Archive | June, 2014

Summer Perennials

29 Jun

After browsing through some perennial flowers last year at a nursery and viewing the prices, I knew I needed to try and see if I could grow them from seed. Now that I have tried to grow them from seed, I understand why they cost so darn much money.  It takes a full year, sometimes two years to get a perennial to bloom.

Here are some of my success stories:

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I love that they will magically reappear every year. My goal was to make my front garden full of perennials so I will only have to weed and watch the beautiful flowers blossom throughout the summer. Here are two huge hollyhock plants I grew from seed that are now in front of the chicken coup.

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I really should know what these plants are, but I don’t– does anyone know the name of these plants?

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A Very Frozen Birthday!

25 Jun

We had a very Frozen Birthday Party for Aleah’s 6th Birthday.

The inspiration came from my friend, she has kids the same age and gender as our kids and we used to throw birthday parties together.  But now since she lives in Iowa, I have to throw my own parties and steal her awesome ideas =)

I loved searching Pinterest and coming up with my own ideas as well.  Our life up here in Cook, MN is Frozen about 6 months out of the year anyway- lots of inspiration.

Here are the signs that I painted:

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These are the Frozen themed foods I created:

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One of the games was the kids had to “Melt a Frozen Heart.”  I froze some hearts and other toys and the kids had to hammer the toys out of the block of ice

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We also played “Pin the Nose on Olaf.”

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this party was so fun to plan.

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Happy Birthday Dear Aleah, I am so proud of the smart, loving, strong, tough, kindhearted, artistic, gifted, persistent and thoughtful person you are and are becoming.  It is the best job in the world to be your mom, thank you for making me a mom. I love you.

Here Fishy Fishy

15 Jun

Now what to do with all those tasty sunnies and crappies?

After you have played with the fish in the live well (for a few hours) you have to line ’em up and count your bounty.

After you have your firstborn organize and count them numerous times; you let the cat check them out.

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Jared came into the backyard where the kids, fish and I were- only to find us smearing paint all over the fish and plopping them down on some paper.  He was a bit surprised but then when he saw the finished product he was alright with my idea =)

Here are some of the prints we made:

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THEN, you can eat them!

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Good Bye Winter and Good Bye Fishing Pole

8 Jun

No one enjoys summer like people who have just endured 7 months of winter.  Not just any winter but a very looong, dark, cold, eternal winter.

Yup, it was a gnarly winter.

No one appreciate summer like us hearty folks in the Northland.

No one.

Okay, now that we have gotten that straight.  I must show you how we are enjoying our summer.  Yesterday we got into the boat and headed out for fishing, swimming and even some tubing.  I Love Summer.  I love it so much I would marry it if that was a thing you could do.  I will be outside until further notice (I am even writing this blog post in my backyard).  See you inside at the end of September when the temps plummet again.  Until then, we will be out- soaking up every ray of beautiful  sunshine.

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This is the last picture of Sophi’s fishing pole.  She was fishing, then Jared caught a fish, then we turned around and her pole was no where to be found.  Poor spiderman fishing pole at the bottom of Pfeiffer Lake.

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Soph realizing her pole is gone.