This has been a whirlwind of a week! It seems like we've been on the go constantly. I found such joy in our few stolen moments of outdoor time. Especially, when Levi became fascinated by the chairs in Nana and Baw-baw's backyard. Sitting was certainly a welcome respite. And, of course, how could I not be joyful about these sweet helping hands? Levi is beyond thrilled that the lawnmower broke. Okay, so he doesn't have a clue what broken really is, but he's pretty darn excited that it is temporarily parked in a very accessible spot. We pass it at least 20 times a day now, and every time he wants to "ride" it. However, he doesn't want me on it with him. This is him trying to shove me off of it. Ha! The anticipation is killing me. Every time I pass my garden I try with all my might to will these to turn red. This bush is laden with beautiful green orbs, and my mouth is already watering. Turn red!!...Please. And, I can barely wait for these to turn blue. Fruits and vegetables are some of the few redeeming qualities of our insanely humid and hot summers. If it takes heat to ripen these beauties then bring it on! If you'd like to play along with Simple Joy Sundays then check out Cool Zebra's blog. Hope y'all had a smashing weekend!
This little Levi-sized bench was sitting on the sidewalk at a local thrift store. It spoke to me. It said, "Turn into this parking lot, and buy me now!" And, of course, I always listen to talking benches. Don't you? Levi actually thinks my hind end is small enough to sit next to him. I'm flattered, so when he pats the three inch space next to him, I pretend. How could feet possibly be this fascinating? The real question should be, how was I so fascinated by his foot fascination that I took about 30 pictures of it? Mmmm...he just melts my heart.
Levi gets his graceful nature from me. This was made especially apparent yesterday when he ran headlong into a door resulting in a very bruised face. If you're ever around me much you'll find out pretty quickly that I am terribly clumsy. Case in point, I've run into at least 10 inanimate objects today. One of which was a bookshelf. Nice, huh?
I love the dirty look he's giving me in this one....like it's all my fault! Ha! I guess it kind of is since I passed on the clumsy gene. A friend of mine gave me this bunny. It wraps around a mini ice pack. Levi still hasn't quite gotten that the bunny has to be applied to the actually injury to do any good. Poor thing, he's doomed to a childhood of perma-skinned knees.
Yesterday, I lost track of time while digging and planting. I'm sort of a garden junkie--as if y'all couldn't tell. Sometimes...I check on my veggies 10 times in a day. You can actually see things grow that way. Yeah, I'm very cool. ;) I planted some New Zealand Spinach. It's not a real spinach, and it thrives in hot weather. In fact I had to hold off on planting it because recently we had a weird cool spell. I thought the seeds were pretty fabulous looking. This is my first year to plant the stuff. I'd never even heard of it before. A while back I planted some Burgundy Royal Bush Beans. They are beginning to flower, and oh, my. They are so pretty. They remind me of teeny orchids. Sigh...I love Spring.
...That's Levi's motto. His favorite foods include salsa and chili, and he loves them SPICY. Nana and Baw-baw keep salsa in their refrigerator now, especially for him. Yesterday, during one of our visits he made a beeline for the fridge. When he gave up on trying to open it himself, he looked up at me and said, "Ope, ope! Sa-sa, sa-sa!! Ope, ope!" Directly translated that means "Open, open! Salsa, salsa! Open, open!" Or in plain English, "Give me salsa! Now!" Somehow he's gotten it in his little head that he needs to stand on a chair at the counter to eat his salsa.I love the last pic because that is so how he eats. He just shovels food in and, without intervention, he'll just keep on shoving it in until there's no more room. Then, when you take the food away, he starts screaming with a mouth chock full. I try not to laugh, but it's hard sometimes.
Oops! I forgot last week. Oh, well, it was bound to happen one of these fine days. This week has been full of joyful happenings. -My plants are growing fabulously as you can see here and here. No worries, I won't torture you with anymore garden photos...today. -We've had lovely, drizzly rain for a couple of days now. It's that kind of rain where the sun still shines and all the green stuff looks greener than you could possibly imagine and the world just looks happy and clean. I like that kind of rain. We don't get it very often, so it's a nice treat. Mostly we get the scary thunderstorms, tornadoes, and leftover hurricanes. -Yesterday, we took a trip to the farmer's market, one of my favorite places. It truly is a trip for us. It's about an hour and a half round trip drive--especially since Nana (or Nanno as Levi has newly dubbed her) was behind the wheel. So worth it though. The seasons first blueberries. Mine are still green, so I had to snag some of these early ones. I might possibly have nearly consumed 2 cartons of them already.And freshly shelled Lady Peas...I'm in love. They were heavenly. Notice the tense there..."were". We came home with loads of good stuff...cabbage, squash, zucchini, green onions, carrots, radishes (because I so didn't grow enough) and even some homemade hummus. When there's this much fabulous, fresh food around, I seriously dream about all the yummy dishes I'm going to make. I think about food a lot. Is that strange? Oooo...speaking of food, I need to come up with something yummy for Memorial day. Hmmmm..... Levi's been pretty congested for a couple of days now, but nothing too bad...that is until this morning. He woke up pretty miserable, so we've been chillin' out all day. And, thanks to Bek we've found a new favorite:
Levi is quite smitten with Justine, and despite his miserable state, he was bopping his head, wiggling his feet, and just grinning away. So this anti-TV mommy is now pretty smitten with YouTube. Hope y'all are having a joyful weekend. Head on over to Cool Zebras to join in on Simple Joy Sunday!
