Daisies Galore!

My daisies are looking gorgeous these days!! I just have to share them--I wish they bloomed more than once a season because I love seeing them. They look especially lovely as the sun begins to set and evening shadows take over the garden--the white of the petals just gleams so brightly then.
Look at this one daisy bush--I took this picture this morning of the bush right by my front steps. This started off as a one gallon plant four years ago and look at it now! HUGE!! Love it!
I have two lavender plants right behind that big daisy plant and the lavender just is starting to bloom. Mmmm, soon the area by my front door will smell so nice!
These are my Endless Summer Hydrangeas (I think I have five of them) in the backyard along the side of the house. Yesterday afternoon I pried my two year old away from the water table long enough to get him to stand next to the flowers--look, the hydrangeas are taller than he is!!
When we moved into this house, the previous owners had planted five or six coniferous trees along the side of the house. Those were such a pain to rip out, but they didn't look good, plus it wasn't a very smart spot to plant trees--they were growing into the side of the house and into the roofline up above. However, when I planted these hydrangeas, I didn't realize they would get quite this big! Ooops!

Here is an updated view of my vegetable garden. It has grown so much since the end of May...but we still haven't harvested *anything*!! Aaaaahhh!! Actually, I think the romaine might be ready to harvest, but that is it!
My tomato plants are big and leafy, but the Roma tomatoes (on the left) have no tomatoes and the Early Girl plants on the right are HUGE and have some green tomatoes--but the little tomatoes haven't grown at all in weeks. Of course it doesn't help that the little tomatoes now are being shade by the huge plants. Why did the tomatoes have to grow on the *back* side of the plants!
Granted, we have had a cold wet spring and early summer and I did plant everything a bit late for this area...but the weather has been gorgeous for awhile now and my little garden gets plenty of water. I want to harvest my garden!! Anyone have any advice?

Check out Lara at The Lazy Organizer for more "Talk About Tuesday"--she's talking about organizing this week.

Muffin Tin Monday

We had another Muffin Tin lunch the other day. My little ones were so excited to see the tins come out again! And, as a bonus for me--the tins bought me 45 minutes of contented munching from my children! Ahhh, nice!!

I made one for each child and each child ate almost everything. I'm still kind of carb heavy when filling up these tins though...I need to work on that.
1: grapes, string cheese, veggie chips, cheerios
2: 1/4 rice cake, veggie bootie, 1/4 tahini/jam sandwich, 1/4 tahini/jam sandwich
3: carrot sticks, dip, mighty bites, grapes

Head on over to Sycamore Stirrings for more muffin tin lunches--and check out her pretty orange muffin tin! So cute!

Family Room Toy Storage

The other day when I posted pictures of my daughter's bedroom, I mentioned that most toys are kept downstairs in the family room. I thought today I'd share pictures of some of our family room toy storage.

My biggest area for toy storage is this wall of cubbies. These are two sets of cubbies from Target--I think they're meant for closet storage. Anyhow, I put these up in early January and they have made my life so much easier! I feel like we have a lot of toys, probably because Handsome still likes a lot of babyish toys whereas Princess is into toys for preschoolers. And of course we have our ever-growing collection of books. We have books everywhere in this house!
You can see that five of the cubbies are taken up by books. The last spot on the top row has two different wooden trains. On the second row we have: doctors kits and tool kit, toy phones and princess mirrors, wooden puzzles, bin with "My Friend" doll clothes (my old doll clothes!), two toy firetrucks; toy trucks and truck flashlight. In the third row we have: box with Snap n Style dolls/clothes (with library books stored on top of the box), toy bus and construction vehicle, bin with Leappad books, bin with baby toys, bin with blankies, and a toy airplane.

The Leappad is stored in the gap between the armoire (which houses the television and electronics), and large Little People toys are stored on top of the cubbies. Lincoln Logs are in the big container to the right with a bead maze and firehats stored on top of the container.
Here are the family pictures I have displayed on shelves above the toy storage. These are the only color pictures I have displayed in the house. I just recently put the vinyl lettering up and I love it--except I put it up a couple of inches too low!! Ugh! I know I *could* rearrange the frames, but I like this arrangement. So I'm living with this for now until I decide just how much it all bothers me.

Oh and the wall shelves? They were free--well, either that or the world's most expensive shelves...I guess it depends on your perspective. The previous home owners left them behind and I stashed them in a closet for a couple of years before repainting them and rehanging them. Or another view on the shelves is that they cost us a plumbing project. See, when the previous home owners put those shelves up, they put a screw right through a PVC water pipe in the wall--a mistake that nobody knew about until awhile AFTER we took the shelves down--when I felt the carpet near the wall and realized it was soaked!! Luckily the wall backs onto the garage, so my handy husband cut a huge hole in the wall, cut out and replaced the section of pipe, and I bleached the entire cavity to kill off any mold that was growing. Apparently removing that screw was equivalent to removing a plug and thus water sprayed out of the hole when we ran water in the upstairs bathrooms.

