Princesses

Last weekend my sister and brother-in-law stopped on their way through Cheyenne.  We had brunch at IHOP, only because they have funny face pancakes.  Then the girls and I went to Douglas to my niece’s birthday party.  They had a big pool and a kiddie pool and a bounce house.  There was, of course, the birthday pinata and cake as well.  The theme was princesses and the girls got their hair sprayed with glitter spray.  I still think Grace has some on her scalp!

Anna floating in the big pool

The littles in the baby pool

What a cake!

Fun in the bounce house

I love how I got her feet off the ground, even though I cut off her head, HA!

Introducing Dog #3

Jeremy's been looking for a bigger dog; a more "manly" dog.  We've been to the animal shelter a few times. We found what we liked this weekend.  She had to get spayed before we could bring her home.

Good heavens, it's hard to get a good picture of a constantly moving dog.  She's a 5 month old yellow lab.  Her previous owners gave her up because she was too rough.  She a big puppy with a big tail who's not trained yet, I'm sure she wasn't being that way on purpose.  So far she's been so mellow.  Knock on wood, we haven't heard her bark or growl.  It's quite the change from our little dogs; the house seemed to become instantly smaller.  She loves to give kisses.  Meet Lizzy!

Soap

As you have probably figured out, I'm somewhat crunchy.  I use cloth diapers, make laundry soap, etc, etc.  I'm not sure how I stumbled across making your own soap, but I did.  I researched, looked at recipes, and read many how-to articles.  I knew I wanted to give cold process soap a try.  I also wanted to do it when the girls weren't around because of the lye that's involved in the process.  While the girls were gone last week, I gave it a try.  I decided to make lavender scented soap.

 Here's the oils I used, olive, castor, coconut and shea butter.  And my awesome mold, which is just a loaf pan.  The weather held out and didn't rain and I was able to mix up the lye solution and do all the mixing outside.

Here's my little bars of soap after they set up in the mold for 24 hours and are sliced and set to dry for 4-6 weeks.  Some of the ends weren't that pretty, but who cares what it looks like, as long as it gets the dirt off.  If you'd like a bar in 6 weeks, lemme know...looks like I have plenty!

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school for our big 2nd grader and a freshly minted kindergartener.  Anna was ready to go and excited until the bus came.  I think there was some trepidation about getting on the bus, but Grace took her hand and led her up the bus stairs.

After the initial "fine" of How-did-your-day-go? all the stories started to come out of who she sat with on the bus and what she played with at school and all about recess.  When asking if she's going to go back tomorrow, she happily said yes.

This shot is a preview of tomorrow's post...any guesses?

Wedding Rings?

Jeremy hasn't worn his wedding ring for quite awhile due to his job.  As it turns out, it no longer fits either.  I've worn mine off and on, depending on how swollen my knuckles and fingers have been from being pregnant or my RA.  While watching Duck Dynasty, we saw that Willie and Korie had each others initial tattooed on their ring fingers.  After searching through many different fonts and finding what we liked, we got each other's first initial tattooed on our ring fingers.  It felt like a little zap, but they were so small it took less than 5 minutes apiece.

You'd be amazed how many comments we've gotten on them already and we haven't even had them a week! (Good heavens, my hands look old!)

State Fair

I took the exact same handknits to State Fair that I took to our county fair to see if they'd clean up as well.  My socks took 1st and my fingerless gloves took 3rd.  My baby sweater got a superintendent's choice and a $20 gift certificate to a yarn store (yippee!)  I think it's ironic because that same sweater had comments at county fair that my finishing left something to be desired and took second place, yet it did so well at State Fair!  Now I can finally put these babies to use!

Leah's 2!

Yesterday, my blonde haired, blue eyed cutie turned 2!  Before her pizza and cake at Grandma and Grandpas house, we went to the park to play.

Her piggies are so adorable!

The slide gave you quite the static electricity charge...check out the hair!

Trying to catch crawfish in the pond in the park.

There's those piggies again!

check out static electricity hair in both of us!

The candles say Happy Birthday.

Leah is ripping open one of her many presents.  Her favorite seems to be the shopping cart loaded with play food.  She would not share it with her cousins; Bridger desperately wanted to play with it.  It must have been a pretty good party, she babbled on most of the way home, while the rest of the car promptly fell asleep.

Garden

After my husband planted my garden in May because I was sick, I will admit I haven't given it much TLC.  Jeremy's dutifully been watering it.  We had a bumper crop of peas which have pretty much done their thing.  I did notice some new pea blossoms; maybe they'll give it another go?  We planted a pumpkin plant outside the garden enclosure that has taken up an area about the size of the garden!  It has quite a few tiny pumpkins on it, hopefully we can get at least one good one.

 This is our broccoli, which we had never planted before.  I was wondering what it would look like or do when we got broccoli.  I was about to give up hope when Jeremy texted me a picture of baby broccoli yesterday...oh yeah!

 Our green beans are blooming right now with a few baby beans on there.  Can't wait for fresh green beans to go with dinner.

 The girls helped plant the garden...if you look closely at some of the previous pictures, there is broccoli with the corn and carrots and beans!  Anyway, carrot seeds are tiny and we seem to have them growing in clumps.  You can see the clump in the above picture.  We have several "clumps" of carrots.

 Our raspberries are going great guns behind the chicken coop.  They are flourishing yet again to due to a husband who has been watering religiously.  We get a few handfuls each night and you have to dig around inside the bushes to make sure you get all the juicy ripe ones.

I had to snap a few photos of the chickens.  The colorful feathered one is one of our roosters.  In our new batch of chickens we got this spring, it appears 3 of them have turned out to be roosters.  They are learned to crow and sound like they have laryngitis.  I have noticed in the last few days that you can tell their different "voices."  The new and old chickens are separated into different pens.  The far pen doesn't have wire over the top like the closer pen does.  Consequently, the new chickens have been getting up and roosting on the cross bracing.  This is one of our Easter egg chickens that is checking out the old chickens below.  We expect to get eggs from our new batch of chickens anytime now.

Pool and Slide

This weekend we put the tiny pool at the bottom of the slide and hooked up the hose at the top of the slide.  I think Grace had the most fun.  Leah didn't go down the slide, but enjoyed wading in the pool.  I'm sure that water was super cold coming right out of the faucet!  Enjoy some wading pool fun!

New Bed

After 13 years, we decided our mattress is going into retirement.  We new we wanted a Sleep Number bed.  After visiting a store and getting their schpeel and trying it out, we knew we were sold.  It finally arrived...after the standard 2 weeks from sale to delivery turned into 4 weeks.  The head and feet are adjustable.  We’re still getting used to it and trying to fine tune our sleep numbers.

I had to make a bedskirt since our old bed had a waterbed frame and we didn't need a skirt.  I think it turned out pretty nice.

And now we have some underbed storage.  We put the old frame and mattress downstairs and made a room of sorts, so if you're so inclined to come stay with us we don't have to blow up the air mattress for you anymore! J

County Fair

I know I've been absent for awhile. Lack of motivation to blog, mostly. Call me a slacker.

I have finally finished my latest knitting adventure.  I call these my garden socks because they remind me of a garden...mostly a carrot garden!  I put ribbing up the back of the leg to keep it up and a roll over cuff.  I used a faux heel flap heel that I think is my new favorite heel type.  It looks clean and fits well and is relatively easy to knit up.

It is county fair time around here. I entered 4 handknits. We went by the fair yesterday to see how well I did and check out the fair. Here are my results.

That's 3 first place ribbons and second place ribbon!  Awesome!  Jeremy was checking out some of the old tractors and the girls where running around like nuts...here's proof....