Porch update

Hello again so soon! Yay! I thought that I would give you an update on my porch since it's been my pet project of the summer months. Remember last year? CLICK HERE. Go ahead and review, I can wait.



Back again? K, lovely! Anyway, it was coming along well enough. My problem was with the chairs. I like the chairs, but they have foam cushions and weren't really meant for outdoor use. I have been on the hunt for comfortable chairs (I like to sit and read on the porch) that were meant to be outside and wouldn't break the bank. Good luck, right? I had friends watching for me and one even found a set I liked, but the chairs didn't have arms, so I thought I'd wait and see if I found something I liked better before I jumped into buying that set. Just DAYS later, while in Fleet Farm, my mom found the perfect set! It was comfy, the chairs had arms, there was a table to match and it was on clearance! ROCK ON! So, here it is:
My little endtables that I made last summer are holding up quite well. Tucker decided to paint the walls of the porch with spray paint this spring. At least it's a pretty robin's egg blue. :) We'll be power washing and restaining hopefully this summer, so I didn't freak out about it tooooo bad!

I also picked up this little fountan at a yard sale this spring. I love the calm, gently falling water noises. And the kids love to play in the water. lol. I emptied it now because I was raising mosquitos in there, in advertantly, ooops! Guess I'll fill it just when I want to use it.

This is the table. I cut some lilies from my garden and some other misc flowers to have some fresh flowers on the porch. I had peonies in there earlier this spring that were super cool looking. The green candles are citronella candles so the bugs don't eat me alive while I'm out there. I'm still waiting for Tim to have time to hang my ceiling fan. In the meantime, I haul a standing fan out there when I need a little breeze (like today).

And this is the little bench that Tim made out of a toddler bed. The cushion is dirty, but aside from that, it's held up as well. The plant on the right there is from my Uncle Lowell's funeral. I had to repot it since it outgrew it's other pot. I love how long and kind of wild it's getting.

Ok, so that's the grand tour of the porch....my favorite place to just sit and chillax.

11 months

It was all I could do.

We officially have internet back at the house and I could NOT be happier about it! It's sooooo nice to be able to pay bills, read facebook, and look for recipes on a real computer vs. my phone and SOOOOOOOOO much more convenient than the library since their hours don't usually jive with my schedule.

I have update my porch....again! So, I will be posting pictures of that soon as well as some other pictures of the kids and some updates on them as well. See you soon!!

The End Tables (and I need your help!)

I finally got around to building my end tables for the front porch and then painting them up. When I bought material for them, I didn't have a plan, other than I didn't want to spend a lot of money on them. I found a piece of pine that was the right width and double the length that I wanted for less than $1 at Menards-SCORE! So then I picked up two furring strips, each 8' long thinking 2' for each leg. I found a gallon of Behr exterior paint on the oops rack at Home Depot in "Sonoran Sands" for $5 and that will be more than enough for this and many, many other projects!

So, I had my grandpa cut the piece that I was going to use for the top in half so I had two square-ish pieces. Then, I realized that by simply cutting 4 legs for each table was not going to make it very sturdy because there would be no bracing. 4 kids = the need for bracing. So I scoured the internet for ideas, picked my daddy's brain, and my BIL's brain. Didn't find anything that I really thought I wanted. So, I took bits and pieces from all 3 places and came up with these tables.


For one, I realized that 24" is too tall for the space I wanted. 12" would be plenty tall. So, I had my BIL cut me 8 pieces 12" long. Then, I laid two pieces on the board flush with one side and measure the amount of space that was left and that became the length of the piece that is the bracing section. In my case, that was 8 1/2" and I used 4 of those for each table.


Now, I could have lined the braces up so it made a square around the legs, but I didn't like that look. So, I put two of them high and two of them low and I love how it turned out.



While I was in the store picking up some screens we had made for our back door, I found a paint sample that I fell in love with. But it was interior paint . There was an easy fix to this problem...have them mix me some exterior!



The plan became to paint the legs the sonoran sands Behr paint and the tops were this gorgeous Pollination from EcoLoco. The only problem is I think it might be a smidge too bright and that creates other project possibilities....do I paint the table between the two chairs to match the new end tables and/or should I paint the frames of the white chairs the pretty green? Let me know what you think! Last night I had the brilliant idea of using some white bed sheets (the unfitted ones) to make floor to ceiling "drapes" for out there that we could close to create some privacy and/or to keep the bugs out/down. Not sure about that, yet, either. Anyway, that's the long and short of it. Hope you like the tables and I can't wait to hear what you think about my other potential projects!

