Summer Playtime

With summer in full swing, I'd been eyeballing kiddie pools for Henry for a few weeks.  I had about decided on a little crab pool at Target, then two weeks ago I stopped in a new Goodwill store in town looking for a filing cabinet, and saw a stack of the exact same pools, still in the box for $4.95 each!  We filled it up for Henry last week, (and a few times since then), and he had a blast!

He's always loved bath time, so we're not at all surprised that he had so much fun just splashing around and laughing in his little crab pool.  It has a little sprinkler that he loved playing with, but we ended up turning it off because he kept putting his face in it!

Besides his little pool, I've been thinking of some other outside toys that would be good for him to have this summer.  This is our short list...

Fisher-Price Bubble Mower - I saw these in Target while I was checking out the kiddie pools.  I had forgotten all about them!  I remember playing with them when I was little!  Henry loves watching his Daddy mow the yard, and he's really started to love playing with bubbles, so I think this could be a big hit!  Plus, it retails for only $20, so it's definitely on the lower end of the price scale than some of the other outdoor toys we're looking at.

Little Tikes Cozy Coupe  - Henry has had a blast playing with these at some of his friends' houses!  It is crazy to me how much he loves them!  I've been watching yard sales, thrift stores, and consignment sales hoping I could scoop up an old one to spray paint like some of these I saw on pinterest:

I LOVE the batmobile:

But I've been looking for months and haven't been able to find one anywhere!  I think maybe other people might have had my same idea. ;)  Since Plan A backfired, now we're trying to decide which model of the Cozy Coupe to get Henry, (that sounds absolutely crazy to me!).  The original classic is the cheapest, and he obviously loves it:

but we've always kind of wanted to get him the Little Tikes Cozy Truck mainly because Daddy has a truck.  Our friend Lucas has the truck, and Henry loves it too!  Plus it's tailgate folds down so you can haul stuff! ;)  I just wish it's eyes didn't look so creepy.  When did they start putting the eyes on these things?  They didn't have them when we were little, (man, that makes me sound old!!), and I prefer them without the eyes.  Am I the only one???

So, I thought we were just trying to decide between these two, and then last week I found the Little Tikes Spray and Rescue Fire Truck:  

which could be fun since Henry loves firetrucks and his favorite fire truck book right now.  Do any of you have a Cozy Coupe?  Which do you recommend?

We're also looking at water tables for Henry, but I don't even know where to begin to narrow them down!  The Little Tikes Anchors Away Pirate Ship is one of my favorites, but I honestly don't know what I'm shopping for, I just think this one is pretty cute! 

via

We'd also like to get/build Henry a picnic table, since I think he's starting to be the age where he could use it.  It would be great for play dates as well!  Ideally we want to build him one based on this Ana White plan.  You know, since we have so much free time lately. ;)  

zulily.com is having lots of outdoor toy sales this week, with a Get Outdoors promotion.  So I've been keeping my eyes peeled for a great deal on some outdoor toys there as well.  You can shop the categories Camping Essentials,  Entertaining, Backyard Fun, and Run, Bike, & Hike to find some great outdoor gear for a fun summer!

So that's our summer fun wish list!  Do any of you have any of these toys?  Any other toys you can recommend?  

Jennifer

Weekend Update

First of all, Happy Father's Day to my beloved husband:

and my Daddy:

That's him holding me in the hospital in the top left corner, and holding Henry in the hospital in the bottom left corner.  I'm blown away by how much Henry and his Oompa love each other, (and how much they look alike!).

I'm so unbelievably lucky to have these two in my life!  I was going to write up a whole Father's Day post, but I started typing and had a major sense of deja vu, turns out, it's because I'd written an almost identical post last year.  It's probably one of my favorite posts ever, and still so true, so I'll just leave it.  You can read it here if you want. ;)

We had a pretty low key, but incredibly productive weekend.  I don't know how our June got to be so incredibly busy, but it is insane!  Fun, but insane!  We had something almost every day last week, and it doesn't let up through the end of the month.  I'm totally baffled that June is already over halfway over!

This weekend we spent trying to get our house and yard in order so that it won't drive us crazy in the coming weeks.  At this point, I think our next break is 4th of July!  Insanity.

