Finished Baby Blanket!!

The First Sunrise of Summer!

So beautiful!

Baby crochet...

Here is a little project I'm working on.  I'm making a granny square, crocheted blanket for our little girl who will be born in September!  I used Instagram on my phone, so the colors are not accurate but I love how they look.  The orange color is actually a dark pink.

Gluten Free Bread! Yummy!

I went to Indianapolis with my mother-in-law this past weekend to check out a huge homeschool convention and while we were there we ate at Jason's Deli for dinner.  Did you know that they have gluten free sandwhiches?!?! Well, they do and I got one and it was awesome!  They use the Udi's brand of sandwhich bread.  I was determined to buy some ASAP because I could not get this bread out of my head now that I knew it existed.  I went to the health food store and this awesome bread has an equally "awesome" price to go along with it.  $6.50 AND the loaf is half the size of a normal loaf!  I'm not saying that it isn't worth it, but frugal-me decided to try to make it myself first.  I did tons of research and looked at tons of pictures of gluten-free bread online (my judgement is heavily swayed by pictures) and settled on this recipe.  It's called "Mock Wheat" bread.  I picked a winner!  I don't know if I am going to even try another recipe because I like it so much!  And it LOOKS good too!

And here is some lettuce that I harvested from my garden yesterday!  It tastes SO good!  The top picture is a variety of leaf lettuces and the bottom one is my mesclun mix.  :)

Instagram!!

This is probably old news to a lot of people, but I just discovered Instagram!  It's a free app on the iPhone and I am in love!

Summer is here!

 So here is a little update on the goings on here at our house.  These photos are mostly of the garden area but I have a few projects that I am going to later post about too.

Here is the current state of my peas!  I planted them mid-march and they are FINALLY making pea pods!  Peas always take so long, but they are so worth it!  Can't wait til they are ready to harvest!

Here are my bush beans!  They look pretty good so far, but I am worried that I am going to have to break out the Sevin spray to fight off the Mexican Bean Beetle Bug.  Evil things!  This particular variety is a french filet bean.  YUM!

My lovely onion and lettuce patch!  So pretty!

This is my oak leaf lettuce...

...Romaine lettuce...

...and green leaf lettuce (also called Black Seeded Simpson).

My gorgeous mesclun mix!  This will probably be harvested this weekend!

Here is my tomato patch with english cucumbers and basil in between.

My english cucumbers!  I am attempting to underplant my tomatoes with them for two reasons:  to help choke out the weeds and to keep the soil moister during the hot summer weeks. 

And here is a full view of the garden!

Here is my most favorite plant!  My Eden Rose!  It's finally blooming!  Although I am disappointed that they aren't blooming as much as last year.  I think I might need to fertilize them really well.  

A vase of roses I put together yesterday all from my garden!  The light pink ones are the Eden Rose and the the red ones are a variety called Blaze and they are planted on the side of my house.  My husband has been wanting to get rid of the Blaze rose for a couple years now because it has never bloomed and it looks really shabby where it is (we need to move it to a better location).  But yesterday he saw these in the vase and now he loves them!

Have a great weekend!

Back again... (the second time)...

So I haven't written any blog posts in forever because we are expecting baby number three!  I've been so tired and finally got through three months of morning sickness I just haven't had the time or energy to keep up with it.  Anyway, I'm back and hopefully I can keep this up to date!  :)

So yesterday, we decided to get the girls guinea pigs!  We've actually been thinking about it for several months now, but just decided to go with it.  We found these two brothers on Craigslist from a family who's pigs had babies back in December.  They are so sweet and tolerate the girls' rough handling of them very well.  I think Ava thinks that she just has to squeeze harder to keep the guinea pig where she wants it!  This is gonna take some training.

We haven't named them yet.  We are trying to get the girls to come up with the names, but I really don't think they care.  We thought that guinea pigs would be the best animal because of our small house and the fact that I am allergic to cats, but it turns out that I am allergic to guinea pigs too.  I was so disappointed.  It's not so bad that we have to get rid of them, but I can't really handle them much without getting a scratchy throat and hives.  Ughhh.  Oh well.  I am going to give it my best and hopefully it will be fine long enough for me to start allergy shots in the fall after the baby is born.

Here is Katie with her rock garden!  She made it all by herself and cut various flowering weeds to "plant" in it.  It is so cute!  She was so proud of it!  She even watered it with her new watering can she got for Easter.  :)