I was up until 4 am caricaturing for an all night graduation party. Then Levi woke me up at 8, so let me go ahead and apologize for any crazy grammar and probably for the photo editing. My sleep deprived eyes like it. As I was trying to harvest radishes, the bottom fell out of the sky, so I only got one before the rain drove me back in. It's pretty though, and it makes me smile. Did you know that you can eat radish leaves. I googled it, so it must be true. ;) Not sure about testing that theory on this beauty, though. Something has already been chowing down on it's greenery. Y'all have a fabulous weekend!
The chives... The dill... The tomatoes... And the cute little lima beans... I just planted the lima beans last week. I kinda forgot that I had lima beans to plant. Whoops! Is anyone else as forgetful as I am?? I like to pretend it's the mommy brain, but, really, I think I 've always been like this.
Despite the rain we've had lately, it was difficult to convince Levi that we really didn't need to turn the sprinkler on in the garden. Luckily, after I snapped this pick of him trying to do it himself, his attention was caught by something else. Granted that something else was my zucchini patch. He thought it might need some attention. Sorry, no pictures of the zucchini patch dig. I was to busy rescuing my plants from his shovel. Hope y'all are having a fabulous week!
A few odds and ends have been harvested over the past month...oregano, asparagus, mint, and some wild greenbriar but nothing worth writing home about. But, today there was actually a meal in the garden. Okay, so this harvest isn't all that spectacular, but it's still pretty exciting to eat out of your own yard. You'd think I'd never done that before, but it seriously never looses its appeal. Lettuce, oregano, mint, one lone asparagus, and a tiny red dot of a wild strawberry that happened to be on my path. I was hoping for more of the wild strawberries, but with Levi in tow, I didn't really have the time or energy to wander around looking for them. They do make excellent additions to salads. Don't expect to bite into anything juicy or sweet, though. Wild strawberries are actually very plain. I mixed in a chopped apple, a little bit of broccoli and carrot, some locally grown pecans, and a homemade honey dijon vinaigrette....yum!
Thanks to a few free lettuce plants, I'm having my first adventure in lettuce gardening. I'm totally hooked. Homegrown lettuce is about a kabillion times better than the grocery store varieties. It actually has real live flavor...surprise! And, yes, that is a pinwheel you see behind the lettuce. A friend told me that pinwheels freak the deer out, and you might remember me mentioning that the deer annihilated last years garden. There are now pinwheels surrounding every plant that the deer might possibly find tasty. Levi thinks I put them there for him though, so don't tell!
Many thanks to Bunny from The Paris House for this sweet blog award! What an awesome way for this cool lady to introduce herself. If I wasn't so darn behind on everything from the past couple of weeks, I would jump right on board with following the rules and passing it along to 15 newly discovered and deserving blogs. Instead, I hope a very sincere thank you will suffice. I do hope y'all are having a lovely week! Now, I'm off to play catch up.
It's past my bedtime, and I'm already sleep deprived from this past week-o-illness. So, I probably shouldn't be messing with my blog design in this state, but I did it anyway. I think I like it. Gasp! I hope I still like it in the morning when I'm hopefully not so sleep deprived. I tried the whole three column thing three different times. It's just not for my blog. I don't know why, and I'm, quite frankly, too tired to care. The photo header was just a matter of cropping the photo to a better shape and changing the color of the header outline to blend in with the background color. Do you like it????
Update on the "week-o-illness": Levi has been fever free since the wee hours of Friday! The sore throat was still getting to him, but, as of today, that seems to have subsided. We are finally getting some normal sleep around here. Hallelujah!! Now, I think I'll just go enjoy some of that sleeping that I'm sitting here blogging about but not actually doing.
