Beauty in the weeds

At the end of our street, where I walk the dog, there's a field. At the beginning of that field there's a large amount of weeds, which most of the time are just an eyesore. But upon closer inspection, weeds have hidden beauty in their lovely blooms. Here's just a few, I'm sure you've seen the same ones in your neighborhood too.

Nature has an amazing way of bringing out the beauty even in something we often find annoying and aggravating. Next time you are cursing the dreaded weeds, think of the pretty blooms that they occasionally bring and smile.

Catching up

OK wow, I can't believe I haven't posted on here in three weeks! The time has really been getting away from me lately. I'll start off with some pics from the 4th. We went to the Dells and stayed in the camper. I made Patriotic Cake Balls, picture below, and I put some of them on lollipop sticks. I inserted a stick into the balls and froze them on a plate for several hours. Then I took them out of the freezer and dipped them in the melted confectioner's coating. Because the cake balls were frozen, the coating dried very quickly, keeping it from running down the sticks. I placed them in a floral foam block to dry. Got that idea from another blog out there somewhere.





Here are a couple other pictures from the 4th. TJ and Dominic enjoying the sparklers and Tony and Kristen earlier that day sitting around the camper. We were tossing the football around the lazy way... from chair to chair. LOL







I've made lots of crafts in the last few weeks, mostly for Kaboose so I can't share them yet. :-P However, we did start a really fun Craft Club on FC that lots of members have joined. We made Potato Beads as our first project and everyone is starting to post their results. It's been great! Anyone can join, you just have to be a registered member of the boards.

Here's a pic of mine:



I'll try hard to be more diligent about posting here! I hope to post some of the crafts I've done for Kaboose in the next day or so. Stay tuned!

Lake Delton storms

So we hauled our new camper up to our seasonal spot at a campground in Wisconsin Dells last weekend. Little did we know we would spend most of our time sopping wet, trudging back and forth through high water and camping out in the public bathroom as it was the safest structure around. It was pretty gnarly, the kids were scared and my husband was fascinated. Though I felt robbed of my weekend it felt good to head home to a dry house. I took some photos and a short video on the way home that showed the storm as we basically followed it south.




We considered ourselves very lucky. After all I am sure you heard about the flooding in Lake Delton, well actually OF Lake Delton. The dam in town (about 5 or so miles from us) broke and Lake Delton emptied into the River, washing a house completely away and catastrophically damaging others

Here's some pics too from the same area (Janesville) about an hour south:

On to high school

Well my daughter has graduated eighth grade and is on to high school now. With four kids all growing up so fast, it's hard to fathom where the time goes.

She's taking summer school right now to get ahead on some of her credits. She ended the year with A's and B's. I am very proud of her considering 7th grade she was bringing home C's and D's. She's come a long way and has developed into a responsible young lady. :) SNIFF

Yikes where did the week go?

Holy moly, it's been a week since I posted last. Where did the time go?

My DS marched in the band in the Memorial Day parade in town. It was humid and muggy, but the parade was fairly short (it's a small town LOL) so it wasn't too bad.

DD and her friend sang a duet in the school talent show yesterday and won first place! The judges had tied it between them and another duet, so they did a "clap-o-meter" type thing and they won with the loudest cheers :)

I've been a crafting machine for Kaboose this past couple of weeks. I've also made a few for FC. Below are a couple of new ones that still need to be added to the site, I'll post the link to the instructions once I have them live.




The stars are made from yarn, dipped in gliter glue and laid on wax paper then allowed to dry. Here's the instructions for those.

The card is construction paper and made for those dads that work in the blue collar industry. We see so many cards with ties for Father's Day, what about all the other hard working dads out there? This is for them :) Adding the link for the instructions here!

Alright, back to the grindstone for me, I have to get kids off to school so that I can cover my kitchen table with crafting supplies yet again! LOL

Field trip to the Art Institute

Ah yes, Chicago, that toddlin' town. ;-) So I boarded a bus (not those lovely luxurious coach buses, no it was a school bus) at 9 am, drove an hour and 40 minutes through the construction riddled tollway and arrived first at Chicago's Rock and Roll McDonald's. I'll admit, that was pretty cool, two stories, nice views out picture glass windows, and definitely better seating than your typical Micky D's. Then it was off to the Art Institute, though we only had about an hour and a half to browse and a lot of the exhibits were closed as they traveled to Texas. BLAH. So we got back on the bus for a 2 hour and 10 minute bumpy, jolting ride home. UGH.

All in all it was a nice day, and the bus wasn't loud, the kids were very well behaved, but man did my tailbone hurt when we finally got back! Here's a few shots, my DD is the one wearing the white Holister hoodie with the brown hair. :) The apple of my eye!

OUCH, and sadness

Yesterday I made cake balls for the bake sale to support the fundraising efforts of our school's eighth grade. The proceeds are to support eighth grade graduation. I finished a double batch and put them all away safe in the fridge to be wrapped in the morning.

Then it happened... I thought for sure I had broken my ankle. It hurt so bad I was certain I wouldn't be able to walk today. Luckily I'm limping around and I don't think it's broken. I was coming down the stairs last night and my foot slipped off the last step, buckled sideways and down I went. ACK! I've had broke bones plenty of times so I know the pain it makes, and it was pretty bad. But I am happy to report that this morning I was able to walk and I'm just very sore.

Now for the sadness part of my post. :( This morning DD and I set off for the bake sale, cake balls in hand. When we got out of the car I saw another mom I knew and she had 3 of DDs classmates with her. One was crying, really hard. I didn't see who it was at first, and I thought maybe her dog had been hit by a car or something. Well it was much worse. As I walked closer I realized it was a girl I knew rather well. Then I found out that she had JUST received a phone call to come home and that her mom had died. OMG. This was a woman who recently I haven't spent a lot of time with, but a few years ago we were on the phone chatting daily. I drove the poor thing home and told her stepdad to call me if they needed anything. This woman is younger than me. She had been ill, having grand mall (sp?) seizures the last few years, but she also battled with depression. Still waiting to hear what caused her death, but needless to say I am very sad. :(