Garden Decor

Soft and Feminine:

Bold and Exotic:

First Purchase

My dad and I went to the Farmer's Market up the road with the boys this morning.  As soon as we pulled in, Austin yelled "Grab your money!", since he and Jacob were paid for their second week of allowance.  We walked up to the tables and he blurted, "I want a watermelon."  Papa asked the lady how to choose the best one and she showed us the different sounds they make if you flick them with your fingers.  She pointed out the best sounding one was the exact watermelon Austin had previously picked out.  Austin paid his $2.00 and Papa assisted with the remaining $3.00.  

Austin said he wanted to dive his face into the watermelon. Here is that attempt:

Along with his brother's:

They also picked their own carrots right out of the ground.  Jacob thought that was really cool. It may be something we try to grow next year.

I also picked up a little something for myself:

Gladiolas. I saw the purple and just had to bring some home!

Monday...

This should say it all.

Fresh Produce

We planted a small garden on Mother's Day and I was able to pick the first fruits of our labor on Father's Day. 

I went out to find our string bean plant on the ground from the weight of the beans.  I picked what I deemed "big enough" and left the smaller ones on to grow a bit more. I think I need to get a crutch for each of them though for support as they continue to grow and produce.  The cantelope and cucmbers are blooming in numbers and I saw our first flower on the strawberry vine today.  Its exciting to see the progress made in them since we planted them a month ago. I have also used the cilantro and parsley in several recipes.

Yesterday I joined a friend at the Farmer's Market.  Blackberries, blueberries and plums filled my bags.  The sole reason for the blueberries is this:

Although, as I ate my salad at dinner last night, I thought they would pair with the rasperry vinegarette very well and may try that next time.  Unforunately my kids are very picky fruit eaters.  Apples, bananas and melon are about all they eat. However, I left the plums in a bowl on the table and am hoping Jacob will at least try one.

Fresh Paint

Remember these canisters I purchased from the thrift store a while ago:

Well, I repainted them today. While I did like the green that was on them, it just didnt mesh well with my decor. I used one of the paint samples from my bedroom to give them a little makeover.

I was very tempted to leave them on my front porch to give it a little life, but I remembered, as I'm washing the paint off of my arms, its water-soluable paint and dont want to take the chance of a blue puddle on my porch one day.  So, back to my bedroom they went!  I am loving the blue.

Ahh. A quiet house to enjoy my guilty pleasures:

Money-Wise

I decided to step the chores up a bit with the boys and implement an allowance at the same time.  I made a list of appropriate chores that had about 15 options on it.  I allowed each one to choose two and explained next month they will have to choose two different chores until they get through the whole list.  Then we will start over.  

I made a run to the dollar store to buy chore charts:

The point of starting the allowance was to teach the kids money management.  Each week they will receive $2.00 if their chart is complete (AND I do not have to remind them about their chores since these are things they know to do everyday anyway).  10% is set aside for Giving, 10% is set aside for Savings and they have 80% to spend.  

What they do with their money is up to them since they earned it.  But I will not give out loans and they cannot do extra chores to earn more.  They must learn to save and be patient.  This already caused a ruckus at the dollar store since Jacob wanted some baseball cards and I told him know even though he has $0.50 sitting at home to pay for half. I told him he'll have to wait until his allowance and if that is what he really wants, he can get them then. He didn't like it, but he accepted it (after repeating myself three times).

I did allow them to each pick out a bank to keep their money in.  Here they are decorating:

I also made a canister out of an empty bread crumb jar for Giving money.  I started this a while ago and I put loose change I find around the house in here:

To help them break it down, I will need to run to the bank and get some rolls of change and pay them that way for a little while. But that will help them to separate the appropriate amounts and put them in the containers themselves.  

The good stuff

Its been a looooong week. But it is finally Friday, I am home with the boys and have the weekend ahead of me.  I wouldnt say the week was "bad", just challenging and non-stop.  I was able to pull out some highs to share with you though. 

