Category: tuesday tip

Some people wonder why I garden and here’s the answer…

I just love seeing all the colors in the flowers and love having fresh vegetables right out of the garden.

Audrey Hepburn said “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”

That is so true. You plant the seeds or the plants and hold your breath to see if it will take. But when it does, it’s amazing.

If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at gardening, but need a little help to get started, you can find some good references at https://scottsmiraclegro.com/.

P.S. – Gardening also helps when you’re writing a book! In More than a Mission, the heroine is a chef with an extensive garden, but some of those plants may have been used to poison a prince!

One of the best deals I got was this 12.99 orchid at Wegman’s. I love having live flowers in the house and I’ve now had this orchid for at least a month. I was also able to snag a lovely orchid planter at Costco for about 19.99. I’ve now had that for 3 months and it still has some flowers on it!

You may think, “Oooh, orchids are so hard to grow!”

Well, just a good soaking once a week and some indirect light and you’re good to go. Even if you do kill it, you’ll have had flowers for at least a week or more and for less than your typical grocery store bouquet!

How about you? What was the best deal you scored recently?

On another note, it was sooo exciting to see South Beach Love on the Hallmark Channels Home & Family Show! If you missed it, you can watch it here https://www.facebook.com/HomeandFamilyShow/posts/3951650401581764 or down below!

If you’ve always wanted to have a plant in your house but don’t think you have a green thumb, try out an air plant! They are inexpensive and all it takes is a few spritzes of water once a week. Since air plants generally grow beneath the canopy of other trees, they don’t like harsh direct light. You can keep them somewhere they get indirect light.

They also don’t need soil so you can glue them (yes glue them) at the bottom to a piece of driftwood, shell, or nestle them in a small pot with some moss.

There are quite a number of different air plants and some have color on the leaves while others will also flower so you can have variety.

If you give them a shot, please let me know!

P.S. – Just in case you need some more assistance with growing air plants, check out this article at HGTV.

It’s open-mic day! You’ve asked and I’m answering: here are three surprising things I bet you didn’t know about me!

The first: I wrote my first book in the fifth grade when a teacher assigned a class project, namely, to write a 20 typed page book for a class lending library. I went home and started writing and my poor mom had to help me type up by 120 (YES ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY) page book. It was a romance, of course, and it was written on a typewriter much like the one in this photo!

The second: I ghostwrote the novel tie-in for the Jane the Virgin television show! Jane even said my name on the show and called me “The Queen of Latina Romance.” More like a princess than a queen, but very exciting.

The third: I would love to own a bed and breakfast geared just for writers. I’d get up in the morning and make everyone a wonderful breakfast and then spend a few hours helping writers and learning some new things myself.

Do you have a question for me? I’d be happy to answer! Take a moment to share something about yourself!

Burnout. There’s an old Chinese proverb that says “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” But even if you love what you’re doing, it can feel like too much sometimes. Too many pages to write, too many e-mails to check, too many things to do! It can all become too much and to avoid reaching the point of burnout, I set aside time to read, create something, or garden. Gardening is actually one of my favorite ways to unwind and there are studies that show that getting your hands in the soil can help with depression! Why? Gardening helps release serotonin thanks to bacteria in the soil. Amazing right? But how about you? What do you do to avoid burnout?