Preschool Graduation

Princess graduated from preschool for the third time...but this time it is for REAL! My baby girl truly is all done with preschool now and is off to kindergarten in the fall. Sniff, sniff. She has three years of preschool under her belt and is more than ready for kindergarten--but it still is hard to leave preschool behind.
Here she is on her first day of preschool in September of 2006...so little...not even three yet!
She was so excited to be going to preschool. She was the only child in the class who cried (and screamed!) when it was time to LEAVE school.
She "graduated" in early June of 2007--look how nicely that little red graduation robe fit her back then at age 3.5...
She went back to preschool in the fall of 2007--this time she went two mornings a week (her first year it just was one morning.)
She grew up SO much in that year--here she is ready for her last day of preschool at the end of her second year.
And then my sweet girl graduated...again!
In September of 2008 she started her final year of preschool. This time around she went three afternoons a week. She was so excited!
Here she is in the preschool hallway on her first day back at school...look at her height difference compared to the first day of her first year (those rainbow borders on the wall never move!)
Yes, definitely excited to be back at preschool!
Now here she is today...her last day EVER of preschool. She is so beautiful...and still my baby despite her height!
The chubby baby cheeks are gone...
And the preschool graduation robes definitely haven't grown at the same rate as my girl!
Happy "Congratulation" Day, Princess! (Those are her words!) I love you forever and always. I'm so proud of you and I hope you love kindergarten as much as you loved preschool.

Goodwill Goodies!

The children and I were out running lots of errands on Tuesday and we ended our morning at Goodwill. I rarely find good stuff at Goodwill, but this trip was an exception!
$2.99 for this little chair and its pot of (bizarre!) green beads. The tag still is on it! I think it will look very sweet with a real little potted plant inn it...and I might not even repaint it. I'm still deciding. I found this in a bin of stuff that hadn't yet been put out on the floor and scooped it right up! The seat of the little chair is about five inches off my counter, so it is a good size.
One thing I do always find at this Goodwill are books for my children. All children's books are 79 cents and (unlike Value Village) they don't discriminate between little kid books and chapter books--they're all the same price! The Golden Book on the top of the pile on the left has never even been opened! The cover still is all stiff!
This is my very favorite find! A gorgeous heavy glass cake dome with NO CHIPS for only $6.99!! Score! The twenty-something male cashier even commented on my find when he rang me up!

Six Weeks

We are six weeks into what was supposed to be a six-eight week project. I'm thinking it will be more of an eight-ten week project. Please, please, please don't let it stretch beyond that! Yes, I'm looking forward to the additional space, but I'm soooo tired of having all these people invading my home.
Do you see that picture? There were FIVE different jobs (you can't see one of the five trucks) being done here at the same time. Lumber, gutters, insulation, fireplace, and our general contractor...all.at.the.same.time. I'm a control freak and this drives me crazy. Actually, wait--what REALLY drives me crazy is that these people seem to think it is okay to PARK at the bottom of my driveway. Keep in mind that my Honda Odyssey is *in* my driveway these days because our garage is full of our family room furniture right now. Why on earth would you park someone in? Especially since there is plenty of parking in our cul-de-sac during the day.
Now that I'm done venting (for now!), here is a new look at my fireplace wall...with a new fireplace, window holes, and DRYWALL (with insulation behind it!) Phew! It was getting rather chilly in here with no insulation or drywall!
Another look at our new gas fireplace. When they removed our old fireplace, they discovered the reason we had a big (and I do mean BIG!) draft across our floor--there was a 1/4 inch gap in the plywood that the builder had never sealed. Brrr! This fireplace is a bit bigger than our old one and the blower is stronger--so we'll get more heat out of the fireplace too. What I'm most excited about though, is that there is no gaudy gold trim on this one!
This is looking from the old part of the family room toward the new part. SPACE! Actually, right now the space is so big and open that we have quite an echo going on downstairs. I'm looking forward to that going away when our furniture is back in the family room.
The siding is going up on the outside of the addition. Hopefully once the siding is painted, the addition won't stick out quite so much.

Blooming!

