Thursday Update

Today is 'not much going on around here' Thursday(again)....I am still here but not really doing anything to blog about.

For Mothers day i did make this planter of succulents for my mom. I planted it in a old vintage dish i bought at goodwill. I love it!! The kids filled the top with some of our summer beach treasures. And voila!!! a pretty planter is made.





Chris and the kids began a garden. We are no experts at veg gardening so i am just crossing my fingers that we will get something to show for it....anything.

Or just make it through the chipmunks eating all of our seeds. That would be a plus. The kids helped a little and nature is taking care of the watering for us right now.





Then there is this little lady who is spending her summery days out on our patio getting soaking wet in her water table (and loving it), running around the yard with sidewalk chalk, marking everything in sight(including us) and eating everyone elses ice pops!

Could she get any cuter?

Leslie

What Do You Do on a Rainy Day???

Well, today we decided to do some embroidery and work on some stitching skills! This was Mitchell's first day with a needle and thread and i think he really loved it...note how hard he was working on it. See the tongue hanging out? He was working a little too hard. First time around we sewed our project to the couch pillow in his lap. We fixed that and then tried it on a clipboard. Much better idea.

This is a piece Avery has had stashed away for awhile....but in the last day or so she seems to have remembered it and wanted to work on it again. In the time that it was away she has gained a lot more hand eye coordination for this. Thank goodness...makes a lot less frustration for both of us.

They both worked hard and for a long time. I told Avery that once it was finished we could make a fun pillow for her bed. "Really?!", she said. i think she thought it was a good idea.

Mitchell was so proud of what he had made, and wanted to give it to Daddy. He said it was a wishing web(like a dream catcher, but that is what he calls them) that he could take to the woods with him for work. so cute....

So, what do you do with the kids on a rainy day?

Wildlife

There has been quite a lot of wildlife in our last few days. We saw all of these guys above just in one afternoon. We had lots of fun at a local farm and lake. There were so many silly animals at the farm, including a dog the size of a horse...yet i somehow managed not to get a shot of him. There were tiny baby bunnies lining the road to the lake....baby birds(bottom middle left)running in the grass...big giant bees in the flowers. Pretty stuff!

Then there was this little guy. Doesn't he look angry? If i were him i would be too. He is just a little baby, and i think if he survives the night in our yard we are going to try to take him to the local wildlife center. He was hand raised and fed by a neighbor and then released in the last few days. Today he turned up in our yard....hungry and lonely. He is obviously used to people. He cheeped and peeped and then would stand in your hand. uh oh! Avery brought out some of our fishing worms for him, he was very grateful and knew just what to do.

We knew we were in trouble when Fluffy Muffy(we kind of named him/her) decided to join us for dinner at the picnic table. At first he peeped at us from a distance then before we knew it he was sitting in Mitchel's chair with him....then in Avery's....and then he hopped right up onto my shoulder. He thinks he is a parrot! We could not keep him away...every time we moved him he came right back. I hope he makes it through the night so we can take him to someone that knows what they are doing.

Before and After

This here is my not so neat or tidy laundry room. I am very grateful to have one in a separate little room in the house, but these shelves were killing me. Collecting all sorts of household miscellany and getting worse and more cluttered by the week. Something had to be done. Drum roll please!!!








Here it is!! My clever hide it all solution. Curtains!!! This whole re-do was based around these two vintage valances you see in the top middle. I picked them up last fall at a flea market with my Mom. I loved them right away and as you can see in the top picture they were not enough to cover the mess or even wide enough to go all the way across the top. They just looked sad...i know.

I am more than thrilled with how they turned out...i churned them out quickly this weekend. Another one of those projects hanging over my head. I was not too careful with measuring or cutting...i just went for it. That is always when i get things done, when i stop thinking about them, and just do them.

Curtains were not the only plan. Months and months ago i bought some vintage clothespins on etsy. I planned on framing them somehow at the time, but i never managed to get it done...until now. I used a little spray adhesive and glued some fabric onto the frame backing, placed it back in the frame and then hot glued each clothespin to the glass!!! It is nice to see a plan turn out as well as you had envisioned it. Then it was hung with another vintage flea market find...my lovely glass washboard!!!

The Weekend Review

We had a nice weekend full of family time and projects around the house. Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!! ** I should add here that Chris pointed out that we celebrated this Easter 'Christmas Story' style. Remember in the movie when they went and had Christmas dinner at the Chinese restaurant...well we had our Easter dinner yesterday at a Indian restaurant. It was fantastic...and i did not have to cook it or clean it up**

Mitchell and Avery got all dressed in their Easter pastel finest. Colleen, do you recognize her dress? She picked it herself for this Easter. This is a sweet hand me down dress from Avery's cousin Quincy. It sure made Easter shopping and planning much easier. She only needed shoes and what girl doesn't love shopping for shoes?

Mitchell's sweater vest set needed a little spiffing up. I dug around in my stash for a little while and found this fabric to make him a bow tie. I used a tutorial i found here at Scraps and Strings . It was so simple and fast and easy to follow. And really could he be any cuter!!! I love a kid in a bow tie. I let him choose the fabric, and it matched the argyle triangles in his vest perfectly! I love it when a plan falls together! Avery is just a beautiful smiling face at our house!!! Love this girl.

About those projects...we had a few hanging over our heads and we finally found the time and motivation to do them. A miracle in and of itself. Must be the beautiful spring weather. I won't tell yet what Chris is building for us...you will have to wait and see what it is in a later post. He even let me help. Between his building and my sewing we felt very accomplished this weekend. What did you do?

