its going to be one of those days

Yep, it will be one of those days.

Dear Lucas - you are 9 months old

Goodness you've developed in leaps and bounds it seems. You're almost crawling, up on your hands and knees lunging forward towards forbidden bits on the floor. You love chewing up Sadie's crayons. I've found you drooling orange, and it was a tangerine crayon.

You've sprouted 2 teeth in a matter of days. One tooth appeared, and then a day later the second popped through. That was speedy fast teething my dear.

You say "dadada" and "mamama" but for the most part you are pretty quiet.

You smile the best at your daddy.

You need...NEED to be near your sister at all times. You saw her head downstairs and thrashed about in my arms until we went down to find her. You were totally content when you found her. Funny boy, you love her so much.

You are my hungry boy. You will eat almost anything. Favorite foods include sweet potatoes, chicken enchiladas, cheerios, watermelon, and homemade popsicles.

You're still my sensitive boy. You are shy, and don't like crowds. You still get clingy, but thats ok.

Lately you've been going to bed later, and we hang out on the big bed and play with toys and cuddle. You absolutely love it. Its nice to have silly time alone.

I love you little boy, I can believe how close your birthday is getting.

Obviously you weren't up for photos. Hopefully your afternoon will be better than this morning.

How does your garden grow?

 Look at those babies! Those are the mystery plants in buckets. We're thinking for sure lettuces in the left one and maybe spinach in the other. Should maybe taste them to be certain though :)

 The strawberries are ripening now, and there are so many berries on my 3 little plants. I think the success to my strawberry plants this year is that I cut the runners so the plant can focus on growing this year. Next year I'll let it do its own thing. This was a wonderful tip from the guys at the greenhouse.

I've been waiting so long for my lavender to sprout. The package said germination could take a month or 2, so I faithfully watered my bucket of dirt every day, and now RESULTS! I can't wait to have pretty smelling lavender in my garden. I have plans to craft with it eventually.

I love love love my dill. I cut him down a bit, so I'm letting him grow again. Lots of water and sun for him.

 This beast keeps trying to grow in the garden. We thought it was a dead vine type thing, but oh no, its back with a vengeance, trying to reclaim my garden. Its wicked, and I though it was my beets when it sprouted, but no. No, I pull this guy out all over the place. Anyone know what he is?

 These are the 2 garden beds in the yard. The potted plants on the edge I forgot to label, but they are strawberries, lettuces, peppers and broccoli. I don't think our broccoli in the garden bed survived, but the seedlings are growing in the pots, so I'm hoping it works.

This one loves to water all the plants. I've been teaching her what she can eat and what she can't eat in terms of my herbs on the patio. She's learning that lemon thyme is a good one, and rosemary isn't fun to eat. I do hope my beets grow despite the evil vine. The vine likes where my beets are so I worry about them. We'll have to wait and see I guess.

Do any of you garden? How is it going for you?

Check out our progress: 

Starting our garden
How does your garden grow post 2

Surprise! We get a trampoline...yay?

So I'll just start from the beginning. Sadie's birthday was about a week or so away. Tony's dad called to find out the details as their invite was lost. He gave his dad all the info, and then on the phone I heard "um, I'll have to talk to Miranda about that and then call you later". So, what was that about? Well, Tony's dad had an old trampoline in their garage/storage place and wanted to know if we wanted it. So Tony and I talked briefly about it, but never decided anything.

During Sadie's birthday party, we're all having a blast talking, watching the kids, and then while I'm talking to someone (or doing something, it was all really a blur), my friend was like, "Hey, you need to see this". I'm thinking it was something cute going on outside, and so I look in the back yard to see my brother in law heaving huge metal parts of trampoline into my yard.

Um, what?

So then I see the rest of his family start setting up this huge behemoth of a trampoline in my yard. I wasn't exactly picturing a trampoline like this. I was thinking a small round tramp, not a huge square beast of a thing. Apparently when Tony and his siblings were younger, they moved into a place where the previous tenant left the trampoline. It has a new mat thing or whatever, but its an old thing.

They got it set up, and Tony took me aside and told me he had no idea this would happen. So now we have a trampoline in our yard.

