Little Things

I was looking through all my iPhone photos taken so far this month (and can you believe that this month is almost over?? Madness). When I think about each month as a whole the things that stand out are usually bigger things--trips, parties, special events or more major things that happened, good or bad. It's no secret that I love taking pictures, and for those bigger events I typically have my camera in tow. But when I look at my phone, the thing that is with me all the time, I notice the parts of each day that made up the month that were special, or funny, or maybe just random. Those are the little things that really make the month.

Like when I found my girl on the couch, "reading" my sewing machine manual:

Or our garage sale wins. We've been treasure hunting at garage sales this month and so far I've scored this baby doll bed/high chair set, a set of Gap pajamas, shorts & sweater, and a Little People airport with cars and airplanes included. Total investment for everything: $10.

This beauty, courtesy of Alyssa's Cupcake Confections:

Watching an almost two year old attempt a headstand:

Finding these:

This sweet, sweet girl (no, we didn't get a new dog; this is Izzy and she belongs to my parents. She stayed with us for a day while they were on vacation).

Also, seeing Izzy's patience on full display. She's a good friend to Charlotte :)

And speaking of friends, seeing these two spend time together is always fun. They're so good together and they balance each other out. It's sweet to watch them learn how to play together and share and I love how excited Charlotte gets when she finds out that she gets to see her friend.

We also seem to have acquired a woodland friend (in addition to the groundhogs, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, etc. that find their way to us):

She's sort of the neighborhood deer and makes an appearance once or twice a week. Sometimes she brings friends, but mostly it's just her. And she doesn't eat my plants or flowers, so I welcome her visits.

And lastly, one tuckered out little girl after a day of playgrounds and bike rides with her Daddy:

Enjoy this short week! Chad's on vacation all week so we have some fun things planned (including an overnight trip, more on that later!). And I'll be getting everything ready for a certain someone's 2nd birthday party on Saturday. More to come on that as well. Have a great day!

~Stacy

Hidden Treasures

I've lived in this city for almost seven years, yet last week when we visited this park I discovered an area tucked away that I never knew existed.

Behold.

It dips down behind another park area with a gazebo and house on the property and isn't visible unless you go behind all of that and come to a small trail that leads down to it. Neat :)

Have a fabulous Memorial Day Weekend!

~Stacy

Planted

Last weekend we stocked up on all of our flowers for the season. We kept it simple--just a few containers and hanging baskets with a mix of low maintenance flowers in reds and whites. My little helper made sure they were well hydrated until I had time to pot everything:

Then earlier this week I set aside a few hours and got everything arranged and planted. Done! That's my kind of gardening :)

Simple is good.

~Stacy

An Evening Ride

We took our first bike ride of the season yesterday. I finally got around to cleaning off the bikes, putting air in the tires, hooking up the trailer, etc. When did a bike ride start requiring so much prep?? Everything was covered in pollen--the rag was school bus yellow when I was done wiping everything down. May's only downfall: allergies.

We rode up to the beach since we can't head in that direction anymore without a little voice begging "Beach! Beach!". And yesterday she added to it by asking "I see seagulls? I walk in sand?" so to the beach it was. It was just before sunset on a beautiful evening and the water was completely still. Sometime soon I want to go back up there at sunset with my good camera, but for this trip the iPhone was a decent stand-in. :)

It's hard to believe just a few short weeks ago it was so ugly outside...

Happy Mother's Day weekend!

~Stacy

Green.

Green is officially everywhere. All of a sudden everything finally got with the program and bloomed and brightened. Our grass grew about six inches in three days (resulting in a clogged lawnmower and the necessity to re-mow every single row). The lawns all up and down the street aren't the pitiful looking sights they were just a few weeks ago, showing off all that winter had done to them. Now they're full and green. There's green on the ground and bursting from the trees, which are finally full enough to look lush and leafy.

Ahhh, May. I went to the garden store for the first time this season. I tend to get overwhelmed in big greenhouses like that; there's just too much to choose from and I know pretty much nothing about plants and flowers besides what I think looks pretty. Full sun, partial shade, perennials, annuals, whatever. I have to read those little plastic inserts on every single thing to know what I'm looking at and most importantly to figure out how likely I am to not kill something. My recipe every year tends to be pretty simple: ferns, geraniums, petunias, begonias if I'm feeling fancy, and then a bunch of what I just refer to as "hair", which is a technical term for the green filler plants that you add in to planters and whatnot.

Oh, and hydrangeas. I love them so. I planted a new one last spring in the back garden bed and it's doing well and I just bought and planted another one today on the side of the house. I planted it on the same side that the two original hydrangeas are on--those things get huge and are beautiful. I have no idea how old they are, but I do know that they are the only things I take extra special care of outside. They are my little pets. My newest hydrangea is one that is supposed to bloom all summer long so we'll see how that turns out.

Other than the hydrangea, I haven't bought any flowers or plants yet. I'm holding out for this weekend--the three of us are celebrating Mother's Day on Saturday and we're planning on going out to get all the flowers and things then. This year I'm not mulching--I'm just keeping it simple with a few flower pots and hanging baskets. I thought I was going to need steel rods in my spine after applying last year's 83 bags of mulch. Mulch can wait another year, and when it's time again we'll be renting a truck.

I do have one little flower arrangement to share though. Over the weekend Charlotte spent a few hours with my dad and he had picked out all the materials for her to make me a present, which she planted herself (and promptly un-planted, but we fixed it):

She watered it for me today so it should be good for awhile since she emptied her entire watering can on it :) She loves to help.

Oh, and she helped with this too:

Yeah that's right, we caught another groundhog. After we caught the last one I was vigilant about making sure there weren't others. Well, about a week or two after the first one was captured I noticed some activity around the hole on the opposite side of the house. The next day I noticed it grazing on the football field just over the fence in the backyard so I knew we had another one to deal with. We used the same method as the last time and caught this not-so-little guy in about three days.

This one was sneakier than the first. He flipped the cage on two different times without setting off the trap and managed to eat all of the cantaloupe underneath. We had just checked the trap and re-baited it about an hour before this photo was taken. I was outside with Charlotte and I heard her say "Hi groundhog, happy to see you!" so I dashed over to the side of the house and saw this:

So Chad packed him up, drove him to his new settlement, and now we appear to be groundhog free again. These things are ruthless, but I'm glad our trapping system seems to work.

But aside from unwelcome visitors, spring is here and that makes me very, very happy. Even bad days seem a little less so when the sun is shining and everything is beautiful.

Happy May.

~Stacy