Finding some milkweed...

and sending it flying.

Finding a playground...

and sending them swinging.

Enjoying the fall...

before it starts raining.

I know, I promised pictures of Little Peach's coat for Monday...and it didn't happen. Sadly it's not going to happen today either. Little Peach wore the coat over the weekend and, as babies often do, spit up all over it. It is now in the process of being washed, dried, ironed, and made picture worthy. Hopefully it will be all set for some pics tomorrow.

Something that is ready for pictures--the leaf wreath we made yesterday.
The girls collected some of the prettiest and most colorful leaves they could find and then using some thread and a wire coat hanger (shaped into a circle) I wrapped the leaves on.

An inexpensive, easy, colorful, and very seasonal wreath to decorate the door with. Mhmm, yup, I feel just like Martha Stewart!

To celebrate the end of the week we had our very first tea party...

...complete with mini sandwiches, cucumbers, and hot cocoa for dipping cookies in.

The tea set is from Montessori Services, a company whose catalogue I spend countless hours drooling over.

And here's a glimpse of Little Peach modeling an almost finished fall jacket and bonnet. Finished pics to hopefully appear here on Monday.

The cosmos are the last plants flowering in my garden. I grew them to add a "little" height to the garden. They were supposed to grow to four feet tall, but they must really like our soil because they range from five to six feet tall. The blossoms themselves are gorgeous, but... ..this late in the season, the rest of the plant looks horrific (four feet of droopy gray/green leaves.) I'd cut off all the blossoms and rip out the plants but...I'd feel guilty because these little guys...

are just going crazy over them. And to tell the truth, I like listening to their buzzing while I rearrange the perennials and rip up the weeds.

And so the flowers get to stay...for as long as the bees do.

Attempting more dresses for the girls made from discarded men's shirts.
This is from a polo shirt. The base of the dress is finished, but there's still a lot to be done. Pookie and I just picked out the buttons (and pinned them on to see how they'd look) and finally settled on two pockets (not the "eight, nine, or ten??" that Pookie was suggesting.) We're still debating over what felt animal will be sewn on the front. I've been recommending a white bunny or cat, but Pookie has been requesting a cow...we'll see.
Once this is finished there's another polo shirt to be made over Fig. Plenty to do...and so litle time!

Carefully scooping out all those pumpkin seeds...

and....hmm, refilling a pumpkin with seeds...

picking out eyes, noses, and mouths for Mommy to carve...

and after a long wait it was finally dark enough for...

jack-o-lanterns!

That was an impromptu blog break brought to you by the last of summer warmth and fun! But now that the leaves are changing, the temps dropping and a distinctly autumnal breeze is blowing, I'm spending just that much more time indoors and happily am back to blogging.

So besides playing in the sun, what have we been up to? Mostly packing up the summer clothes and unpacking the winter clothes (a long slow process what with three girls' wardrobes to take care of), but also a bit more painting. I'm slowly getting more color on the walls, which looks great, but makes our lack of wall art somehow all that more noticeable. For the girls' room I've been thinking that these might look cute...

Illustrations by Ethel Everett for the book "Water Babies", a recent used book sale find.

The girls were thrilled with the illustrations in this book as they love this video...

...Disney circa 1935. Don't you love how imaginative the old Disney Silly Symphonies are?

Now I just need to figure out what should go on the walls in our main living area...

I guess that's something I'll have to search for later. I promised two little girls that we would carve some pumpkins today and if I don't help them do it now I'm afraid they're going to start doing it on their own...yikes!

We're going away on vacation for a week, so there's a lot that needs to be done. There's all kinds of washing, drying, folding, and packing to do and a baptism gown that still needs to be hemmed (yes, Little Peach will be baptized while we're on vacation.) Am I doing any of that? Well....kinda...first I just had to see what the newly purchased blue paint would look like on the girls walls...

And two walls later, I'm loving it! And so now it's back to the washing, drying, folding, and sewing even though I'm dying to paint those other two walls...

A dark chocolate cake with raspberry jam between layers and raspberry icing on top.

And the birthday girl.

Only two and already so grown up!

Somebody has a birthday tomorrow, so we're baking some cake!

And then we'll be blowing up some balloons, hanging up some streamers, and wrapping some presents!

Today's planned activity for the girls was to make banana bread. It seemed like a good idea--the girls and I hadn't cooked in awhile and all that banana mashing would be fun, right?
Ooh no...nope...definetly not fun. Just a minute or two into the cooking and the girls were bored, bored, bored. But the unplanned dish washing afterwards? Now that was a hit!
Pookie carefully filled the sink, added the soap, and washed, scrubbed and rinsed the dishes...
...while Fig stayed busy with scooping up water in her cup, pouring it into the thermos, pouring it into the mug, and pouring it all back into the sink...

...and I sat back and observed. It was a good reminder for me that children don't necessarily need carefully planned lessons in order to be learning--they are always at work pursuing knowledge.

So what's the plan for tomorrow? I don't know, I think I'll wait and see what the girls come up with...

Getting some help with the dinner preparation...

which means more clean-up for me...

but seeing how proud they are, after cleaning an ear of corn all by themselves, makes it all worthwhile.

Slowly, but surely, I'm becoming just like my mother...and my grandmother too.

Everytime we'd go to visit my grandparents, my grandmother would whisk my mother off to her garden and there they'd be pointing, talking, walking about for what seemed like hours and hours. As a child I wondered how you could talk about flowers for that long, I mean weren't they just...flowers?

