This week’s learned, links, and thankfulness…

I love seafood, and crab is my favorite, so I need this crab bomb in my life.

We are doing some renovations upstairs soon and I’m looking for an wardrobe to hold blankets and towels. I’d to find an antique piece and paint it like this.

I pinned this round basket, and then I found this cool one on etsy. Someone please snatch it up as your summer bag (this one is cool too!).

All sorts of yes to peanut butter ice cream sandwiches.

These are nice simple espadrilles.

We have one week left of school and we are so excited about that, but that also means True and Brave leave soon to spend their summer in Texas. We will miss them so much!

I enrolled Glow for kindergarten this week. Eek! My baby is officially starting school! #waytoofast

If you follow me on instagram, you know we’ve been gone on a long road trip. We had such a good time and we saw and did so much, so I don’t even know where to start on sharing all of it. I have plenty of road trips tips to share too.

I’m going to attempt to paint all the upstairs bedrooms in the next few weeks, wish me luck!

If you’re stateside, enjoy the long weekend friends.

We were finally able to plant our first citrus trees in May of 2014. Most of them came from 5 gallon containers, so this past winter was our first time getting to try their fruit! The experience was a little anti-climactic though, as many varieties served exclusively as eye-candy, as opposed to fruit-candy. It’s my understanding that ho-hum fruit can be characteristic of trees bearing their first crops. Thankfully, some did provide the desirable eye-/fruit-candy hybrid: tango mandarins, wekiwa tangelolos, cocktail grapefruit, and meiwa kumquats all exceeded our high expectations!

In total, we have 19 different varieties of citrus. However, a few are doubled up (and, yes, some even tripled), so that brings our citrus tree total to 27.

Most of the trees are in the ground (in raised beds because of our poorly draining soil), but a few are in clay and zinc containers. The in-ground citrus are being trellised in three different ways. The first way, an arbor (or arch), is seen in the photos. The second way we’re growing the in-ground citrus is referred to as an espalier (not seen because there’s nothing really to see now); it will be shaped into something that resembles a traditional fence, known as a horizontal cordon. The third way is a screen that will serve as a natural privacy fence.

-Ben

On Mother’s Day, the girls, with Ben as the brains behind the operation, surprised me with a little song and dance number. They did their own version of the “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and theirs is “Ten Years of Motherhood.” I was chilling in bed that afternoon and they came upstairs to perform their mini show. My favorite part was the 4 booties shaking. Every time they hit that line, they’d all turn around and do a good shaking. These girls are so cute!

What did I get exactly?  1 giant rubber plant tree… well, I have to go pick it out).  2 peanut butter bananas… yum. 3 ice cream adventures… we were supposed to do it that day, but Ben was sick, so I get to cash in later. 4 shaking booties… so funny! 5 wood floored rooms… we are changing out all the carpet upstairs for wood floors. 6 breaks from motherhood… I have to put that to good use. 7 Mother’s Day cards… I love their handmade gifts. 8 hugs and kisses… lots from each girl. 9 salted caramels… I got a bag full of salted caramel chocolates. 10 hip hop ab workouts... I love my Cize workout videos and can’t wait to try this one out too.

Ben created the art work (from this picture) and had the girls draw on each one. He told me he had the song planned out as “Twelve Years of Motherhood,” but True told him, “Papi, mommy has only been a mom for 10 years.” Nice catch, True.

Right before going to bed, I freaked out and started crying because they are growing up. Suddenly, this all feels too fast with already having 10 years of parenting under my belt. True is 10 and that means her leaving us is not too far from now. I was crying and asking Ben if we could have two more. LOL. He lovingly said, “No, we are already having a hard time with 4.” That is true, but all I could think of are all the missed opportunities and how badly I wanted to rewind and do it all over again. I was in panic mode and wanted to freeze time (or rewind), but certainly not move forward.

True and Brave are becoming such little ladies and I feel the teen years creeping up on us. Every one tells you, “Enjoy it now because it will be over soon.” But when I’m up to my neck in all the chaos and craziness of having little ones, I struggle with the enjoy it now part. It’s true though, it feels like it will be over in a blink of an eye.

My motherhood resolution for my 11th year of mothering … more hugs, kisses, and stopping for chats, especially about grace and gospel.

Fluffy Cotton Tassel

Supplies:
Twisted cotton rope (I purchased mine from Michaels in the jewelry section)
Needle
Scissors
Directions:
1. Cut about thirty 8″ strands of cotton rope. Unravel each strand and comb through strands with the needle.

