One of each

Oh I do love a well stocked greenhouse with all of those beautiful plants sitting there in perfectly formed rows--all green, flowery and tidy looking.  I want to take them all home, put them in the garden and give them lots of love.  And then, wouldn't it be nice to set up that little wooden number right in the middle of all of those beautiful flowers, string up a hammock and take a nap? Eyes closed.  Light breeze. Rocking back and forth.  

Well, that's what I'm dreaming about right now.  

A sewing fix

I was listening to the sewing machine call to me the other day.  It went something like this:

Machine:  "Heya there J,  how are ya?  Wanna come in for a little visit?  Come on in here and just sit for a bit, won't cha?."  

Me:    "No time.  There's just no time right now, why, with weeds in the garden and strawberries to pick.  You understand, of course.  "  I replied weakly.

Machine:   (Gaining confidence) "Come on.  You know you want to.  No one has to know.  Just a few stitches.  What's it gonna hurt?

Me:  "Oh I guess you're right....just a few stitches...a few stitches....that never hurt anyone....Okay...I'll be right in!

This is what Carmel gained from my insanity.  A brand new skirt that was once her mama's shirt.  My 5 minute sewing fix.  I had been saving this, much to small for me, shirt because I just loved the fabric so much (tissue cotton, I think) and I couldn't bear to pass it along.  I lopped off the shirt somewhere below the sleeves and put in an elastic casing.  I saved the hem at the bottom of the shirt to be the skirt hem.  Easy.  Easy.  Which is about my speed right now.

The material makes for a perfect summer weight skirt for the Carms.  It is long enough to cover her little legs from the sun and light enough to stay cool.  I love it.

Little play things

Does this look safe?

This has been Owen's new favorite place to be for the last week now.  

Explore it. Climb in it.  Sit in it.  Bump your head on it. Ouch!  Sit in it some more.  Pretend to drive it.  Eat your snack in it.  Ask about it.  Talk about it.  Make up songs about it.  Sit in it some more.  Climb on it some more.  Explore it some more....

Grow so very very tired in it.  Ask, if you can take your nap in it.

Happy to share

Oh my, critters of the creek please move over and share your watery space because it is hot outside indeed.  Why must every body of water look sooo inviting when it's hot hot?  I'm really not complaining.  It's quite lovely wallowing around (or wallerin', as we say 'round here) in the bottom of a creek bed.  Really!  

All the little bodies were happy to move out of the way and let us play in their space - turtles, crayfish, mud puppies and more (there were a few mostly unidentified wormy-snake looking thingies that I could have been pretty happy not to see).

I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend.

A most frightening pattern

After having searched for small gardening gloves for Owen with no luck, I decided I would just sew a pair for him.  How hard could it be?  A little pair of gloves.  It will only take me a minute, right?  HA!  

I tried to use the Heather Ross pattern found in Weekend Sewing (I really love this book!) but I just couldn't get it to work out with his tiny little hands.  I probably tried it about 6 different times varying finger width, hand width, length--anything, but I just couldn't work it out.  I haven't given up on the pattern entirely yet.  I think I may try some for myself and see how it works out.  It is available here as a free pattern, but for all my sewing friends I certainly recommend her book.  It's dreamy.

I ended up taking a pair of regular children's gardening gloves, all of which are too big for a three year old, and scaled down the size to fit smaller hands (pictured above).  

The results:

Well now, I just adore the results especially since it's all matchy matchy with his little gardening bag (it's a sickness, I know).  I am happy to share the pattern if any of you feel inclined to spend entirely too long stitching up some tiny gloves that you could just buy here.  In fact, I'm sort of wishing I would have found those sooner, but I guess then it would be all un-matchy and I'm not sure I could live with that.  Oh heavens no.

And so with some new gloves to work with, we're off to weed out some thistle.  Have a happy weekend everyone.

Painted faces

Is the unibrow still in style?

Don't we look so incredibly scary, especially the Carms and I (hmm well, mainly me)?  Oh the joy of face painting.  Who knew?  Most of the day I forgot how ridiculous I looked because you know, it's kind of hard to see yourself unless you happen upon a mirror.   And come on, who has time to search out a mirror at any point during the day unless of course it is to apply copious amounts of extraordinarily difficult to remove face paint? 

At this point I feel moved to pass on my face-painting-EUREKA to anyone who will listen.    If you ever need to discipline a three year old and you want him to really listen to you, run to the bathroom, apply scary face paint and then quite seriously--Lay. Down. The. Law.

Let me tell you... 

this is the face that will be looking back at you.

