Domestic Adventures

When I suggested to Hope that we meet at the library for story-time, she replied, “or we could be brilliant and make our own story-time!” What a wonderful idea! We met this morning at a park with lots of shade, a covered pavilion and great play equipment. After the kids spent some energy on the slides and swinging bridges, we gathered in the pavilion and I read a few books aloud. Next, Hope read about the City Mouse and the Country Mouse and we helped the kids with this adorable mousey craft Hope had prepared. It’s a little finger puppet (Emmaline’s has rather thick whiskers obscuring his mousey little face). After that was lunch, then walking on the boardwalk until we were all tired enough to fall asleep right there. I think it really was brilliant.

What perfect timing for Voni to tag me for my mug shot. Trent gave me this mug yesterday. It was supposed to be a birthday gift, but when the Fed-Ex man delivered the box, Trent thought it was something else and opened the box right in front of me. A little early surprise.
My new favorite mug features a Word Cloud from my blog. Hope had posted about this a while ago and I couldn’t get it to work. But with a little fiddling, Trent figured it out and ordered this sweet little gift. Now I can sip coffee from a bloggy little mug while I read my morning blogs.

Now I am tagging Tricia.

… they’re making a mess in our yard!

She seemed okay with it once I explained that the mess was for our sprinklers and would help make our yard nice. All that lovely green stuff you see growing is really just weeds, and they’re only green in the summer. It will be nice to have actual grass and keep it alive.

Step one of our lawn remodel is to deal with our sick and dead trees. Sadly, two had to go, but two more are waiting for anti-fungus, high-nutrient injections from the tree doctor to battle some sort of root fungus. Emmaline enjoyed watching the stump grinder from the window.
Tomorrow some irrigation should be going in. After that comes of fun part - sod and landscape plants!

This post by Amy about custom letterpress cards made me think back to my book binding class at Rollins. The art department had a massive old letterpress along with drawers and drawers full of typefaces and “furniture” for positioning the type. This is my favorite book from the class. The text is John 1:1-4, 14. All the pages have a window cut in the center through which you can see the candle on a square of burgundy paper.
The press we used was supposed to be self-cleaning, but I always managed to make a mess of it anyway. I remember Trent helping me through this project by cleaning the press for me at three in the morning the night before it was due while I finished sewing the signatures together. True love in action!

In celebration of my mom’s birthday, my parents spent the day with us. Trent grilled steak and peppers for fajitas and I made salsa verde and mango black bean salsa to go with chips. And of course there was birthday cake. I used my daisy ann cake pan and filled the center with chocolate ganache sprinkled with slivered almonds. Quite yummy. I was also pleased with the tall, stripy candles I found at Target.
It was so nice to enjoy the afternoon and evening with everyone and of course the kids always love to spend time with Grammy and PopPop. Happy birthday, Mom!

In her totally distracted three year old way, Emmaline’s eyes are focused on the pebbles and weeds, trash and treasures of the sidewalk, wherever we go. She invariably finds a little rock or flower to scoop up and carry along with her while we walk. The flowers were always gifts for me, but I never knew where the rocks went until I found this tin in Emmaline’s room. Her rock collection. I remember a few of these rocks from certain trips to the park, and the shells are from our Amelia Island vacation. It’s funny how she’s kept them so long, and when a new one comes into the house, right into the box it goes!

Thrilled at how light the evening still was, we decided to take a walk after dinner tonight. Emmaline rode along on her tricycle as we pointed out yards we liked and talked about the day’s events. We walked until it was almost dark and as we were turning onto our street, Micah’s eyelids got just too heavy for him. He knows it’s late even if it’s not dark.

Emmaline is delighted to have a cousin, even though they haven’t officially met yet (due to a touch of illness in our household and then a car in the shop). When I showed her these pictures she perked right up. “Is that Cuzzy Macey?! Can she come to our house when she gets bigger?”