Sunday Sunshine

Practicing contentment by remembering the gracesof the week(s) and practicing gratitude by giving.

The heat of summer has set in and while it has been HOT, I'm so thankful for the sunshine!  We have had lots of time to play in the water at the local lake or pool and in the backyard pools of gracious friends. G love the water and has had a lot of fun this month!

This week we were also blessed with a night away - thanks to the Granny Nanny who came to stay with G.  HandyMan and I got to go see one of his favorite bands (highlight of his year) and I got an hour to go play at Ikea (highlight of my month!).

Life is full.  We are blessed.

Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” (James 1:16 -The Message) May the light of the Father brighten your week!

A Walk in the Garden

In the midst of a very full summer, I finally caught an evening when the G-Tot was settled in bed before I ran out of energy and I was able to take a stroll with the camera to catch some of my yard and garden to share.

One of my favorite things this summer is this fantastic hanging pot that was gifted to my husband.  A local farm grows these and they're gorgeous and it really hangs almost four feet.  With all my purple hostas in bloom - it's one of my favorite views right now.



On the vegetable front, I have the most beautiful broccoli I've ever grown:



We're picking green beans by the bucket load every two days (ok, its a 2 quart bucket):



It also looks like it's going to be a great year for tomatoes in our garden too!  I am so excited but don't want to count my tomatoes before they're ripe.



Things are great in our yard this year.  How's your garden growing?

Sunday Sunshine

Practicing contentment by remembering the gracesof the week(s) and practicing gratitude by giving.

It seems that I've entered a season of life in which time for reflection is sparse.   G-Tot is adding words and phrases to her vocabulary on an hourly basis and wakes up running!  I grope for coffee and breathe a prayer, and shuffle into the day.

I'm so thankful to have a little bit of time today to get organized for the week to come, to process the last few weeks and to just sit, alone, with my thoughts.

We have enjoyed visits from family, a decent craft show, and today celebrated church members who have celebrated 80 (or more) birthdays.  What a blessing to see these spry "youngsters" join us each week, and oh the stories they tell!

I've been pulled into the tidal wave of planning and fundraising for our church's VBS program that will take  place in August.  It's a joy to see all the little folks involved and running around at church too.

While it is only July, I'm glad for craft supply sales as I begin to plan what I'm going to do with G-Tot and another two-year-old that I baby-sit in the fall.  I'm also grateful for all the moms who are much better at that kind of stuff than I am and post their ideas on their blogs!

The gloomy fog of June has lifted and sunshine reigns in our area.  My garden thrives and wild berries are taking over my flower beds.  I choose to have no complaints.

I hope you can choose to do the same this week!

Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” (James 1:16 -The Message) May the light of the Father brighten your week!

The Menu Board

In the last few months, I've found that it is increasingly dangerous to have a laptop on the kitchen counter in the presence of food preparations and a toddler.  I've also found myself being sucked in by the shiny screen and going off on recipe chases and toddler activity scavenger hunts and losing large amounts of time.   It is also the information center for many of my day-to-day activities: recipes, weather, calendar, communications.

As I try to balance a home, toddler, work and life in general, I'm finding that sometime this wonderful tool is more of a hindrance than a help.  As I work on finding balance, and in an effort to save it from getting a bath in strawberry jam,  my cute little netbook is getting grounded.  I'm trying really hard to only fire it up when either a) GBaby's asleep or b) it is a designated working time.  (Read: I'm hiding somewhere and HandyMan, or some other gracious soul, has eyes on the tot).

When I tried implementing this type of limit on myself in the past, it worked great for about 3 hours until I was setting out to prep a meal and needed a recipe online.  Then I'd jump on the computer really fast to pull it up.   Then since I was already on, I needed to check the weather and the news and blogs and, oh yeah, the calendar too to see if HandyMan is home for dinner tonight... You get the idea.

So, as a solution to this problem, as well as to encourage myself to more reading and less surfing, I recently got a new toy, er, I mean organizational tool. It has basic web capabilities which is great for pulling up those recipes.   So, I've added a new page to my little corner of the internet here: The Menu Board.  See the tab up at the top?  If you click, you'll find all the recipes that are on my menu for the week with links, and a few other categories of recipes that I like to have at my fingertips.  Think of it as a notepad you might find on my kitchen counter - because there's not much glamour or organization to the page [yet].  I've bookmarked the page on my new toy and have my recipes for the week one click away.

Someday I may take the time to actually organize it into one of those nifty Monday Menu posts, but for now, I'm keeping it simple!  So if you're in need of some menu inspiration, check it out and click around.  There's some yummy stuff there!