A few things brought to you by Pinterest and a few other things we did last week

I never seem to be able to sit down to blog any more.  We are busy as usual but more often Baylor wants to watch something on Netfilx and Lori will not let him use her laptop.  And since I cannot put my photos on her laptop, there is not much I can do to blog.  Anyway, I have a few moments while Octonauts is on so here is what we have been up to the last two weeks.  But I don't have enough time so I will be brief. 

We made fresh mint chocolate chip ice cream.  We love it but Gavin tried it and was not a fan of the fresh, herby mint taste.  

We harvested our broccoli.  We had four heads and they were quite nice and tasty.  

We made a green smoothie and it was delicious.  I think the most delicious smoothie we have made and Baylor loved it.  

We have the fountain up but there is nothing else in the barrel so the fountain tends to fall over.  Baylor came up with his own solution by putting a lid on the fountain.  I thought it was genius but I also put a brick on the fountain in the bottom to help it out.  

We made melted bead suncatchers (found on Pinterest) last Saturday morning.  For the most part they turned out great.  

Other than I learned if you are doing something of any detail, like an attempt to make the sun, don't use clear beads.  The top circle should be the sun and it really do not read like a sun.  Next time I will use the opaque    beads because it was pretty much a waste of about 40 minutes of bead by bead placement.  The rainbows turned out fine and I did a daisy with the opaque beads that worked out well.  Eventually I will drill holes in them, string them up to make gifts.  

After our water balloon fight, I made these splash bombs (found on Pinterest) that worked out well. There is no endless filling and tying of tiny balloons. 

They splash well and are easy to throw.  However, I need to make more because we only have seven because one pack of sponges had a sliced sponge.  We need more than four for each of us anyway.  Back to the Dollar General this week.  

Saturday afternoon Lori took of work early to go to Karen and Tiny's for a pizza on the grill party.  They are friends of Molly that we had met several times over the years and Karen was at the Hospice the day I went. She had the dough ready and a huge topping bar set up.  Baylor showed off his culinary skills!

And his goofy faces.  Karen is standing behind us.  She recently became a grandma but unfortunately they were not able to make it.  

Tiny was in charge of grilling the pizzas.  She tended to forget them and burn the bottoms but everyone was a good sport about it.  

Baylor liked his pizza but we ended up eating most of it.  

The cupcake with the mile high frosting was more his style.  As usual he shared the cake bottom with me.  

There was a nine year old there AJ who did really well playing with Baylor.  They played the bean bag toss game.  I really want to make one of these for Baylor.  It would be fun play in the back yard!  

I brought Dulce de Leche Cheesecake (found on Pinterest) to the party.  I thought about making it nut free and then forgot.  I found out that there was a guest with nut allergies and regretted not do so.  Karen scraped off the bottom layer so he could have some also.  

Their neighbors were watering their front yard which proved to be too much temptation for the boys.  It is only water and they went through it several times.  

And then there was fire!  Bean bag toss, water, and fire all in one night!  They roasted marshmallows on tiny sticks.  Several people were jumping in telling Baylor what not to do and I had to go over an assure them that he was fine around fire.  As his mom you would think they would have taken their cues from me but around fire they were naturally cautious.  They did not know Baylor comes from a long line of pyromaniacs.   

Our hostess, Tiny and Karen, wonderful gurls and we were happy to be able to spend the time with them and their friends.    

This week I was working on the mulch pile and noticed the black raspberries turning red.  I ran into grab my camera and Baylor picked the first black one we have had in two years.  He ate it and loved it.  

There a many more coming along and I know I will be out there every day getting scratched up trying to pick them all.  

I really cut back the red raspberries and they are a bit slow to come on.  This week I finally stopped along the road and dug up three wine berry canes.  I love them and they are only found along the roads. I hate eating them from there because of all the car exhaust I imagine on them.  So we will have to wait until next year for them because they are in a bit of shock right now. But then we will have five berries growing, red, yellow, and black raspberries, blackberries and wine berries.  I will be in berry heaven then, right in my own backyard.  

The rest of the garden is growing well.  The corn is up.  We need to plant more this weekend to fill up the bed.  

The cucumbers are starting to climb the trellis. The beans on the other side are climbing also.  

The lettuce, radishes and carrots are all doing well.

Baylor found a branch on one of the maple trees to use as a swing.  I guess we will be putting in a rope swing on one of the trees soon.  

On Monday last week I was trolling Pinterest and found a beautiful photo of a bottle tree covered in blue bottles and yellow flowering black eyed Susan vine.  I decided I wanted to at least do the vine on the side of my shed so we stopped at the garden center on our way home for preschool.  On the way into the store I spied the bottle tree that did not have forty bottle stems on it (the only other tree I have come across had way to many bottles for my taste).  I grabbed one and we found the plant we needed. It will be a while until the vine covers it, and until I can fill all the bottle stems.  Thankfully Wegmans has bottled Italian water in blue bottles so I will not become a drunkard in my attempt to complete the tree.  I did buy some wine last week to at least get me started!  

