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...