Patio Perk Up

It has been so nice out lately. I have been spending a lot of time doing yard work and just sitting out to enjoy the nice weather. Recently, I purchased these beauties to perk up my patio. Aren't they just lovely and full of character?

I am going to be perking up my patio area. This is the first addition.

A Case of the Ickies

Man this last week seemed to take forever! Most of my fam. were sick and even Ethan stayed home from school for two days. We had sore throats/coughs that wiped us all out. On Saturday, I guess Eva was feeling left out, and didn't want to be out done so she barfed up all over herself twice on the way to grandma's house. Once we got her all cleaned up and her carseat washed. She did it again at grandpa's house. Poor thing. Now, James has the nasty scratchy throat and is all congested in his chest and head.

Hopefully, we will get back into the swing of things this week.

Banana Bread with Maple Glaze

Yesterday I made some yummy banana bread!

Lion House Bakery Banana-Nut Bread

(Makes two loaves)

6-8 very ripe bananas (mine were just spotted and just mashed them by hand)

4 eggs

2 c. granulated sugar

3/4 c. veg. oil

4 c. all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 c. chopped walnuts ( I used a heaping cup of walnuts, I like it nutty)

Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch loaf pans and set aside. (I generously oiled the pans and omitted the flour without any problems of sticking) Preheat oven to 325 F

Peel bananas and place into a large mixing bowl; mash bananas well. Add eggs, sugar, and oil and mix until well blended. In a separate bowl mix all of the dry ingredients excluding the nuts. Add to banana mixture. Mix until blended. Fold in Nuts. Do not over mix. Pour into prepared pans. Bake 45-50 minutes, or until inserted toothpick come out clean (I have a gas oven and it took about an hour and 15 min. for them to be bake all of the way). Turn loaves out onto wire racks to cool.

Maple Glaze

(My Recipe)

1 1/2 c powdered sugar

4 T milk

3 T maple Syrup

Add powdered sugars to bowl. Add the milk and syrup. Wisk together and while the loaves are still warm, use a pastry brush to frost the loaves.

This is one of my heads of lettuce. It comes from a package of Gourmet Blend seeds.

Suprisingly, the lettuce is what is doing the best in my garden. This is the first time that I have attempted to plant lettuce and thought that it would do the worst. Generally, it is a fall crop and I thought that it would wither up and die. I intentionally planted them inbetween tomato plants figuring that the tomatoes would shade them and make them last longer.

My tomatoes are doing okay, but I thought that they would be thriving and be much larger by now. They are just so-so. We will see how they do.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Lady Bugs . . . at the lady bug pic-nic!

This is no bush my friends. It is a large pile of weeds that I plucked from the earth yesterday. Can I say that I love pulling weeds. I always have. There is just something about pulling them out with one's might that just makes all of my stress melt away.


As you can see, I have cleared half of this corner. I had been putting it off, because this area had been infested with lady bug larvae. I wanted them to hang around for my garden. I noticed that the weeds were going to seed and let's face it, I don't need more weeds than I already have.

As I was plucking my way along there were a lot of lady bugs scampering to hide under the grass. Yeah! They stayed. Hopefully they will still stick around and eat all of the nasty little bugs in my garden.

We have been having fun playing with our webcam. This was taken a couple of weeks ago. I just figured out how to download these files.

My backyard is full of weeds. I spend hours out there everyday picking them and you can't even tell that I had.

This is a somewhat less daunting view of them.

Hair and a Nap

If you haven't seen what Eva's new doo looks like here are some pic's.

She obviously loves it! J/K, she is having fun playing games.

Yesterday, when I went to wake her up to pick up Ethan from school, this is where I found her.
She had made herself a bed in her closet.