Aliska We grow in containers because even after we augment our soil for years it looks like this: It doesn't matter how much organic matter we put in. All it takes is a few gullywashers a year and the compost washes down the hill and we are back to trying to garden in rocks and coal. The only way to hold organic matter in the soil here is to augment very heavily and have a ton of perennial plants with huge mats of roots to help anchor it. So veg went to containers and in-ground growing is mainly used for hardy perennial flowers. To fill the containers, we have a great compost heap and we spend as much time growing soil as we do growing our plants. Here's two of our compost heaps in 2008 - that's after all the buckets were filled: Since then we've stepped up our composting a lot. We actually harvest our forest floors now. Two reasons for that. One is to feed the compost heap with the organic matter from the forest floor and from our annual leaf harvest. The second is to expose the soil on the forest floor so we can seed into it and grow more stuff for the animals to eat. This is our star compost producer. She's good for about 2 five gallon buckets of collectibles each day. (That's just the black gold she leaves in the back yards closest to the compost heap. She also leaves plenty out in the hills.) Connie the queen of compost: As for intermediate transplanting. Part of it is that potting up size by size is good for the plants. Part of it is that while potting up season is in full swing, we have to spend to spend day after day sieving compost and blending it with a little perlite. It takes time to get enough compost to fill close to 500 buckets. We use fresh compost in the buckets each year. That decreases disease risk for the plants and lets us plant them in soil that is so nutrient rich that we never use fertilizer. At the end of the growing season the compost from the buckets gets put in my giant flower gardens. The reason we have so many plants is that we grow most of our own food. Gardening isn't a hobby for us - it's dinner! We are both vegetarian so don't worry - cute Connie and the goats are working animals (landscaping crew and compost makers), not future meals. As we've transitioned to doing all of our food growing in containers, we've seen other gardeners in the area do the same. We get used buckets from our friendly local scrapyard dealer. He's a gardener who's now using more containers and he tells his other gardening customers about it. It's a lot of work, but it's usually better than fighting Appalachian hill soil. It also lets us control the soil moisture - not an easy thing to do if you are ground growing and the weather is cycles of drought and flood. We also use tire gardens for some of our growing: Most of the photos have additional comments with them. Click on any of them to see a larger image and the comments. Lynda

This is from Barbie Boop: yes, scraps.. pull out your paper scraps.. cut them into post cards, card layers, book marks, tags, and trading cards do you have strips of cs scraps? line them up and stamp on them... then layer the strips on a card! do you have scraps.. that you have cut out or punched out of... pull out a few images and start stamping them on those scraps! save for cards.. or rak others with those stamped images! start with your verse stamps! we can all use a few prestamped verses! vellum scraps? cut into post cards, card layers, book marks, tags, and trading cards then... all the rest... you can stamp butterflies, and dragonflies on them.. then cut and use them as card embelishments. remember that TAGS can be any size or shape.. so.. have fun cutting out wee little ones also! if you have paper or vellum scraps: make them into mini envelopes to fill with goodies, stamped verse, an image and then you can attach it to a card front, inside or just rak someone with it. you can also cut your scraps into envelope liners. have fun using up your scraps. hugs, barbie

I think www.dmarie.com , and www.gracefulbee.com both have punch art samples. If not I know Ebay has them listed for sale, although sometimes it takes you a while to figure out exactly what punch they used to make the design that way. You could also try www.scraplink.com and do a search on punch art. You might be able to find some on www.southernsplash.com ( I think this is what the name of the site is) Good luck. Love Penny

I am lucky enough to have my own craft room also I bought 4 large desks / dressers from a local hotel when they remodelled, each desk has 3 drawers on each side and a drawer in the middle, and they are STURDY and have formica tops. I keep all my stickers alphabetically in my old magnetic albums, if the back of the sticker pages sticks to the page it is not a problem since I don't use that part of the sticker anyway. I keep all of my die cuts in a portable hanging file system also by alphabet, I store all of my paper in hanging file folders, by theme, or color. For those of you who can't do this I would suggest some storage boxes that would fit in your case LizAnne, underneath your bed or clean out a drawer of your dresser. However my favorite is still the craftsman tool box. It can be drapped with a floral cloth to match whatever room it's in or be painted like Patti suggested. It doesn't have to be attached to any walls nor will it's wheels hurt the floors. (I had one in my dining room for years when our garage was being redone, covered with a cloth it looks just like a small table.) LizAnne, you could also store other items in, and on it, but the top makes a great cutting and work surface. I would suggest putting down a protective mat of sorts though, and I think it is less than $100.00. Penny