The bees are buzzing and the flowers in my yard are beginning to bloom! Spring really is here...at least for a few days! We've had a handful of days with glorious weather and the sunshine has jolted my spring flowers into bloom!
I have three of these columbines under my front window. They're about three times the size they were when I planted them a few years ago!
This is one of my new columbines that I just planted this past week.
This flower is my new-found love! Zoom in on the picture--the folds on the blooms are amazing! The structure of the bloom just is really really neat. The plant is called Leprechaun's Gold and is gorgeous! The leaves are a yellow-gold and just so pretty. Love it!
My dianthus just are starting to bloom--soon they'll be a rim of pink around the front edge of this bed.
Here is a sideways (overexposed--it was bright outside!) shot of the bed under my front window. Lots of plants still growing--I see lilies, black-eyed susans, and daisies yet to come! Oooh, and one of my hellebores is trucking along in there too! This bed is really coming along well. I think in another three years or so, it will be a mass of blooms from the late spring through summer!
Here is another view of that same bed. Isn't the rhody gorgeous?! I've been slowly and steadily pruning it back to health for the last few years. It was spindly and not too healthy when we moved in five years ago, but now it is doing great! This year I need to prune the height down a bit because it is getting too tall for the space--I'm 5'10" and the top blooms are at eye level with me!
Another view of the front of the house. See that big bush to the right of the path? My plan is to rip out the bush (it is half dead anyhow) and the groundcover and put in slate stepping stones (or something similar) and a little black metal bistro set. Wouldn't that be cute?! Our front porch is too narrow to sit on, so a little bistro set in front of it would be very handy. (Currently the porch serves as the parking zone for the children's front yard toys...they're pretty well hidden up there!)
Vinca--ahhh how I love thee! My vinca is just about done blooming for the year. It is my very favorite groundcover. I'm lucky because in my area it is a perennial and comes back again and again. I just love seeing those little purple flowers bursting into bloom at the start of spring each year!
My lone bleeding heart! This is in my backyard and I was so excited to see these two measly blooms. I thought the construction work destroyed my three bleeding hearts (the plant was dormant when construction started, so I couldn't see where to dig them out)...but apparently one survived!
I planted a couple of California poppies in my backyard this year. This is near the grass in the backyard and the plants need to be sturdy because stray soccer balls sometimes come rolling through here!

The last couple of years I've tried to be good and spend my money mostly on perennials rather than on annuals (although I did buy geraniums for my pots and some petunias for my front yard) so that I can enjoy the flowers year after year. Although I like the instant gratification of annuals, I do like looking forward to seeing my perennials pop out of the ground and it is exciting to see them get bigger each year.

Happy Gardening!

Strawberries!

Yesterday I was at our local grocery store and they were having an amazing deal on organic strawberries--buy one pound for $2.98 and get two pounds free! I love a deal like that! Soooo, I came home with nine pounds of strawberries. I wanted to buy even more, but was a bit worried about where I would put them all.

Luckily earlier in the day I saw a recipe for Puff Up Pancakes over at Leigh Anne's blog. I love her blog, by the way--lots of fun recipes and the way she shares her parenting skills and life advice is very approachable. Good pictures, too!

Anyhow, the pancakes sounded fun...and she said they tasted great with strawberries...so I knew what we were having for dinner! The pancakes are super easy to make in a 9x13 pan in your oven.
Mine puffed up so much that it got tangled up in the top rack in my oven! Whoops!
Luckily it deflated a bit when it came out of the oven. It was GOOD! Not a traditional pancake flavor, but definitely good.
And yes, it tasted good with strawberries and powdered sugar. We all loved this dinner!

Unfortunately that only used up one pound of strawberries...I still had eight more pounds! I had a plan though. Strawberry freezer jam! We're on our last container of blackberry freezer jam that I made in early September, so this was good timing!
That left me with just two pounds of strawberries. A much more manageable amount for my family of four! In fact, we ate another pound of them today! Yum!

If you want it done right...

Why is it that having my husband make lunch for the children always *seems* like a good idea?
Because really, if I thought about it, I would remember that *every* time, I'm left with a mess like this...hours later. And no, the milk container wasn't empty.
*sigh* He means well.

Look What I Ordered Yesterday!

