Erin Flett, a Maine-based textile designer, creates her gorgeous prints with a view—literally—to New England’s great outdoors.
Living
Houseplants are an unexpected and fun location to add Halloween decor. Plant picks are relatively simple to make for any occasion or theme, but these doll part picks seem extra creepy to me and therefore, perfect for the Halloween season. Materials to Make Halloween Houseplant Picks Sculpting clay that you bake (i.e. Fimo or Sculpey). […]
In the world of giant-pumpkin growing, Steve Connolly is one of its stars. In 2000 he became the first New Englander to crack 1,000 pounds. At the 2010 Topsfield Fair he turned in a 1,674-pounder, the world’s third-largest pumpkin that year. We caught up with Connolly, a plastics engineer, at his backyard pumpkin patch in […]
How To
Soda Can Tealight Holders
We had a lot of picnics this summer—this is par for the course at our house. So I’ve had extra empty soda cans on hand and I’ve been wondering if there is something fun I can make with them. I experimented with these soda can tealight holders and discovered they are actually very simple and […]
Here is a craft project that is absolutely foolish (in a good way) and will bring a smile to anyone who receives it. It’s a cookie portrait — a silhouette portrait turned into cookie art! For the purposes of this blog I chose to make an Elvis portrait because he is easily recognized by a […]
When these entrepreneurs applied Yankee ingenuity to their canine dilemmas, the pet products they came up with created a whole new premium pet market. 1. In 1999, some clever folks at Jefferson Rubber Works–makers of molded rubber products for military and industry– reimagined a rubber disk originally intended for water-treatment plants and turned it into […]
How a stray dog bounded his way into the hearts of one Massachusetts family.
Gardens
More Photos of Giant Pumpkins
Giant-pumpkin grower Steve Connolly shared some photos of his enormous pumpkins.
Last week I went to Parson’s Beach in Kennebunk, Maine, to celebrate a friend’s birthday with a beach picnic (we referred to it as a Mermaid’s Breakfast). I love any excuse for a picnic—even early morning ones—and I wanted to make this picnic extra memorable. I pulled a couple craft projects together that would add […]
Avid gardener and blogger Michael Gordon, who lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, shares his secrets on how to create the perfect backyard garden.
The leaves on my lily plants are all tattered and chewed. I noticed small bright-orange/red beetles on them, and also gooey black insects under the leaves. What should I do? Both the grub (larva) and adult lily leaf beetle (also called the Asiatic lily beetle) feed on true lilies (not daylilies) in spring and summer. […]
How To
Make Beaded Spool Ornaments
Beaded spool ornaments are whimsical decorations created from a hodgepodge of materials. The variety of materials in these ornaments is what makes them so charming—you can choose and assemble a mix of charms, beads, buttons, spools, paper images, hardware and ribbon to suit your creative taste. You can also choose the length of the ornaments—shorter […]