Backyard Garden Love

Deck flowers: fushias, geraniums and a pink black-eyed susan vine (thunbergia)

Aria enjoying the peas

Peas

Scarlet Runner Beans

Tomoatoes!

Green Peppers

Roscoe lovin the strawberries

Zucchini

 

Mmm cherry tomatoes!

Echinacea

 

A bit blurry because it was raining and windy!

 

My Kitchen Garden on the deck full of cilantro, mint, chives, thyme, parsley and sweet basil!

Summer Snapshots

Here's a couple pics from the end of June!

We were spending lots of time outside because it finally was warm enough.  I have discovered a lovely thing... my kids will play quite happily together for long periods of time if I set up the little pool and a sprinkler!  I have enjoyed a few relaxing afternoons dozing, working, reading, playing with my new iphone on the deck while they have fun in the water.

Roscoe loves his dog Ryley.  Ryley's not so sure most of the time what he thinks of Roscoe's love and attention.

One particularly warm day I brought out some tempera paint and we found some shade in the backyard to paint some rocks for our garden.  Now I just need to find some sealant spray to weatherproof the paint... I know I have some somewhere in my house....

 

 I quite enjoyed having the kids paint outside.  It didn't matter how messy it got, and was super easy to clean up!  Yay for summer!

Roscoe loving the alligator pool I bought on clearance at the end of last summer!

Rainy Day Puppets

If all the raindrops were lemondrops and gumdrops, oh what a rain that would be!

We have been experiencing more than our fair share of wet and miserable days since May, which is quite odd considering how hot and dry the Okanagan usually is.  So we made some lemonade with our lemons, aka fun rainy day activities to fill our rainy days.  One that Aria and I have worked particularly hard on, was a homemade puppet theatre. 

  

Aria created the puppets, and I built the theatre out of a box from our recycling, some wrapping paper from the dollar store, yarn, 2 buttons, some sparkly trim and some felt (yay for no sewing!) I had laying around waiting to be used!  Aria decided she would like to do an underwater puppet show, so I went online and found some good underwater creature coloring pages, and away she went coloring and adding glitter for some pizazz!

 I cut a good size rectangle out of the front of the box, and then cut out the back of the box, but only three sides, so that the theatre can fold up nicely still and keep all the puppets inside... and not all over my house!  I cut the felt in strips to hide little puppet-master's bodies, but still allowed ease of movement and play.  Aria helped me thread the strips onto a piece of yarn and then we fastened it with buttons on either side of the box.

 

 

 

 

 

We can't wait to make new puppets as we learn new Bible stories or fairy tales, or create new worlds and adventures!

Ballet Performance

Aria had her year end dance recital the last weekend.  I know I already included some shots from the dress rehearsal, but here are some pictures from the actual day of with hair and makeup (which she LOVES) done.

 Posing!

She did such a great job, and we were happy that she was in the first half of the program so that we could leave at intermission and get the kids home to bed.  Surprisingly, Roscoe really enjoyed the performance, and was totally enthralled with it the entire time!  As soon as Aria came on stage for her "Mother Goose" number he started exclaiming "Aria!  Aria!"  Pretty darn cute!  He loves his big sister SO much.  I had to include a shot of her bun.  I am SOOO not a hair person, but I thought I did quite well, and you can't even see the multitude of hair pins that I used!

Fingerprint Art

Aria had a friend over the other day, and after playing outside for a while and having eaten lunch, we thought it would be fun to try some fingerprint pictures with a great Melissa and Doug ink pad I picked up at the Vernon Teach and Learn.  First we carefully got our fingers inked.

 

Then we stamped them on the paper.

 Then we did some drawing and coloring to change the little fingerprint ovals into something!  It was funny to see how the girls would copy whatever picture I had just created.  Roscoe had a hard time not transferring one color of ink onto another.

 Both girls are very artistic, and really enjoyed using their creativity.  I think their pictures will make great birthday cards!  We even made some Get Well Soon cards for Aria's friend's little brother who was recovering from an operation.

So simple, and easy to clean up... just wipe little fingers clean!  And a great way to use both fine and gross motor skills.  Cheers!

I-Pick, U-Pick, We All Pick STRAWBERRIES!

After eating sub-par Californian strawberries for the past several months, we always look forward excitedly to the local strawberry season here in the valley.  A family friend has a nice little farm with U-Pick strawberries, so I took the kids out with my mom on our day off, and loaded up on the sweet little morsels.  The kids did really well not gorging themselves on too many as we picked, and with their help Mom and I managed to pick eight ice cream pail fulls in less than an hour... before the day got too hot!

Aria and Grandma

Roscoe showing off his harvest... lots of green ones...

Yum!  Imagine the jam, and pies, milkshakes, etc that I've been making these in to!

"Helping" Grandma

Aria was very helpful, and enjoys picking strawberries from our own little garden in the backyard as well.