Okay, back to toy storage! To the right of those cubbies is a little coat closet tucked under the stairs. We didn't use it (except for stuffing it with unused stuff!) for a couple of years and then jamming the train table in front of it to keep Princess from exploring the junk we had stuffed in there. Then 1.5 years ago I had the idea to use that space for playing!
We took the door off (another one of those icky oak hollow-core doors...thus the oak trim around the door frame) and my husband removed the pullstring light fixture and did the electrical work necessary to put in a regular light with a lightswitch. I painted the closet up and added in a toy shelf and a rug (to hide the access panel in the floor that leads to our crawl space) and then we revealed it to the children--they had no clue (well, Handsome was a baby then!) what we had been working on.
Princess was so excited and for quite awhile they spent a lot of time playing in there. Lately they haven't spent as much time in the closet playing, so I'm thinking of turning it into a reading nook and moving all of the downstairs books in there and putting some big floor pillows in there. I'm still pondering that though. I think once they outgrow the toy closet completely, I'll turn it into my little office and put a little desk in there for me.

Maybe next week I'll post the before/after pictures of the toy closet. It was a dreary unused space before and now it is so bright and cheerful! You can't see the toy closet at all until you're all the way in our (fairly small) family room, so it is a great surprise for children who come over to play.

We do have more toys, but this is all the pictures I have for now.

It's the simple things...

Some days it is the simple things in life that make me smile. These hydrangeas are from my garden and I put them in a basic white pitcher. So simple and so pretty. They perk up my entire kitchen and bring a bit of summer inside.

Disneyland!!

Yes, that's right, we are going to DISNEYLAND!!! I'm so excited! I made our hotel reservations in January (found a great deal) and kept my fingers crossed that we'd actually be able to make the trip in September. Yesterday I found great airfare prices that I was afraid would disappear quickly, so we had a long discussion last night about finances and whether or not this trip would happen. Obviously we decided to go ahead with it. We are so excited!

We're going from September 16th-20th and spending three days actually in the parks--the other two days are for travel and looking through Downtown Disney (shopping). Princess will be so thrilled! One of her good friends from preschool went last year and Princess keeps mentioning that we should "go there someday." Oh what a wonderful surprise this will be! I can hardly believe it is just two months away!

Random Cuteness

My babies are so gosh darn cute, I just have to write down some of their latest things so that I have them for posterity. This will be a random list, so be forewarned!


***

Both my children have allergies to animals and I detest creepy-crawly things. Needless to say, we don't have any pets. Well, last week I was eavesdropping on my children as they were playing in the yard and realized they were playing with a slug. (Gross, I know!!) Anyhow, they were carting the slug around the backyard on a large leaf and calling it their pet. Hilarious and gross at the same time. The kicker was when they sent the slug (on its leaf) down the slide! Now everytime they go out in the backyard, they find a slug to be their pet. It's so funny and yet kind of sad at the same time.

***

Today we went to pick strawberries--this was Handsome's first time not having the berries cut up and prepared for him. (Yes, he's sheltered--I like it that way!) Anyhow, neither he nor Princess realized that you could eat the berries as you picked them. I clued them in on that after about half an hour. Ohhhh, Handsome was SO happy! My mom went with us and the two of us quickly tired of pulling the leaves off the berries for Handsome, so we showed him how to take bites of the berries. After that he happily munched away...until we heard a strange noise and then he said "Handsome no like leaves. Noooooo, Handsome no like leaves." (Except, of course, he used his name instead of Handsome...he answers to Handsome but doesn't say call himself that.)

***

Last night Princess was singing to herself in bed after she went to bed. It was sooo cute! She was singing "Halleluia" for awhile and then she switched to "Christ is Risen, Christ is died, Christ will come again." Yes, a little bit backward, but absolutely adorable nonetheless! Even better was that she was singing it over and over again. Totally hilarious!


***

And, no list of anecdotes is complete without a potty reference. Handsome is in diapers fulltime still but uses the potty on occasion--we're not doing potty learning yet though although I think he's almost ready. Anyhow, he wanted to use the potty the other day and almost immediately pushed out a poo-poo. After telling me all about it ("did ONE poo-poo, Mama), he proceeded to push out another one--at which point he said "made poo-poo FRIEND!!" So cute and definitely gave me a chuckle!

After you leave me a comment (just click on the "bees buzzed by" link at the end of this post!), head on over to The Lazy Organizer for more "Talk About Tuesday"!

