Afternoon in the sprinklers

Today was L's first experience running in the sprinklers or 'sprinkler' in this case. Both of the boys has so much fun it totally felt like one of those afternoons you have as a kid that last forever. It was just simply awesome!

Where are the wild things?

X is a very active and adventerious three year old child. Lately he has been on this kick with the book Where the Wild Things Are. He told me last night that he wanted to go to the wood to find the wild things. I thought it was so cute he has to most wild imagination. I just couldn't pass up reliving that magical feeling of imagary things. So I told him I would take him to the woods and we would search for the "wild things". I took him a local state park that has smaller trails you can take kids on. We didn't find any "wild things" but we did see alot of bunnies, squirrls, and lizards. He had a great time and suprisingly he wan't dissappointed that we didn't see any wild things. He told me "They must be sleeping, maybe they come out at night. But I sleep at night so I can't look for them then."

are the wild things here?

Or maybe here?

I thing I saw something!

They aren't in there!

Are the up here? I don't see them!

A good day together!

Veggie Garden - The begginings

Because of the price hike in food we have decided to start a veggie garden. Money is tight so a good start is to plant what we eat the most of. After researching the different gardening techniques we realized the soil in the section of our house that we want to use is not the best. The area is also small and an odd shape. So we decided the best option for us was a combo of square foot gardening with a raised bed Lasagna garden. We measured the space and it looks like we can fit 4 - 4'x4' beds in the section and still have room for our compost bin!

What is a square foot garden and a Lasagna garden you ask?

Well square foot gardening is a technique of intensive planting developed by a civil engineer. Mel Bartholomew came up with square foot gardening in the 1970's. The Technique is a system of planting based on a grid of 1'X1' squares with plants placed in carefully determined spacing. In his book Square Foot Gardening Mel explains his system "The square foot system lets you make the most of your garden space to conserve the amount of water, soil conditioners, and labor needed to produce a maximum amount of food in that space. A square foot garden takes only one-fifth the space and work of a conventional single-row garden to produce the same harvest."

Lasagna gardening really takes square foot gardening to a whole different level. Patricia Lanza explains in her book Lasagna Gardening that this garden is a no till no dig organic method. You can check out her website at www. lasagnagardening.com. In a Lasagna garden the first layer is either Cardboard or three layers of newspaper laid directly on top of the area. Then you apply layers to the garden. Grass clippings, veggie scraps, leaves, etc. Then anything you would put in a compost pile you can put into the lasagna garden. The materials will break down to produce the soil to plant in.

So this last weekend we purchased the wood and some soil (We don't yet have enough compost for both sections) for two of the four beds. and started to layer our Lasagna garden. Its coming along nicely. It is way less work than I thought it was going to be. Next up is planting the sections! I've created a whole blog just for the garden. If you would like to visit it you can do so at https://csdesigner-csdesigner.blogspot.com

Butterfly Birthday Party

Recently my couson was moving and her daughters birthday was at the same time. I took it upon myself to help out with the party. Her theme was butterflys. The birthday was at a local park she rented the covered tables from the city. So I made tissue paper poms and strung them and hung them in yellow and pink along with butterflys. I made a smaller version of the tissue pom poms and secured them to a stick decorated with a butterfly (I had them hanging around!) and put them in bright pink tins that held drinks at each table. The cupcake pics were also butterfly theme. We did a make and take tissue butterfly using a clotspin. The goodie bags were stamped with stampin up set "Baroque Motifs". It was alot of work but totally worth it.

More Garden Flowers

As promised here are some more pictures of flowering going on in our garden. The little red one is a bloom on our pomegranate tree. Once the bloom dies the hard part of the flower (which is red) turns into the bottom of the actual pomegranate! So the blooms showing are very exciting around here. We also have several varieties of roses in our garden. They were part of the landscape when we originally purchased the house. Rose bushes aren't my absolute favorite plant but I just couldn't see killing them.

Garden Flowers

I just love the weather right before summer. Warm enough to wear a dress but still cool enough to pair it with a sweater. If only California was always like this. But I know soon it will be scorching hot and my flowers will wilt. So I wanted to share some of the blooms that have been growing around our garden this spring. I'll will have to post more later on.

Alot had gone on in the Slevin household in the since my last post. Our new addition Logan Nathaniel has joined us. He is such a doll baby we just can't imagine life with out him. Here is a photo from his very first photo shoot. Our very good friend Cari a professional photographer took the photos. You can check out her blog at www.carihollisphotography.com.