Ahhhh, summer.

Tomorrow is the first day of summer!  Yay!  So, I figured I'd share some things that we've done over the past couple of weeks (as well as some cute outfits).

We took a group field trip to a small local farm and look at the sweet little farm girl that I found there!  The girls had a great time.  They picked and ate blueberries, fed sheep and horses, milked goats and fed the babies.  Zion gathered eggs and diligently (and carefully) carried them in the little basket for the rest of the trip.  She was excited to bring these eggs home and have them for dinner.

Summer has provided us with much more time to spend with our friends.  There's nothing better than sweet friends, sprinklers, Popsicles and backyard picnics!

Then there's this.  This girl is the sweetest little human being.  And this frilly, sheer floral top (Guess - $.99 at Goodwill) is one that she LOVES!  Look at that face...

Ashni is discovering her love of accessories.  This fedora gets worn a lot.  She looks so grown up when she accessorizes.

My girls are plagued (ha) with long legs and super thin waists and my husband is plagued with his disdain for them showing too much skin.  This makes buying shorts difficult.  Bijou, on the other hand, is just the right size for her shorts to fit in the waist, but not be too short.  Yay!

pink shoes - Keds ($2.99 at Goodwill)

shorts - not sure of the brand ($1.49 at Goodwill)

tank top - Land's End (free, hand me down)

Total outfit - approx $4.50

Our annual Father's Day spread.  Every year on Father's Day, I make my husband a spinach, portobello and Gruyere quiche.  It only happens once a year and it is a huge hit every time.  This year, we also had roasted potatoes, cherries with fresh whipped cream (thanks Jena) and the girls squeezed two dozen oranges for juice

School, of course, continues over the summer.  Bijou has been working on adding two digit numbers with carrying and Zion is still working on her letter sounds.  She really wants to learn to read.

It's always fun to find pictures like this on my phone.  This is what happens when kids sneak and use your phone while you are getting dressed.  (Notice the stockpile of Girl Scout cookies in the background.)

The playground is a good (free) way to kill time between afternoon activities.  We spent a little time there this afternoon.  I love this lucha libre shirt (Boo Homes - $1.49 at Goodwill) that Bijou is wearing.  LOVE IT!

Zion at the monkey bars

desert boots - Crew Cuts ($2.99 at Goodwill)

trousers - Old Navy ($.99 at Goodwill)

popsicle tank - Gap ($.99 at Goodwill)

Total outfit - approx $5

This is what big sisters are for - to wear little sisters like hats! 

pink sneakers - Vans (previously featured)

shorts - Judith March ($2.49 at Goodwill)

t-shirt - Cherokee (free hand me down)

Total outfit (without shoes) - approx $2.50

We leave in two weeks to take Ashni to fence in the Summer National Championship in Ohio.  Jena leaves for France two days after.  We will go to St. Louis at the end of July to pick up my mother for a visit.  There will be field trips and play days and workshops to fill up all the rest of our long summer days. I'm looking forward to having a great and productive summer!

SCORE!!

Today, we had a yard sale to raise a little extra money for the girls from Jena's ballet class to take to France. Several families brought things and Jena made fresh squeezed lemonade to sell.  I think they did pretty well for themselves (I haven't heard the final count yet).  It took a lot of willpower, but I did NOT buy a ton of things from the yard sale (be proud of me), but I did score an AWESOME dollhouse complete with furniture (porcelain toilet and sink, too) and a family.  I was not thrilled with the color (it was bright purple with turquoise shutters and yellow and blue trim), so I brought it home and painted it a pale yellow (because that's what we had in the garage).  Now, I think it looks like a sweet little island cottage and Zion is thrilled!

What My Kid Wearing Today

Twice a year, there is a kids consignment sale in our town.  Generally, I do not go because the prices tend to be outrageous.  This year, a friend invited me to go with her, so that is what we did this morning.  It was crowded and there were lots of overpriced things, but I did manage to find a few things for Bijou for spring and summer.  I bought seven or eight things and spent $30.  That is a splurge for me.  I am sure that they will be featured here at some point.  Anywho, this is what Zion wore today while we were out.

I found these sweet little white suede oxfords yesterday - FootMates ($1.99 at Goodwill)

grey leggings - Garanimals ($.99 at Goodwill)

denim skirt - Justice ($1.49 at Goodwill)

Grey striped Whiz Kid t-shirt - WonderKids ($.99 at Goodwill)

Striped button down - Children's Place ($1.49 at Goodwill)

Grey linen blazer - Gap ($3.99 at Goodwill)

(and her socks are hot pink even though you can't tell in the picture)

total outfit - approx. $11

How about a new segment?

I really enjoy being able to dress Zion still.  I also enjoy shopping at thrift stores.  Actually, shopping at thrift stores is really the only my kids have clothes.  It's pricey dressing four little girls!  Fortunately, our local Goodwill is a virtual treasure trove of cool clothes AND kids clothes up to a size 5 are only $.99 and the most expensive kids clothes are still only $2.49.  So, why not combine my love of dressing my kids in cool clothes and my love of thrift stores and create a new blog segment (yes I know, I am not good at keeping up with this blog as it is, so adding something new is probably not my best idea...) called "What's My Kid Wearing Today?"  Whenever I feel like one of my clan looks particularly stylish, I will post pictures.  So without further ado...What's My Kid Wearing Today?

