how did 4 years go so quickly?

how has she grown from this

to this so fast?

today is my baby's fourth birthday.  i cherish every second we spend together and she is the center of my world if you haven't noticed!  i don't know how i got so lucky to have a child with her spirit.  her light shines so brightly and she shares her light with the people around her.  love you sweet girl.  

weepers peepers

i love trees with a weeping habit.  not like weeping willows, but small scale weepers that flower in the spring.  i had one my front yard in my minneapolis house.  you can grow some amazing plants in minneapolis.  miss that.  hostas, hydrangeas the size of a large dinner plate, beautiful perennials and grasses.  i've always wanted another weeper since leaving minnie.

it was so sunny today, i had to go to my wholesale nursery to see what i could find.  i'm an outdoorsy girl and i can't stand to be inside when it is nice out.  my girl likes the outdoors too.

this flax i'm removing had to go.  it was a total snail magnet.  we've got snails right now.   we've got snails  bad.  i even find them on my windows.  i've tried everything and they will not go away.  jerks.  i found a snail inside a shoe i left outside.  so gross!  (random side note, guess who took this picture?  my almost four year old!  another random side note, i don't usually wear khakis when i work in the yard! )

adios slimy.  please leave my plants alone.  i hope i don't see you around these parts anymore.

my sweet girl, she loves gardening.  i love that!  i give her specific jobs, like throwing all the rocks we dig up on the other side of the fence, or rubbing the plants roots before i put the plant in the ground, or she gets to put the fertilizer in.  in this case she was giving our newly planted baby some of this...

we hope our weeper doesn't go into transplant shock.  this is supposed to help.  i don't ever use this for shrubs or other plants, but when i plant trees i always give them a hit of this stuff.  i haven't had a tree go into shock in a long time.  it's not like a plant trees everyday though, so hopefully our new baby will adjust nicely to her new home.

i'll post some more pictures of our weeper once i get the planter around her figured out.

happy monday friends!  i hope you all had the best easter ever!  i did!

bunny ears!

do you ever get so excited about a project you just want to take a million pictures and send them to everyone you know?  that's kind of how i feel about this little project.  most of my friends wouldn't really care about this kind of thing, so i'm really glad you're here.  i saw these bunny ears in country living magazine about a month ago.  looked simple enough.  i told myself i was going to make these for my girl for easter.  i had all the supplies already except for the headbands.

moving right along, everything was going so smoothly.  bunny ears done.  just need to make the cover for the headband now and attach the ears to the headband.  wow, this is a really a fun project and so simple.

here's where the project took a wrong turn and i got mad.  if mr cotton tail would've heard the words coming out of my mouth i'd probably be getting rabbit pellets in my easter basket.  um, country living, did you try to follow your own instructions?  something goes haywire in the last step.  i tried following your directions, mutliple times.  i had to come up with my own solution.  i was not going to be defeated by the bunny ears.  my girl was getting these things although now she knows that i made them and they will not be part of her easter basket.

let's take it back a step.  when all else fails use your hot glue gun.  instead of making a casing for the headband, i ended up wrapping the bias tape around and around until the headband was covered and glued it in place.  i have no idea what CL was talking about in that last step.

i was on a roll and there are lots of little people in my life, so i went ahead and made four of them.  they turned out really cute and now i kind of wish i was having an easter party just so i could hand these out.  if i didn't have so much trouble with the last step i could make these pretty quickly.  also, in CLs tutorial they say to use bias tape.  you could use strips of fabric just as easily, which i did with the blue seersucker ears.

hoppy thursday!  (did i really just say that?  yes i did.  dorky, i know.)  i'm off to my little one's school easter party!

sweet treats for my sweets

the highlight of this past weekend was my daughter's 4th birthday party.  this is the first time we haven't had her party at our house.  i was a little leary, but i found a crafty place and i felt like the owner understood what i was looking for.  we had her party here.

i had to put the amber stamp on her party.  i could not just show up with a birthday cake and balloons.  we decided on a donut/sweet treat theme and the kids were going to be "making" donuts.  rather than traditional birthday hats, i made chef hats for the attendees (only 9).  this was a super easy project and the only cost for me was my time and the cost of velcro.  i used fabric i had on hand.  i found this simple online tutorial for the chef hats.

the party favors were packed into pink donut boxes tied with bakers twine, red for girls natural for boys.

this is what drew me into artsoup.  i love VWs and the kids got to paint this bug.  i wish i would have gotten in there to paint the bug!  it looks like fun!  to keep the kids busy, they had two organized crafts and then they got free time in the studio while their projects were drying.

they made giant donuts out of cardboard cutouts.  another bonus, artsoup tries to use recycled materials.

