When the hibernation habit gets a little blase and the bottoms of your feet become a little itchy for remembrance of their bare-naked grassy days, I feel like the “wet seed wild in the hot blind earth,” of Faulkner’s imagination—caught in the hopeful tandem between winter and spring. If nothing else is ripe, at least the time is ripening for sowing seeds of futures, dreaming dreams, and planting wishes.

The Greek goddess of vegetation, Persephone, is the spring herald of seeds and fresh growth. The pomegranate seeds she ate, while banned from food, are said to have been the reason she was shunned and absent from her duty as fertility mother, thus creating the barren season of winter. We are teetering on the edge of this cold season and the turnover of new growth, so we shall celebrate the seed!

The year is new and I needed something lovely to write on and plant—why not combine the two forces into plantable paper? My seeded stuff ended up looking curiously edible. It somehow achieved the consistency of oatmeal (the brown and cream paper mush) and raisin (foxglove seeds) cookie bars. To make your own write-on granola-esque notes, do this!

(Oatmeal Raisin) Seeded Wildflower Paper

Material and Tools

• 10-20 sheets of recycled paper (you can use newspaper, old book, junk mail, etc…) and keep in mind the color will be a result of the dye of the paper you use
• 1 or cups of lukewarm water
• natural dye or tissue paper (optional)
• 1-2 packs wildflower seeds
• a hand towel
• a cookie/baking sheet
• a mug, cup, or rolling pin
• a blender

I started off with black/cream sheets of paper from a discarded 1950s atlas, a handful of newspaper, some junk mail, and a brown paper bag. Rip all the paper you’re going to use up into thin shreds. The smaller, the better, but don’t go too crazy! Put the paper shreds into the blender until it’s almost full. Add 1 cup of lukewarm water and blend, starting with the lowest setting and gradually vamping it up to full power. Blend until the individual pieces have become a watery mush and are indistinguishable, adding water as needed. This process took me 10-15 minutes, and lots of patient alternating between stirring and blending, but eventually did the trick. When the paper has returned back to its pulpy state, you may add a bit of natural dye or square of (dyed) tissue paper to kick it with some color. I chose to leave mine its neutral shade of oatmealy-beige.

Remove the pulp from the blender and place it in a bowl. Add whatever seeds you are inclined—I used foxglove, shasta daisy, and zinnia, for lots of variety and potential. Stir well until the seeds are distributed evenly throughout. Take a small handful of the “dough” and ball it up in your hands, squeezing most of the water out but leaving enough so that it clumps together. Spread the ball out into your desired shape on the baking sheet, flattening it until it’s as thin as it will go. Thin it out even further with a rolling pin, or by using a mug to roll it out. Soak up the excess water with a towel. Repeat this until all the pulp is used. You can make whatever size/shape of paper you desire, but know that the thicker and larger the size, the longer it will take to dry.

Bake at 250 for 20-30 minutes, or until mostly dry. Alternatively, leave in the sun to dry, dry with a hairdryer, take a hairdryer to it, or use your breath for the most hands-on experience.

When you’re ready to bury it, soak the paper for about an hour before placing it lightly (about 1/2 inch deep) in the soil. My foxgloves, zinnia, and daisies will spring up to life in a few weeks.

Get fancy with your paper! I used a sheet of mine to make a hand-sewn Valentine. Simply use thread (usually 3 strands is plenty for this) to make your own design and sew it as you would anything else.

From {Tree}HouseHold, and the promise of spring, sew your seeds of wild oatmeal today!

About the contributor:
	Heather Buzzard is a freshly hatched graduate of Emory University, where she studied creative writing, sociology, religion and environmental science. Her time is spent frolicking as a musician in two Atlanta bands, dressing up for silly photoshoots, inventing recipes, and drooling happily over her Indie Fixx work.

Looking for a winter sewing project? One that will keep you warm during and after you make it? How about this Cozy Wool Throw Project from the last issue of Joie? Put together by Rebecca Thoms Hanley of BananaSauarus Rex, it’s an easy enough project that even I could complete it…and I probably couldn’t sew myself out of a paper bag.

To read the article, click HERE or use the viewer above. It starts on page #116.

Not crafty, here’s some goodies you can buy from the BananaSauarus Rex shop.

It’s time to deck the halls again and for those of you who (like me) still have not decorated (or have even thought yet about your plans for decorating) here are some ideas for hand-making your holidays!

Home for the holidays tutorial from Retro Mama

Ceramic disks with pressed flowers by [ otchipotchi ] On and Off!

