TreasuresInTerraCotta

We didn't take any big vacations but we did a few fun outings locally. We're back to school this week, so I guess I need to move on from Summer Recap collages and start taking school pictures!  

The garden continues to provide a bit of a focal point most mornings either watering or harvesting or searching for bugs.  Not to mention providing cucumbers, jalapenos, bell peppers and lots of tomatoes.  I haven't bought any from the store in months now.  If I could just perfect growing limes, garlic and cilantro I could make salsa any time!  Every year I probably end up with hundreds of garden pictures, but I just can't get enough of them.  They never fail to make me happy or to surprise me when I look back and see the changes. I feel like I have finally started to make progress on the learning curve of Gardening.  The soil in my two bed areas is rich and deep.  I know what grows well in our area.  I've started doing things without realizing that I'm doing them.  I'm getting volunteer plants.  And the garden is producing. So it's time to branch out.  We dug a new garden bed in late June and planted a few seeds when the r...

Our summer has been full of little things.  In fact, I started keeping track of all the "little things" because it felt like we weren't doing anything!  We didnt' take any trips.  We didn't have any company.  We didn't spend a fortune.  We stayed home.  We took little trips around town.  We tried to stay cool. And I downloaded Picasa and learned how to make these cute collages. Here's my first attempt. We borrowed a couple science books from the library, kept a list of interesting ideas on the refrigerator and bookmarked fun science from the internet.  Not to mention simply enjoying the world around us and the crazy nature of Southern Arizona. Most of the kids around here are back to school already or will be later in the week.  We'll start in less than two weeks, so sadly, we are starting to wrap-up summer...and trying to cram in all the stuff we wanted to do.  Stay tuned for more Summer Recaps. 

The kids are all ready for summer fun!  My sister found this  Freezer Paper Stencil Tutorial at MADE  and we decided the six cousins needed matching shirts for all the sumer fun we have coming up in July.  We picked up shirts in various shades of blue, dug out some old fabric paint, bought a humongous roll of freezer paper and then the debate began.  What should the stencil be?  There was much discussion, second-guessing and internet searching for clip art while trying to find something that was: ~easy to cut ~visually appealing ~gender-neutral ~summer-y ~and fun We finally settled on a simple camp fire.  All of the kids (except the 2 year old) painted their own shirts.  Each one is slightly different but they are all adorable.  (I'll post more pictures when we get the kids all together.) I wish we had done this craft earlier in the summer so the kids would have had "camp shirts" for all the out-and-abo...

This is what a homeschool kid gets to do on his first day of Summer Vacation.  Egg Contraption ready for an Egg-Drop Calvin engineered a styrofoam Eegee's cup tied to a plastic bag parachute.  Packing peanuts were added to the cup and then the egg was placed inside.  A second cup with more peanuts was taped on top to prevent the egg from dropping out or bouncing out upon impact. A few homeschooled kids enjoying summer vacation! Up, up, up... and up, up, up... 75-85 feet up Here comes Calvin's egg. Nice and slow It made a nice soft landing The egg survived! Do you think we should tell Eegee's that thier cups helped to save the egg?  Maybe we could get some flavor-of-the-month out of the deal! We don't have any big plans for the summer, but we have a running list of things to do at home and around town, including: throwing water balloons, swimming, planting a butterfly garden, taking treats to the p...

One of the local school districts started back to school this week!  It put me in a panic!  Where has summer gone?  How are we doing on our list of summer fun ideas?  Have we actually done anything fun?   I feel like we need to cram a whole bunch of summer fun into the next couple weeks.   But, in my defense, here are a few of the things we've done in the past couple weeks.   We made pinecone bird feeders ( again ).  This time, I was much more prepared and it was a lot more fun.   We spent part of a morning doing crafts at the kitchen table.  We seems to make crafty messes a lot, but this time we were all doing it together and I got a couple pictures.  Truman got to experience water coloring for the first time. For kid's art work Crayola Water Colors are the best !  Look at that bold red that Andrew is working on.  (And they washed right off the baby!) ...

Tempera paint smells like elementary school! Good thing we got lots of hand-me-down paints from my cousin! And some treasure boxes courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa.   Gotta put those old campaign signs to good use!   Once the baby got messy I popped him in the tub. Leave the baby unattended in the bath or leave the boys unattended with the paint!?  That's when it got interesting...look at the look on his face!! "The baby was only in the tub five minutes!!" Yes, tempera paint on vinyl signs is better than ice skating!