Painting

We spent the weekend painting the porch!  And by “we” I mean mostly T, but Buggy and I did help some…we still have the paint in our hair to prove it. :)  T borrowed a paint sprayer from one of our friends and OH MY GOODNESS!  Why have I never used one of these before?!?  It was SO fast!  SO messy as well, but it would have literally taken me a week’s worth of naptimes…or more…to paint all that railing!  We got it done in just a couple of hours! 

I love how it looks!  We have been waiting for it to cure and then we will wash the floor part of the porch and seal it.  Our house it really turning into my dream house!  I love how it looks like a farmhouse in the country, complete with my newly planted old fashioned roses in the front!

And my favorite flower of them all, hydrangeas!  I love them!  We originally got them to go in the backyard but realized it wasn’t going to work so I stuck all four of them on the end of the porch where there is more shade.  I’m really hoping they do well there.  They just make me happy!

Doesn’t the rail look amazing?!  T did a wonderful job!

The girls and I took time out from the painting project to attend the wedding of one of their babysitters.  It was a beautiful wedding.  The bride was absolutely stunning, and everything was just perfect.  I got teary watching, first her 3 year old little sister come down the aisle sprinkling flower petals, and then the bride herself.  I can’t imagine how I’m going to keep it together at my own girls’ weddings when I was tearing up just watching this sweet girl who I’ve only known for four years! 

Yesterday was our last day in the 70’s. :’(  But I’m so thankful for this gorgeous weather we have been having!  Tonight is supposed to be the first freeze so the girls and I spent all day yesterday bringing in the garden, and planting tulip bulbs. 

We had a ton of carrots!

And a TON of tomatoes!  Last year I just snipped off clumps of tomatoes and left them in the laundry room where they got some sun and they slowly ripened.  I think we had tomatoes all the way up until January!  I’m hoping that works again, although I think part of the success was that it was cold in there, but we have since insulated so they might go bad before they ripen this time.  Maybe I should stick them in the garage?

T actually had success with the pumpkins and squash he planted this year!  Every year we plant them and we never get them big enough before the frost gets them.  This year instead of starting with seeds he bought some that were already about four inches high and that seems to have done the trick.  We have three pumpkins and one really good squash. 

K also grew a watermelon!  I let her buy the seeds even though I have never been able to grow a watermelon in our short season.  She was thrilled that she got one…although I don’t know if it will be edible.  It’s pretty small, but she’s just happy that she grew one. :)

We had our first homeschool lesson on plants yesterday when we were bringing the garden in (carpet is coming Thursday and we’ll finally be able to set up our classroom!). 

We had fun identifying the parts of a flower that I pulled up for them to look at and then we made a chart that compared 8 different kinds of vegetables/fruit that we grew in our garden.  I asked the girls to describe the root, leaf, stem, and produce on each of the plants and they did a great job! 

Bug came up with words like feathery (carrot and asparagus leaves) and vine-ey (pumpkin and strawberries) and wiggly (tomato roots) and ridges (strawberry leaves).  It was actually a lot of fun, and they listened really well.  I’m looking forward to getting our classroom set up and getting going! Hopefully by next week!