Jordan, Martha and Lydia

I decided to build myself a garden shelf using existing materials: old Pallets.

First you have to cut off one side of the pallet (making sure that you leave 2 supports).

Then you take the slats that you cut off the one side, and get those ready.

Here are both sides of the shelf.

Starting to assemble.

Many bent nails and pounded fingers later, behold, The finished item. (pretty much.)

The shelf was too heavy for me to carry into the garage by myself, so I left it where I finished it. I waited for Jordan and Austin to come home to help me carry it in. Jordan arrived separately from Austin, and admired my shelf. Austin arrived later, and when I asked him and Jordan to carry it in, he informed me that he had seen the shelf when coming in, he saw the shelf, thought it was kinda rustic, but was meant to be broken up for firewood. Thankfully, he didn’t decide to do it right then and there! Needless to say, I told him that if he had broken it up, I would have cried! (Remember the pounded fingers?)

It is now happily (and safely) situated in the garage!

Usually, I don’t manage to capture my projects that I like doing on camera…at least the before pictures, as I start my project, then realize that perhaps pictures would be nice. It almost happened here. So, Jordan invested in a weed wacker. I am quite thrilled. We discovered that he has a hard time operating the weedwacker due to allergies (and being at work), so I donned his old work boots, a long skirt, a wet, long sleeve heavy shirt (it is cooler that way, believe me), a hat and sunglasses, and tromped outside to do my lady of the house duties. 😀

Due to the summer rains (and no weedwacker) this is what the front yard near the house looked like.

A closer look at how thick and tall the weeds are.

This is what it looked like afterwards.

Quite the difference, huh? Man, it sure felt good.

This is around one of the trees on the West side of the house. Those weeds are about waist high, at least.

Afterwards. My, how satisfying it felt! Weedwacking has such a nice sound to it too. Hearing the motor, and the sound of the twine ripping up the overbearing weeds. Ah…makes me want to go at it again!

Getting into the back yard. Mostly grasses.

Ahhh…gone!

Gone!

The North side of the house. Still back yard. Look at how green those weeds are!

The most annoying part of all, how grown up those weeds are around the trees and the clothes line, which is very economical in the summer!

Gone! Gone! Gone!

Weeds in the garden bed on the North side of the house.  I hate walking on the path when the weeds are so overgrown.

YES! Vanquished!

The  northeast part of the house. I didn’t like looking out of my bedroom window because things were so overgrown! The weeds are a little wilty looking because of a lack of rain.

Yay…I can see the ground again!

It looked so nice! And yes…I have an electric weedwacker. lol…I felt almost like it was a little sissified because it didn’t have horrid smelling exhaust coming out the back end like the gas ones do, but I was satisfied with the job it was doing!

To the east side of the house, at the garden.

(oh yeah, my wild pet lizard friend.)

Back by the garden/kitchen door. Note my lizard friend.

To the southeast.

This was as far as I got for now. I felt so good. It looked so nice. And I only spent about 2 hours doing it too. Ahhh…

I decided that, look as I love tea parties, ask and I have a plastic set (from years and years ago), sovaldi sale that I should have a tea party with Lydia.

Yes, I did put the towel down for a reason. Tea parties with toddlers can be messy!

Trying to figure out how the whole thing works.

A very wet Lydia, having fun playing with the water, and pouring “tea” for me and her.

All in all, it was fun, but I think that next time…we may have tea in the bathtub!

Lydia is shown here helping me mop the floor.

I love it when she helps me with little things like that. Sure, she’s not able to handle the adult sized tools, but she’s getting a joy out of doing something like this. May I always encourage her help with things around the house, and may she always grow up accustomed to helping me out. 🙂

I had some lovely guests stop by. I had a pair of road runners in my lawn…

(and on my car).

It was the first time that I remember seeing them in the wild, so I had to get a picture of them.

Of course, it was while I was in the kitchen making bagels that I saw the road runners.

Whole wheat and honey bagels, which I went through the traditional process of boiling them before I baked them.

I took a picture of the bagels through the oven door while they were baking.

A bit of kitchen inspiration: I was getting a bit annoyed with turning my soap container upside down in order to soap up my scrubber to do the dishes, so I went to Bed Bath & Beyond and got a replacement lotion dispenser pump (it was $2.99). I then scrubbed the label off of an empty Soy Sauce bottle (note the chinese symbols), and stuck the pump on top. As the neck is not big enough to screw the pump on to, but small enough for the pump to sit snugly inside, I figured it was good enough for me. It makes washing my hands and doing dishes so much easier! I’m wanting to do something like that for the bathroom now, as clear glass is really elegant.

I’m also including my own way of hollowing out a pineapple. I was making a tropical dish and wanted to use the pineapple for the serving dish.

I split a whole pineapple in half,and then cut down the center and as deep (yet angled) as I could down the sides.

Then I cut a 30-45 degree angle cut from the center cut towards the outside of the pineapple with a paring knife.

I then went and re-cut the outside cut to loosen the spear, and then lift the spear away.

With the bottom part, I cut as angled as I could from the top down and from the bottom up to loosen the bottom spear. (Each half yielded 4 spears.) If I had had a curved knife, I would have been able to make the cuts cleaner, but as I didn’t, there was still large pieces of pineapple in the bowl. I used a melon baller to scrape out the remainder and set it aside.

Finished product:

Sesame pork & Pineapple, served with Yellow Rice in Pineapple halves.

Included with the meal were some tropical drinks that I served up. (The boys were all very impressed).

The orange layer was a blend of strawberry, mango, papaya and pineapple with gingerale, the pink was strawberry (sweetened with honey), the yellow was the remainder of the pineapple I had hollowed earlier, and the green was blended kiwi. Each glass was topped with a slice of kiwi and a chunk of pineapple.

Behold the table.

It was VERY good. 🙂

Here is a baby quilt that I just finished. It was for my dear friend Ruth Spencer’s first nephew. I figured the sailboats would be appropriate, as they live the island of Trinidad.