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Denise Breimeir
Earlier this month when I was in Des Moines on business, I had a few hours to spare the day I arrived. I drove 35 minutes north of my hotel to Reiman Gardens, located on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames. The gardens are beautiful in their own right, but I went there specifically to see Elwood, the world’s largest concrete garden gnome! He’s tucked away in a quiet back corner of the garden in a serene space surrounded by trees. Elwood has been a resident of Reiman Gardens since the 40th Anniversary of…
When planning this year’s crop of outdoor fairy garden themes, I knew I really wanted to make my biggest garden a zoo. Inspiration came from my trip to the Indianapolis Zoo in March for their new spring festival xZOOberance, and from all the buzz surrounding the new sloths exhibit that opened there Memorial Day weekend. I haven’t seen the sloths yet but they are on my summer bucket list. When I saw sloth fairy garden figures online, I knew I just had to create a zoo fairy garden. These adorable animals take leisure to the next…
March came roaring in like a lion this year but there were still several early signs of spring to be found in central Indiana even during spring’s coldest month. Longer days and daffodil shoots peeking up through the ground promised winter would be over soon, and the calendar quickly started filling up with all kinds of fun spring events, including the annual Indiana Flower and Patio Show at the state fairgrounds. My mom and I continued our spring tradition with a visit to the show on March 11. Stepping into the West Pavilion, we were met by bright…
Happy Spring! Today I’m sharing my Easter eggs I made this year in a late night egg dyeing and decorating session the evening before Easter with my Mom. Because Easter weekend was busy with Fairyville and family Easter activities, I kept my eggs pretty simple this year and didn’t go overboard with techniques. I added stickers to a lot of the eggs, my favorite way to decorate dyed eggs quickly. I tried a few new metallic effects, and also used a super cute Easter Animals egg decorating kit by Paper Source to make some fast and…
Nickel Plate Arts’ seventh annual Welcome to Fairyville event is underway in Noblesville, Indiana with lots of fairy fun slated for Fairy Friday (April 19, 2019) and Sprite Saturday (April 20, 2019)! Some of the activities like the Fairy Trail of tiny homes have been moved indoors, so the merriment won’t be dampened by the rainy and unseasonably cold weather. Fairyville events for Fairy Friday and Sprite Saturday are highlighted below. For complete details, check out the Welcome to Fairyville event page and Important Fairyville Weather Updates plus the latest posts and pictures on Nickel Plate Arts…
March roared in like a lion, with snow and cold temperatures, but I’m hopeful that spring will be here soon! I consider St. Patrick’s Day the first Spring holiday on the calendar. All of the green reminds me that the landscape will be greening up soon and one of my favorite annual spring events, the Indianapolis Flower and Patio show, falls around St. Patrick’s Day. Today I’m sharing a quick and simple Irish fairy garden I made to display in my living room. I can’t take credit for this idea…
Lately I’ve been working on several custom orders, which I love to do because they stretch my creativity and give me an opportunity to work on projects I might not otherwise make. I love a challenge! The first of this latest round of custom order requests was a couple months ago. Ashley contacted me about designing personalized cards to give to her friends she was going to ask to be bridesmaids in her upcoming wedding. I wasn’t sure where to start with design options, so I did what I always do in that situation…
Gia and Harper. They sound like trendy baby names, and not winter storms, the first of which snuck in with all its snowy beauty and said surprise, dropping eight inches of snow – double the forecasted amount for my area – onto the landscape. Harper was more disappointing and uncooperative, baffling meteorologists who didn’t know exactly what it would mean for central Indiana until even a few hours before its arrival. Projected snow totals ranged from four to eight inches or more (some even said twelve was possible). In reality we just got a bunch of rain for…
Brr… it’s cold out! Here in central Indiana, we’re feeling the effects of the polar vortex that’s affecting a lot of the U.S. and Canada right now. Our high temperature is supposed be below zero tomorrow and I don’t even want to think about the wind chill. January has definitely been a wintry month after a mild December. My friend Rebecca first told me about frozen bubbles in January 2014, another unforgettable record cold and snowy month. She linked me to an article (the link is now broken) about a…
I saw special markers used to color snow on Facebook recently. I had no idea such a thing existed so I looked them up on Amazon out of curiosity. I really had no desire to color snow but it got me thinking there might be other cool toys or gadgets out there that would be fun to play with in the snow. While searching, I stumbled across some snow molds that caught my attention, especially a gnome mold which was included in a set of five characters. They reminded me of the brick maker molds I used to build snow…
Happy New Year! I hope your 2019 is off to a great start! My vacation days from work are almost over, and I’m not looking forward to getting back to the grind. It’s been nice celebrating the holidays with family, staying up all night, spending more time at home with Flurry, blogging, and decorating gingerbread! When I was shopping for a gingerbread house kit for Christmas this year, I bought two, because I thought the Wilton Ready-to-Decorate Dazzling Gingerbread House Decorating Kit would make a perfect New Year’s gingerbread house! The shimmer…
Christmas may be over but I always like to keep my decorations up for a few weeks afterwards. The twelve days of Christmas start on December 25 and run through January 5, so it just makes sense to me to leave my decorations up through then anyway. I start decorating after Thanksgiving, and this year I finished decorating pretty late (mid-December), so I’m not tired of looking at my Christmas décor yet. I usually start taking my decorations down in mid-January, beginning with the tree, with the goal of getting everything put away by the…
Merry Christmas! I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday filled with all of your favorite things, including your favorite sweet treats. This Christmas season flew by faster than any other for me. I didn’t get a lot of things done before December 25 that I wanted to, and I’m determined to plan better for next year. But I did make gingerbread cookies and a gingerbread house, one of my favorite traditions. I love the way gingerbread tastes, and I especially love the decorating opportunities it offers. I love to pore over elaborate gingerbread cookie…
An annual Christmas tradition for my mom and me is a visit to The Old World Christmas Village & Market the first Friday in December. Mom and I first learned of this event from an ad in the holiday bazaars newspaper insert several years ago. We were headed downtown to the Holiday Author Fair at the Indiana Historical Society and noticed the market was the same day so we could check it out while we were nearby. That first year we went on a Saturday, but afterwards we switched to going at 5:00 on Friday when the market first…
Christmas will be here before we know it! Now is the perfect time to check out one of the newest and best Christmas events in the Indianapolis area, the Carmel Christkindlmarkt, celebrating its second year. The outdoor German Christmas market is open Wednesdays through Sundays through Christmas Eve, with no admission charge and free parking available right next to the market in the Palladium Center for the Performing Arts’ parking garage. Check out my post from last year to learn more about the heritage of German Christmas Markets and read about my visit to the inaugural Carmel Christkindlmarkt…