Has it really been that long?

WOW! I didn't realize that it's been so long since my last post. Not really feeling like blogging lately and seems like there isn't much to blog about. Though when I took pictures off my camera today (first time since June 16th) there were 179 pictures, so OBVIOUSLY something was worth taking a picture and therefore blogging about!


While I was watering plants this morning, I noticed that my rosemary wasn't doing so hot, so I pulled him out of his spot in the flower bed and planted him in a pot on the front porch, added some vines and petunias that I hadn't planted yet. That turned out nice and started me on a whirlwind cleaning expedition of the front porch. I really need to power wash it and restain and seal the wood, but sweeping made a major improvement for today.


My SIL, Sue, gave me some great white chairs when she was cleaning out her storage unit over the 4th, and they found a home on my front porch as well. Two weeks ago, while I was at my parents, I saw a great oval mirror with a nasty gold frame in the pile headed for Goodwill so I rescued that and gave it a coat of spray paint and that turned up on my porch, too.



Then I had a mad stretch of ambition and tackled a project I never thought I would with Tim being gone....I used the mitre saw to trim down a scrap piece of lumber to use as the base of a cushion I made for the bench that Tim whipped up using the old toddler bed frame that met an untimely end as a bed, but was destined for greatness as a bench. A couple weeks ago, Tim made a beautiful hoosier style cabinet for someone and had this scrap piece laying there from the backing...so I grabbed it up and trimmed it to size. It was a bit too wide for the mitre saw, but I cut what I could, then flipped the material the other way, lined up the blade and cut again and it was perfect! Then I took some quilt batting to use for filler and some material I had laying around from another project (that I have yet to finish...) and stapled it to the base. EASY PEASY once I got the base board cut! I popped it in and I love the results! Here's the bench before the cushion....
And after.....


And so, with those improvements, a couple throw pillows and a lamp, I give you my front porch...comfy and cozy and waiting for a ceiling fan for many summer nights sitting there reading or chatting or just relaxing.

Laws Of Illusion

Recently, I was contacted by the One2One Network to see if I wanted to review a new CD by Sarah McLachlan. I remember hearing her music, but didn't realize that it's been 7 years since she's had an album. I took the chance and have to say I LOVE IT! It's great to have music that you can listen to with the kids around...I wasn't too careful about that before, but since Riley's favorite CD is not one I care for a 7 year old to listen to, I do have to be more careful and this is a great one for the whole family!

I've had the CD playing for days while I'm cleaning or playing with the kids...just whenever we're home. I've even caught myself singing along. :)

If you like the music Sarah has put out in the past, you'll love this!


(CD was provided to me for review, but all opinions are my own. Thanks!)

Tucker Story

I have a funny story that I forgot to share.

A couple weeks ago, Tucker got up early so Tim was helping him get dressed. Tim sent him to the bathroom to get his undies. It took him a long time, so Tim went to see what he was up to. Turns out he found something more fun than undies.

He unwrapped and was trying to insert a tampon. He looked up and told Tim, "I need dis in my butt, Dad."


What do you say to that? :)

Here FISHY FISHY FISHY!!

Remember that old Bert and Ernie clip where they are out on the lake and Ernie doesn't bring a fishing pole and Bert doesn't believe that you can catch fish by calling them?



It kinda feels like that around here lately. The boys (all 5 of them) are in a race to catch the biggest bass. Tim will catch a big one, then one of the boys will catch a bigger one and it goes back and forth. Tim doesn't ever get to hold the family record for more than 24 hours. This weekend, Tim caught a 17" bass in the morning.



And TJ caught a 20" that afternoon.




He wanted to cast while we were out fishing, so Tim put a big bait thing on the hook and let him go. About a half hour of him casting and reeling it in right away and we hear a big splash. We thought it was Riley catching a big one, but he yelled that it was JoJo. Tim went running. TJ was reeling it in, but trying to hang on for dear life. He got it about 5' from shore before it was too tough and Tim had to help out.

What a beauty.

Of course, the water was just too hard for Riley and Tucker to resist. Riley was playing in the water and Tucker jumped in....he didn't expect it to be so deep, so he wasn't able to catch his balance and needed Riley to rescue him. There's a reason we don't have a pool in the yard! Here's a shot of all the boys on the way home from the lake.