I am undecided about if I like it or not. I've only used it once. Sadie likes it, but I'm worried about her actually jumping on it, so she just sits and has someone else bounce it for her.

So, ya.... we'll see how this goes...

Sadie's 2nd Birthday Party

Its been a couple days since her party, but man, throwing a party really wipes you out. These are just some of the photos taken of her party. I took a few, but the rest were taken by my mom or sister. Thank you guys for taking them, I just wanted to enjoy the day.

These are the decorations. I sewed the bunting myself. It was pretty easy, I'll try and post a diy on it later.

These were printed instagram photos of Sadie that I taped to the wall. Nice thing about washi tape is that it doesn't rip the paint off your walls.

 

 

We had so many little treats. I baked mini donuts with icing and sprinkles, lemon cupcakes with raspberry buttercream, gluten free vegan chocolate cupcakes with raspberry frosting, chocolate dipped oreos and raspberry/cranberry lemonade punch. My mom brought fruit skewers, and we were good to go. I loved both kinds of cupcakes, and my dad accidentally ate a chocolate one and loved it. Then we told him it was vegan and gluten free and he made a face, but still said he loved it. I love my dad.

 There's my birthday girl, loving her new ball. When we were unwrapping presents, she got too overwhelmed after a while and would stop mid unwrap and run after the ball in the yard. Yep, just needed a little ball break.

 Her brother was quite content sitting in his new lawn chair with a toy until he almost took a nose dive off. Then he was content sitting with me.

 Poor Lucas was not really social that day. Too many people, teething and shyness made him cling to me most of the day.

 But he did go with Grandma for a bit and had fun pulling grass while Sadie opened new toys.

 Once we freed the lalapaloosy dolls (I should have used a knife or scissor, they were worse than barbies) we had an impromptu tea party.

She loved the idea of food on a stick, but didn't love the food as much. Just holding it was enough.

 And then we were given a trampoline....we'll go into that one later.

At the end of it all, I had the guests write down their favorite Sadie memory in a book so she could look at it when she was older. Guests also got to take home a baby food jar of candy, yum!

Oh, and one other crazy thing happened during Sadie's birthday party. We were hanging out in the yard and Tony's sister noticed that the neighbors behind us had some sort of bbq or were burning something on the picnic table. Upon closer inspection, it was a basket that was on fire. Nobody was home, so my dad hopped over and put out the fire. Lucky it didn't set the whole table on fire. Never a dull moment here I suppose.

So when the last guest left, the kids ate dinner, and went straight to bed. Both slept for 12 hours each, and napped for 3 the next day. They did so well.

I had so much fun, I look forward to planning Lucas' 1st birthday in August.

I'll be back with some DIY stuff and recipes for food that we had on her birthday.

Happy Birthday Sadie!

Happy Birthday my Sadie Pie, lovey girl, cutie girl. I love you so much! I can't believe you are 2!

playing in the wind - or - how to tire out the children before bed

 Our sleeping patterns are changing. Tony's schedule is an hour earlier than normal, which I'm ok with, but the kids are starting to find that the sun is up at 6 am and therefore they should be up to. I'm not ok with that. Lucas in particular is up at 6 and Sadie soon follows when she hears him. This means an hour or so of whining before they fall asleep again or are just quiet. Bedtime hasn't changed, but waking up has.

So we're installing curtain rods and I'm making curtains that will block out the sun so they will sleep.

Last night we tried running around in the yard to get them good and tired. It was kinda cold and windy, so it wasn't for too long, but they loved it. I never appreciated a back yard until now. Do any of you wake up at 6 am with the kids? Have blinds or curtains worked in keeping them sleeping?
Material suggestions or ideas on keeping the sun out are appreciated.

Finger Paint Fun

Yesterday the kids were both grumpy from their terribly short naps and they needed something to do. I was so thankful that I bought cheapo paint from the dollar store for such an occasion.

Lets just say that Sadie needed no help in painting and dove right in. Lucas on the other hand, well, he was unsure of this paint substance and when he grabbed at the blue paint pot and got it on his hands, he just starred. His fingers were BLUE! He was not so much a fan.

