Misc. Monday-leftover summer

For those of you in the south, summer may still be hanging on, but for those of us here in WI, it is quickly fading away. The temperatures average in the 60's during the day and we've had to have the heater on a couple of times. One evening I even turned the electric blanket on. There's nothing like warm sheets on a cold evening. :o)

I love fall. I love cooler weather, wearing sweaters, warm soups, snuggling, hot chocolate, watching the leaves fall (which I get to do from every window in our house :o). And while my veggie garden gave up a couple of weeks ago, it seems like my flower beds don't want to let summer go. I transplanted a couple dozen daisy plants from our pasture into my flower bed this year. While most of these, and all the ones in the pasture have long since given up their flowers (I think sometime back in July), I have one plant that keeps on blooming. I checked today and not only are there several flowers still blooming, there are a couple more buds that haven't even opened yet.

 A friend gave me a couple different types of flowers last year. I don't remember the names of them, and wasn't sure what they would look like till they bloomed this year. These are some of them. They were the last flowers in my garden to bloom. I think next spring I will transplant a couple of these to other parts of the garden so they are spread around. Right now it looks kind of funny with this huge patch of purple in one corner and everything else is just green.

Anyway, I say all this to show you the pretty arrangement I decided to make this weekend with these two pretty flowers. I had picked the gladiolas a couple of days ago and these are the last of them (although I found another plant out in the garden that hasn't bloomed yet). Even though it's fall outside, this arrangement reminds me of summer-well, spring, actually.

And here's another bit of summer that I plan on enjoying all winter long.

I picked close to 10 gallons of berries this year! I froze them right away, and right now I'm in the process of processing them. :o) Yesterday I made a batch of jam, and today I started a batch of syrup, but I think I will finish it off tomorrow. Right now, I'm sitting down enjoying this:

Home made yogurt, granola, and raspberry sauce...YUM!!! I know what's for breakfast tomorrow. :o)

Well, I will close this for now, enjoy my dessert, and get some snuggle time in with the little one before she heads off to bed. Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Family Friday

So I've been missing in action for a couple of weeks. As you may have imagined, once we started our home schooling year, my free time kind of dwindled a bit. It didn't help that I had a birthday party to plan and several intense cakes to do. I will post more about most of the cakes over on my craft website later, but I will show one of them here because it was for a special little 8 year old's birthday-namely, Michelle's. Here is the cake I made for her. I'm posting a lot of pictures because there were so many cute details on it.

This was a fun theme to play with.

LOVE the little caterpillars!

The ladybugs and bees were cute too. :o)

I think this little guy was my favorite. :o)

 I took these as the party was getting started, but then I got so busy with the girls and the activities that I forgot to take pictures of any of the girls! Next year I'm going to hire someone to take pictures for me. 

Here are a couple of birthday pictures I did get of Michelle before and after her party. I woke her up with breakfast in bed (she talked about this to anyone who would listen for about a week after).

She loved the happy face I made with blackberries.

 And here she is in the birthday shirt. I made this shirt when Nick was little and each year they pose with it on for me to get pictures and see how big they've grown. If I could do it again, I would have bought a large men's shirt instead of a medium. Nick outgrew this one sometime in his teen years.

I guess I should get off of here now. Mike took Michelle to a football game, and Angel went to another football game with some friends so I'm home alone. I think I will take advantage of the quiet and either get some reading done, or see about processing some of those berries stashed away in my freezer. :o)

Till next time...

God's love and blessings

Through the house Thursday-Michelle's room

It's been a crazy few days, but I have a couple of minutes to sit down and thought I'd share some of the progress we've made in Michelle's room. If you remember this post,you know that we had to rip out a wall and repaint due to a mold issue. We did get the walls all painted, and she's all moved back in, but I'm still working on the decorative mural. I just haven't been in a painting kind of mood, so it keeps getting put on the bottom of the to-do list. Hopefully I'll get it done soon.

Here's a couple of shots of the only finished part. I turned her light switch into a bird house. She picked out the type of butterfly she wanted me to paint.

 

Here she was pretending to hold the lady bug on her hand, but I didn't notice the butterfly antennae on her head until the picture was on the computer. :o)

 

That's a quick look at our house this week. Hopefully next week I'll have some pictures of our newly painted a organized laundry room. :o) Just need to make a few tweaks here and there and snap some pictures in the daylight. 

How about you? What new things are going on in your life? Have you got some unfinished projects? I'm going to do my best to get this one done soon so I can check it off the list. (I LOVE checking things off the to-do list :o)

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!