Our Garden is taking off!

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are recent pictures of our garden, taken this weekend, and made into a pretty slideshow for you!

Spoiled? No... well maybe... okay, definately

So, I never thought that I would be one of "those" people.

You know the ones, they spoil their animals, and treat them like children. They spend oodles on money on their animals. I have always known I loved my animals, and I want them to be happy, but one of those people? Never.

But I am. I have come to terms with it, accepted it, and know that I will always love my (future) children and husband more, and will not spend outside our means on our pets, but I do love them very much, and have started buying more and more for them.

With Roxie, it was a necessity. She destroyed her toys, so we had to buy replacement (stronger) toys. She destroyed them, we got new ones again. (Now she has bones and KONG products, nothing else can live).

Ellie we bought a few toys at first, but she really wasn't interested. She would play with the interactive feathers and stuff for a bit, but not really. She would much rather chase a pen or a chapstick around the room anyways, and we had plenty of those, so it was a non-issue.

Enter the kittens. These two play with EVERYTHING! And when I say play, I mean rough and tumble, jump off things chase around the room till they fall asleep play. These kittens, who are filling the cat space left by Ellie would be spoiled for that reason alone. Every time we went to the pet store, I would buy another toy. We had got them a little scratching post, but it was clearly not cutting it for these two little rambunctious climbers.

So... and here is the reason for the post... we decided to spoil them with this deluxe cat tree. It was on sale, and it was online so it didn't cost us lots, but Ellie sure never had something like this. But the kittens love it, and it brings us joy seeing them love it. And isn't that what spoiling someone you love is all about?

So after starting this dress well over a month ago... maybe a couple months... I told myself this weekend I HAD to finish it.

It shouldn't have taken long, all I had left was the zipper, the hem and the ribbon (I'll explain why this doesn't exist later). But the problem was that I had accidentally made the dress too big. I know, you're thinking that's a good thing, but not really, because I had to try to rectify the mistake by taking it in.

I am getting all my supplies out, and realize that I have somehow misplaced the portion of my pattern that explains how to do the zipper. I search everywhere, and it is nowhere. So, I will not change my goal, and left without options, I decide that I will just wing it, because how hard can a zipper be?

In theory, not that hard. In practice, when the dress is made too large, very.

I pin the zipper in place, and try the dress on. Too big. I undo ALL the pins, take in the sides, rinse and repeat. Very hopeful, I try it on, and .... still too big. I undo ALL the pins again, take in the sides, try it on, and it is a better fit, but the middle is still too loose. So I take out the middle pins, hoping that I can just re-pin those areas... nope, won't work, I end up fixing all the pins again. It finally fits!

I sew the zipper in place, then I take it off the sewing machine to look at it. I groan. My husband asks, " What's wrong?" I show him that I have somehow managed to sew part of the dress onto the zipper. Sigh. I take out my seam ripper, take that apart, and fix my mistake.

Then I take my time hemming carefully, and that, thankfully, goes well.

I intended to add a ribbon along the bottom, but after all the time and effort the rest of it took, I just wanted to try it on. Overall, I think it looks good, but I am not in love with the top, so I will probably always wear a sweater or shirt of some kind over it (like in the picture).

With that in mind, I decided that if I added any color ribbon, I would need to always match the sweater to that color, but if I leave it plain it is more versatile.

I ended the day being giddy that I actually made a dress that (with a sweater) looks good on me, and doesn't scream out that it was made by hand. Yay! Good day.

Watch Lily and Argon play

Siblings at play! Aren't they cute. Sorry no music, this was a really quick video and post.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I am not Irish, if I am, it is such a tiny fraction, I might as well not be!

But I love St. Patrick's day . I love Irish music and corned beef is yuuuummmmy! I also made cabbage soup tonight.

