Stepping Stone Mosaic

I have had a stepping stone kit kicking around for years and I am not even sure where I got it from but I am pretty confident that I got it for free. 

The thing with cement is that you have to work on it for a few days in a row and it shouldn't be too hot or too cold. Finally, I decided this is as good as it is going to get and went for it. Basically, you get a small bag of dry cement, a stirring stick like you would use for paint and a flimsy plastic form. It included a bunch of nice pieces of glass like you would use for stained glass projects. It also included a few pattern choices and I went with the dragonfly design.  I thought I would use their pattern this time and learn the fundamentals of this type of craft and get creative with designs when I am not worried about exactly how do we do this.  The dragonfly choice was natural because last weekend we suddenly had 1000's of dragonflies appear around our dock. We have also had a lot of mosquitoes lately so the dragonflies swooping around catching the mosquitoes felt like heroes. 

First, you pour the concrete mix into a pail or container. You really need to move carefully to avoid having a cloud of concrete dust flying up at you. Mix in the water completely and then put it into the mould. Next, we get to place the glass pieces into the concrete and it is a little harder than I imagined

When you are done with your design the cement is already getting very firm but it needs to sit for about 24 hours before the pieces are held securely in the cement. You can then work on polishing the surface of the mosaic pieces and clean bits of stray concrete off of them.

Bob and Jasper kept me company while I was working on the stepping stone.

When you are finished polishing off all your pieces or like in my case you decide that is all the polishing you can stand you put the piece to the side to cure for about a week before removing it from the mould. That will allow it time to cure and be strong enough to walk on. Next time out at the lake I will see how it turned out and find a little home for it.

Fall in the Raised Bed Gardens

Welcome!

We have a little raised bed garden on the side of the cottage. It is a bit of a learning curve for us but we are having a lot of fun with it. The climate at the cottage tends to be quite variable and we are not always there to water it or protect it from chipmunks and possibly beavers.

One bed is mainly herbs and we also tried for garlic but that just didn't work out. We have been using the herbs a bit but, more often than not, I forget that that is a cooking option out here! The herbs actually do pretty spectacularly. We put them pretty close together and the Parsley and Cilantro kind of crowded the other herbs but they still did fine.

I tried adding some lettuce seeds, purchased at Dollarama, to the spot where the garlic didn't grow.  I keep reading about how you can have two crops a year of  spring types of plants so I thought I would experiment.  They have popped up and look cute but really, it could freeze any night now.

This is our poor little squash which is still making efforts even though it is too late for this year. 

 Not even one flower was sucessful this year!

Here we have the beginnings of a delicious pasta sauce at the Lake Cottage!