Garden update

Well apparently I'm not a great gardener, but it's a learning process right??

My lettuce... well apparently it bolted and it tasted yucky.  I think that if I had actually read about how to grow it before hand it would have been better LOL.

My green beans are doing pretty good, but I don't have enough plants to grow enough beans to actually feed us, so I planted more in place of the lettuce.

The new seedlings are doing GREAT!  I'll have to thin them out a bit, but they should give me plenty of beans now.

I'm probably most excited about my first pepper~  It's a red one and I can't wait to pick it!  I also see more blooms so I should have peppers in the next couple of weeks~

Here's hoping I can actually eat this stuff!

Overcoming Fears

This weekend was a big one for us.

Littlest Monkey finally got in the pool.

To backtrack, two years ago Spring Break, while on the fishing dock at Possum Kingdom lake, he fell in.

It traumatized him.

It took a long time last summer, but he got in the water finally.

This year it was like he couldn't get that out of his mind, and the of course the ant incident...  well, he's traumatized.

So, until mid-June, this weekend in fact, he WOULD NOT get in the pool.  No way.  Scream, cry, yell, kick.

Not. Having. It.

I have to admit that it's been frustrating as the rest of us love to be outside and in the pool and he won't go near it.

But finally, that changed this weekend.

I will admit.  I was a mean Momma.

I made him.

I put him kicking and screaming on the top step.  He yelled at me.  And then we started talking about what would sink or float, but he was distracted.

And he's in.

:D

The first time he still wouldn't let me hold him, but he was in.

Last night however, he said, "I wanna go over there."

And pointed across the pool.  To the fountain.

I said YES.

And he went.

Tonight, he asked for the raft to sit on himself...

AND started jumping back into hubby.

Here's what he looks like...

And of course biggest Monkey was ready to fly...

It's all good here.

How about you?

Pinterest experiment #2, DIY photo boards

Here's the second experiment that I tried.  I love this idea, but this one is far from perfect.


Poster Photo DIY


I knew I had some photos that would work for this, but I was a little worried about the gluing part.

And I should have been :)

First of all, I took my disk of photos to Office Depot and talked with the cranky guy behind the counter.  He wasn't really interested in helping me, but we got through it.  I chose three for the boards, knowing that one might not be great if enlarged that big.  They ended up being about $5 a piece.  Still, not bad for poster sized prints!  These are on paper, not photo paper and as she says, they can wrinkle.

Next I headed to Lowe's in search of this foam board.  I finally looked at the back of the foam board in the pic and read the label.  The board that she uses is actually blue!  It's light blue, but I didn't realize that looking for it in the store.  Once I knew that, it was easy.

Next I had the Lowe's guy cut my 8 x 4 board into 2 x 4s.  It would have much better had his blade been sharp.  OY.  But we got it done and headed home.

The board has protective plastic on it, peel it off.

next, cut it to size using a SHARP tool. :)  (Mr. Lowe's man.)

Next I went to file the edges.  There were some rough edges and a weird hump edge, for interlocking panels I'm sure cause this is really insulation you know.  I used my hubby's large file in the garage and it was a MESS.  Then I painted the edges black.

Once that was dry, I tried the adhesive.  In her blog she mentioned not to use Mod Podge, so I didn't.  I went outside and tried to do this by myself.

HA.

This would be why there are no pictures of this step!!

It was pretty hard to spray and lay the photo down alone, definitely a two person job.  In this respect, my second board was better.

I got it down, with a few bubbles here and there, but the photo I used didn't really show it.  If I was too close with the spray adhesive, it made craters in the foam board. OY.

Anyway, I got it done.

It wasn't as pretty as I'd hoped.   I hung it on the fireplace originally with Command strips.

And then I popped it up there :)

After Dear Hubby got home, we agreed that we should probably move it.  He also helped me with my other one.  Here are the two final products on the wall.

This is the first one, when it's up close you can see it's not the most professional looking thing.  But, from a distance, it's ok.  Also, you can see the sunset pics that I made in the previous post ;)

Here's the second one.

The second one was much better, but I still got too close with the adhesive at one point making another crater.

These are hung with command strips on the wall and I'm ok with that for now.  I don't like the edging at all on it, the foam board doesn't look great.  I'm thinking that I'll recruit Hubby and his mitre saw to create frames for them :)

I don't know how I'll do this again, but I like the idea, but my for taste, it needs  some tweaking.  I'll think about it and let you know!