had to have these for a sweet treat party!  fellow blogger friend annie recently did a post on these.

so true

fun donut labels can be found here.

finished product.  the kid's projects turned out great.  i love that artsoup encourages kids to create freely.  it drives me crazy when parents try to take over a child's project and try to dictate how their art should look.  it is one thing to help your child, but c'mon let it be art!  i think all of us are born artistic, but somehow overtime something sucks the creativity out of some of us.  this has happened to me before, but since having my daughter i have found my creativity again.  thank you sweet girl.

hope you're off to a good week so far!

for those days you're so busy you're on the verge of a panic attack... a crock pot recipe

i'm often running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  maybe it's time management or maybe it's choice management, but sometimes i'm spread pretty thin.  i almost never say no to anything.

it is so nice on a busy day to come home to a cooked meal.  my good friend ashley gave me this super easy recipe, not sure where she got it from. i have no desire to be a food blogger but i like to share some of my favorite recipes, especially easy ones like this.  i still can't believe how good these are considering the effort put into making them.

ingredients:


1 pkg boneless skinless chicken breast
1 pkg chicken taco seasoning (i have lawry's pictured but i think i like mccormicks better) 
1 can rotel
1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c water


directions:


sprinkle taco seasoning in the bottom of a crockpot.  place frozen chicken breasts on top.  pour rotel on top of the chicken.  pour olive oil and water over everything.  cook on low for six hours.  you can turn the chicken halfway through but not necessary.  the chicken is so tender you just need to stick a fork in it and it shreds.  shred chicken and let it sit in the juices in the crockpot for 15-30 minutes more.  that's it!  super easy!

treasure time

this past weekend was action packed!  i cut my vacation short so i could go to the rose bowl flea market with these lovely ladies, grace and amy.  is that bad?  i cut my vacation short and drove like a bat out of hell the day before so i could hunt for used treasures.

this time i went to the flea market with a list in hand, trying to stay focused here, something i'm not very good at.  i found these feathery friends.  they were not on the list, but i needed them.

you know, i'm a country girl at heart living in the burbs.

i wonder what my h.o.a. would say about chickens in my backyard.

my husband had chickens growing up.  he knows how to take care of them.  he named all of his chickens.  i love his chicken stories.  he grew up in the country like me but he is not a country boy at heart, not anymore anyways.  

this one is my second favorite

i need to frame them.  they are taped to cardboard at the moment.  i can't wait to show you where i'm going to hang them!  hold your horses.  it's going to be awhile.  pulling a room together out of mostly vintage goody goodness takes some time my friends.  i'm starting from scratch.

this one is my favorite.  i love color.  i think i'm a color junkie.

these were on my list!  amy and grace pointed these out to me.  thank you girls!  i was getting discouraged about finding the big pieces on my list.  i might have overlooked these babies.  they're great aren't they?

this was not a flea market find, but i found it earlier on my vacay at a vintage store called "junk in the trunk"

you can never have too much vintage fabric.

this still had the original price tag from monkey wards!  monkey wards and i go way back.  my grandpa lived around the corner from a montgomery wards and we used to walk there.  he used to sing me this song on our way.  i think it was called "animal crakers in my soup".  good memories.

thank you grace and amy for the fun flea times!

surf & Ski: santa barbara and tahoe

long time no see.  the fam and i took a nice little road trip this past week.  we had a blast and got some much needed rest.  now it's back to reality.  this is going to be one hell of a week getting back to the swing of things, starting with a root canal today.

i want to go back here again.  this was my first time to santa barbara.

quality time

a little of this

a little of that

gotta a love a town that has this on the sidewalk.  this is a chalk marker marking a running route for people training with team in training.

late mornings in jammies and playing with babies

i love california!  it is such a beautiful state and has so much to offer.  for those of you struggling with this you should explore.  get out of so cal and see what else this state has to offer.  i don't think there is any other place that offers the diversity of culture, landscape, people and natural beauty as this state.

they're cute aren't they?

little miss s.  poor thing, she needed some r&r too.

next time i go to sb i want to stay in this town instead.  my cup of tea right here.

got a little shopping in too

up to nor cal-  making beans with grandma

no deer xing signs here, just winos

one thing i love about the town i grew up in, the support of small businesses.  this entire store only sold products made around my town.  the nearest walmart is an hour away.

fun shops

don't you love mismatched jammies, uggs on the wrong feet and messy hair? i do.

20 minutes from my parent's house

squaw valley

she had no idea we were about to drop her off at ski school for a few hours, which she ended up hating.

the hubs

bad mama jamma

she liked skiing with us better than ski school.

i just want to pinch those cheeks!

central cali on our way home

that's it for now.  have a great week!

smiles,

amber