It is SPRING 2016!

Spring time in the.... Oklahoma!

It has been a while since I have written a blog post but since it's spring I thought I would share some of the projects that we have been doing.

When its is spring it always seems easy to say, "This is the day the Lord has made." Even though those words should come easily everyday.  There are so many beautiful things in the spring. The honey bees that start to pollinate the first spring bulbs, dew on the ground, the birds that sing there happy little songs.

I like to garden.  If you didn't know that about me... now you do. I know that my mom and dad taught me the joys of gardening, so now it is my turn! We are constantly learning about worms, bees, butterflies, and birds. Trying to save on waste we started to compost about 3 years ago. It has been fun to let the boys see something good that comes from there "leftovers" or "trash".

One of the thing that I really enjoy are flowers. I like the produce that come from the veggie and fruits but flowers are a truly beautiful! I guess I have my mom to thank for passing the green thumb on to me, so thanks mom!

We got seed happy! The boys helped me mark the seeds with jumbo craft sticks and even drew some great pictures to show that the flower or veggie would look like. I'm thankful we are able to see the fruit of our hard work. Literally, we have one fruit, a strawberry. Hopefully we get lots more berries because we also bought some blackberries and raspberries. We already had some blueberries bushes purchased.


In the fall we planted some Gala Apple trees. We have just now see the first sign of spring in them!  Just a couple of days later there was tons of leaves and the sweetest smelling blossoms. Looking forward to the day when we get an apple off them in a year or two or more. 

The boys and I were asked to "help" plant flowers in front of the church. We had to buy new gardening gloves and spades for them, because they were so eager to help! It is fun for them to see that they can contribute to the church. I am glad we were able to help.

If you could tell we enjoy being outside. Thankfully I have a husband who moves fences, extends flower gardens builds playhouse, twists the clothes line, makes a fire pit and builds a raised garden. I am probably forgetting something but that is the stuff that has happened in the past year.

We were talking to his parents when the visited last and they mentioned that had great success with a wood resurfacer. It is supposed to be waterproof, slip reliant and you don't have to worry about splinters. Guess who followed there suggestion? My husband spend a few afternoons putting two layers on it with a helper here and there. It looks great! Thanks for all that you do to help us want to be outside more! 

We now have some bird feeders out and hope there are some who will choose to nest near by. The boys even put some ribbons and scraps out hoping that the birds would use them for their nests.  Our little trees are not big enough to have nests but there are several trees in our neighbors yards and I am fairly certain they have nests. I love the idea that a nest will have some color in there nest.  We cut up some ribbon, yarn and twine then let it hang in a suet cage. I found this idea on Pinterest about four years ago. My little man asked if he could put in the pieces for me for there nest.

We were so thankful to the Oklahoma City Zoo, Target, and OETA (There are other sponsors but I threw our my sheet of paper away). I took the boys to the zoo on a beautiful day. There were lots of characters to see and we were able to go to all of the stations and get several books too!

We were able to see Curious George with the bright sun shining in their eyes. Daniel Tiger as you can  see was almost impossible to get a picture with because everyone thought they were too important to wait in line. Thankfully, did get to give him a hug and get a picture with him, regardless of the craziness!

The boys had a great time getting tattoos, making bookmarks, banks, and listening to stories. We were even able to get a little concert from Spaghetti Eddie. Thank you to all the volunteers who helped out with this event! The great thing is that were able to see all of their favorite animals and more. Once everyone was exhausted we loaded up and made the trip home. So much fun!

As the sun sets think about tomorrow. Start every day with new beginnings. Know that the creator of the universe has big plans for you everyday!

Psalm 118:24

This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Salsa!

 Needed:
For this salsa you need a blender or a food processor.
1 can of whole tomatoes
2 cans of tomatoes and green peppers (mild, medium, or hot) your choose
1/2 of a onion
1 lime juice
2-4 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon of cumin
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 jalapeño
Freshly ground pepper
Sea salt

 

My lime juicer!!!!!!!

 For the mild salsa I used a quarter of the jalapeño.

Pulse until you get the consistency that you want it, we like are to be like a sauce.

 I filled three pint jars with one batch of this recipe.

For the Medium Salsa I used a three quarters of jalapeño, and use one medium and one mild tomatoes and green chilies.  I think next time I will toast my jalapeños to add just a little more flavor.

So happy to have this in my fridge, may be it would take so long for me to make them once they are out. 

If you really don't like spicy, you could always do away with the jalapeño and stick to mild tomatoes and green chiles it you want it spicier then I would add more jalapeños and maybe even you the hot green chiles and tomatoes. You can adjust to make you and your family happy!

Hand Wreath's

Remember when.....

Making hand wreaths. 

I didn't know exactly how I was going to do this, but I had something very similar in mind. I originally thought I would like to do a wreath of each boys hands although once we started we would of had to make more hands and I would have to cut them out which would mean that if we did that the boys would nap and then that makes out for a grouchy mommy. So... we combined them and we will smile about that ;-)!

Needed for this project:

paper plates

scissors

paper 

paint

glue

glitter

Christmas songs playing in the background! 

I drew a circle for MJ to cut it out and I cut out JD's inner circle.

 JD was so proud of his little hands.

 We did lots and lots of hands....

Painting time

 

We set aside the painted plates and it was now time for GLUE and GLITER! I helped JD put on his glue and MJ put 3 dots on each finger.

 The aftermath of the glue and glitter....

I love to see my boys working together to get a project done.

Here is the final product. My boys were pretty proud!