kids and adults build a habitat for mason bees.  City Councilman Dennis McVey and his wife have Mason Bee Houses in their yard.  He came to Rainier Community Garden on July 19th and shared a lot of information about Mason Bees.  

Melanie's Strawberry Barrel

We just finished Melanie's Strawberry Barrel.  It's our last strawberry barrel for the season.  Below are pictures of her barrel & what ours looks like, now that it's filled with plants.

We use a grinding disk to cut a slit in the barrel.  Heat the area around the slit with a heat gun until we can push a wine bottle in and make a plant pocket. 

We leave the wine bottle in the pockets until they cool.  Then we remove the bottle.

We drill holes in 4" pipe (more holes at the top, and very few holes at the bottom) so we can water from the center of the planter, as well as water directly into the pockets.  We can fertilize the plants from the center, too.

Our planter, now that the plants have been growing a couple of months.  We've harvested lots of strawberries!

Herb garden.  Rosemary, parsley, sage, chives, basil, mint, etc.  would grow well in Melanie's barrel, too.

Our veggie garden...

Strawberry barrel....

We let the broccoli go to seed (bolt) to attract the bees.  George wasn't sure what I was doing, until he saw the bees hovering all around the broccoli.  We usually grow borage & horehound plants, but they didn't come up this year.  I'll plant some next spring - just to make sure we have them in the garden.  They are bee magnets!

Gold Bar Bathroom Shelf....

The shelf unit in our camping trailer is to hold toiletries.  We have precious little space in our tiny bathroom, so this was Handcrafted by George to help us utilize every square inch!  Not fancy, but it works!

Baby Rowan

We went to visit Wendy, Morgan and Rowan.....  We were greeted by Ruby right away!

Ruby - guarding the door...  

Grandpa holding Rowan...

Precious!

Wendy relaxing, while Rowan sleeps....

Sleeping baby Rowan...

Morgan holding Rowan, as Wendy watches....

Tiered Wedding Cake & Cupcake Stand

Our granddaughter, Casey, is getting married soon.  She called and asked George to make her a special stand to hold her wedding cake and 120 cupcakes underneath.  I looked on Pinterest and found many different styles of cupcake/wedding cake stands:  Tall and round to stacked square wooden boxes.  Her cake is going to be white with green flowers, so we wanted to go along with her Redneck Wedding color theme.  

We put Mason jars between the tiers and filled them with Hershey's Kisses........

We painted these door knobs white and used them for the feet of the cake stand.

We used a nail in the center and a pencil on a string to measure and cut 5 circles out of solid wood: 10", 12", 14", 16" & 18" respectively.

George cutting one of the circles on his band saw.

We were going to use Kerr glass jelly jars.  (The wooded circles are just balanced on top.)  Then we found out we needed to accommodate 120 cupcakes, as well as a 9" wedding cake on top.....  Uh, oh!  

Sanding circles.....

We found plastic drinking jugs that look like canning jars.  They are taller and easier to drill holes in.  (They already had a hole in the top for the straw.)

Here's the stand, put together with screws, caps and all - before we painted it white.

The little, round white feet!  Cute!!!

We put empty cupcake papers on the tiers and found we needed more tiers........  

We took the stand apart and painted everything white in pieces.  The tiers were hanging around in the garage from white string.....

We bought 4 white, scalloped plastic tiers and drilled holes in the center.  We filed the edges of the feet on these tiers, so 3" lengths of 1" PVC pipe would snap on them.  We added them between the tiers and filled the Mason jars with Hershey's Kisses.  We used 2#'s of kisses!

Showing a few empty cupcake papers.

We glued wedding bell ribbon around the edges of the wooden trays.  The ribbon is a little wider then the boards, but this gives the trays a little lip, so the cupcakes won't get bumped off the edges.

Casey loves her wedding cake/cupcake stand!  She is picking it up, soon!

We love you, Casey!!!

Casey & Curran's Wedding Treasure Chest.....

George & I finished Casey & Curran's Wedding Treasure Chest.  We bent wood to put on the top, but it wasn't working as well as we hoped, so we opted for leather straps instead.  (The wood was putting too much stress on the slats that ran across the top of the curved chest.)

We put on brass fittings, tacks and a brass lock.  We got a frame and put Casey & Curran's wedding invitation on the front of the chest.  The chest is larger then one might expect, because we hoped that they could put their wedding album and keepsakes in this chest, after their marriage ceremony.  

Congratulations Casey & Curran!!

Something old:

(Leather straps)

Something New:  

(Picture frame and brass fittings)

Something Borrowed:

(Our old brass lock)

Something Blue:

(Blue in the wedding invitation)

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