Felt ornament tutorial from Bugs and Fishes

Snowglobes from Indie Fixx

Embroidered ornaments from Resurrection Fern

Felt Ornaments at The Purl Bee

Scrap wood advent tree from Summerville

Winter Wonderland Centerpiece from Indie Fixx

Christmas village shadow boxes from Smile And Wave

Bundled pine needles from Resurrection Fern

Pompom garland from Indie Fixx

Vintage spool gift tags/ornaments from Scrumdillydilly

Coca-cola Advent calendar from naughty secretary club

Candy canes from Isabel Pavía

Chalkboard Advent Calendar from Indie Fixx

These weighty coral texts were never meant to serve as umbrellas, but they were called upon to serve this duty on a rainy Thursday night at Atlanta’s West Elm, where the reigning online DIY queen’s first book was celebrated, signed, clutched, petted and hovered over. Grace Bonney and Amy Azzarito double-team as a touring duo to promote Design*Sponge’s first book, encourage local arts by hosting crafting activities in conjunction with the book signing, and spread the wildfire grassroots movement of low-budget, high-personality creativity.

Amidst the flurry of divine gourmet tarts, sparkling lemonade, and fabric paint, Grace shines like a hand-polished gem. The book line snaked slowly only because she was sure to spend a few minutes with every fan, chatting them up about what brought them out and what their connection is with Design*Sponge, whose longtime online presence has now translated into an uber-successful real life. The crowd was beyond beautiful, a polite and cheery mob suited more to a catwalk or photoshoot than a typical book signing. The aesthetic standards of the audience were clearly up to and beyond the philosophy of the book. But there is nothing high-brow or snobbish about this movement: the fact that this blog-to-book transformation has toured packed spaces in dozens of major cities is a tribute to its inclusivity, mass appeal, and good-natured idea sharing.

As a daily reader of D*S, I am one of 75,000 viewers of the virtual tome of twine, the bible of bell jars, the anthology of wall art. Likewise, these 400 pages (!) are the printed equivalent of a juice detox; fresh fruity floral funky, and with a little blending and a little cleanup you too can create something you’ll feel the nourishing effects of. The book is divided into five major sections: sneak peeks, DIY projects, DIY basics, a flower workshop, and before and afters. The content mimics the website, but is fine tuned and includes over 50 pages of never-before-seen material exclusive to the book. The cross-country book tour event was divided into three sections: crafting (DIY painted resuable napkins), nibbles and mingling, and the signing. Global in scale, eclectic in skill level, distinctly feminine in aura but open to possibility, the book’s insides echo its cover, which was selected out of 45 possibilities for its timelessness and character.

This bit from a dedicated Amazon.com customer review of the book made me chuckle: “WARNING: This book will make you look crazy. I have been carrying this red bible around for weeks like a newborn baby, clutching it to my chest. When people ask me why I have gone nutso, I will gingerly peel it from the front of my shirt and carefully turn the pages for them to see.”

The lovely and impeccably hair styled Lady Grace was kind enough to chat with me for a few minutes in between personalizing enough books to fill a small library…our conversation, naturally, flew to treehouses…

Me: Do you have a favorite Sneak Peek from the book?

Grace: My favorite sneak peak is the Jessica Helgerson house in Portland. It’s actually the only designer house in the book. But I don’t like it because it’s a designer house, I like it because it reminds me of a treehouse. My dream is to live in a place like that.

Me: How was the process of juggling the daily editing responsibilities of Design*Sponge while writing this book?

Grace: It’s really hard. I actually ended up in the hospital aggravating a migraine condition that I didn’t even know I had! That’s how much work I did. But it ultimately taught me that I can work a lot more than I even thought I could, so I work much harder and longer hours now than I ever did before. It really taught me to be incredibly efficient with my time.

Me: People have referred to the book as the bible of a movement. What’s it like to be labeled the leader of this DIY revolution?

Grace: It’s incredibly flattering…but I think mostly what’s special about this revolution is that there is no one leader. It’s a group effort. I think I may have just stepped forward a little earlier in the process, but I really just see myself as part of a larger group movement of people who want to take back design.

Me: What’s next in the works for D*S?

Grace: We are bringing in our second full-time employee and getting our office in January, so that’s our first big project. We’re going to do another newspaper. And we’re going to do a second book, but I need a break before I do that one.

