The girls' garden

The girls are in full gardening mode now.  This year they planted cucumbers, lettuce, green beans, tomatoes, banana peppers and I transplanted some mint from our herb garden at school.  So far, all of the plants look pretty strong and healthy, so hopefully they will get a good harvest this year.  Keep you fingers crossed.

(this box just has cucumbers and lettuce)

Spring has sprung?

The weather is warming up here.  Today, it was a sweat producing 85 degrees.  That type of weather calls us all out to the garden (barefoot of course).  I am on spring break this week, so the girls and I have been catching up on some school, some chores and preparing our garden for spring.  This year we are planing green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce and spinach.  Hopefully we will be able to grow enough to make at least a couple of meals. 

These boxes will hold spinach, lettuce and mint.

You can't see it, but Zion is holding a stick that Ashni painted last summer.  It has been in our backyard all winter.

 Ashni making rows in the small boxes (despite the fact that I said they didn't need rows).

Did I mention that Zion was wearing pants with a bunny tail?

Bijou's muddy toes (well, muddy toe).

That is hysterical laughter on Bijou's face.  I swear.

I was quite impressed with Jena's strength.  Zion is little, but she weighs a TON.

New bed and bedroom changes.

I spent my Saturday cleaning out my garage to make space to build a platform bed for our new king sized mattress that will (hopefully) be delivered this week. Now we don't live the in the biggest house, so with a family this size, I am ALWAYS trying to make things that serve multiple functions. I scoured the internet looking for free platform bed plans (because I'm cheap like that), but didn't really find anything that I liked. Plus, I really wanted somewhere that I could store all of the books that had been taking up space in my garage. So after hours of Google searches, I decided to just design my own. I wanted something really simple with ample storage.

The great thing about this is I could have the lumber cut to size at the hardware store (because, as you know, I do not own power tools) and I put it all together in about an hour and a half. The total cost of the bed with lumber, cuts, sandpaper and wood glue (I had nails already) was about $95. (I will post more pictures when we actually get our mattress and move it into our bedroom)

Our house is going through some sort of spring transformation right now. My mother is moving back to St. Louis to be closer to my older brother, so the girls are separating into two rooms (bigger girls in one room, smaller girls in the other). There are a lot of redecorating projects in the works (which means my entire house in a disaster area at the moment). Here are the bones of my ideas for each room:

Smaller girls room has beige walls and a bare wood bunk bed. They will get their own pretend little town. They will have the play kitchen, the doll crib and clothes in their walk in closet to play house. They will also have a book shelf and the old modern doll house and barn. I just found (for crazy cheap at a church yard sale) a Melissa & Doug wooden mailbox (pretend post office) and a wooden work bench. I am turning the workbench into a farm stand that will be stocked with felt produce. There are a couple of other things that will happen in there.

The Bigger girls' room is green. They will get twin beds and the new modern dollhouse (I haven't taken pictures of it yet). We have a red, antique drop leaf table (that belonged to a relative of my grandmother) that will become their writing table (pen pal letters and such). I also found a vintage, turquoise typewriter (YEEEEE!!!!) at the thrift store in perfect condition. It will go on their writing table. I'm not sure what else I'll come up with as I start putting things together, but I promise to share pictures as I go.

Spring Cleaning: School/Dining/Craft Room

I know after my last burst of spring cleaning, I said I would work on my living room. I did actually get my living room/office space in order, but I figured since I don't have any before pictures of the room, and after picture would be rather anticlimactic. So instead, I am sharing our school room (which is also our dining room and my craft space). I posted pictures a few months ago when we started 2nd and 3rd grade. This is what it looked like before. That blue furniture served its purpose, but I was SO sick of looking at every time I walked through the dining room. It has found a new home in the garage.



This is what the room looks like now. It's so much more open and the kids have been getting to a point where they do not work well sitting together. Instead of working, they are either playing or writing notes to each other. (Really, you guys? You're passing notes in a homeschool class?) This way they have their own work space to do independent lessons and we can still come together at the dining room table for group activities. I save jars and other glass containers because I love them for storage. I decided to keep small items that we have lots of (i.e. crayons, erasers, paper clips and chalk) in them. I feel so much better about the space now.







