Wordle

So I blog-hopped my way over to "Just a Girl" and was having fun looking around on her site and before I knew it, I found a new project idea! She found a website called Wordle and you can use it to create "word clouds" out of any words you input. So neat!! Here is her post where she made a Wordle and framed it.

Here is one that is Chapter 1 of Revelations ~ Divine Love. (I didn't make this one, I found it on their site in the gallery.)
Isn't that neat?!

Well, I think it is--so I'm doing it too. Copying equals flattery, right? Right! I already printed out what I want to frame and it will be going in my master bathroom. I'll post pictures of the master bathroom whenever we get around to finishing it. (It has been over a year since that project was started...)

In the meantime, I did a Wordle of my blog! You just put in your blog address and *poof* it does all the work for you! The bigger words are the ones that are mentioned most often...I guess I talk about mistreatments a lot. And I say like a lot. Like I guess I like a lot of things more than I don't like them. Or something like that. (ha!)

By the way--there is no way to save your Wordle as a jpeg. You have to either print it, save it in a public gallery (no privacy in Wordle land!), or do a screen capture...which is what I did in order to show you this little Wordle.

Fountain Play

We've been at Children's Hospital two times over the last 1.5 weeks and have taken advantage of the opportunity to go to a nearby outdoor shopping center so that the children can play in their outdoor fountains. It is such a pretty shopping center and not at all typical for our state. It seems more like one you would find in California. Princess and Handsome love the fountains there and it is a nice way for them to use up some energy before the trip back home.
For our second trip, Princess wasn't with us as she was spending the night away from home for the FIRST time ever! She spent the night with Grandma and had a wonderful time although she returned home exhausted as she had no nap and stayed up until 10:30pm!
So Handsome and I set out alone before dawn on our trek to Children's Hospital. We were rewarded by a gorgeous sunrise as the boat traveled across the water. Of course about an hour away from home I realized that I forgot Handsome's shoes at home! I put him in the car in his jammies...and didn't pack shoes! Whoops! He wore his jammies for his chest x-ray and his barium swallow test and then we had a few hours before his next appointment at Children's, so I got him dressed and we headed off to the outdoor shopping center for breakfast, shopping, and fountain play.
It was so nice to sit at a table outside and eat our breakfast--very peaceful and nice to spend one-on-one time with my baby boy. After the shops opened, I bought him a pair of Merrell's for fall. Not shoes I usually would pair with summer shorts, but I didn't want to waste money on another pair of summer shoes.

Then my baby had some time to play in the fountains before we went back to the hospital. He loves this fountain with turtles and frogs spitting water at each other--I think he would have spent all day there if I let him!

Touch a Truck

For this week's "Talk About Tuesday" I'm talking about trucks! There has been a lot of fluff talk around here lately and not enough truck talk. (Re-read my journal title if you need a refresher.) We went to our town's "Touch a Truck" event this weekend--and the adjacent Farmers Market joined in with "Touch a Tractor". Needless to say, Handsome was in his element and Princess was pretty pleased too!

The gravel company gave out plastic hard hats (flimsy ones--but very neat nonetheless!) and they were a huge hit! Makes a nice change from our stash of plastic fire hats. We have so many fire hats since we stalk the fire truck every time it makes an appearance.

Princess is about 47 inches tall (probably a bit taller because it has been awhile since she was measured) and this tractor tire was taller than she was!
We had to pry Handsome away from the tractors.
Overall it was a great way to spend some time on a Saturday! We saw tractors, a fire truck, police SUV, school bus, city bus, cement mixer, dump truck, dive boat, a pump truck, and probably something else that I'm forgetting. I love free events like this for children.

Another apron giveaway!

Whitney at My Journey Toward the Glamorous Life of a Housewife is hosting an apron giveaway! Isn't this little apron sweet? I love it! (You have until 10am on Tuesday to enter.) I found Whitney's blog through Nester's big ol' mistreatment party. (See my post from earlier today for more on that.)

Mistreatments

In the words of The Nester...

Mistreatment: (n). covering for a window that is quick, cheap and pretty. may or may not need hardware does not require sewing. a real designer's worst nightmare.

Mistreating: (v). the act of treating a window with dignity and respect without use of the following: hundreds of dollars, sewing, time, crying, divorce, child neglect...

Join the Mistreatment Party today over at Nesting Place!

My kitchen flows through to my family room with a small eating area in between the kitchen and family room. It is a nice area, but not at all spacious, so I want the window treatments in the area to go together--there is one window above the kitchen sink, a sliding door next to the kitchen table, and a huge long window in the family room.

We moved here almost five years ago and I immediately took down the vertical blinds that were on all three windows--I can't stand those things! The windows were naked until June when I started mistreating them. Oh, and I put up wood blinds on the big long family room window...but now I need to save up money to put those on the other windows--those are expensive!

Anyhow, I'm not sure I like my mistreatments. Maybe that's because I really don't like valances (well, except for the cute one in my daughter's room) and these mistreatments essentially are valances. I'd love to do long panels on the sliding door, but that isn't practical seeing as my two year old can reach the door from his highchair. Those would be a hot mess in no time flat.