It really is only possible to take one or two sane pictures of any of my children.  After that the insanity sets in...  Anywho, here's a break down of the ensemble, lol:

Boots - Old Navy (I actually bought these new and they cost me a whopping $25.  Got them in the boys section because all of the girls' boots seemed very impractical)
Leggings - Gymboree ($.99 @ Goodwill)
Skirt - Justice ($1.49 @ Goodwill)
Sweater - OshKosh ($.99 at Goodwill)
Bomber Jacket - Hawke and Co. ($3.99 @ Goodwill)
Fuzzy Hat - Not sure ($.99 @ Goodwill)

Total outfit (minus the boots) - approx. $9.00.  Not too shabby, right?

Winter wonderland party and other stuff

Okay, here are some pictures from Bijou's birthday party. It turned out exactly the way I pictured it. Well, I pictured it in a nice clean room, painted a nice soft blue, with maybe just a fireplace with a mirror over it or something. But it was just as nice in our rather cluttered school/dining/multi purpose room. I lost my camera in the house halfway through the party, so there are no pictures of Bijou blowing out the candles. But here are some birthday party pics and some other stuff that has happened over the past few weeks.

The morning of Bijou's birthday. I made her birthday shirt the night before. I stenciled the sneaker and ironed some rhinestones on (the girls loves her sparkle).

These are the goodie bags from the party. They included the crayons (from and earlier post) and a handmade finger puppet (either owl or fox).

I made shortbread cookies with lemon icing for the kids to decorate. We had snowmen and snowflakes!

The cupcakes were chocolate with vanilla buttercream frosting. I used snowflake stencils and sprinkled cinnamon over them to create the shapes on top. Everyone had their own mug for hot chocolate with a little tag with their names on it.

I love between meal parties (after lunch before dinner) because I don't have to try to prepare food. We had popcorn, pretzels and hot chocolate!

The bigger girls helped cut snowflakes out of coffee filters to decorate the windows. We pulled a branch from the backyard and hung snowflakes from it. This was a VERY low budget party.

Okay, off of the birthday party.... the dollar store had these piggy banks! YAY! So I bought one for each of the girls...

...and let Bijou go wild with Sharpies. The older girls painted theirs.

And this was my latest cool Goodwill find. Zion rides it around the house and I don't have to worry about having to push her around on the tricycle anymore when it gets warm. This on is just her size. It was $7 well spent.


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A few of my favorite things...

I love finding great things at the thrift store (or on the side of the road or in the trash or in my grandparents' basement). I keep a shelf or two on my bookshelf just for all of my random things that I love. My current favorites are these...

The awesome fan is something I got from my grandmother years ago. It's one of my most prized possessions. It's really loud, but it still works (we don't use it because of all of the small fingers in the house that could be potentially lost). I got the little Japanese kokeshi doll at a thrift store in St. Croix a few years ago. That wooden bullet thing is a set of nesting dolls just waiting on me to make up mind about what I'm going to paint on them (I will make up my mind eventually). The little blue bottle of tooth powder that I bought at my next door neighbor's garage sale (there's still some tooth powder in it). I really love old cameras and I found this 8mm Revere at the Salvation Army for $3. It weighs a TON and still works! The metal "ORTH" is a broken piece of a sign that I found in a parking lot. My "stuff" shelf changes fairly regularly as I find new stuff, but this is what it consists of today. Oh, the portrait in the background is the first one I painted of my husband and the little 7UP photo was taken by a friend.

Really? Another awesome find?

Yeah, another awesome thrift store find! It has been a good week. We found these canisters at the Goodwill today. They were $7.99 for the set and the lids are STEEL!! Yay me!!!

Fun Thrift Store Find

I haven't posted any good thrift store finds lately, so here you go. On a little impromptu trip to the Salvation Army the other day I stumbled upon this little case for $3. I had no idea what it was or even how to open it.


Fortunately, I was curious enough to figure out how to open it instead of just walking away. Oh how glad I am I opened it! I love all of the colors and the little wooden spools and it came with pinking shears - good, heavy, solid metal pinking shears like my grandmother used to have! Mmmmmm, love it....

Abacus Lessons

Okay, so I love thrift store and antique shop hopping. It's a love that I inherited from my mother. On a recent trip, my mom (who loves boxes and containers) found two very nice little boxes that, we discovered, housed a compass in one and an abacus in the other. And because I am always thinking about school, I enlisted my mother to teach the girls how to use an abacus. Really, I sucked her in to doing it because I never learned how to use an abacus, but it seems like an awesome skill to have. So, the girls had their first abacus lesson today. They picked it up pretty easily and I'm sure they'll be pros in no time.



I guess today was guest teacher day in our little school house. Daddy did a lesson on Islam. I'm really glad that he volunteered to teach the girls a little bit about the faith and how he was raised. I think it's important for the girls to know about a variety of different faiths and to see how they are similar to one another and how there are principals in each that can enrich their lives. I think it is especially important to understand the faiths that helped shape their parents. Hopefully we can keep up the family teaching. I would love for Daddy to incorporate some yoga and yoga principals into the weekly routine and Granny to help out with handwriting (she has the best handwriting) and family history. School is so much nicer when everyone has a hand in it.

Dia de los Muertos

On, yet another, thrifting expedition yesterday, I picked up a little pair of white canvas sneakers for Zion (the previously painted robot sneakers are still a bit big). These were only $.50!! For some odd reason, they were screaming for Day of the Dead skulls!! So I spent a couple of hours this afternoon listening to Jimi Hendrix and painting VERY tiny skulls. I don't know if it's some sort of sickness or masochistic side, but WHY in the world would I choose to paint something do detailed on something so small??? (I mean, I had to paint them with a toothpick and a VERY tiny brush....)Who knows, but I think they turned out pretty cute!