Jill

I LOOOOVE last minute notes from the teachers asking to dress kids up as Mother Goose characters the next day.

Usually, I will burn the midnight oil making something. And I actually almost went down that path, looking up for inspirational images on Google (What did people do before Google?)

Then my laziness got the better of me that night, and I creatively figured out a way to have a costume in under 5 minutes.

With minimal effort...

Since I made Isabel do most of the work

She went as "Jill"

 

From Jack and Jill.

Who went up the hill. 

And in case there was any lingering doubt about it, that is a "Pail of Water" she is carrying.

(which led to an interesting conversation of "Why did they have to go up the hill to get water, momma?")

 

 Can you tell which is my handwriting and which is hers? 

I am not sure if I should be impressed that a 4 year old's handwriting can be so similar to a grownup, or if I should be embarrassed that my writing is really like a 4 year old's.

Garden

Warning-- there are going to lots of pictures of plants and dead-looking plants. So skip if you are not into gardening.

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The weather is warming up (reluctantly). And my garden is waking up from its slumber. With minimal casualties, I might add (Dumb beginner's luck)

The daffodils are always the first to pop their heads up (in my then unraked garden bed) - they were planted by the previous owners and have been coming up for the past 5 years now. These cheerful ladies are a sight for sore eyes in March/April when one is completely sick of the cold and is tempted to sell everything and move down to Mexico so that one is warm all year long.

The muscari (also known as bluebells, but not those kind of bluebells) are back in full force

And the tulips are getting encouraged by the warmth that we had this past Saturday and have grown quite a bit by Sunday.

Amazing how much difference a day of warmth can positively affect living things.

My precious hydrangeas have all returned (with the exception of two that are still showing no signs of activity -- they probably breathed their last breath sometime in the summer last year, but I shall give it a few more weeks....just in case.)

Endless Summer by Grandma's Corner -- it's her 2nd spring and doing very well indeed

Sun-tolerant Little Lambs by the front of the house -- they were looking like dried up sticks for a long while and I was worried that they weren't coming back. But this weekend was warm enough to encourage them to start waking up --

If you look closer, you'll see that there are buds growing, Being a sun-tolerant variety, it makes sense that it started to bloom later than the other shade-preferring varieties -- I assume it was waiting for the temperature to stabilize a little more.

Also happy to see that my Mother's day gift from Izzy last year is making a come-back.(There's sign of new growth at the bottom right of the plant)

It is really hard to see all these dead looking twigs and not think "Crap, they are done for". But hydrangeas bloom on old wood, so it is imperative to not remove those unsightly spindly twigs during fall/winter.

I am moving on to the back garden this year, behind the garage.
The plan is to convert it into a vegetable garden with raised beds and pea gravel paths. 

Since it really is technically still too nippy out to transplant stuff, I started the only vegetable that I was going to plant directly from seed

And after a week and a half of waiting, they are FINALLY sprouting! 

Do you see them??

How about now?

It is quite sad how excited I get over 5 little baby leaves (that was Saturday...by Sunday, they have doubled!)

But there you go.

My little baby carrots =)

Things I've learned from last year:

1) Always...and I mean, ALWAYS...wear gloves. ESPECIALLY when you have neighbourhood cats roaming the land. Do you see where I am going here? Said cats have a tendency to release their bowels when they feel the need to, and sometimes, it is right in your garden bed.

2) I like clearly defined boundaries. Pavers, planters, rocks..my garden beds HAVE to be clearly defined

3) I am still hopeless at growing keeping grass alive. Perhaps I shall set a statement and say, haven't you heard, weed-patches for front yards are the latest "in" thing now, 

I Can See Clearly Now...A Carnival!

I regret to say that Isabel has about as little chance of making it on American Idol as I do. There goes my dreams of living vicariously through her super stardom

Dash it all!

Art, Or Lack Thereof

I don't know squat about art.

However, I am quite picky over what I do choose to go on my walls (and trying not to go with commercialized, cookie cutter prints that one finds in big box stores) which explains why they are all still pretty bare 6 years later...For example, I completely do not understand the allure of abstract paintings. To me, it is pretty much equivalent to what my 4 year-old can produce, and I prefer her work over those thousand-dollar pieces.

However, those walls must be filled and I am trying to do it with the very limited categories that I do love - two which stand above all others are equine and ballet

In one of the random (but now staple!) blogs that I stumbled upon, the Etsy seller Eye Poetry Photography was highlighted in one post.

And I am in love.

And just to throw some variety into the mix, this owl....

  

Has rendered me completely speechless

The wonder of God in creating such beauty. 

Now the question is....do I pick just one and have a massive print of it, or do a collage?

I Was Waiting in the Dumpster

 

Cracked me up!

Randomness

Random pictures of from my camera and phone that I never got around to posting...

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Isabel with some of her friends at her school's Christmas pageant last year...she has bits of cannoli still on her mouth and teeth, I notice...



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My favorite view in the house is of this hallway. Something about it is just so serene.
Probably due to the lack of clutter!



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Have been starting to bake again and enjoying a proper tea time



Isabel loves scones. Or rather, she loves butter and doesn't mind the jam and the scone.



Made them rather flat today...I think I confused the thickness with another recipe when rolling it out.

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Got a nighttime visitor in the middle of the night this week...sadly, it wasn't Jeremy Renner or Shane Filan...I suppose Isabel would be the next best thing! Certainly was when I woke up in the morning and snoggled her chubby cheeks!



I shall be very sad when she looses her baby fat

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Poor Melly has to suffer through the indignity of trying on Isabel's clothes that she has outgrown.



She does take whatever we dish out to her with much patience though. She's a very sweet girl...



Who has obviously adjusted pretty well to life off the streets...

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Changed the sheets back to white, in anticipation of the upcoming spring...it brightens up the whole room



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Isabel looking like a 60s mod girl



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Dug out my old Polaroid pictures from perhaps 10 years ago.... Pictures of people who mean a lot to me, past and present



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Finally had time to drop in to the library this weekend and got my usual ambitious pile of books checked out.



The scary thing is that I do go through it all in a couple of weeks, with weekly visits to drop off those that I have finished and to pick up new ones.

I...am a reader.

Obviously.

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Trying out the reds...I think I may like them better than the whites.



I don't really imbibe in alcoholic beverages. The only drinks I crave are hot, milky teas; soy cappuccinos and diet coke lime. But those don't look so good displayed.

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Neigh

 

Isabel had a friend's birthday party to attend back in January (actually, there were 5 parties to attend back in January)

And I wanted to include something handmade into the gift.

The friend was horse crazy, according to her mother, so I made a barn-like stable to go with the pony she was getting.

 

Isabel pleaded with me to be allowed to play with it before having to wrap it up and head off to the party. It makes my heart warm when she is excited about something that I make, so I let her. 

 

It was adorable hearing her made-up conversations between her horses. 

The stable was made based on this dollhouse tutorial by UK lass in US . 

I did not follow the tutorial to the tee -- I was in a "wing it" mood and therefore glanced at the pictures and took it from there

The dimensions of the stable was increased to be able to fit the horse that it was made for, I used felt and cardboard, and the way I fitted the cardboard into the felt and secured it were....not conventional. 

The most fun portion of the project was in the details --- from the brooms to sweep the stable out, a pitchfork for spreading hay, to the individual stables inside.

I am very tempted to make a double story barn with window cutouts for Isabel

(so that the horses would actually be able to look outside, rather than staring dumbly at a blank wall -- although now I am talking about a toy being able to see, which may be a different set of problems altogether)