Staying Home during Covid-19

No matter where you are, these words have become quite common to everyone~ Shut down, stay at home, wear a mask and of course Coved-19! So far, we have been shut down for a little over a month and looks like we have a few more weeks to go. If you are anything like me during this quarantine, I started out relaxing and trying to understand all that was going on but now my house is clean, closets are organized, I have bags of clothing waiting to be dropped off at Community Aid and the pile for the summer yard sale is growing daily. Heck, even my attic has been gone through. I do not normally have this much time on my hands, but I have tried to make effective use of my time. So, when my husband, Todd and I started cleaning out the shed on one nice sunny day, I was totally surprised to find dried gourds that had grown by accident in my backyard many years ago. At that time, I wrote a blog about the “mishap” and if you would like to read that first, here is the link. Oh lands, this is from 2014, so this just goes to prove that once gourds are dry, they can last a long time until you are ready to something with them.

 

Preparing my gourds for crafting

When I picked them off the vine in 2014, I left them outside to dry just like we do at the farm. They were snowed and rained on as proof in the pictures and I really had good intentions of crafting them in the spring once they were ready but you know how that goes, life happened and they were pushed to the back of the shed over the last 6 years. I cleaned one to see how hard it was going to be since I am not at the farm to have them do it for me.

That did not go too bad so now I am going to bring the rest in and get them cleaned (hopefully, they all make it) and then the crafting begins. They are cleaned and ready to go. Now, I have to say, I am the retail manager for a reason. I have no artistic ability at all, but I love to decorate and display the gourds. Luckily, I have Todd who is a crafter at Meadowbrooke and he helped me out with cutting them for me while I searched around my house to see what I had that I could paint and decorate them with.

Crafting my gourds at home

Well after a day of cutting, hunting, dyeing, painting, spraying, letting dry and accessorizing, here you go. This what I came up to make all my gourd into. I made a birdhouse, a birdfeeder, and a silly little spring gnome. My bedroom décor is a beach theme, so I had to try the crab and then decoupaged wallpaper flowers onto the last one to put in my spare room on a shelf. Some I think turned out nice, some are okay, and some are not exactly what I had in mind, but I must say I did have fun playing and working on them. I found it to be a relaxing day of creativity and would highly recommend it. Meadowbrooke has begun to offer really cool kits that can be done at your home with whatever you can find when you hunt around your house or if you are really adventurous, you can buy hard shelled gourds that has nothing done to them and start from scratch.

 

Whatever you are doing to occupy your time while you are home or if you are still working as an essential worker (a big thank you!), I hope you are being safe and staying healthy. I am anxious to get back to my store and customers as I miss you all very much and that time will come, we just need to be patient. My thoughts and prayers are with you all!