Normally, I would use an excuse like Mother's Day to buy something for myself... a piece of jewelry...some great fabric.... a cute pair of shoes...However, I am currently waging a war on stuff. Having a kid has totally changed my priorities. The minute I got pregnant, I realized that living in a small house with a baby was going to mean a major overhaul. First, I had to make room for his diapers, and his clothes, and his toys. I cleared out tons of stuff then. I pared things down to what I thought were the essentials. I squeezed a wooden play kitchen into my kitchen. I turned my old bedroom into his playroom/our bedroom. I turned my studio into a studio/office/bedroom that never gets slept in. I thought I did a pretty darn good job, too. But as he has gotten older, I've begun to reevaluate once again. I've decided that in order to get any work done, I'm going to need a space for him in my studio/office/bedroom. I've tackled a giant set of shelves and successfully removed it from the room thus clearing out a large chunk of wall. Okay, so I haven't found homes for all the stuff that previously resided on the shelf, but given time I will...I'm determined. Most of it is going in a garage sale and then off to Goodwill. I'm envisioning a little Levi-sized workspace, so that he can "work" alongside mommy. I'm currently on the hunt for a small table. I've already found the chair, a super cute thrift store find. I even have a few small shelves for all of his collecting (if he's anything like me he'll have collections). In my clearing out I found a couple of frames that are just begging to become bulletin boards, and I'd like to hang some binder clips to create a rotating art display. Right now all of these things are piled up next to the wall waiting for the table. The table is critical. The hanging height of all these things can't be determined until it is in place. I know...I'm a little crazy, but I have a vision. So, for a post-Mother's Day present I'll be forgoing the jewelry, fabric, and shoes (as if I actually need any more). Instead, I'm treating myself to a child sized table. First, I have to find it, of course. And, it has to blend nicely into my decor. As in, it must be made of wood--no plastic. And, unlike the above Etsy-window-shopping, it has to actually fit into my budget. I keep hoping to spot something on the side of the road. Hey, it's happened before! That's how I got Levi's little wooden kitchen....Wish me luck!
Every now and then I try to make my blog my own. You know...doll it up a bit. You might have noticed that I regularly fail at this. The clue? It always gets set back to a prefab template. Argh! I am, admittedly, a computer dunce. Pre-blogging I could check my email and shop. My computer knowledge ended with those two activities. Now, I've added blogging to my repertoire, but, really, that's sort of like writing long, picture filled emails and sending them out into the universe. I don't think this classifies me as computer savvy. When I look at HTML all I see is gobblety-goo. Last night, I tried and tried to fix things up. I put a picture in the header. It ended up taking up half the computer screen. I took it down. I tried it again. I took it down again. I tried making my blog three columns. I succeeded. Don't go thinking I've made sense of the gobblety-goo. I just googled it. (Oh, I should add googling to my list of computer can-do's.) Anyway, I was obviously none too pleased with the results as is evidenced by the lack of the third column. I like other people's three columned blogs, but mine? It looked like gobblety-goo. I'm not trying to get too terribly fancy with the whole blog design. In fact, I tend to like simple blogs, but I'm apparently inept when it comes to creating one. I'd be happy with a white blog (I have no idea why it's currently green) with a nice photo up top and maybe even three nice, neat columns...not the too close for comfort look I got last night. Okay, so a pale, robins egg blue border around the whole thing would be cool, but I think I'd be way overstretching my own brain powers to accomplish that one. So, does anyone have any tips or favorite tutorials for swanking things up?
There are so many things to be joyful about this week. We are so blessed. I hardly know where to start. Since it is Mother's Day, I'll start out with a special thanks to my mom, aka Nana, Nano, and the Nan. She is one very special lady!
My sister's birthday is another thing that's right up there at the top of the joys list. I picked some of "her" flowers to celebrate: Friends...what would we do without them?!! Thanks so much to everyone who stopped by to help clean up after last Sunday's tornado!!! Your efforts touched our hearts. This week I have been particularly grateful for my Bundleboo wrap. It gave my baby rest when he was hurting, and it gave my arms a break from the strain of toting him. Levi was so comforted by being all cozy and wrapped up. And, what would a post be here without a picture of what's growing? The beautiful blackberry flowers have withered away and been replaced by the beginnings of fruit!!! I so can't wait to plunder this thorny mess when those green clusters turn black! Head to Cool Zebras to join in on Simple Joy Sunday. Hope y'all are having a wonderful Mother's Day full of great joy!!!
Today, we have two very fabulous occasions to celebrate! One being obvious...Mother's Day. So, Happy Mother's Day to all you mommies out there! Hope you're getting loads of love and maybe even a little rest today! The other very cool reason to celebrate today is...drum roll, please...It's Aunt Annie's Birthday!!!!! In honor of the coolest Aunt on the block, I took a couple of photos of some wild roses that we affectionately refer to as Annie's flowers. They open their gorgeous blossoms this time every year. These blooms suit Annie quite well....beautiful and wild. Happy Birthday, Annie Bannie! You are much loved.
And, of course, how could I not be joyful about these sweet helping hands?
Levi is beyond thrilled that the lawnmower broke. Okay, so he doesn't have a clue what broken really is, but he's pretty darn excited that it is temporarily parked in a very accessible spot. We pass it at least 20 times a day now, and every time he wants to "ride" it. However, he doesn't want me on it with him. This is him trying to shove me off of it. Ha!
The anticipation is killing me. Every time I pass my garden I try with all my might to will these to turn red. This bush is laden with beautiful green orbs, and my mouth is already watering. Turn red!!...Please.
And, I can barely wait for these to turn blue. Fruits and vegetables are some of the few redeeming qualities of our insanely humid and hot summers. If it takes heat to ripen these beauties then bring it on!
If you'd like to play along with Simple Joy Sundays then check out Cool Zebra's blog. Hope y'all had a smashing weekend!
