Summer Projects

This has been a busy summer for us but I've still manged to get a few projects done.  I did these flip flops at the beginning of summer.  Thanks pinterest and The Mother Huddle.  They were so easy to do, super cheap (2 dollars for the flops, the fabric was just scraps I had at home), and so comfy.  They probably will only make it this one summer but they are so cheap and fun to make you can bet I'll be doing it again next year!

 It was a spring of flowers.  The previous owners put in quite a few and we've added our fair share.  My favorites were the peonies.  They were gorgeous!  Also I enjoyed planting annuals with Peach.  I've never been a fan of annuals before but it was fun letting her pick the colors she liked.  They were cheap and we had a good time planting them.

Dr J made built me two garden boxes and the girls helped he and I fill them with soil.  Unfortunately that soil (while quite expensive) just didn't have the nutrients our garden needed.  Our plants did incredible at first and then all our plants stumped out and the leaves turned yellow.  I got a book about plant health and determined our plants were low in nutrients.  Initially I was going to put on some miracle grow but I was worried that the salts would build up in my boxes so instead I used fish emulsion.  It smelled HORRIBLE, but I was desperate to help my garden.  I mixed it with water and sprayed it directly on the plant leaves.  I then added some to our soil and hurrah the leaves went green and the plants started to grow again.  Amazing.  So far we've gotten a couple of tomatoes and some sweet peas.  Our carrots are looking great.  Our green beans unfortunately didn't make it.  A bunny kept eating all the flowers, bugs were getting the leaves.  Our onions look good.  We have basil and squash, watermelon, cilantro, and we even got some seven potatoes off a rotten red potato I planted.  I love eating food I grow myself!

This has been my favorite snack of the summer, sliced cucumbers, white vinegar, salt and pepper.  It's almost like eating salt and vinegar chips only fresher:)

One of the things I've seen all over pinterest has been pantry mixes.  We've been having fun making some mixes here.

Instant brown sugar oatmeal....yum!

This brownie mix is delicious.  I've had to remake the batch three times!  Also like the tortilla mix.  

Also loved her pantry.  Is it possible to have pantry envy?  Well I have serious pantry envy of Heart, Hands, Home.  Those containers are beautiful, but lets be honest with my kids and my budget, beautiful glass vinyl labeled jars are just not going to work for me.  So I got a couple plastic containers at the dollar store.  They might not be pretty but the do the job :) 

They also had these little baskets.  They were perfect for helping organize shoes on the shoe rack.  Can you believe how many pairs of shoes my kids have?  SERIOUSLY NUTS!  We definitely need reduce here!