Once you go Mac...

Part 1

As you may or may  not know, or care, I teach 5th grade in the 'burbs.  I love my school and I love the families there.  We were fortunate enough to raise thousands of dollars in the fall to purchase 12 student iPads and one grade level iPad for every team on the campus.

WAY COOL.

I had played and played with hubby's work iPad for months.  The monkeys LOVE it and the apps are amazing.  I REALLY wanted one.  REALLY bad.

so I saved my lunch money, gift cards etc.  and bought my own. :)

I had lots of trouble deciding on the size, 16 vs. 32 GB.  (doesn't that sound techie??)  After lots of research (asking my friends) and debating was it was REALLY for, I went with the 16.  I knew I wouldn't add my music to it and I really want it to be a work/learning tool not a music player.  I have my phone for music so at the moment, this size is perfect :)  I also spent some bucks on a case.  This one is a Versavue by Targus.  Best part about it is that it durable and you can prop it up BOTH portrait and landscape.  It's very cool :)

So, now if I can ever get it out of the monkey's grubby little paws I might get to use it.  LOL.  (honestly is hasn't been too bad.)

Part 2:

About a month ago, hubby's work computer crashed.  Hard.  like smoke and fire bad.  And he hadn't backed up in months.  (shame shame.)  At the point of lowest of lows, he decided that we should get a Mac for our home computer (our desktop is older than Boy 1.  yes really.)  We also LOVE to play music while we're on the patio and recently the easiest way we've found is just play it off my work laptop.  I also take lots of pictures and those are all on my work laptop.  That's a lot of hard drive space friends.  Hubby also wanted one we could share, that would last a while and that the kids would use as well.  Memorial Day weekend we went to "look" at Macs.  Lo and behold the refurbished floor model was on sale (YES) and they added lots of things with it.  So now we have this:

She's pretty isn't she???  And let me just say, it's ridiculous how intuitive this computer is.  Hubby spent 15  - 20 minutes installing our printer on my work laptop, this took two.  It said, "do you want to add this printer?"  and we said "yes" and it was done.  CRAZY.

I'm still fiddling with the touchpad, and the swiping side to side etc but it's pretty amazing.  In fact, I'm blogging from her right now :)

So last night and we're getting ready to go to bed, we looked at the coffee table and saw this...

The Macbook, my iPad, his iPad, my iPhone (the red cassette) and his iPhone.

Guess this makes us a Mac family now huh?

Pinterest Experiment #1, photo canvas

Dear Hubby has asked for a while to have my photos all over the house.  So with Father's Day approaching, I finally get to work.

I had seen these photo canvasses on Pinterest and thought they looked great :)  So I gave it s shot.  Here's the original link...

Photo Canvas

I loved that she painted the edges instead of using ribbon as I'd seen other places.  So here's how it worked for me.

I found canvasses on sale at Hobby Lobby for pretty cheap, not as cheap as she mentions, but $2 - $4 a piece, split up over packs of two.  I found black acrylic paint for $1.50 and I bought spray adhesive that I would need for another project instead of Mod Podge.

So here is my first canvas:

I put a little paint on a paper plate and got started.  It went pretty quick.

At this point I laid one of my enlargements over the top and realized that I needed more buffer of paint on the font, so I painted a little thicker.

I didn't mention the enlargements.  I had a LOT of credits at a local photo store so I didn't actually pay anything for mine.  You can find them pretty cheap as Cosco though.

So after the canvasses were dry, I sprayed on the adhesive.  It's hard to see in the second pic, but enough to make it damp.

Then I carefully placed my photo on the top and then turned it over and pressed from the back to make sure it was smooth.  I don't have a photo of this, it took two hands!!

My enlargement was a tad bigger than the canvas, go figure.

So I took my exacto knife and tried to trim.  My first effort was not good!

After that I settled down and it went fine!  I went back with my acrylic paint and touched up and no problem!

I made 6 total last night, total time about 1.5 hours including drying time.

Here are the finished ones.  I plan on making one more today I think as they didn't fit in my space as I thought they would.  I have three 11 x 14 and three 8 x 10.

I'll add a pic once they are hung since I don't know where he wants them yet :)

Enjoy!!