Happy Friday friends! And hello!

About a week and a half ago we wrapped our our SimpleTax’s incredibly successful first year. The next day I hopped on a plane and flew to Charlottesville for Heather and Gav’s amazing wedding. And I’m back again! Hooray!!

One of the Pinterest projects that’s been on my list for a long time (… more than a year …) is a wood pallet garden. Okay, and other wood pallet projects too.

Pallet projects generally have been on my mind for quite awhile; I found the pallet I used for this project in April 2012. Then I found its friend the other pallet about a month later. These pallets have been living in a stack on our back deck. For a year.

It’s not like I wasn’t thinking about pallet projects. At one point shortly after I found them I tried to disassemble one. I don’t actually remember what the project was, but I do remember me + my hammer + two hours + lots of swearing. Needless to say that project was a bit of a fail. Life lesson: if you don’t have power tools, stick to pallet projects that don’t need deconstructing.

So, I decided upon this vertical pallet garden from Life on the Balcony.

Pretty, right? I thought so too, and bought the landscape paper for this project last May.

And then I just never got around to it. I have all sorts of excuses: I was busy craigslisting and projecting all the stuff inside our house, wedding season came, SimpleTax was crazy. But honestly, I was a little intimidated by potting soil.

A few weeks ago, I decided to take the afternoon off and just do it. A trip to Home Depot’s garden centre, two bags of potting soil (that were surprisingly inexpensive and not all that intimidating), and lots of plants later (including a hanging planter and some pretty lavender), I was ready to go. And it went quite quickly following Life on the Balcony’s instructions. Except I needed a third bag of potting soil (shakes fist) so lots of swearing and one more bus ride to Home Depot and a half an hour more and I was done!

I let the pallet sit there and the roots take hold for 2 weeks, and then I tried to make it vertical.

And I realized that was never going to happen. There aren’t enough back boards on my pallet, so when I (ok, the hubs) lifts it or tilts it, all the flowers sag. Grrr. This is extra unfortunately because of the sweet peas I planted at the botton to grow up the planter. Grrr.

In positive news, at least it isn’t a total Pinterest fail.

And, in other positive news, I still think it looks pretty awesome and brightens up our deck. And I’m thinking about using the other pallet to hide the other wall and make a different kind of pallet garden from Kelly Moore that can certainly stand vertically!

We shall see, friends. Maybe next May :)