disappearing act

Yes. I know I've been away from this little blog for a couple of weeks. The sunshine, the green grass, the warm soil, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, sweet children on bikes (including one who needs training wheels no longer), popsicles, and freeze tag have kept me away. And just recently my oldest asked if we could use a stack of old bricks in our yard to make a path through our garden.

Yes. We've been busy around here. I'm sore and a bit sunburned, but what a time we've had!

old fashioned picnic dinners

With warmer weather on its way, I need to shift gears. After months of planning and preparing cozy winter meals, I'm definitely ready for yummy salads and anything grilled--chicken, steak, veggies, pizza. I picked up these plastic food baskets at Cost Plus a few weeks ago. Aren't they fun?

And I love how sliced watermelon looks in my new bowl!

What do you look forward to making for your family (or eating) with summer on the horizon?

i'm such a groupie!

I'll be 35 in a couple of months, but you'd never know it by the way I acted when I met The Farm Chicks this morning! I'm almost certain I behaved like a 12 year old. I was completely giddy, and I had the dumbest grin on my face the entire time. Hopefully they're used to it by now. As I stood there with them, I had this little conversation with myself...

"I can't believe it's them! I can't believe it's them...get a grip, Jen! They're just people!"

Last month, our family went down to California to visit family. When I saw their new cookbook on a shelf in a bookstore, I pulled it off the shelf and set it out with all of the other cookbooks on display. Groupie!

And now for the icing on the cake...this really made my day! Serena told me she saw this yellow tray on my blog a while back--I picked it up one Saturday morning when I hit a few yard sales, thrift stores and antique stores here in town.

Guess what? It was hers! Yep...the giddiness went up a few more notches at that point.

new daisies

I adore these Gerbera daisies that grace my kitchen table. When the afternoon sun pours in through the west window and bathes them with its natural light, it takes my breath away!

No camera flash can out-do the warm glow of sunlight.

Even in the shadows, they make my heart happy. I'm so glad God made flowers!

time for lilacs

last year's blooms

Who doesn't love the smell of lilacs in bloom? My lilac bushes are starting to wake from their long winter's nap. This means that my poor kids have to do a lilac craft. ;)

For our Friday Preschool class this morning, we'll make these paper lilacs using purple paint, straws, green pipe cleaners, green construction paper and white tag board.

You can probably figure this out by looking at my terribly dark photo (sorry). We'll use straws to dab the paint onto the white tag board, which, surprisingly takes awhile. I always love it when kids' crafts last longer than 5 minutes. Sometimes it takes me a very long time to prepare these crafts for my kids and then they finish lickedy-split!

Here are a couple of fun books that feature our very lovely lilac flower.

In Bunny's Noisy Book, I'll have the kids make the sounds that Bunny hears or makes. In Little Green, I'll have the kids use their fingers to imitate what Little Green, the hummingbird, does in the book (flying high and low, zipping, darting, starting, stopping, looping, etc.).