Meet our First Pets

With a little help from Ed Emberley, Avery made a picture for our new little guys so they would not forget their names. "Mom?", she asked, "Do fish know how to read?". That was a hard one to answer. In the end we established that maybe they do...but we could not really know because we have never been fish. Do you think she bought it?

They were both so excited. Right now i am the coolest mom on the planet!!!! But my sweet little Mitchell did not really understand that you could not hold or pet a fish. I was feeling a little guilty. From the look of these pictures it is a good thing he is not a cat or those fish might not last very long.

But the smell is what i think is going to repel him....he got a good sniff of goldfish water and thought it was completely gross!!!

So welcome Jupiter, Venus, Triton and Poseidon....may your life be long! Many thanks to our niece/cousin Julia who helped us with our names...they now go along with the theme of her new fish(Hermes and Neptune). What don't all families use a theme for naming all the "cousin" fish??

Snow, Snow, Snow!!!

We got a lot of snow....last week it snowed and snowed and snowed for days. i do not recall ever seeing it like this here before. On the last morning of the storm, when i woke up, i went to peek out the blinds to see what had really came down....i was a little afraid to look and i was shocked by what i saw. Not only was there a ton of it but it was beautiful!!! clinging to the trees and fences, and everything really.

We got nearly 3 feet, and on the last night of the storm the winds blew and made drifts in some spots that were even higher. When Chris was done shoveling the driveway, I could look out the front window and there was snow piled up about a 1/4 of the way up from the windowsill.

The kids played despite the effort. I don't know how they walked in it because it was in some places deeper than Mitchell. I went out on a rescue mission when Mitchell lost his boot and glove in the snow, and i was walking in snow that came to my mid thigh. Crazy!!! He insisted on being carried home. I did not want to but i really did not blame him. so i threw him over my shoulder, fireman carry style, and tried to keep us both upright on the way home.

Avery is just like Chris, she could stay out in it for days...jumping in it, making snow angels, digging paths...does not matter as long as she can be in the snow. It was funny to watch her make snow seats all along the path i had dug them through the backyard so that it was easier to get to the door to get in.

We have been singing this song for days!!!

Brown Paper Packages

...tied up with string! Who does not love a package in the mail? I know i do and this one was only made better by how pretty it was. I did not want to open it even though i knew what was inside was even more lovely than the envelope.

I seem to be gravitating to some pretty amazing art on etsy lately. I can not help myself. There are so many that i want but i know i can not have them all....so i narrowed it down to these and another that is on the way. I found these prints through a blog called hide & seek, and her etsy shop, of the same name, is awesome. All the prints are amazing, but these really caught my eye. Click on these to see them bigger, the details are worth it.

The first one is called "Dad, this is the Friend I told you about..." and the second is called "Hide and Seek". I love the little squirrell and the owl hiding in the tree. I am excited to get them up on my wall...probably in my living room where i can enjoy them, or upstairs where i can enjoy them too....i guess i am undecided. They came unframed but i had some frames ready and waiting when they got here.

and making the package all that much sweeter she included some really cute stickers and a bookmark form her store. Chris says it is always about the extras!!! so true...because they are so unexpected and fun. Go check the store out! Please take a minute also to check out Craft Hope on etsy, they are listing donated items and all the proceeds go directly to Doctors without Borders to support the efforts in Haiti. You can donate a small or large amount based on your purchase and then have something pretty and know you helped a little too!

Is This What Cabin Fever Looks Like?

When i was a little girl i loved to make lists and put my crayons in rainbow order. Now i see this orderly "thing" coming out in my children. This is what Mitchell does with every clementine that he eats. He peels it carefully, and then puts it all out in a neat tidy little row, and then after that is all done he can eat it...one slice at a time.

They also got clever with a old rope that Mitch had from my dad. Mitch tied it to his old ride on bike, then through both of his giant dump trucks.Do not be confused by the outfit, he became a train conductor...i know he looks quite a lot like a cowboy but he insisted that he was a conductor. Well, ok then!

He got Avery to be his passenger. They then promptly rode circles around my house with Mitchell calling "All Aboard" as they went, as loud as he possibly could! And for anyone that knows him well you know that that is louder than one mommy can stand. He is crazy loud!! But they are both crazy cute so i can get over it.

Sew and Tell Friday!!!!

Hooray, this week i have something to share. Finally. I did this so early in the week that i actually almost forgot i had a finish to share. Poor Avery i had to put her in the stairwell to take this picture because it was the only place i could get her high enough to see the length of my shower curtain.

From a vintage sheet and some other vintage fabrics i had in the house, from my mom, i made this shower curtain. I had some help from this blog tutorial. I would never have known what measurements to use if it had not been for the tutorial.

I am especially proud to have done these ruffles! i don't think i will ever do ruffles again. it was hard and frustrating but the end result is so fun and i guess, worth all the headache

All i need to do is get it hung in time for my company that will be here in the morning. Grommets is my plan but i may have to settle for the quick fix of curtain clips.

Head on over to Amylouwho's and see all the wonderful things everyone has accomplished this week.

Look What He Did!

Mitchell was so proud of himself this morning. When he first got legos from aunt colleen he was frustrated because he did not think he could make anything. But as a little time has gone by he has really gotten the hang of it. He made this bat car this morning, he called it, and wanted me to take a picture and put it on the blog to show all of you out there what he had done.

These are just a few extra pictures we got over the weekend. These two are too cute. I am so lucky to have them....Avery is turning into such a beautiful little girl. And Mitchell keeps us laughing every single day. Love them.