The fruits of our labor

This is a photo of Owen taken during the first week of April at the point we realized weeds were threatening to take over our strawberry patch.  Since then we have weeded this bed nearly daily.  Sometimes we take out a weed or two with just a minute to spare and sometimes buckets full with hours to spend.   It is a job with no end, but we have continued to visit here each day in hopeful anticipation.   Something wonderful will come from this labor, right?  

  

You bet.

Sweet, sweet rewards.

Toddler gardening

When you're talking about getting the little people you love so much involved in the gardening process, well...

it's all about the proper attire.

Rainy spring walks

With our favorite people.  

Enjoying our favorite things.  

Traipsing about all our favorite places.

Our big tree discovery

I had been searching the pages of every tree book we have to find out the name of the tree we saw with the big maroon flowers a couple of weeks ago.  At that time there weren't any leaves on it which made it difficult to identify.  I asked friends, parents of friends, friends of friends. I searched the Internet, Googling and Yahooing until I was totally out of search ideas.

Finally I thought "well, I guess I should go find that tree again and see if it has anything else to tell me".  LEAVES!  Finally, the leaves were starting to show.  They looked strangely familiar, but I still couldn't put my finger on it (now, this was all about to be very embarrassing for me, but I'll get to that in a minute.)

I loaded the pictures on the computer so I could show Andy.  "Hmmn" says he.  (snicker. snicker.  snicker.)  "Did you look up Paw Paw tree?"
"NOOOoooOOOOooo",  says me.  " I didn't!"

Do you think he was right?  Yes, of course he was right! Did he think it was HI-larious that his wife had just been looking up Paw Paw trees for the last several weeks (incidentally the same weeks she was trying to identify said Paw Paw tree) passionately proclaiming,  "we must MUST plant Paw Paw trees on our property because the trees are sooo this and the fruit is sooo that" and on and on and on.  Yes, he thought that was very amusing.

So, right, anyway, yup...

That's a Paw Paw tree there.  That's what that is.
Just so you know.

The Workbench

It has been a few weeks ago now that I first noticed Andy's gears starting to turn while he was watching Owen work with his new saw.  Certainly, he must have been thinking that these just weren't good working conditions for his boy.  Now I say "certainly" because all of this watching and head shaking was what had originally led to me finding various miniature workbench sketches laying all about the yard. And so...

Old working conditions:

New working conditions:

Much better.

Much loved.

Somem's goin' on here.

Little sketches here and there.  Power tools spread across the lawn.  Clamps.  Squares.  Saws. Little bits of mutilated lumber laying helplessly all around.

Yes.  I get the distinct feeling that my guys, both the big one and the small one, are up to something.  

I am certainly looking forward to the finished project, but watching the whole process is sure a lot of fun too. 

TV Turnoff Week: Update

 *At the very tip top here I'd like to say thank you to the mama over at Unplug your Kids.  It was nice to have the opportunity to participate.  Thank you so much for putting the whole thing together.  

Well,  since everyone who knows us knows we don't own a television, I guess the first question would be why would we participate in TV Turnoff Week?

We may not be watching the television around here but we certainly get more than our share of computer time, which is really what I was hoping to decrease during that week.  I didn't force anyone else (meaning Andy) to do it with me but it seems that we were both more aware of our computer time during that stretch.

My goal was one hour a day.  This included recreational use like doing a blog post (me) or looking around YouTube for Dame Edna scenes(Andy).  That time also included computer use for checking weather and doing banking.  

For most days I stayed between 20 minutes to an hour which I was happy with.  And for Andy, well he never actually committed to participating and I didn't pressure, but I know his computer use was way down for the week.  This is especially true considering his available computer time was way up since I wasn't there hogging the screen each night.

 

What I discovered in the week of being "unplugged" is something wonderful, sad, and exciting about Time.  It just keeps passing no matter what we choose to do with it.  There is only so much of it in a day and when I choose to use that time scouring the Internet for every last piece of information, I find it's easy to lose...balance.  And really,  for me it isn't even just the computer that I let knock me off balance.   I am making choices all day long about how I spend my time.

If I choose a sewing project today then there is no time to catch up on the dishes tonight.  If I choose to do the laundry (wash, dry, fold and put away.  I really dislike the folding and putting away part.) then there is no time to go out and weed the garden(yes, it's that time).  If I am able to make a great effort to accomplish both, then I am distracted from Owen and Carmel and usually missing out on some fun with them and no one can really be happy about that.

So. What to do?  What to do?

The only thing I can come up with is... well, just let the dishes and the laundry go ahead and pile up!  (Oh alright!!  I suppose a little less screen time in a day wouldn't hurt either.)