Finally!

It finally happened.... Kristen lost her first tooth tonight! What a momentous occasion! One we seem to have been waiting for, for the past year or so. She's 8 1/2 years old, and most of her friends have lost just about all of their front teeth and have new ones in their place. I'm not really surprised that it's taken Kristen this long to lose her first one. She didn't get her very first tooth until she was 13 months old. I have been told that the later you get your teeth, the longer you keep them.

We've waited so long for this loose tooth to come out that her new tooth was already growing in behind it. But here's her cute little smile where you can just see the gap.

I was wondering how long before the others followed, but you know, there's not another one loose right now, so it may be a while! Look at the gleam in her eye, she's wondering how much the Tooth Fairy is going to leave ;-) Hmmm? what is the going rate for a tooth these days?!

OK Tooth Fairy. . . . come and get it!

A good weekend

We went over to our neighbors on Saturday night instead of just watching a movie on our own. The night before, (while I had just popped in for a chat) Cheryl's dad had brought over some ribs he'd just made for dinner. Of course I had to try one and oh my goodness was it good. It was a dry rub he'd used on there and the flavors were ginger and teriyaki. So for Saturday night I bought the rub too and took out two racks of pork baby ribs from the freezer. We took them to Cheryl's for dinner. She grilled steaks too, and made stuffed jalapeno peppers wrapped in bacon AND made strawberry margaritas. And at 9pm she whipped up a quick chocolate cake and put it in the oven, that made the whole kitchen smell delicious. Cheryl's sister and her friend were there and all 6 of us played a game of 'Battle of the Sexes' :-)

On Sunday morning I went to pick up Kristen from her sleepover. She'd had a fun time but said she didn't get much sleep cos some of the girls were talking still past midnight!

I didn't go to church yesterday :-( Instead I got out my sewing machine! We changed the game room around yet again, and it looks in more of a mess than it previously did, so still no pics I'm afraid. In the hopes of 'pulling the room together' once we get it all decluttered again, I bought some material to make some curtains and cushions. I made one curtain yesterday. It came out ok, and now I have to do two more. Hopefully I can get them done this week otherwise I will become bored with them. I am feeling more in the mood for sewing though (a good thing considering my new $500 machine hasn't seen much of the light of day since I bought it last year) and I think I will look in to taking more sewing lessons. It took me an hour just to get the machine to work yesterday! I was probably threading it wrong or had the tension wrong, who knows, but eventually it worked.

My sis asked how the sunflower was doing? I took this picture last week when we finally saw the head of the flower emerge.

Unfortunately the head of the flower never really got any bigger than that and it now seems to have wilted and died already :-/ Still an impressive sight, and we might think of planting more next year around the edge of the garden. The tomatoes could be doing better. Our plants are huge and there are many green tomatoes on them but they seem to be taking a while to turn red, and by the time they do the skins are split and dry (not surprising with 100 degree weather every day) and one was already pecked by birds. We need to put some netting around and I think up the watering too. So far I've only tried one tomato which tasted lovely, so I would like to have more.

This morning we're off to piano lesson at 10.30am and then it will be back home to escape the heat, and get on with the sewing! Hope you all enjoy the day.

Saturday Surfing!

Surfing around blogs this sunny Saturday morning I came across this delightful blog... and she's having a giveaway! I'm feeling in the mood to get crafty and have started thinking about getting my sewing machine out! I said 'thinking', it may be a while before I actually do. But one of the things I want to do when my sewing machine does eventually make it out of the closet, is try my hand at making an apron. For me :-) and then if it turns out good, well, I think a hand made apron for the women I love in my life would be a great Christmas idea. . . . oooh, did I just say that out loud? That's ok, cos knowing my procrastinating self, it probably won't actually happen this year!

But in the mean time, I thought I'd try my chances at winning a lovely apron, and that's why I've posted the button above :-) Here's keeping my fingers crossed! If you want a chance to win too, pop on over to SUSAN's blog.

Let's make our own!

Everything went well at the ENT the other day. He looked up my nose with the camera and said there was no sign of polyps. I don't have to go back until December. I would think that in future I may only have to see him a couple of times a year. Things are ok now, but it will be interesting to see how I fare come the winter months too... but so far, so good.

We weren't very successful at Ikea looking for bean bags. Does anyone know a place where these are easily available? Target had some in, but they were either pink, or embroided with sports motives, and the balls inside of them felt really large! After Ikea we popped across the street to Petsmart. Kristen wanted a new ball for Boo, one that he can actually pick up. He loves playing with balls but he gets frustrated because he can't get his little mouth around most of them to pick them up and bring them back to you. What he needs is a 'soft toy' kind that he had before. We were lucky to find him the perfect one. CLICK HERE to see. Kristen then spied another toy that she liked for him. When I looked at it I realized it was simply just fleece braided together! You can CLICK HERE to see it, but I had a better idea. We went right next door to JoAnns Fabrics, bought a yard of fleece (on sale for $5) and made our own 'Fleecy Clean' toy.

Of course if you want to really go all out, you would buy 3 different colors of fleece, but fleece can be expensive. When not on sale, this one cost $10 a yard! It had 3 colors in it so I thought it would do.