I also got the chance to trade stories and smiles with the wondrous Amy Azzarito, joy of all trades. Her take-aways from the book tour reminded me of the utmost importance of the work going on here. Under the influence of financial crises and natural disasters, homes are being destroyed and taken back. With this, design tends to go to the back burner, but this brand of independent budget decor offers homeowners and renters encouragement by teaching them how to make instead of how to buy. Quality design and a thoughtfully crafted home does not come at the hand of an interior decorator or expensive catalog purchases, but with ingenuity, playfulness, and resourcefulness where it’s least expected. As we were chatting, Amy flipped through my doggy-eared copy of the book to her own Brooklyn home and got a thrill from seeing all the stars and little notes I’d made about her chic flora and fauna filled space.

Image courtesy of www.designsponge.com

Amy’s home is my favorite of the collection. It’s impossible to pore through the book without a pencil or photographic memory – there are so many gold stars to be awarded! On the four-page spread of Amy’s Brooklyn home, I marked up at least 10 projects or details that were extraordinary, one of which leads to a how-to in later pages (the butterfly dome). The dome is something that I’ve seen floating around in the idea world of my head for ages now, but had not been able to translate into a feasible weekend craft project until Amy broke down a stunning million-dollar piece into inexpensive, simple, and doable steps. This de-cluttering of the complicated is the magic that the D*S team has going for them.

The idea of the old-fashioned skill share is harkening its way back into popularity. This book is the illustrated and bound version of this share-the-(artsandcrafts)-wealth movement, a manifesto for the hardware store and thrift shop enthusiasts, a guide for those of us with 12 different kinds of craft glue, a membership card for those of us who wear white shoes well after labor day and want our walls to do the same. The space that we inhabit shapes our being, and when we consciously map out our physical landscapes to embody the same ideals that we hold true (beauty, independence, eclecticism, sustainability), we are able to resonate with our interior landscape and vice versa. The Design*Sponge manuscript makes this abstract ambition as simple and intuitive as tying a bow: easy process and splendid result. The design process should not feel learned, but innate, tying a bow to your own rhythm, with your favorite color ribbon, handmade with love and easily undone to fit all shapes and seasons. Love the pages of this book, love these words, and if you end up hot gluing a few together by accident I’m sure you can refer to the website for a handy DIY solution.

Buy the book here.

All event pictures by me.

About the contributor:
	Heather Buzzard is a freshly hatched graduate of Emory University, where she studied creative writing, sociology, religion and environmental science. Her time is spent frolicking as a musician in two Atlanta bands, dressing up for silly photoshoots, inventing recipes, and drooling happily over her Indie Fixx work.

Hiya! Heather here, turning things outside in for the second installment of {Tree}Household: Rearranging the Ferniture.

The fern frond is a fabulously flexible art form: funky in the living room, funny in the bedroom, and unexpectedly flavorful in the kitchen. Unfurling like an ancient scroll, the signature fern curve takes shape in every corner of the creative home as an evergreen source of year-long hue, a delicate architectural detail, and subtle groundcover turned striking accent. Here we find a few ways of bringing friendly ferns far beyond the banks of their native streams and woodland corners into the forefront of our everydays.

Ferns in the Living Room

Upholstered Fern Chair by Williams Sonoma (via MotherBlogger) | Fern Silhouettes by Two’s Company (via Country Living) | Stenciled Fern Trunk by Angelique

Ferns are one of the things I find perfect in nature; in design, they do more than just bring the outside in—they lend symmetry, grace, and shapeliness to everything they adorn, from pressed wall decor to freshly picked fabric. Symbolically, ferns are associated with, “Magic, fascination, confidence, shelter, discretion, reverie and a secret bond of love.” Whether a cinnamon fern with tiny curling tendrils, a delicate whisk fern, or one of the other 12,000 species, they all share the same arcing stems and proportional leaves that make them ripe for artistic picking.

Ferns in the Bedroom

Fern Boutonniere by JPM Design | Fern Headband by Ancient Grove | Fern Pillow by T Double L | Fern Chandelier by Dolce

Ferns are not only good to look at, but as a natural bonus are good to eat! Here are a few ideas for bringing ferns into the kitchen, both as decorative accents and edible mainstays.