Last week we worked on doing a little damage control in our garden.  I need to do a whole separate post about what all we did, but it involved some natural fertilizers, and this homemade bug repellent that smelled like salsa on steroids:

I wasn't too sure how well it would work, but I will say this.  I sprayed it all on the plants in the garden, but ran out with only two okra plants left.  I thought about making more, but decided that would give us a really good control group to see if the spray worked.

Well, yesterday afternoon I noticed that the one okra plant that was sprayed didn't have bugs, but the two that weren't sprayed were covered in black aphids!  Could be purely coincidental, but I think it's a good sign!  We'll probably end up making another batch soon, because it's supposed to rain all week, but for now I'm staying optimistic.

I also think the fertilizing perked the garden up a little, because all of the sudden we have teeny veggies everywhere!  Last week our cucumber plants exploded with blossoms, and yesterday I found tons of little baby cucumbers!  This was the biggest one:

I'm super excited about all the cucumbers because I can't wait to try my hand at making some pickles!  I looked at the ingredients in grocery store pickles for the first time a few weeks ago, and was totally stunned to find high fructose corn syrup and yellow 40 in the brand that we always buy!  I don't know why I'd never thought to look at pickle ingredients before, but I just couldn't believe it!  Pickles of all things!  grrr...  So, this summer we're going to attempt to make some homemade pickle relish, (sweet for me and dill for husband), bread and butter chips, dill chips, and dill spears.  I also really want to try fermenting some pickles!  I have been reading all about how great eating fermented foods are for you, and no I'm totally intrigued!  I can't wait to try it out.

Speaking of canning and fermenting foods, because we're canning novices, we've been trying to can a couple things a weekend to really learn the ropes before canning season is really in full swing, (i.e. when the cucumbers and tomatoes are ready in our area!).  We figured if we started with some things that we thought sounded good, easy, and were in small manageable batches, it would build our confidence up so that we would feel a lot more comfortable with the whole canning process in time to make big batches of pickles or can tomatoes.  Also, by starting with smaller batches of different stuff that we don't eat every day, we wouldn't be totally heartbroken if our canning didn't turn out well and we had to throw out $3 worth of radishes or carrots vs. starting with peaches that are only in season for a couple weeks.

rosemary onion confit, radish relish, (isn't it a beautiful color?!), and some fermenting curtido

At least that's our theory!  ha!  So with that, I mentioned last week that we'd canned some chow chow and hot carrots, and this weekend we put up 5 half pint jars of rosemary onion confit and 7 half pint jars of radishes.  The onion confit recipe is from The Pickled Pantry and the radish relish recipe is from Put 'em Up!  

We also tried out a first little batch of fermented food by making a little jar of Curtido with cilantro.  It's supposed to be ready in a few days and I can't wait to try it!  I'm going to make some pupusas for the first time, (keep your fingers crossed that works!), to eat with it, which I'm way too excited about!  Pupusas are a Salvodoran food that are basically corn tortillas stuffed with meat, and or beans, and cheese.  There's a great Salvodran chain of restuarants in DFW called Gloria's and I used to love going there for the pupusas and margaritas.  I'm really hoping mine turn out well!  I've been watching you tube videos of Salvodoran mamas making pupusas to prepare! ;)

So that's a little of what we've been up to lately!  How are y'all enjoying the summer?

Jennifer

Bad Blogger

-I seem to have entered summer vacation mode.  It's crazy that even though I don't work, Henry isn't in school, and husband doesn't get a summer vacation from work, (too bad, that would be great!!), that we've still shifted gears from a few weeks ago.  I just want to play outside, work the garden, and eat ice cream.  As you can imagine this isn't great for my waistline or blogging.  I keep trying to motivate myself to blog more, there are several posts I want to get written, I just can't seem to ever get any of them done.  I think we may take a little mini break from posting so regularly just for the summer.  ;)

-Apparently I'm also taking a break from taking pictures with my camera.  I think it's been a few weeks since I've even picked it up and turned it on.  The memory card is full and I need to get a new one.  I know that you can delete all the pictures and fill the card back up again, but since Henry's birth I just can't bring myself to delete any pictures off memory cards.  I have a bag that has probably 10 filled memory cards in it now.  The pictures are all on the computer and most of them are backed up, I just can't delete the pictures.  Clearly I'm crazy.