How does your garden grow?

Very well, thank you.

My friend Kelly asked to see pictures of my garden, so I thought I'd share them here. It's easier to load lots of pictures here than to post them on Facebook....plus my FB profile pulls my blog posts so it's win-win.

April 17th, I planted my raspberries and then on the 19th, I planted the peas between the rows of berries. This will work for me this year, but not in years to come because the berries will be too tall and pokey. :) I have 3 rows of snap peas and 3 rows of snow peas, each are about 8 feet long.
April 30th, the potatoes went in. This is the first year I've ever done potatoes, so we'll see how it goes. I may skip these in future years to have room for my peas, but we'll see. Dotted among the potatoes, I planted broccoli. 10 plants went in, but ole Mother Nature was hard on a few of them and I now have 8 plants. This day I also planted about 80 yellow onions.



May 16th the rest of the garden went in. This includes:
*15 rows of corn (2 varieties)
*5 rows of green beans (2 varieties)
*3 packets (2 varieties) carrots
*3 cucumber plants
*2 pumpkin plants (which are flowering already?!)
*2 watermelon plants
*80 red onions
*3 jalapeno plants
*10 roma, 3 cherry and 7 slicing tomato plants (That's 20 tomatoes....those of you that live close, be prepared to receive tomatoes, lol!!)
*3 celery plants
*and a cabbage that is Rugby's project for school.



Tim made me a trellis (well, one for each row) for the peas and they are climbing that pretty well. I still need to do some training there.



We have a trellis built with 2x4's and chicken wire for the cucumbers to climb, but he needs to put stakes in yet to hold it up. The tomatoes are going to be staked on broom sticks or trained around twine on a wooden frame...we'll see. We need to plan that yet.

And the most exciting news? I have baby peaches on my tree!! They are about the size of cherries right now, but this summer I WILL HAVE PEACHES!! YAY!!

So, that's how my garden is doing. How about yours?

Send clorox wipes and wine...STAT!

We're knee deep (almost literally!) in potty training #4....it's hit or miss, especially with the #2 portion of the training. Tonight, he is standing on the deck and pulls his pants to his ankles, "Me go potty outside" and I whisk him to the toilet, "No, we go on the potty" and he did. He took off running outside to play with Dad and JoJo and the neighbor boy. Five minutes later, I was heading outside to see how things are going and to see if Tim needed help, but caught Tucker trying to get in the back door. Being the FABULOUS mother that I am, I let him struggle with the door while I took the time to hide (right next to the door) to scare him when he walked in.

Should I stop here and tell you that he dressed himself earlier in the day and was sans undies? Yes, that's important to know.....

So, he gets the door open and I scare him. (yay! lol!) He's saying "Me going poops, Mom. Me going pooooooooooooooops." Too late. It had fallen from his bum, slid down his leg and out onto the concrete step. I scooped him up, pulled the pants and shoes off and plunked him on the toilet....where he realized there was poop spread on his leg, so therefore it was on the toilet seat and totally grossing him out. Straight to the shower with the kidlet, out come the Clorox wipes and while he's showering, I'm sharing this all with you....then I'm getting my wine. I may need more by the time the weekend is over.

My Amazing Godfather

My amazing godfather lost his battle with cancer last Saturday. Tomorrow is the funeral.

Uncle was a great man. Always quick with a joke and a smile. Anyone that ever met him, loved him. He was so much fun and we were all better just for knowing him. He loved his wife, Brenda, and her two girls just as much as he loves his own 3 kids. He was so self-less, giving what he could to make everyone else happy and was always the peace-keeper.

When I was growing up, I remember always laughing with him. I remember him sitting me on his lap and letting me drive his baby blue cutlass...he put it on cruise and let me steer...I was probably only 7 or 8, maybe even younger. I remember going go-carting with him. I remember going with him and his kids to the hotel in Green Bay while he was playing in a cribbage tournament. I'd watch the kids and then after we'd do something fun. The circus was in town the same weekend as that tournament, so we'd usually get to do that, too.

I remember taking Rugby and Riley out on the lake with him. Uncle loved to spend time on the water in his boat...either skiing or swimming or fishing...just having fun.