At school, I used this opportunity to teach about Ireland. We ate Irish cheese, and we had Irish soda bread. And I showed the class you tube videos about Ireland. I didn't have another resource, and sadly, I was "caught" using you tube by one of my oh so observant kids. But they were great videos, and I will share them with this blog too for anyone who reads to enjoy a bit of Ireland too.





it might not have been this exact Riverdance clip... but I did show them a Riverdance video



Hope you enjoyed this taste of Ireland ! (where I have never been, but admire anyways)

Argon

Who knew that a little kitty's name could be so confused with so many other names!

So... here is what Argon is NOT

1. Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Similar. Also a cool name, but not our kitty's namesake



2. Aggron from pokemon. Now this one I had no idea that it even existed, but one of my 2nd graders, upon hearing my kitten's name said, "Like the pokemon character!" Sigh. So I investigated, and sure enough there is a very very similar sounding pokemon, but not the same.



3. Eragon from the book and movie. This mistake was made by the vet upon hearing our kitty's name. Again, similar, I can see the confusion, but still not our kitten's namesake.



So what is Argon you ask? It is an element on the periodic table of elements, a noble gas to be exact. My chemist husband picked it out, if you hadn't guessed. I thought it was a cute name, and a cute idea. For those of you who like to learn, here is a short you tube clip to educate you on what our kitten is named after

Meet Lily and Argon!

So... change of plans from the previous lady we were talking with. Long story short, we did not get a good vibe from her, and did not think it would be a good match. We made this decision on Friday night. After that I started looking online to see kittens from a shelter and I found these two, and my husband and I just fell in love.

I sent off an email that night to see if they would be at that shelter's adoption event the next day, Saturday. They wrote back and said they would be, so we went. We saw them, we filled out the application, and by 9:20 that night, they were ours. :-)

Here is a video of them for you to enjoy.

Blast from the past

So, having nothing particularly new to share today, I decided instead to share an old Roxie video. This is when she is just an 8 week old puppy, and so cute and little. It is really short, but fun.

Good Housekeeping magazine confirms what Christians already knew

So, I was reading my Good Housekeeping magazine today and one of the articles was about ways to live longer. I was surprised to find that one of their tips was "Say a Prayer".

They found that older people who attend religious services once a week are 46 percent less likely to die over six years then people who go to services less often. They further said that having a belief system provides comfort and improves health.

Other believers know the feeling of peace that comes from knowing that God promised that everything would work out, or any of his other promises. Seeing prayer at work keeps our hope alive and also the ability to lay all of our stresses and concerns on him probably keeps our health good simply because of the lack of stress.

The article ended with an encouragement to those who are not part of a church to start going even if they don't believe it because it is so beneficial.

Besides being excited about the fact we have better odds for a longer life, I also was really excited to see even a secular magazine encouraging people to attend church. I hope people really take the article to heart and find the truth, and not a substitute.

Mistress Mary Quite Contrary, how does your garden grow?

March is here! Blake and I have spent this past week getting our garden ready for spring. We have a whole bunch of plants and I am so excited to see them grow and mature into a lot of food for us!

Up at the top of these pictures is our raspberry plant, which is really a raspberry stick at the moment (on the left) and our lime tree. Our lime tree used to be on the patio, and then little Roxie thought it would be fun to destroy it one day. It had limes and everything! That was a bad day, but the good news is that it has been recovering well. As you can see, there is a lot of green. No limes yet, but lots of green.

The second picture is of our strawberries. My dad put them together for me, and there are tons of little green strawberries to someday grow into lots of delicious fresh strawberries for me to eat on my cereal and ice cream yum!

The third picture is a view of the rest of the garden. We will have zucchini, onion, tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, and peppers in that area. I am so excited about all of the things growing, and hopefully I will have enough to share.

New Family members

This is family of kittens that we hope to get our new kitten from. We will also most likely be adopting the mother as well. The mostly white kitten with calico colorings is the kitten that we are leaning towards the most, but we will see more as the time gets closer. Aren't they cute!