Until we meet again...

I wish all weekends were like this

Friday I took the day off but I took Baylor to school for half a day.  I needed the time to work on the boxes of kitchenalia I brought home from Molly's and the boxes of my kitchenalia out in the garage.  And clean up the house for the Aunt's meeting on Saturday.  I worked my butt off and thankfully it was not a hot day. My cousin DiAnn came over to get some cleaning supplies and some kitchenalia from the garage.  She was not able to make it on Saturday and wanted to get her yearly fill of cleaning products.  We had a quick visit because I had to pick up Baylor before 1:00.

 Unfortunately it was a rainy day and my original plan to take him strawberry picking was dashed.  We still went to Oak Grove for more berries and ice cream.  The neighbor brought us two quarts of berries on Thursday night.  We sat in the living room watching TV while I capped the berries.  

These tiny berries were red all the way through and so strawberry tasty.  The berries we bought were not quite as red but it was a pretty overcast week.  

My dear Molly taught me how to make jam years ago.  I went crazy with it a few years but I don't eat a lot of toast or jammy things and I was just giving it away.  Then I had a baby and all that stuff went into storage. I have canned a few tomatoes since he was born but we have not tackled jam until today.  I started him with the potato masher to break up the berries.  He gave it his best effort but he did was not able to make much progress.

So we brought out the chopper and went to town with it. 

Until we had four cups of mashed strawberries.  

Baylor poured it into the pan.

And added the sugar.  

I took over because the idea of stirring for several minutes was totally not his thing.  I added the pectin and he came to help with the canning.  

He was pretty brave putting the lids and rings on the jars.  

He even screwed one down.  

Can for 10 minutes and cool.  Shazam, our first Strawberry Jam Session.  

At bath time this is what I saw while walking past the room.  He said he was keeping the water over him to keep him warm.  I asked him to go back in so I could take a photo of it and Lori told me not to put in on FB.  So it is here.  

Saturday was the Aunt's Meeting.  I ran around like a crazy person hiding things, I mean cleaning the house. If it were not for visitors I would never clean up. I am not dirty, just cluttery.  When Mom arrived Baylor helped her to peel the apples for the fried apples.  He is pretty good with the peeler and even peeled a potato earlier this week.  

The Aunt's meeting was fun and we had a wonderful time.  We ate and talked until after 2:00. Rachel took the boys swimming in the very cold water and they did not stay long.  After everyone cleaned out the shelves of toilet bowl cleaner and dish washer tabs, and took some kitchenalia Heather and the kids stayed until after 5:00. Heather, Dad and I put up the canopy on the deck and they held the ladder while I cleaned the gutters on the back of house.  They were so clogged with tree material and algae.  The water just flooded down the drain when I dug it out.  I also dug up several plants in my gardens for Heather to plant at her house.  Many of the plants I originally dug from our grandparents.  I shared red raspberries but we need to wait for the black raspberries until next spring.  We planned a few day trips with the kids which I am really looking forward too.  I made dinner for when Lori arrived home and we had a nice evening.  

Sunday morning we had a slow start to the morning. It was an odd day that we did not have anywhere to go and nothing planned to do.  We ended up doing a little of a lot of things and nothing too much.   We made smoothies for breakfast and they turned out to the best smoothy we have ever made.  They even had spinach in them and were so good.  When we made it outside, my first job was to clean up the rest of the enamelware.  Lori would freak if I left it here in her garage.  I put a photo on FB and asked if anyone wanted any.  Tamela came and took two boxes worth and Jen claimed the yellow stock pot.  The rest is back in boxes and I will be working on finding a buyer for it.  I just don't have room to keep it all and do not have a need for the several pieces of the same item.  It was surprisingly easier to give away than I thought it would be.  I have been pretty attached to it for many years and so was Molly.  I did keep special pieces and unique pieces. 

I had told Baylor that after I cleaned up the garage we were going to have a water balloon fight. He told me several times how excited he was for the water balloon fight but he was also very impatient for it to begin. After I had everything packed up and put away we sat on the stairs and filled balloon after balloon after balloon after balloon.  It took a long time to fill enough balloons for both of us.   

I made myself the best target I could be but he could not throw them hard enough to burst on me.  He threw them at my feet and around me.  We loved it so much we did it again!  

After that we changed and had a nice little lunch of jammy bread and cantaloupe.  

We then did some weeding and gardening until my face was red from the heat.  We took a refreshing dip in the pool.  It was still pretty cold but we had fun.  Then we changed and made lemon poppy seed ice cream.  He loved it so much I caught him digging it out of the ice cream maker eating it while it was freezing.  He ate the whole bowl of semi frozen ice cream because he did not want to wait any longer.  

And we put in the fountain this year.  But we decided on no fish because of the trouble with the cats eating them.  He was just happy to have more water to play in.  I was doing some laundry and went outside to find him throwing mud around the patio.  It was bath time for sure and he had his fourth clothing change.  We watched TV, ate more melon and waited for Lori to get home.  He passed out on the couch around 8:00.  It was a wonderful weekend!