Another reason I'm not sure I like my mistreatments is my mom's reaction to them. She came in my house and commented on how I did something with my windows. I explained my mistreatments and awaited her opinion--I thought she'd really like the faux roman shade in the family room. Um, no. Her comment was "well, I really like the wood blinds you put up before." And that was that. Ouch.

Soooo...all this blathering is to ask you to be very honest with your opinions! Tell me what you think and give me constructive advice, please! I have to adjust the mistreatments anyhow because they're all at different heights (I was trying to see what height I like best) and that doesn't work for me.

Oh and yes, I've posted some of these pictures before--but I hadn't done the sliding door then.

Here is my kitchen window before (I love strawberries, can you tell?)

And here it is now. This mistreatment is too high (unfortunately!) as compared to my sliding door, so it needs to move down a touch...at least that will hide the alarm sensor on the window a bit more.

Here is a (bad!) picture of my sliding door. See, this totally looks like a wimpy little valance above the door. I'm not liking this at all. Plus it needs to be moved down because you can see the top edge of the door too much.

Here is the family room window--this is a faux roman shade that I did using straight pins and drapery clips. I like this one the best of the three mistreatments, but I'm not sure that hanging it from drapery clips on nails is working for me. Eh, truthfully I'm not sure about anything with these three window treatments!

A fall giveaway!

Behind My Red Door is hosting a fall giveaway with lots of great harvest goodies. You have until Sunday at noon to enter. Good luck!

Bows for all!

I tried a new hairstyle on Princess the other day and she LOVED it. She was so excited to run and show her dada--made me glad I tried this one on a weekend so that he was home to tell her how pretty she looked. It just is four braids (a bit hard to see some of the braids in this picture) from the front of her head that I gathered (along with the rest of her hair) at the nape of her neck and added a bow. Always a bow!


And then there are the days when Handsome says he needs a bow too. I try to limit his bow wearing to the house, but one time I did let him wear a bow to his sister's ballet class. He was so excited!

A harvest!

Woohoo, we're finally harvesting something other than romaine from our vegetable garden! My Early Girl tomato plants are five feet tall (no exaggeration!) and we're finally seeing the first red tomatoes! Woohoo! The roma tomato plants are a foot or so smaller and the tomatoes still are green...but I have faith they will get red soon!
The other day the children were thrilled when I pointed out that our first strawberries have turned red. Oooh the excitement over those few red berries!! I know you're supposed to pinch off the flowers and whatnot the first year of your strawberry patch, but that didn't sound very fun to me...so I let them go. It looks like we'll have more berries soon, too!
Aaaaand...we have a cute little green pepper growing! Look at it--so cute! (Excuse the blurriness--it isn't blurry in real life. For some reason I focused on the leaves instead of the pepper.)
Apparently this wasn't enough of a harvest for us. Well, okay, truly we only picked the strawberries--the pepper obviously wasn't ready and the tomatoes needed a couple more days...so truly we picked six strawberries... ANYHOW, we decided to push our luck (please note that I use the term "we" quite generously--really it was my husband!) and pull a carrot too...despite me pointing out that the bushy top of the carrot wasn't very bushy.
Um, yes, that would be a carrot. We all had a good chuckle over that and then we stuck it back in the ground. Man, these carrots are a pain in the rear--first hardly any of them sprouted and now they're taking for-freaking-ever to grow! Hopefully they'll start growing a bit better now that they're established.

A few more parting shots of the strawberries...since they really were all that we harvested.

Chores

I recently added a new chore to the list for 4.5 year old Princess--she now is in charge of unloading the clean silverware from the dishwasher. Why did I wait so long to give her this chore? She LOVES it! The other night she practically was in tears because my husband was putting the silverware away. Crazy. What's even better is that Handsome is insanely jealous that Princess "gets" to do this job. She really wants to unload the rest of the dishwasher, but she's not tall enough to put anything into the cupboards yet. Sometimes as a "treat", I'll let her unload some of the plastic stuff onto the counter.
I'm going to have such a rude awakening in a few years when she realizes that unloading the dishwasher really isn't anything to be all that thrilled about. In the meantime though I'm going to enjoy it!

Blueberry Coffee Cake

This is my favorite coffee cake recipe--I loooove it and only make it with fresh blueberries because otherwise I might be tempted to make it year-round. At least this way I limit myself to making it in the summer. It is soooo yummy and people LOVE it--and I don't share the recipe with just anyone!

Blueberry Coffee Cake

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cup fresh blueberries
• 1/4 cup confectioners sugar (for dusting)

1. Heat oven to 350, coat bundt pan with cooking spray
2. Make streusel topping: mix 1 cup brown sugar, 2/3 cup flour, and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Cut in 1/2 cup margarine. The mixture will be crumbly.
3. For the cake: beat 1/2 cup margarine in a large bowl until creamy; add 1 cup white sugar and beat until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Whisk together 2 cups flour, baking powder, and salt. Add alternating with milk to the creamed mixture, beating well after each addition.
4. Spread 1/2 batter in the pan. Cover with berries and add remaining batter by tablespoons. Cover with streusel topping.
5. Bake at 350 for 55-60 minutes until deep golden brown. Remove pan to wire rack to cool. Invert onto a plate after cake has cooled. Dust with confectioners sugar before serving