A few years ago, it was his idea to get all the family together for Christmas and get a block of rooms at a hotel with a pool and hang out there. We were living across the state at the time, but we made it for that. All of us did. And we all had SO MUCH FUN!

In recent years, he was getting into making his own wine and he was SO GOOD at that, too. He made the wine for his wedding, even. It's something I wish that I'd have talked to him more about because I'd love to learn.

I was looking for pictures to scan and post, but I can't seem to find my book with them in. Maybe that's better for now, I don't know if I could look at them without crying.

I'll miss him. I already do. We all do. He was a great man, but he's leaving behind some wonderful kids and a legacy of love. And I'm sure he's in a better place and we'll see him again someday.

Love you, Uncle.

Family Pix

Over Easter, my friend Kelly offered to take a family picture for us. It was nice because we were all dressed nicely for Easter church.


My mom hijacked it from my Facebook page and had it printed, I should have one printed, too because the family picture I have hanging on my wall is from when RILEY (my 7 year old) was 2 months old. I think it's time.

Hello there!

Hi Everyone!

If you stopped by (vs reading me in a reader) did you notice any changes lately? I love the new options for backgrounds within Blogger now! I freshened up the 'ole blog for spring with a fancy bright blue and having the option for a double column on the right side over there is super nice.

I also took the blogs I read section off and replaced it with the fancy-dancy new version that has a little snippet of each blog's most recent post....and it's tied to my google reader which I majorly trimmed today, too. I went from near 100 blogs to 38 that I just couldn't get rid of. Should be much more manageable.

Also, you may have noticed that I've been posting less often lately...kinda in a funk about that so I contacted BlogHer ads and let them know they could fill my spot with someone that is up to blogging more often than I have been. They've been super patient with me and I appreciate that, but one tiny check every 6 months wasn't really worth the pressure of posting that often. I tried to build readership, but didn't quite succeed there, either. So, this is the way it will go. I'll be deleting my reviews blog since I'm no longer with BlogHer, I can have them here instead so it's not YET ANOTHER blog to keep up with. I'm also going to try to spend some time working on Cafe Jessica.

But, what I'm really doing is making my life a bit simpler and easier to manage right now. My uncle is really sick and I'd like to worry about that....not a blog I have to keep up with or blogs in my reader. I'm also not joining more weight loss challenges at the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans for a while so I don't have to think about weighing in all the time. I'm going to attempt to make real, in real life friends. And I want to feel like I have a purpose again and be a good mommy to my boys because, honestly, I've been slacking there, too. So, expect fewer posts, but with a little luck they'll be longer and more picture filled.

Garden

Tis the season!! YAY!!! This weekend, someone on Craigslist was offering up some purple raspberry plants if someone wanted to come dig them up. Well, yes, thank you! So we went and it was just the little suckers, but we dug and dug and dug some more. My mom and grandma both think I'm nuts because I planted 8 rows of them and each row is 9 feet long. I know they are a lot of work, but I have four kids and if I expect any berries to make jam or pies with, I have to have enough for them to eat and still make things. The man we got them from said I should have berries next year, so we'll see....

Next weekend, we're hoping the neighbor is able to til the garden for me so I can plant some spring crops. I planted some peas between the raspberry rows because I just couldn't wait, but I have onions and spinach I want to plant down there yet.
I heard something on public radio about planting rye on the walkways to help keep weeds down, but need to research that some more and I'm still trying to figure out this companion planting thing. I have a ton of questions, so I might have to go to the extension office and see if someone there can help or point me in the right direction.

Blueberry munchers

How can I keep up when this is what happens when I leave the room for 2 seconds?!

Can you tell which brother was less involved here?

"Wasn't me!" -Tucker

"Whoops! Dropped one (or 12)"

"WOOHOO! Mom left the blueberries out for me!"

Going's on

Good Afternoon!

This morning, I had a tooth pulled so I am stuck sitting still this afternoon. The babies had a nap when we got home and I've been able to sit still. I'm glad that today's weather isn't as gorgeous as yesterday's or I'd be in big trouble. We are planning to do leftovers tonight since Tim isn't home yet to help make dinner. Sounds like he'll be home right around bedtime. I'm tired, but I'm tired of sitting still, too. The boys will be home from school soon, then it's homework and craziness until bed. Hopefully they don't mind watching movies and playing wii tonight. :) Have a great night! Be back to blogging soon!