Saturday Phone Dump

I know I'm a little behind in my Five in a Row posts, but that will have to wait.  I just purged my phone of all it's pictures and boy, do I have a lot of fun things to share.  Just excuse the poor quality. 

William took swimming lessons this summer.  It didn't turn out like I was hoping, due to a flaky teacher, but he had tons of fun and I'm glad we did it.

 I made relish for the first time!  It was a somewhat easy project, however it had to be started the night before, leaving the veggies in a brine, so the next day was a fairly straightforward process.

We are getting lots of work done in our backyard!  I'll post more about this later, but here's a sneak peak.  The circle you see is the start of our fire pit.  The concrete is stamped and colored (the powder you see is the color going on) and it looks so beautiful!  The existing patio was torn out, and new concrete was poured.   My little piece of paradise in the desert.

I also canned pickles.  The cukes were from my garden, and the spices I used were similar to the ones in the relish.  SO yum!

Abby is getting to be quite the helper when it comes to grocery shopping.  Out of the blue she insisted she take her shopping cart to the store and well, when a gal wants a cart a momma has to oblige! 

We went to our last Angel game last Saturday, and on the way down we stopped at Bass Pro Shop.  This Arctic Cat was quite the hit with Abby.   

I found this fun project on a blog I like and decided to make my own for our school room.  I ripped up a Dick and Jane book and Mod Podged away!  John promised me he's going to hang this up today, and the plan is to put a red book shelf under it.  I'll keep you posted. 

See that awesome turquoise light?  That was another afternoon project I did while the kiddos napped.  I have a brass lamp in the living room that screamed drab, and John agreed to let me take it to fab.  He however, wasn't sure of my skills and said that I needed to find a practice piece first.  I scoured the local thrift stores and found this beauty, loaded with brass.  I found a color I loved (that also happened to go fabulously with the turquoise pillows and vase I have in the living room) and got to work.  30 minutes later I had a brand new lamp!  I upcycled the ancient silk plant that was sitting in on the sideboard by pulling several flowers out and placing them in a bud vase.  Voila!  New decor!  (The lamp shade WILL be going, but I have yet to find one that I like.  If I can't find anything else, I might just pull the fabric off this one and recover it.)

I think we might have gone full circle in the bug department.  Remember those tobacco worms we found in our garden a bit ago?  Well, I think we found the adult.  The picture simply doesn't do it justice, as that thing was muy grande.

So much else has been happening over here, but that will all have to wait.  I have yogurt incubating on my counter that is simply needing my attention now.