Then I became a teenager and summer mornings I'd look out the window to see my Mom slowly walking alongside her garden, studying this, pulling up that, moving a flower here and there. I couldn't understand it. Those same flowers were there yesterday and the day before, what more was there to look at?

Now here I am, a young adult with a garden of my own. Every morning the same, I tell the girls to behave for a second while I sneak out back and look at my garden. I pull a few weeds, prop up a vine that has fallen over, marvel over how beautiful some plants look and wonder what to do about the plants that are struggling along. Just a few minutes, all my own, to enjoy the beauty that my hard work has slowly brought forth from the earth.

When my mother comes to visit, out we go to the backyard and we talk about things like why the nasturtium leaves are yellow and the dahlia leaves are brown. We talk about plans for next year and plants we'd like to have. Somehow, although they are "just flowers" there is always plenty to talk about.

And so, I now know what I'll be like in fifty years or so. I'm happy with that.

I had plans to remake a rummage sale mens shirt over for myself, but it just looked better...as a summer dress for Pookie.

I've never tried doing anything like this before, but now, after just one attempt, I'm hooked. I'm looking at old clothes in a whole new way...

and thinking there will be a lot more dresses to come!

Little hands...

Little feet...

Our little one...

is finally here!

From cool and rainy to hot and sunny. And I do mean hot. It's almost a hundred degrees here. Swimsuits, garden hose, and some homemade orange juice popsicles (you gotta love those right?), all helping to keep us cool.

And keeping me happy? These newly acquired dinnerplate dahlias for the garden.

Gorgeous!

It's raining out, which is really just fine with me. Fig and I are slowly recovering from a stomach flu and a rainy day is the perfect kind of day to spend lying around indulging in a bit of self pity and a whole lot of stomach soothing crackers. The recovery process wouldn't be nearly so tolerable on a lovely sunny day, so I'll take the rain...it can even go on for a couple more days if it likes, I won't complain!

Poor Pookie is not sick though and has had endure a whole lot of "boringness" around here, which is obviously beginning to wear on her. So to make today just a bit more exciting for her, I pulled out the art supplies and came up with something Pookie would enjoy, but that Fig and I could participate in without expending too much energy.

Construction paper, markers, glue and scissors--perfect! For Fig I cut out all the shapes and put the glue on them for her, but she placed them where she wanted and used her makers to color around them. Once again she practiced her colors, holding up a piece and stating that it was green or asking if it was purple.

Pookie used pieces that I cut out (and learned a bit more about squares, triangles, and circles), but really enjoyed cutting out her own. She loves being a "big girl" and being able to use the scissors and glue without any help from me. In fact she was so absorbed in cutting and gluing by herself that she worked for nearly an hour at her artwork. It's exciting to watch her ability to create independently grow more and more every day.

And, of course, when they were all done up the artwork went on the refrigerator. Now we have a very colorful kitchen indeed!

It's been a busy two weeks--company visiting, a weekend trip to the beach, and enough labor symptoms to remind me that I really need to get baby's stuff ready! In between everything I managed to sneak in just enough time to hem Pookie's pants so that her outfit (last seen back here) would be complete.

Pookie is very happy with her outfit (once again that's Vogue pattern 7894 view A)...

and very happily modeled it for me...

which was apparently very tiring...

And now if I can just get one more free moment I'm going to hem Fig's pajama shorts so she can have something new too. More time...that's all I need!

As my husband was gone on business, I spent last week at my parents house with the girls. What a delightful vacation--no cleaning, no cooking, and lots of babysitters! I had some fun shopping the local antique stores and brought home a bundle of goodies for the girls' room (pictures coming soon!)

When we arrived home I had a package waiting for me.

Now I've been dying to do something with the girls' bathroom for a long time, but being pregnant, painting has been out of the question. After browsing the internet for some time I finally came across Modern Wall Graphics and without much thought purchased these bird and branch decals to decorate the bathroom with.

For a whole week I fretted over whether I'd just wasted money on them. Would they look good? or cheap? or tacky? Well, upon opening the package I was immediatley "aww-ing" over them and was even more in love when I finally put them on the wall. It seriously looks like I painted these on--check them out!

They were breeze to put up, look great, and were a fast, easy, and economical way to decorate a small space. Now I'm looking at their site and contemplating what to do about the rest of the bathrooms in the house...!

The rain has stopped.

Outside I am waging a war against a very obnoxious and persistent squirrel. He has dug up my nasturtium seeds, ripped apart my morning glories, and plucked a few sweet peas. My moonflowers are currently the only plants yet untouched. "Irritated" would be putting it mildly. I'm still devising a plan to save my plants/deter the squirrel from using my garden as his grocery store...

I've also been moving some of these violets from the lawn to the garden patch. At the rate this squirrel is going these may be the flowers I get to see this year...

Fig is spending her time outdoors picking dandelions. Pookie is back to searching for worms...

...yes, that's a worm she's holding there. She, amazingly, can find worms anywhere at any time.

Indoors we're cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Every nook, every cranny, clean, clean, clean! More than just spring cleaning, I think I'm experiencing an extreme case of "nesting."

That's right, nesting--in just two months baby #3 is due (suprise!) So much more time to wait through and yet...so little time for everything I still need to get done! Hopefully (should my energy hold out) there will be new projects to share soon...