I was catching up on blogs last night and came across this cute chalkboard...from Uppercase Living! Doesn't it look fancy and expensive?! $19.99...plus shipping, tax, blah, blah, blah. Anyhow, Kim at Today's Creative Blog posted a quick note about it because the promo for it ended on Monday...so I snapped one up! Hopefully some of you saw her posting too and were able to get one. I'm excited about it even though I'm not 100% sure where I'll be putting it. I'm thinking about the laundry room/powder room/mud room...it serves lots of purposes and has an awkward wall that I've never decorated.

Thrift Store Finds

Today my sweet three year old boy decided not to nap while his sissy was at preschool, so after over an hour of him playing instead of napping, I got him up and we checked out a thrift store in town that I've never been in before. It's kind of a thrift/junk store. Anyhow, it was a mish-mash of stuff--some great stuff that was horribly overpriced and some cheap stuff that I wouldn't have bought even if it was free! I guess that's how it goes when you have multiple people selling in the same location.
I did find these two pretty milk glass containers. One was $3 and I think the other was $2.50. I like them. They had three that look like the one on the right--I think I might go back and buy one more of them. Ignore the dust on the black dresser...the construction dust is permeating my downstairs!!
I couldn't resist this pretty jar, either! It's not all that vintage in my book since it commemorates the bicentennial...but I just love the coloring. My other jars in this color are older, but I think this will fit in just fine!

Five Week Construction Update

As of last Thursday, we are five weeks into this construction project. Originally this was slated to be a 6-8 week project....I'm thinking it will be more like 9-10 weeks.
The two windows on the first floor that are not included in the remodel are the kitchen and the formal dining room. We had our contractor build the addition so that if in the future (way WAY in the future!) we want to expand the kitchen and build an office off the back of the dining room, we'll be able to tie into the roof line of the addition and not need to recreate that. If it weren't for the possibility of doing that additional work in the future, we would have opted for a gable style roof instead of a shed style.
I love the light that already is coming into the new space!! For this picture I was standing in the old space of the family room and looking toward the new space. Our kitchen table will go in front of the window on the left.
This is our old fireplace wall--with one new 2x2 window cut in on the left--a new one will go in on the right where the studs are exposed. The fireplace header also has moved up--our new fireplace (the old one is wicked drafty!) will be installed on Wednesday and I picked out the tile for it on Saturday. I'm so thrilled to see the old tile GONE! Apparently the builder of our house (in the early 90s) thought it would look good to put floor tile on the wall AND the floor surrounding the fireplace. Tacky!
Here you can see the third 2x2 window that we'll be adding to this space. These 2x2 windows weren't in our original plans, but we decided they were necessary to keep our house as full of natural light as it was before the addition.
Our life is behind that plastic wall--our drafty, chilly, dusty life! I'm ready for this project to be DONE!
This final picture has me standing in the corner of the new space and looking across the room toward our kitchen. I'm so excited for our family to get to start *living* in all this space. It will be wonderful!

Zoo Trip!

Where does the time go? It is May already!! I've been MIA in blogland because construction on our addition has moved inside and it is so noisy here that we leave the house every chance we get!

Last week I took the children to the zoo because admission prices for the zoo skyrocket on May 1st--so we went on April 30th and had such a fun day together! It takes us about 2.5 hours to get to the zoo (we have to take a ferry because we don't live in the main part of our state) so it was an all-day expedition.
I love these lion statues--they used to be in front of the "Cat House" when I was a little girl...back in the Dark Ages when animals at the zoo used to be in cages. I'm so glad these statues were salvaged--my mom has pictures of me posing on them when I was my daughter's age!
The animals were out enjoying the spring weather too. It was gorgeous! Sunny with some warmth, but not so warm that we were seeking out shade. It was great zoo weather!
My children love these gorilla statues and we always get pictures with them!
This one (of the two of them) now is the background on my computer--I love pictures where they both are happy!
My children were so excited to see a baby gorilla--they decided it was "Grampy" giving the baby a ride because their Grampy gives them rides on his back.
Have you met my son the turtle?
Oh wait, I mean my son the spider! Can you tell that my little ones love the interactive parts of the zoo as much as they love seeing the animals?
I just love the body language in this picture--it speaks volumes to me!
And yes, we're not all about frills and fluff...we love trucks (and tractors!) too!