You can see above that the fleece is doggy themed, with little dog houses and bones on it. I cut tassels on either side of this piece to make a 'blanky' for Boo (as per Kristen's request) and there is still another piece left this size if we want to make another toy for a doggy friend. And of course if you have bigger dogs then you just make the braid bigger and thicker.

And while I was in the mood for making stuff I decided to try a new recipe. I posted this on my Facebook page when I found it, but I'm showing you 'my version' here. I made more pesto with my fresh basil on Thursday, and went looking for a recipe in which to use it. I came across THIS ONE from Allrecipes.com. It's called 'Phenomenal Chicken and Pasta in Creamy Pesto Sauce. I didn't follow the recipe exactly but to simply things I just sauted onion then cooked the chicken pieces, added a little wine, 2 tblsp of Pesto and then some heavy cream. I boiled some low-carb pasta (forgot to mention I am trying to eat very low carb at the minute, to help shift these stubborn 10lbs!) and added that to the chicken and sauce. Served with a small side of my home grown zucchini. . . . and voila!


Today Kristen is off to a friend's birthday party, then she's actually staying the night. She is very excited about the sleepover. The little girl was her 'best friend' in 2nd grade, she's called Hannah. It would be nice if they got in the same class again this year, but there's no telling if that will happen.  Jason and I will have the evening all to ourselves! Not sure what we'll do yet either. Perhaps a movie? dinner out? or the usual. . . . .  a movie at home with our feet up ;-)

While you're waiting. . . .

The game room is looking such a mess right now it's not worth taking pictures. Not until we move things around again at the weekend. So while you're waiting for those pics (and because I promised pictures in my next post) I thought you might like some 'Farm' news. Let's be honest, it's been a while since I last posted about it, June 27th to be exact!

THIS. . . is the pumpkin patch:

Thriving, isn't it? :-) There's probably a half dozen or more plants in this bed. Jason has trained most of them to go up the trellis. The flowers you see are mainly 'male' flowers. The female flower will have a 'bulb' at it's base. So far we've only seen 2. . . this is one of them:

Just last week this little guy was still pretty green. He turned orange very quickly but doesn't seem to be growing as fast. It's one of the Jack-o-Lantern ones (not the little sugar pumpkins) so we are hoping he gets much bigger.

The other pumpkin is hanging on the trellis (trying to disguise himself as a melon)!


But he can't fool us. . . THIS is a watermelon (hanging on a trellis)

back to the pumpkin patch. . . a couple of different angle shots:

The picture above is taken from the other side of the trellis.

And now back to the watermelon patch!

and below, 2 more watermelons further down on  the same trellis. Kristen is thrilled with these little guys, watermelon is her favorite fruit!


Hope you enjoyed your little walk through the 'patches' this morning. It's Friday and we have no plans :-)  Just a nice relaxing day doing whatever we want. 

just a quick one...

still no pics today (sorry Nenna). We may actually be rearranging the rearrangement in the game room this weekend! We're not totally happy with it. Everything still looks a mess too, but I'll take a picture later then if we change it all around again I'll be able to show you the final result too.

I'm off to the ENT today. It's my 6 week check up since my last appointment when I had the last of the 'packing' removed. Everything is going well, I am not stuffy at all, get no headaches and amazingly enough, I don't even have to take my Advair for asthma (something I was having to do on a daily basis for years!)

After my appointment Kristen and I will go over to Ikea. We will be looking for a couple of bean bag chairs for her. Because of the way we have the game room now, the controls to the PS2 don't reach the sofa so she has to sit on the floor closer to the tv to play it. I thought bean bag chairs would be fun for her and a friend to sit on while they play. The other games like the Wii and Xbox have wireless controllers, so they are ok. If we move the game room around yet again I still think we'll have this issue because our aim is to move the sofa further away from the tv so Jason can use the Wii Active. I also want to look at some curtains in there and a new rug for the room. I'm hoping it's not too busy. It gets crazy at the weekends so I never go then.

OK, this is just a small post. I promise the next one I write will have pictures!

The less you do....

. . . the less you feel like doing! At least that's how I feel. Yesterday we didn't do anything all day. I should have gone out to get some essentials at the store, like milk and dog food, but I just couldn't motivate myself! It was overcast yesterday but still warm and sticky. It said thunder was forecast but we never got any. Today it will be 'partly cloudy' and 98! I know this sounds crazy but I find myself thinking of Fall already and much cooler weather! That usually happens with me after a few weeks of intense heat like high 90's and triple digits. I love the start of each new season, but I'm always ready to move on to the next one.

Today Kristen has a piano lesson to go to at 10.30am, so we will be leaving here in about an hour. I would have liked to pop out shopping afterward (I wanted to take a trip to Ikea) but we have to come straight back home to wait in for the a/c guy - yet again! After they replaced the cracked drip pan in the attic last week I still noticed water dripping from the overflow a few days later. The guy told me I should NEVER see water coming from there, so I've called them out again to go take a look and see if we still have a problem.

We've been rearranging our game room! Jason bought the new Wii Active and needed more room to play it. I will take pictures soon (once we get it all back together the way I want it) and let you see the difference. That is the reason I wanted to go to Ikea, I need to get a new rug and curtains, and some picture frames for the walls. I never did get all that done when we finished painting the room and putting the 'Billy Bookshelves' in. He has yet to try out the game!

So that's all that's happening here for now. Have a great day!