Popcorn Popping-For sure NOT the one take Osmonds

So it is that time of the year, popcorn popping on the Flowering Pear trees!  Arkansas is bursting with these clusters of white blooms.  Beautiful to the eyes, breathtaking-no really.  Our allergies are crazy!

February went out like a lion, but March came in like a lamb.

Bling for the mailbox

So my parents came for a visit last week!  Hooray!  I asked my mom to help me build one of these:

cool mailbox garland decorations made with that cool mesh stuff I had bought....good thing cuz HL hobbylobby  is out of it-unless you want purple and yellow!

We went to get some of those over-sized plastic ornaments and found out they are also over-Priced!  $10-20 a pop!

Soooooo.  I went shopping in my garage for some wire, rope-left over from the move, old Christmas lights-found at thrift shops for a few bucks a piece!

While @ HL got a mylar tabel cloth 50% off.  Stopped for some Deco Mesh tube from Silks a Bloom   Hint, they also have rolls of decomesh too.

Mom, the decorating elf she is, got to work on the garland using this as our inspiration but rope and pipe cleaners/wire for our base. AKA FREE!  We watched a great tutorial here. while Dad and I started forming the wire frames for the ginormous Christmas balls.  We made 6 to 8 loops of continuous 16 Gage multipurpose wire. (hint the natural curve of the wire was the small ball.  I grabbed the wire, counted 6 loops, cut on the 7th loop.  Cut some 12" pieces to secure the top and bottom of the ball and started forming the ball by opening out the frame pieces one by one to make a 3D ball.  They would have looked great as is or spray painted, or with garland or tinsil attached to the metal.....so many possibilities.  I wrapped them using just one $4 table cloth and clear packing tape and wired them on.

  OK, so we didn't have a pattern, but they turned out great!  I stuffed some of them with grocery bags to give them some poof.




Here is the finished product.   YES!  It snowed while my parents were here...I think they brought it with them!

 I made the spiral pieces using the deco mesh TUBE with the same wire I used for the balls.  Lots of fun!  Tip.  Secure each end of wire to tube by bending and cripming the wire to the edge of the tubing twice and then pulling the stretchy tubing up to cover the ugly fraying ends.  Don't think about it just do it.

 

Thanksgiving and Thanks-Helping

Caleb pealed a mountain of potatoes and not even one complaint!
I think he pretended it was a sword.  Then he whipped up a pumpkin pie!
He is amazing!

Ben and Aunt Pillsbury made the pie crust, Ben did do the fancy edge, and a dang good job too.

My CLEAN pantry.  If only we can keep it this  way.

 

So, Anthony rolled out the dough, painted butter
on the dough I helped him steer the pizza
cutter, and he rolled them up.  Not bad
for a 4 year old!

Our Thanksgiving Feast!  Yep, I still haven't finished painting. ;-)

Camera Timer+auto focus= great photo of the rolls,...they were good.

 
 Joseph loves the holes in olives.

Joseph's first tThanksgiving meal.

My big turkeys!  We made these hats & some place-mats at the library yesterday.  

We had a great 1st Thanksgiving in Little Rock!  The boys all helped me with the meal while James was at work this morning.  We are blessed with much and have grateful hearts.  Love ya'all!

Raining Elephants and Giraffes!

Did NOT get much sleep last night.  Lighting and thunder and WOW buckets of RAIN!
This is looking into our neighbor's new pool!  You can see by the high water line where the water was sometime in the night!

Zoom in to see the two different mud lines on the bottom of the fence.  That is how high the flash flood in our back yard was!

 Anyone for rafting?  There is some great white water here!  Usually this is a meadow!

 This is Otter Creek-by Elementry school.  Usually this is DRY!

 Otter Creek from the other side of the bridge

Fun, fun, fun!  At least it is not SNOW!!!!  Oh and our temps are in the 70's!

HODIA video with Caleb and Don.

My Caleb is featured in this video for his Diabetes camp!

A Look at Camp Hodia from Idaho Diabetes Youth Programs on Vimeo.

Arkansas Aracanoid

Ewwww.  Creepy.  Cool!  Arkansas insects help us decorate for Halloween.  Yes, they are real, no they are not fake.

The boys and I found the coolest spider web last night.  It even has a zig zag web like the fake spider webs you buy......but it is REAL!

 Don't know what this alien thin is but I'm not letting him in.

 Back to the bush you go.

Yes this spider is a good 2 1/2" long.

Remembering 9-11

So, as we were talking to Caleb about 9-11 last night as he prepared his current event summary for middle school, I had time to reflect back and remember.  I watched it all happen on my TV in Rexburg Idaho before I left for work with my 18 month old.  When I arrived at work, I wanted desperately to go back and pick up Caleb.  I remember how quiet the world outside was, no airplanes in the sky,  very little traffic.  So somber.  I remembered I had taken these photos up at the gardens on the Ricks College campus earlier in the summer and decided to put phrases to them.  The middle one was our Christmas card cover that year.