Ferns in the Kitchen

Fern Tablescape by HeyLook | Fern Cookies by Queen of Hearts Tarts | Fern Glasses by Greener Grass Design

Fiddlehead ferns, the densely wound head of the ostrich fern, are a celebrated treat in the Northeast US, often compared to a woodier asparagus. Served boiled, pickled, dried or sauteed as a delectable delicacy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the heads of the kapo and high climbing ferns make an exotic side or primetime veggie dish. The tops of bracken ferns are prepared as a ritual vegetable for the ceremonies involved in Korean harvest festivals and New Years celebrations. Salad is given a whole new layer of special when made with swamp fern or “water lettuce”, a slick and nutritious aquatic weed. Tree ferns, so tall that they make up part of the jungle canopy and so varied that there are 600+ species, are roasted, seasoned, and feasted upon in tropical regions. Distilled from the woody tendrils of a foraged shrub, Sweet Fern tea (recipe here and available here) is an herbal brew aiding in digestion and a peaceful pungence.

Cooked Fiddleheads by Libraryman | Ferns for Sale by Summertomato

TreeHouseHold is delighted to feature our first recipe tutorial: the Fernover! Sister to the traditional apple turnover, brother to the savory pie, and distant cousin to latte art, the vegan “fernover” is an edible celebration of the unfurling of the autumn season.

The recipe combines sweet and savory, food and art, and three of the fall’s greatest natural talents (squash, apples, and beets) into one pretty pastry. This is slow food in the most leisurely sense of the phrase, and is best made on an unhurried afternoon when dinner is “whenever it’s ready”.

Since fiddlehead fern season lasts a snappy 3-4 weeks in late spring, these bundles of tastebud joy do not use actual ferns (although when available these pastries would be lovely paired with a side dish of boiled or roasted fiddleheads for a fully fern-centric meal!), but they incorporate ferns in the artistic presentation. These fernovers are also perfect for preparing, freezing, and reheating at a moment’s notice for a quick meal or snack that tastes like it was a lifetime in the making.

Butternut Squash and Apple Fernovers

olive oil
3 medium apples, diced
2 medium butternut squash, diced
1 cob of corn, taken off the cob
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 sprig ginger, shaved and sliced
fresh thyme
fresh rosemary
sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup apple cider
a few glugs of red cooking wine or sherry
phyllo dough
vegan butter, melted, and a kitchen paintbrush

The Art Part:
the juice of 1 or 2 beets, boiled in a little water
1 tsp turmeric powder
fern stencil or stamp

1. In a large skillet, combine and saute apples, squash, corn, onion, garlic, ginger, thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper. Mix in cinnamon, apple cider, and cooking wine to create a light sauce for the vegetable blend. Cook for a few minutes until squash is tender and onions are golden brown and translucent. Remove mixture from heat.

2. Spread one layer of thawed phyllo dough (for instructions on working with the fickle phyllo, see here) on a damp paper towel and brush with butter. Fold in half vertically and brush again. Fold in half vertically again and brush once more. Place 1-2 tablespoons of the squash mixture on the phyllo and fold to form a triangle. Fold again until turnover shape is achieved, using the same method as you would properly fold a flag (see here for help). Brush shaped turnover with butter once more. Repeat this step until all the mixture is gone, or until you tire of this culinary origami.

3. Combine 1 teaspoon turmeric powder with a few spoonfuls of the beet juice that leaks out after you boil them. This will make a bright red-orange paste. Dip your stamp in it or paint the paste onto your stamp or stencil, and apply to a small section of another piece of phyllo. Tear the stamped area of dough from the rest of the sheet and lay it gently onto the top of the pastry.

4. Bake in a preheated oven for 20-30 minutes at 375.

5. Feast! Great served warm with honey mustard (and for the non-vegans, fresh herbed goat cheese).

Thanks for reading, and stay outside and tuned up for the next installment of TreeHouseHold, Acornucopia!

Thanks to Working with Ferns: Issues and Applications by Ashwani Kumar for all the delicious information!

All recipe photographs by me.

About the contributor:
	Heather Buzzard is a freshly hatched graduate of Emory University, where she studied creative writing, sociology, religion and environmental science. Her time is spent frolicking as a musician in two Atlanta bands, dressing up for silly photoshoots, inventing recipes, and drooling happily over her Indie Fixx work.

Hallo! I’m Heather the Indie Fixx intern and I’ll be putting together a post every so often for my project {Tree}Household.

As a writer, artist and product of nature, I find myself trying to hack away at the divide between the indoors and the outside. I would almost always rather be out-of-doors, or at least barefoot, and feel a bit like I’ve just toppled out of a tree and landed in this somewhat sterile biosphere we call civilization. One of the ways I’ve found to bridge these spaces is to use flotsam from the organic world inside, inviting the relationship between our lives and the seasons and ecosystems we live in to flourish. Each {Tree}Household piece will feature an element of the outdoors with creative and useful ways to integrate it into our living walls, plates and hearts.

