A Time for Planting

As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field,

 so he flourishes. ~Psalm 103:15

Because sunflowers are my favorite Ben planted hundreds of them for me this spring. I am thankful they are doing much better than the garden we planted! It was doing well in the beginning...we got radishes, onions, string beans, turnips and the corn was doing really well....that is until the last wind/rain storm we got (pre-Irene) which blew a tree...yes a tree....right into the middle of our corn.  I forgot to bring my camera when we were at the garden, otherwise I'd have a picture for you. Needless to say we are discouraged, though Ben's excited for another opportunity to use his chainsaw...it's the only way we'll get the tree off the garden. The squash and pumpkins still look like they want to produce us something but we're not holding our breath. It will take a miracle to convince Ben planting a garden next year is a good idea!

Noah and Owen were very sweet and went out and cut me a bunch of flowers to have in the house!

A Time to Make Puzzles

I have been looking for things to decorate the playroom walls for awhile now. Every time I see something cute though it seems to cost a fortune and I just can't justify spending a lot of money on a PLAY room. It never occurred to me to find puzzles to frame because I am NOT a puzzle person. I find no enjoyment in making them much to my children's dismay. This one above is a Melissa & Doug puzzle and was a birthday gift for one of the boys. After we made it I just kept thinking how pretty it is and how perfect it would be hanging on the wall of the playroom. I asked him what he thought about putting some modge podge over it to glue it together. He loved the idea because he had seen some in his aunt Addie's room not too long ago and thought it was very cool. It's an odd shape so I haven't been able to find a reasonably priced frame for it yet. We're still brainstorming ideas of how we can mount it on the wall so if you have any ideas send them my way! 

A Time For Patio Furniture

I've learned over the years to set small goals for myself. If I don't I just get overwhelmed by the fact that there's no way I can possibly accomplish all the things I want to with our ever growing family to take care of. This summer my ONE goal was to paint our patio furniture!

Last summer my aunt and uncle were getting rid of some things and asked us if we could use a patio set. I've been wanting one ever since we moved into the house but we'd always come back to the fact that we can't spend money on everything we want so we never bought one. I'm so thankful we didn't because I really love this set. My aunt had started to paint it a barn red color so we thought we'd finish it in that color. Then one night Ben was at a paint store and was looking at the clearance section and found a gallon of outdoor paint for $5. He wasn't sure of the color but thought it would be good for something. We decided to use this paint on the furniture and got really really nervous when we opened the can and started stirring because it was looking really purple. As we started painting and once it dried we were really happy with the color. They also recently gave me a little table that I thought would be perfect near the grill for putting food or drinks on. I painted it the same color and am really happy with the results!

I admit that I have a really hard time patiently waiting for things I'd like to have. My husband will save and save, then even when he has the money to buy it, will wait some more to be sure he's ready to make the purchase...I love that quality in him and am thankful that he is teaching me to be more that way. In total this patio set has cost us $5...you can't get a better deal than that! 

Eating dinner before we painted the furniture...
it was really sunny that night!