Mark and I attempted to restart the South Beach diet.  We are not nearly in the shape we were last time, but do need to make some much better eating choices.  By Tuesday evening, I realized I was starving my husband and only purchased about 1/3 of the amount of food we would need to push through the rest of the week.  We didnt totally chuck it out the window though.  I am committing to making seafood once a week and when salad is served with dinner, it WILL be eaten.  I even packed salad for my lunch the rest of the week, except today since Jake tagged along with me and I took him out for lunch.  Last night was my first attempt at salmon, and although dinner was a bit bland, I was impressed by the edibility of the fish:

Another little perk this week was the package waiting on the front porch for ME yesterday. 

(My husband is constantly buying car parts online, so we are used to packages arriving, but rarely are they anything I'd even remotely be interested in.) 

 I won a giveaway from Sunshine and Lavendar.  This pair of cute earrings were handmade by another vendor featured on her blog:

Hopefully this weekend we will be able to repair the swiss cheese attribute our pool liner acquired over the winter (of which we found AFTER taking 2 days to fill it and dump 15 bags of salt to run our new salt water filtration system).  I'm ready to plow the thing over and use my parents blow-up, 3' deep pool down the road, but I've gotta give it a chance for my boys (especially the biggest one).

Veggie Hide-N-Seek

How do I get my kids to eat their veggies at dinner?

With this!

(And a 4 oz serving works out to 1/2 cup of noodles, meaning each of my children had 2 servings!)

Do you have to be creative to get your children to eat well?  What are some tricks you've learned as a parent? 

To be honest, Jacob is a very good veggie eater. He loves raw celery, broccoli, carrots with ranch dressing.  He has devoured salad since he was two years old.  Jacob will ask for second helpings when it comes to cooked green beans.  Austin, on the other hand, will only willingly eat carrots and corn-on-the-cob.  But he does love these typs of noodles, especially Wacky Mac, due to the "curly" shape.

Apple Pie in a Jar

Its called Apple Pie in a Jar.

I want to pop the top, grab a spoon and go at it!  Homemade goodness from my neighbor.

**My tech savvy husband solved my comment problem. Its my awesome, updated laptop. lol  Apparently the version of Internet Explorer I have is causing complications. In the meantime I will use Google Chrome and hopefully catch up with everyone.**

Awesome. I still cannot comment on anyone's blog, including my own. I am reading them all though and have attempted to comment on most of them in the past two weeks with no avail.  I'll try more research tonight. It is just so odd! Does anyone have any suggestions of what I may be doing incorrectly? I have commented on many before and since I am always logged in when I comment, it used to just pull my information.

Well, off to drop one child off at KidBlast for an end-of-school party and take the other to karate to be over just in time to make it back to KidBlast to pick up child #1.  Hoping for a hot, steamy pizza and breadsticks to appear on my counter when I get home (oh, and my hubby to be here too).

Grrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!

Is it just me or are others having an issue posting comments??? I have attempted to leave comments with my Google account for over a week now on 3 or 4 different blogs and when I try to post it sends me to the sign in page. I put in my account info and get pushed back to do the "word verification" thing then it takes me back to the sign in page to put my account info back in!  Plus it shows me as "Anonymous".  Its the same info I use for my blogs and they are working just fine. Besides the fact that I am already signed into my blog when I try to comment. Very frustrating!!!

Busch Gardens

Sorry I have been MIA. Its been a crazy week and weekend with lots of activities.  In exciting news, I have been deemed the official family trip coordinator by my mother-in-law.  We are taking a Boulton Bunch vacation to Busch Gardens.  It'll be the four of us, my brother-in-law and his wife and my parents-in-law. We were hoping my parents could join us but it doesn't look like the timing will work out. 

In March, the eight of us went on a beach hiatus for the weekend and it was really nice spending that time together. This time we'll have a little more adventure and I'm sure Mark & Austin will have a blast with Elmo while the rest of us ride the coasters. (hee hee, My husband will not do roller coasters.)  I am geared up and ready to go!

My brother-in-law, his wife, Mark, Jacob and I went last summer. Jacob was so bummed he couldn't ride one of the roller coasters with Uncle Zak and I chickened out.  I am hoping to see a few more shows this time around too.