My craft space is still a work in progress. I have a massive amount of craft supplies to try and organize in this shared space. This is my progress as of this weekend.

I got this book at the Salvation Army a few weeks ago. I'd say it's from the 60's. I thought the cover was hilarious, but it does have some pretty cute projects in it.

Who knows where the spring cleaning will take me next, but I'm leaving for a child free, over night trip to New Orleans in the morning, so no more cleaning until at least Wednesday!

Spring Cleaning...the girls' room

Round two of spring cleaning takes me into the girls bedroom. My seven year old and three year old share a room and we FINALLY got them bunk beds. Yay, bunk beds! The bunk beds are really simple and I will probably spruce them up at some point, but for now, they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. With the addition of the new beds I had to rearrange the entire room (well, I probably didn't have to, but I'm OCD like that). There is finally storage space for everything and the room can be easily kept neat. Life is good. I tried to make sure that their shared space is not too "little kid" for Ashni, but still little kid friendly enough for Bijou. I think it works well for the two of them. I think eventually I will build some storage boxes on wheels to go beneath the bottom bunk for storing pajamas, but at the moment they are tucked away in the closet and that works for me too.

The paper lanterns are left over from the Mad Hatter birthday party a few weeks ago.

These little flower shelves are a Goodwill find from a while back. They work for holding small objects like glasses and small artwork.

The art is a mixture of my art, the kids' art and that little mushroom painting (from the Salvation Army)

This white shelf was given to me by a friend and all of the bins are from the Dollar Store (my favorite one stop shop for storage containers). The orange cloth bins we've had for years.

The new play kitchen area.

Next up, my living room/office...

Warm weather and making kites

The kids have almost cleared the backyard of who knows how many years of leaves. Thank you 70 degree days. Inspired by the wind billowing through the lawn and leaf bags as they were being filled, the girls decided to make kites and take them to the park. We used plastic grocery bags and bamboo skewers. We really couldn't get them to fly. I think they may have been too small. So if the weather permits, we will make bigger ones tomorrow and try them again. Despite the kite failure, the kids had a great time at the park and I enjoyed my bare feet touching the cool grass.



And, just because it was such a nice day, I thought I'd get some pictures of the girls all together. But to start you off, here's the best picture that anyone has ever taken of any baby EVER! Well, probably not, but I think it's pretty darn cute!


Now on to the pictures from the park....

The four ladies. It was pretty much impossible to get everyone to look at me at the same time, so I gave up trying.

There were big huge blossoms of some sort on the trees. Bijou is sporting hers as a hat.

The oldest and youngest of our little tribe. They have lots of moments like this. Jena is like the second mother.

Ashni was trying to get her to smell the flower not eat it.

She is still wearing that blossom hat!

Just the ladies today.

It was a good day...

Starter Pots and Terrariums

We are desperately awaiting the arrival of spring in our house. The winter has taken its toll and my vitamin D deficiency is at an all time low (okay, so I really don't have a vitamin D deficiency, I just REALLY miss the sun). So to lift our spirits we decided to exercise our green thumbs. None of us actually have a green thumb, but we're working on developing one. I, personally, know my limitations in the care of plants, so the girls and I made mini terrariums. I figured moss grows under our trees in the backyard with no help, it seems like something that we could keep alive. I like the little burst of green that these bring into the house (seeing as we have no house plants).



My mother is a little more adventurous and much better at keeping plants alive (I need verbal cues for food and drink, not just silently waiting for water in a little pot). She and the girls planted their flower seeds in starter pots. Hopefully they will sprout and we will be able to transfer them when the weather gets warmer. The cashier at Home Depot seemed very surprised that the girls wanted to plant their own garden and that we were letting them. I guess they don't get too many kids in to buy potting soil and seeds (which is unfortunate).