-We did our first two experiments with canning food this past weekend.  We did 3 pints of spicy carrots, (they're just pickled carrots with jalapenos and red pepper flakes-our local tacqueria makes them and they're GOOD, hopefully ours turn out as well!), and 6 pints of chow chow.  I need to do a post about canning, but I will say that it was a lot easier and not as time consuming as I thought it would be! We probably spent more time watching Parks and Rec and waiting for the water to boil than the active part of canning took!  In case you were wondering, it takes a looooonnngg time for 21.5 quarts of water to boil on a 17 year old stove.

watching Curious George from his new chair

-Henry got a new red rocking chair from his CeCe and he loves it!  He also loves standing in the chair, but that is definitely not my favorite.

This child is such a dare devil!  He certainly doesn't get that from his mama who is a huge chicken and terrified of heights.  Crazy kid!  He is seriously going to give me a heart attack between that and trick riding on his rocking horse.  He has no fear!

-Our little garden is growing so much!  I'm so excited about it!  All except one bed, which is not looking so hot.  We've been trying some new things out this week in an attempt to perk it up a little bit. I'll let y'all know what we did and if they worked when we see some results.  It's the bed with bell peppers and heirloom tomatoes.  If they don't improve by next weekend, we're probably going to end up transplanting anything salvageable out of the bed, running a soil sample to make sure that there's nothing off, and replanting the bed with more heat hardy plants.  I've been doing lots of garden research and I've read lots of reports of people having trouble with heirloom tomatoes growing, so they may not have been the best for us to start with?  We'll just have to see!

Roma tomatoes, heirloom tomato, jalapenos, squash blossoms, radishes

On the other end of the spectrum, with summer finally hitting us, (we had an unusually cool, long spring in Texas!), most of our other plants have taken off!  The okra shot up about a foot in a week once we got over 95!  I've lost count of how many blossoms there are on the cucumbers, (hooray, I'm ready to make some pickles!!), our Roma tomatoes look great, and our hot peppers are taking off!  I love going out to look at them every day, (ok more like 3 times a day, ha!).  I swear the cayenne peppers grow between half an inch and an inch every day!  One pepper is almost as big as my hand:

I love it!

-I got some pretties in the mail from Crystal Faye yesterday and am so excited!  These were part of my birthday present from husband, and I love everything!  Pretty sure these three will get a lot of use this summer!

-Last week it seemed like Henry just woke up looking bigger/older one day.  I sent husband a message saying such with this picture:

and he countered with this picture:

from the weekend we moved in to our house, about 8 months ago.  I cannot get over how fast Henry's growing and changing!  But he is at such a fun age right now!  He keeps us laughing all the time!

-This week Henry's been very into stacking things.  He's very in to patterns, lining things up, fitting things together, and stacking things.  I was working on lunch the other day, and he went to the playroom and got a tupperware container, (that he stole from a cabinet a few days before), put some blocks inside, and took them to play in the living room.  He takes the blocks out, stacks them up, puts them back in the container.  Turns the container upside down and stacks blocks on top of it.  Then picks them all back up and puts them back in the container.  I watched him do it for several minutes.  Then yesterday I found this:

haha!  Like I said, he definitely keeps us entertained!  Please excuse the messy floor.  I promise it's swept every day, we're just messy apparently. ;)

A couple deals going on right now, tiny prints has thank you cards on sale 50% off today only!  We got the thank you cards for Henry's birthday, (you can see them in this post), from tiny prints and just loved them!  Great deal!!


The Britax Free Ride Event that I wrote about here, is about half over!  You only have through the end of the month to take advantage of getting a free car seat, bassinet, or second seat when you buy a Britax BReady stroller.  This is an amazing deal that Britax usually only does once a year, so if you're in the market for a stroller, don't miss out on it!

So that's what we're up to this week!  I'm really hoping to start blogging more again next week.  It's been nice to take a little break, but I'm starting to miss it!!  It's weird because when I take breaks from blogging I always feel like it's hard to get back in to it, but once I start typing I suddenly have so much to say and can think of all kinds of post ideas!

Happy Thursday!  Only one more day to the weekend!

Jennifer