Strawberries!

The other day the children and I were driving home and I made an impromptu stop at a local-ish strawberry farm and bought half a flat of fresh strawberries. Store-bought strawberries have nothing on fresh local berries; berries that were in the field just a few hours ago.

I adore strawberries which, I suppose, is fitting for a former Strawberry Festival Queen. My husband tells our little girl that she is a princess but Mama is a real Queen. The first time I showed her my tiara her eyes got as huge as saucers and she said "Mama, you really ARE a queen!!" Oh it was priceless!! I knew I hung onto that gaudy tiara for a reason!

Anyhow, these strawberries were so yummy! I spent all of naptime cleaning them and then the bowl of red berries was so gorgeous, I just had to take a picture!

My husband came home from work and noticed the bowl of strawberries, ate one, and then remarked that he's never had strawberries this good before! As you can tell, even my two year old LOVED these strawberries! (I had to take a picture of his sweet face before washing the berry juice off him!)

We had more strawberries today--strawberry smoothies! You really can't go wrong with a smoothie recipe, but here is how I did it...

• 2 cups strawberries (I left mine whole because I'm lazy like that)
• 2 cups 1% milk
• 2 cups lowfat vanilla bean ice cream (isn't low fat ice cream an oxymoron??)
• 1/2 cup of sugar
  

Blend and drink!! This serves at least four people and could serve more depending on the size of your servings.

I loved it and so did my husband and my 4 year old. My 2 year old doesn't like ice cream (or chocolate...crazy boy!) and thus didn't really like this...which left more for me!

4th of July

Happy 4th of July!

We're having a quiet 4th of July at home. Our flag is flying out front and we're wearing our red white and blue. No fireworks or anything fancy though. As a matter of fact, we put the children down at the usual time and skip fireworks altogether. They're early risers regardless of when they go to bed and they don't even know what fireworks are...so they're not at all upset to go to bed at their usual time.

We did, however, make a trip to Home Depot to see the firetruck, ambulance, and fire boat that were visiting there today. Those were huge hits, of course, especially with Handsome!!

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Muffin Tin Lunch

In my quest to make lunchtime more interesting (I get tired of making the same things even thought the children don't get tired of eating!!), I remembered something I read about a long time ago--serving lunch in a muffin tin. Then, I found a blog that sponsors a muffin tin lunchfest!

So, one day last week we had a muffin tin lunch. The children were thrilled to eat out of "circles" as they called it. My children eat a fair amount at lunch so I made each of them a muffin tin and they each ate almost all of their food. As predicted, my 4 year old didn't finish her carrots and my 2 year old didn't finish his tomatoes. I was pleased, however, that neither started their meal with a cookie--my daughter started with the rice cake and my son started with the whole wheat crackers.
The tins contained:
raisins, tomatoes, cheerios, shredded cheese
rice cake, veggie booty, carrot sticks, grapes
mighty bites, oatmeal raisin cookie, unsweetened applesauce, whole wheat ritz

Definitely a big hit and something we will do again!

A Girly Bedroom

Today on Talk About Tuesday over at the Lazy Organizer, it is a home tour where people pick one space in their house to talk about. Without further ado, here is the bedroom my little princess sleeps in. It is pink and green and very girly--I love it and so does she!

Her white four poster bed was my bed when I was growing up and I just love that. Her name is done with wall letters along the length of her bed (not pictured) and then I'm planning on doing a rag garland on the wall at the head of her bed.


You'll notice there aren't a lot of toys in her room, mostly it is books. The children spend most of their time playing downstairs, so that is where the toys mostly are located. However we have a LOT of children's books so those are spread throughout the bedrooms as well as downstairs.
Her dollhouse bookcase and traditional bookcases are from Target and I love them! When she is older, we'll probably replace the dollhouse bookcase with a desk. Her long dresser is one that we bought for her before she was born. When she was a baby we had a changing pad on it, but now it is pretty empty. We still have a diaper pail in her room because it makes a great garbage can that her little brother can't open! Oh and yes, those are some of her bows to the right of the window--she has more inside the big basket on her bookshelf.
Our long range plan for the house includes replacing all of the oak hollowcore doors with white six panel doors--but for now we have oak. I am so NOT an oak person!
I love my Dutalier glider! I used it all the time when Princess was a baby and she's still rocked in it every night before bedtime. Handsome has an identical one in his bedroom--someday my husband and I intend to reclaim them and use them for ourselves (that's why they match and are in a neutral fabric).
No photo tour of this room is complete without a look at the chandelier! I looked all over before I found this one and I *love* it! It is so over-the-top girly! When I first took it out of the box I was worried it was *too* girly, but it really works in this room and my daughter loves it!