Easy DIY Red White & Blue Rags Balls, Vietnamese Pork Chops w/Cucumber Radish Salad, Planter Turned Salt Container, Harvesting Lavender

Easy DIY Red White & Blue Rags Balls-
Summer is really here, 90's and now 80's, and cool at night. The chicks have the garden to roam in today, but are staying close to their area. The hens are more interested in their food, figures! Getting ready for the 4th of July I started putting our things out, and remembered a project I had seen a year or two ago Super Easy Rag Balls. I decided to make some and went to Jo-Ann's Fabric for some styrofoam balls and fabrics. I didn't really see fabrics that I liked. I started thinking it made more sense to just get something with generic red/white/blue and leave out for the summer. Since I have an old white enameled basin with a red rim I thought it made sense to put the balls in it. It's fun to use the basin on our coffee table in the living room. It's a simple thing to change decor-wise.  I started looking for just red and blue fabrics, then found this red check fabric-

Then I found this dark blue fabric with the antique style world map print-

I thought the dark blue and red would look really cute together. I bought one yard of each, half price, for a total of about $11. I bought two different sizes of styrofoam balls, the large ones were about $2. The small ones came in a six pack for about $5. I already have some straight pins from selling and some Liquid Nails glue. Basically you just tear one-inch strips, leaving he edges raw, start the first strip with a pin, cover it and just keep going around until there's no styrofoam showing. Each ball used a few pins and then I finished the end of the last strip with a small dot of liquid nails-

You could put these in a glass bowl, basket or other places. I really like them! It was a really easy project to do while you're watching television. Just snip, tear, rinse and repeat. I put them in the basin and wanted something taller in the center so I used an old, red, miniature oil lamp. I might use something else, still thinking! I also have about 1/3 of a yard of both fabrics left so I will use that up  somewhere else!

Vietnamese Pork Chops w/Cucumber Radish Salad-
I found this recipe years ago from Rachaelraymag.com. It's really easy to make the marinade that you use the pork chops. You make the salad dressing easily ahead of time. Since our radishes didn't do as well as I hoped for in our cold frame, probably from lack of light, we wound up with some really nice tall organic radish greens. They worked great for the salad and it has tons and tons of flavor! We used our own Basil as well. The chops came out super juicy and delish.

Planter Turned Salt Well-
When I went to Jo-Ann's Fabrics they had lots of beachy summer things marked down $70%. When I saw this it really reminded me of a lot of the very over-priced salt containers I have seen-

While it was intended to be a hanging planter I decide to use it for salt! I just removed the string, washed and and filled with the salt I always keep by my stove. For a whopping total of $4 I have a nice ceramic glazed salt well-

Harvesting Lavender-

I love lavender and have a few plants in our yards. While I didn't harvest this quite in it's prime, it's still gorgeous to me! I harvested most of this plant today, to bundle and dry, and leave around the house. Here's the plant last week-

The bees were actively pollinating while I harvested, and I did promise them to leave some. And I did.