Moss Graffiti by Anna Garforth | Velvet Moss Rug by Anthropologie | Moss Painted Beetle by Helen Nodding | Wood and Moss Ring by Cometman and Kokeya (via Design Territory)

Today’s focus is that fuzzy rug that paves a royal green carpet for the noblest of bugs. Moss is unassuming and subtle, preferring shade and recluse to the spotlight, but its jewel tones and weird little habitats are unexpected. It sneaks up in between the cracks where little else will grow and fills in the quiet moments when nobody is watching. Moss is perseverant and yet easily torn, subtle ground cover but shockingly bright against a leafy floor, a plant of extremes and yet a lovely medium for artistic endeavors.

Moss Frame Wall Art and Wal Circle by MOSStile | Moss and Ivy Natural Perfume Oil by For Strange Women | Moss Silhouette via Oh So Beautiful Paper | Green Photography by Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey |Garden Rug by Pia Wustenberg via InHabitat

Its versatility lends itself to many uses. Sea moss is ground into a mineral smoothie drink in Trinidad, ground moss has become a popular green graffiti tool in London and it weaves into Styrofoam molds to form an alternative bath mat in Japan. The slow creep of this greenery represents nature’s determination to beautify the most concrete sidewalks. Reindeer eat moss because it helps keep their blood from freezing, and we humans need a moss because it is a natural reminder to be aware of our toxic outputs since it will not grow in heavily polluted environments.

Garden Rug by Pia Wustenberg via InHabitat | Moss Floor by Better Homes and Gardens | Moss Graffiti by Edina Tokodi via InHabitat | Moss Chandelier by Mosstika | Moss Muffin Tins by Storage and Glee | Moss Place Setting via Style Me Pretty

Very unlike a rolling stone, I have found myself gathering much moss. Addressed with a sharp knife, moss cuts quite easily. Recently, I took an X-acto knife to a large piece of moss I found near the banks of a stream, and cut it into the puzzle piece shape below. For precision cutting moss into designs, the thinner and denser, the better.

Moss Puzzle Piece by the author

For more artistic moss endeavors, DIY moss “paint” is simple to make in a blender and allows you to grow moss on any fairly shady and moist hard surface. One recipe for the concoction involves beer, and the other uses buttermilk. Once the few ingredients are combined, just use a brush to swab the mixture onto a wall, tree, bench, rock, etc… and when the moss-to-be starts to grow it will evolve from your design into a shape of its own! This method is the magic behind the moss graffiti of street artists like Helen Nodding, Edina Tokodi, and Oki Sato (all featured in the images throughout) who use moss as an eco-friendly alternative to chemical based paints.

Find recipes for Moss “Paint” below:

Moss Paint at Supernaturale- Beer version

Moss Paint at Instructables- Buttermilk version

{Tree}Household’s next post, Rearranging the Ferniture,  will be unfurling the mysteries of ferns and how to familiarize ourselves with those frond friends! Look for it next month.

Moss Lampshade by MOSStile via InHabitat | Moss Bathroom Carpet by Nguyen La Chanh | Moss Table by Paradise Express Oki Sato’s Moss House via Design*Sponge | Moss Zebra by Mosstika | Globe Manzanita Forest Moss Terrarium by Tiny Terrains

About the contributor:
	Heather Buzzard is a freshly hatched graduate of Emory University, where she studied creative writing, sociology, religion and environmental science. Her time is spent frolicking as a musician in two Atlanta bands, dressing up for silly photoshoots, inventing recipes, and drooling happily over her Indie Fixx work.

Some spooktacular Halloween decorating ideas!

1. Black Feather Decor DIY from annaleenashe
2. EEK Blocks from Craftomaniac
3. Halloween Burlap Bunting at Craftzine
4. Haunted Ghost Mirror from c.r.a.f.t.
5. Lace Spider Webs at Thriftress
6. Glass Jar Luminaries from Not Just Decorating

Here are some pumpkin decorating ideas that do not involve pumpkin guts in any way!

1. Pumpkin Chandelier Wreath at Martha Stewart
2. Pumpkin Bookshelf Tree at Country Living
3. Decoupaged Black and White Pumpkin at Country Living
4. Plaid Painted Pumpkin from Saved by Love

5. Carved Butternut Squash Centerpieces from Paper, Plate, and Plane
6. Squash Softies from Oh, How Posh!
7. Fabric Pumpkins from Retro Mama
8. Pumpkin Yardstick Light from Hand Make My Day