2. Bundle all the strands together and tightly tie a 10″ long bunch of unraveled strands around the center and knot.

3. Cut another 10″ long bunch of unraveled strands, wrap a couple times around (about 1/2″ from the top) the tassel neck. Knot to secure.

4. Turn the tassel upside down so the tassel neck is covered. Trim tassel ends. Use the tie-off threads to attach it to your project.

I wanted to add a big fluffy tassel to my round market basket after pinning this bag. I think the fluffy tassel definitely adds some pizazz to my basket. It would also be fun to dip dye this into a bright pink or yellow. There will probably be a few more tassels made in my future.

basket from french baskets.

While Vegas wasn’t exactly our cup of tea, the Neon Museum totally was, and if you’re in the area, be sure to visit. All the night tours were already booked. They only have 7 operating light signs, so we figured it wasn’t too big of a deal to miss out on a night tour. We went on the first tour of the day and booked it in advanced. They sell out quickly, so be sure to order tickets ahead of time.

You know us … we like metal, rusty, old things, so we loved the Neon Boneyard Museum. It’s so cool to hear the history of the signs and the history of Vegas. It’s not very big and the tour was about an hour long. They don’t really stop for picture taking and you have to stick with the group. If you do like taking pictures, I suggest hanging around the back of the group, so that you can get pictures without others being in it. As the tour moves forward, you can turn around and snap a couple pictures. There was another couple that liked to hang back and take pictures too, so they offered to take pictures of our whole family (and we did the same for them).

They have a little scavenger hunt worksheet for the kids, so while they might zone out from all the talking, the worksheet helped keep them engaged. The two littlest ones were doing a good job of keeping an eye out for the things to find on the activity page. We were all enamored with all the cool signs and I really wish we could purchase a couple (none of the signs are available for purchase). If you find yourselves in Vegas, skip the slot machines (or take a break from them) and visit the Neon Museum.

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Ben’s in charge of all things yard/garden related, but I get this tiny front porch-courtyard to tend to. We don’t hang out here much due in part to our neighbor’s over-watered yard; his two-a-day waterings lead to more of a swamp than a lawn. The health of the two trees we have on that side has been negatively affected due to the excessive water. And while we don’t care much for the trees, Ben has still tried to mention something to him (they are very nice neighbors). However, the message wasn’t received because it’s still quite swampy.

Besides the downside of over-watering with a drought going on in California, it has also led to a lot of mosquitoes from the sitting water (note the mosquito net curtain we use on the door to try to keep mosquitoes and flies out of the house). Hence, we don’t hang out in the front porch because the mosquitoes really love our California blood (when the girls and I go to Texas in the summer, oh how attracted they are to us!).

Every Saturday morning, I get up at 5am to go out to the courtyard water my plants before the bugs wake up (and for some reason I love waking up at 5am on Saturdays). Then, I never go back to this area until the following Saturday. Ironically, this courtyard is one of the reasons we bought the house (and I loved the big windows behind it), but it’s not such a pleasant place to hang out.

We’ve tried a variety of methods to keep the mosquitoes away, but none of them have helped too much (anyone have any tips?), so decided to give Ortho Bug B Gon a try. It says that it starts killing mosquitoes in minutes and is backed by a money-back guarantee, therefore what did we have to lose? Ben’s the fly killer in our house, thus I let him be the one to deliver the mosquito massacre.

Side story, Ben loves killing flies. He can even catch them in mid-air! We live near a lot of dairy farms, so we have lots of flies too. When Ben goes in fly killing mode, I call him the “fly killer,” and I sing (sung to Dave Matthew’s Band “Grave Digger”), “He’s the fly killer, he’ll dig your grave, he’ll make it shallow, so you can feel the rain.” Ben’s mom would tell us stories of when he was about 5 years old, he would disappear into the garage and then go back into the house to the backyard. He would do that back and forth, and it was obvious he was hiding something in his hands. Ben’s mom finally asked him to stop, open up his hands, and then a lot of flies flew out! Yuck! Told you, he’s got some talent catching flies.

I’m feeling more optimistic that the mosquitoes will B GON, so I picked up more plants to spruce up the area. Ben simply sprayed it it on the walls around the porch and he was done in about 10 minutes. It was a quick process. I’m hoping the bugs stay away and it’ll be such a pretty spot that we will want to sit out here and enjoy the space. I re-potted some plants, added new ones, cleaned up the area, and put some pillows on a couple chairs. Ben even created a trellis for my pink jasmine to grow on (will share that DIY soon), so I have plans to be intentional to sit in our courtyard, with a glass of wine in hand, and watch the kids play in the front yard.