Garden Box

I work for a vinyl fence company and have some of the best bosses ever. If you remember last summer I got to go to Alaska and stay at their fishing lodge...one of my favorite things ever. This year I asked if I could have a couple of garden boxes made and here is one of them. I just love the way it looks. My other box is smaller and I don't have it planted yet. I will post a picture when I do.
I actually work the division of the company that does all out of state sales and military bases. When I asked for a garden box the brother that owns the Arizona portion of the business offered to make my boxes. I am blessed to work for such a great family. In this box I have tomatoes, several varieties and some squash. My dad told me that I need to thin out the squash that I planted with seeds but I just can't make myself pull any out yet but it all is growing so fast I will have to soon. The strawberries you see there in front and a couple of smaller plants sitting inside the planter are actually going to go into the smaller box...next weekends job. Thanks Lindblom family...I love my job!

Easter

What fun Easter celebration we had with all the kids. We decided to do it on Sat. night...I really wanted to do it at night so we could have a glow in the dark easter egg hunt. More on that later. Anyway we started out grilling hamburgers. I know that doesn't sound to much like Easter but it sounded good so we went for it and Brett did a great job of the grilling...they were great. Above are the goodie bags they all went home with along with the little bunnies each got at their place setting. I tried to put these at the end but for some reason they just won't move so here they are. The girls really loved the bunnies but the boys could just see the sucker they are made with. After everyone had eaten all the little ones were ready for egg coloring. If you notice most have their shirts off...no that was not a requirement but they all had new shirts so their parents didn't want egg dye on them so they all took them off. So I guess we had shirtless egg dying.

Shirts or no shirts they all had fun and came out with some really pretty eggs. We had 5 kiddies and 5 colors of egg dye so everyone got to do one egg and then passed their color of dye to the next person. This worked great for a while and then everyone started to grab to get their favorite colors until the eggs were all colored.

As you can see Hunter was really concentrating to get just the right shade of blue. Funny how some were patient enough to get bright colors and some were more impatient, they ended up with the pastel colors. Either way they were pretty.

Now onto the "glow in the dark" egg hunt. I had seen the idea on Pinterest and really wanted to try it. So I found some glow in the dark bracelets and talked Julie and Carrie into stuffing them into the eggs. They really had to shove them in to get the eggs to shut. While the kids were busy coloring eggs they went out and hid the glow in the dark eggs. I tried to take a picture but since it was dark the flash went off and you couldn't see the eggs. Take my word for it tho, it looked really cool. The kids loved it. Down side to it all tho, we noticed some of the liquid in the glow in the dark bracelets started to leak since they were stuffed so tightly into the eggs. We decided to be on the safe side we needed throw them all away. The kiddies were pretty disappointed but better safe than sorry. Of course later on we found the dog eating some of them and it didn't bother her.

I had another game to play after the egg hunt but unfortunately it was getting late and the parents were ready to get the kids home so that they could get to bed for the Easter Bunny to visit them. Maybe next year. Fun was had by all tho. I think the glow in the dark egg hunt needs to become a tradition at Grandma's house. Oh by the way...I hear I could have bought glow in the dark eggs at Walmart. That probably would have been much easier. Next Year.

Birthday Quiet Book

This weekend this cute little girl turned a year old. She is Avery my "great" niece and is one of the happiest babies that I have ever been around and just soooo cute. I wanted to come up with something special for her birthday and of course like I always do I started trying to think of something that I could make her.
I have always wanted to make thoses cute little quiet books but felt like maybe Avery wasn't quite old enough for the one with all the different activities in them. So I went to Etsy.com and typed in quiet book patterns and came up with this pattern by SW Designs. It happened to be Feb. 29th...Leap day and they were having a sale. I love sales so I ordered this cute toddler quiet book called "On The Farm". Best yet it was sent digitally to my email so I didn't have to wait for it. This picture was the book after it was all put together.

I sat down one day when I really should have been doing several other things to look at it and start organizing fabrics etc. and found it rather addicting and was finished with the whole book in no time at all. It was so easy. Here is a set of the first pages.

And here is the set of the last four pages. The chicken and the cow were my favorite and after this picture was taken I added a bow onto the cows bell.

