Crafty when copying

I went to my favorite shop this week and saw some cute flip flops. I noted to myself, "ok, flip flops, ribbon, velcro, and a button, how hard can it be to make these?" I went to Hobby Lobby (did I mention three hungry kids in tow) and purchased the materials. I came home, and when Joe was sleeping, the girls watched while I assembled. Watching turned into touching, touching turned into their own creating, creating turned into a mess and the mess turned into crazy mamma. I got them finished, but I think I am not going to invite the girls to the party next time I do this.

The flip flops are designed so that you can remove the ribbon etc, from the straps and switch it for another design at whim. Can't switch mine yet - I haven't gotten around to making another pair to switch them with. Still, cute as a solo act, eh?

A small little tiny dream come true

Two years ago I saw some beautiful colored glass mason jars at Dollar General. I put off buying them, but then I just had to buy a few. The next year I bought a few more and put them up for "later". I had a vision of stringing them up in the backyard and lighting small candles inside each one. Well, after spreading the hay in the garden, we had a bit of baling wire left over. I decided it was perfect to complete my vision, so I painstakingly made wire curly cues and nailed in nails for the wire to hang on. I then went inside and brought out all of my glasses. I had the girls wipe off the dust outside with a cloth. Then Joe got a couple and with one good bang, shattered a green one to pieces. Well, I took a "lets move on" attitude (after considering crying) and picked up every speck of glass I could find in the grass. Brian took the kids inside. I carefully placed the rest but one. When one of the girls came out I asked her to carefully hand it to me... but it didn't make it. Crash. (I really thought about crying this time - my beautiful glass I've been saving!!!) "Lets move on," I told myself and I ended up with five remaining jars. Five is more visually appealing than six anyway. (Seven would have been better though.) Well thats life. Here's the pictures.

The garden has grown

The garden is looking good. Still green. No dashes of color yet like yellow squash or red tomatoes. We are still looking forward to that.



The tomatoes are getting pretty tall. An inch or two daily isn't unusual.


We've been helping the green bean vines climb, but it seems they just do not climb until they are ready to climb. A very interesting lesson in life.


Brian lined all the walkways with a thick layer of hay to keep the crazy weeds from invading. It has been so helpful. I'm not much of a fan of cultivating and picking weeds.

Did you know potato plants made such pretty flowers?

Here are just a few of our growing tomatoes. I had to go out and give the flowers a good shake on the rest of the plants because they weren't in the mood to produce fruit. Haha! Now they are all going to town. I suppose that is also an interesting lesson for life.

I think the corn is probably our most visually appealing plant. It just looks so corney.

Chalk Art

I bought a giant box of chalk at Walmart and we've all had fun with it.