He was also not a fan when his sister decided he needed to be not only blue, but yellow and red as well. She also turned herself into pretty colours and loved it.

Baths were had, my tub is now a purple/brown mess, but everyone was happy afterwards, at least for a little while.

tea heaven

One rainy Saturday afternoon, Beth and I decided to be adventurous. We heard that there was a David's Tea in the mall close by, and being tea lovers, we decided to head out sans children to see the tea. I had been dying to try their tea for forever, and there havent been many chances to go without the kids.

So off we went in search of fancy tea.

Davids tea did not disappoint. The girls behind the counter were awesome. Beth was pretty decisive in her choices, she was after matcha, which I smelled for the first time. Not a fan, not at all. I on the other hand, wanted to try a bunch of different black teas. I must have smelled a dozen different black teas before deciding on getting 5 little sample type bags, a cup and steeper. I will be back for a bigger tin of tea, but for now I'm drinking them and deciding on what I want in my tin.

One contender for the bigger tin of tea is the Glitter and Gold black tea. Its got such a nice spicy aroma of cloves, orange peel and vanilla. One of the best parts of it are the little gold sugar balls that dissolve and make your tea shimmer. Fancy fancy fancy!

I do love it for the taste though, not just the glitter. I love the cloves in it, and although I'm not a huge vanilla fan, its very good in this tea.

I'll be brewing up more stuff, and trying out iced tea with my stuff as well. I'm hoping that Tony finds my mothers day present there as well.

How does your garden grow?

Its been a while, and its hard for me to be patient, but our garden is slowly growing! I have to remind myself that these things take time. The lettuce above has been really happy since it killed its brother. Yep, plant murder right there in my garden. This big guy has been getting huge and then we noticed his brother in the same planter has been getting puny. Beth went to touch it and the little guy kinda popped off out of the dirt. Dead. These guys needed more space. Lesson learned. We're hoping to get the other garden bed dug up to plant these guys in it and give them more space instead of in planters.

 Oh look! My basil seedlings are finally sprouting! They seem to take a longer time than normal, but they are growing and are happy. I'm happy cause I'm so looking forward to fresh basil.

Onions are sprouting now too! There was an incident with a crow who was looking for a meal and found our onions, but I caught him in the act and since scaring him off, I haven't seen anything digging in our garden other than a naughty Sadie.

 Beth's basil sprouted along with another plant - which due to not labeling - we don't know what it is. Oh well, guess we'll have to wait and see.

The last thing we did is start a compost. Its gonna help the garden and our very clay like soil. I usually dump a couple of these containers in our compost a day. Its getting a little too filled with fruit and veggie scraps and now we've gotta try and balance it out with grass clippings or something. I've heard shredded newspaper works to help dry things out, do any of you know anything about that?

I'll also link you all to the other garden posts so you and I can track the progress in the garden this year:
Starting our garden

Currently...

Reading: Mocking Jay by Suzanne Collins. The last in the Hunger Games series. I've read it before but only once, and normally I read all my books a few times at least. Its making me very impatient for the other movies to come out. 


Watching: Game of Thrones. I should probably be reading this series instead of watching the show, but its so good. A little gory but its got such a good story. My favorite characters are Tyrion and Arya.


Working on: pumping out sketches in my notebook. I have been feeling very drawn to the idea of selling on etsy again. I love to sew right now and I'd love to contribute a little to our income. I've always loved the idea of selling online.

Thinking about: pricing out things to sell online, what to sell, branding, all that jazz that goes with selling on etsy. I want to do it right, not rush it, but still have fun.

Anticipating: Sadie's 2nd birthday party! She's 2 in a few weeks, so I'm trying to get invites done and sent out asap.

Listening to: Metric. Its one of Tony's favorite bands right now so I listen to it a lot, especially in the car. Getting a little sick of her, but maybe if I throw some Dragonette in there I'll be happy.

Eating: Chicken veggie soup. I put a bunch of leftover veggies in chicken stock along with a half eaten can of chick peas and star noodles. Its not bad, especially when I put in my rosemary and lemon thyme from the garden.

Wishing: It would get sunny this week so I can plant my beets and lettuce. I can't wait to harvest my own beets this year.