After getting it all put together I decided it needed 1 more page...a back cover I guess. So early the same morning I was to pass it onto Avery I put together this flower page. You can't see it but around the flower I wrote...Made for Avery with love by Aunt Mindy...Happy Birthday and then the date. Avery loves books so I hope she enjoys this one too as much as I enjoyed making it for her

My story should end here but much to my surprise when I received the email copy of this pattern Shelly Wallace, the author, said that if I post this onto my blog I will get another one of her quiet book patterns for free. You can't ask for anything better than that for a good deal. Thanks Shelly...now the hard part...which one? If any others of you out there are interested you can find all Shellys cute quiet book patterns in her etsy shop at www.shelleywallace.etsy.com.
Happy 1st Birthday Avery!

Season End

Hunter and Connor finished a successful baseball season this past weekend. They both were really fun to watch. You could see alot of improvement in Hunters team by the end of the season. His games were fun to watch and starting to look like real baseball. The boys learned so much.

I love this picture of him watching the ball. Great game Hunt!

Connors team was fun to watch too. He always had a smile on his face when he played. He had a little different strategy as he ran from one base to the next...he usually did a loop or two into the outfield between bases. Didn't really matter because the little guys on the opposing team usually were still struggling to get the ball and figure out where it goes next by the time he would reach the base. They were so cute to watch.

So it's time to say goodbye to baseball. Time for a short sports break before moving onto spring football and soccer. These are busy boys! Good job guys!

Crafty Weekend

Oh wow, here we are almost at another weekend and I am just now getting to last weekend...where does the time go. Last weekend I got to spend it with this crafty little girl, Reagen. She came to spend the night on Friday and stayed until Sunday evening. We had a great time together...watched a few movies, went to her cousins t-ball games, did a little grocery shopping and alot of crafting.

Reagen pulled out her sewing machine and worked for a bit on a quilt that she has been working on for some time. She pulled out a box of her scrapbooking stuff...didn't really make anything with it but reorganized it all. She also wanted to go to the fabric store. I wasn't sure just what for but you know I am always game for any store that carries fabric so off to Hobby Lobby we went.

She picked out this fleece and came home and tied this little blanket for herself. She did it all on her own...measured, cut and tied. While Reagen worked on her projects I worked on a few of my own.

I had seen one of these banners on Pinerest made with old book pages. I picked me up an old book at Goodwill's half price sale the week before so I decided to give it a try. The one I had seen had buttons on it so I decided to go through a jar of old antique buttons that I had and found some real interesting things in there besides buttons. I know its hard to see but there is an old zipper pull (it's the aqua color on the middle one), an old snap, some sort of hook thing, an old safety pin with thread wrapped around it and several other things that looked neat but I don't really know what they are. Anyway I really liked how the old buttons and things made it turn out. I gave this one as a gift but must make another one for myself.

Another idea that I found on Pinterest were these hangers. I have been into crocheting lately so I decided to give them a try. I thought they turned out nice and gave them along with the banner to my Sister in Law, Kristy for her birthday.

OK, maybe I am hooked on Pinterest because that is where I found the idea for these cards. Had to make some of them to go along with the above gift and of course had to make some extras too for later. It's always a good feeling to go back to work on Monday's when you feel like you have really accomplished a few thing during the weekend. Humm...tomorrow starts another weekend, will I get anything accomplished? I'll have to let you know because I never know myself until the end of the weekend. I always start the weekend with alot of plans and alot of times things just happen and nothing gets done. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for another productive weekend. Might even start painting my bedroom.

What else have we been doing?

What else have we been up to?

Well Jessah played on the soccer team of her school.

Reagen was on the cheer team...

Thane played on a basketball team. To bad the game Grandma went to got cancelled so no action shot.

This boy got to play on his first t-ball team. Connor loved finally getting to play instead of always watching...even if he did sit down when he was playing outfield.

Hunter is playing Coaches pitch this year. He just hit the ball here.

All are keeping busy and active.

And last but not least...

No I didn't forget little Faithy...what's new with her you say? Well Faith had a birthday last month and got a new big bike. Shortly after she got it she got going a little to fast and fell off and broke her arm. She has been a real trooper about it tho. She even has a cute smile laying in her hospital bed waiting for her cast.

Her first cast was pink. This is before she let everyone sign it. She is still smiling here along with her brother.

Cast #2 is purple...so girly, pink then purple. Still smiling....You don't think she is using this to her advantage. Who can resist giving attention to a poor little cute girl with a cast.