It seems like life never slows down here at the Whimsical Wife household. You try to take a few moments out of the day to take a breath of fresh air, look at the blue sky and enjoy the brilliant day around you.....

and then it's back to washing, cooking, cleaning, nappy changes, burping, feeding.... and so on and so forth.

To keep myself a little bit sane I have been trying to enjoy the small things in life at the moment. Gorgeous clear blue skies, or the smell of a freshly mown lawn, twittering birds around the house as I sit on the deck in a quiet moment sipping a cup of tea, the little squeals and goo's and gaa's from my gorgeous son playing on his play mat and my favourite thing to do (apart from enjoying my precious son) is to admire the gorgeous roses that are flourishing around the yard of our house.

For me roses are the pinnacle of God's creation. The variety's, colour and scents abound and I cannot help to admire each and everyone of them for their different qualities, shape and scent. They always take my breath away to admire the beauty in each and every rose. I love watching the intricate buds unfolding each day and to look at each petal as it creates a perfectly formed flower. Roses are a truly beautiful plant one which will always be my favourite.

I planted four Pierre De Ronsard rose bushes that we planted along the front of our veggie patch which have flowered beautifully every year since we planted them. This year however they have been exceptionally abundant and absolutely stunning if I don't say so. I trained the roses along the veggie patch fence and up the wooden arbor we created as the entrance into the veggie patch. This is the first time we have had roses adorning the arbor and it was such a view as the roses slowly unfolded and exploded into an abundance of pink and white. I took a photo of them as they were only starting to open, the week after I took this photo they were even more spectacular.

The veggie patch sign that you can see hanging in the arbor entrance was a new addition to the patch in the last 6 months. I had been meaning to write a bit of a tutorial on it but alas it got put on the wayside and I never got to take proper photo's of how I did it along the way. A brief overview of how I did it is below.

We used a piece of old relcaimed wood that we had lying around. The more rustic the better when creating "country" type signs. It gives great character to the sign that you're creating. I then roughly sketched the words onto the wood with a pencil so that the letters were evenly spaced and it fit correctly onto the piece of wood. Never try going free hand with the paint.... you could end up with squished letters at the end of your sign because you didn't space it correctly. Trust me I know!

I then used black acrylic paint to paint in the letters of the sign. I decided to go with a simple sign that said "The Patch" I couldn't fit The Veggie Patch onto this piece of wood so "The Patch" it became. ( I think I am about 5-6 months preggers in the photo above)

After leaving the black paint to dry I then shadowed the letters with a grey paint to give the letters a bit more of a three dimensional look. (see below) I also gave the whole thing a "white" wash with some watered down white paint and a rag to give it more rustic charm. Bevan attached the sign to the arbor using some old wire hanging about and voila "The Patch" was born.

Our little dog abby love to sit and watch me while I painted the sign so I couldn't resist snapping her cute little face.

So if your a bit of a rose lover make sure you plant a Pierre De Ronsard.... you'll fall in love with it more and more every year! Now I just need to convince hubby that we do have room in the yard to plant more roses...... (Our count stands at about 25 bushes at the moment)